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As a City Manager, reflecting on the successes and failures of your strategic plan is a crucial part of your role. Ensuring strategic priorities are aligned with Council’s objectives right from the get-go establishes good precedents and habits for all current and future initiatives.
Are you prepared for a swot analysis?
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis can help you understand how your government is positioned in relation to where you are — versus where you wanted to be. In order to review the performance of your previous year’s strategic plan, the following questions can be helpful in pinpointing where your successes and missteps came from.
By asking some of the following questions, you can save yourself from repeating the same missteps and ensure alignment between your team’s actions and Council priorities & KPIs
Here are 9 questions our municipal customers always ask their teams
- What is the one thing your municipality did very well this year? What do you need to do to turn that success into a repeatable process?
- What is the one thing you know your municipality needs to improve on? Does it have to do with operations? Budgeting? Resource allocation? How will you ensure these missteps aren’t repeated in the future?
- Which department, division, or team experienced the most hurdles in their work towards achieving the city’s strategic priorities?
- Which department, division, or team realized the most success in achieving their strategic priorities?
- Which performance metrics do you wish you had measured to gauge the progress of your strategic plan?
- What are the top 5 KPIs you want to use to measure the success of your strategic and operational plans moving forward?
- If you could make one major change from the last year, what would it be and who would it impact most?
- Do you feel your relationship with Council helped or hindered your team’s performance? What adjustments would you make in the future to drive success?
- Are you prepared for any growth to the population in your municipality? If not, why and what are the consequences associated with being ill-prepared?
Opening the lines of communication with your staff and consistently engaging with Council and residents will help you achieve both your short- and long-term priorities. By establishing measurable objectives and engaging department directors, you are effectively empowering your senior leadership team for success.
Be sure to also check out some examples of great examples of city strategic plans.
You can find peace of mind knowing that Council priorities are aligned with your team’s strategic initiatives.
You will now be able to focus your energies where they’re most needed: on the creating a prosperous municipality.
Cara Ong
Cara has over 15 years of experience in business and product management. She is a highly organized, results-driven, strategic executive and entrepreneur with a positive attitude towards work and life.
Cara is passionate about helping organizations find effective solutions and providing forward-thinking strategies to help them achieve their goals of operational efficiency.
In her free time, Cara enjoys acrylic painting and golf.
