Local government entities can use strategic planning to ensure various priorities and goals are met, develop effective strategies and tactics to reach those goals, and hold the municipality accountable to itself and the community. Municipal strategic plans allow you and your team to set and work toward a series of goals and initiatives to make changes and improvements throughout the municipality and community.
Strategic planning requires significant time and effort to see real benefits in your community. A planning template can help you get started and guide you in the right direction. Consider using our municipality strategic planning template to jumpstart your plan.
In This Article
- The Goal of This Municipal Strategic Planning Template
- How to Use This Municipal Strategic Planning Template
- Tips for Seeing Your Municipal Strategic Plan in Action
- Start Your Municipal Strategic Plan With AchieveIt
The Goal of This Municipal Strategic Planning Template
Strategic plans are intended to help you get everyone on the same page regarding goals and visions. While strategic planning is thorough and extremely beneficial for various types of organizations and businesses, the planning process can be challenging to begin without prior experience. The goal of this planning template is to help guide you and your team through the municipality strategic planning process.
A template can help you identify and address concerns and potential challenges from the start. You’ll also more effectively identify your municipality’s needs while creating a step-by-step plan that helps you meet those needs. This template will help ensure you cover all the necessary points to create a solid strategic plan.
Using this template will guide strategic planning using details from your municipality. When using templates from AchieveIt, you also have the option of consulting with our expert team. Drawing inspiration from templates and other successful plans helps you determine what will work best for your municipality. With this template, we can help you streamline your strategic planning process.
How to Use This Municipal Strategic Planning Template
Our template is designed to be the basis that guides your municipal strategic plan. Every municipality is different, and your plan may vary from our template and other municipality plans.
To create the most effective strategic plan for your municipality, use this template as your starting point. As you work through the plan, you can make your own adjustments to form the plan into what you need it to be.
1. Update the Template
Review the template and update it with your municipality’s information. As mentioned above, every organization is different, so you’ll have to update the template with the vocabulary, references and names your municipality uses.
For example, municipalities may refer to their goals with different terms. While one may refer to goals as objectives, another may refer to their goals as strategic priorities. Updating the template to use your specific language helps reduce confusion.
2. Set Goals and Look for Strategic Themes
As you set your goals, break them down into actionable tactics, objectives and strategies. These smaller tasks will help you work toward each overall goal. We also suggest looking for themes among your goals. Overarching themes help you identify commonalities and organize your strategies. We can provide examples of several common strategic themes, though you may identify others.
3. Identify Goal Owners and Timelines
To ensure your strategic plan’s success, each goal in your plan should have an assigned owner and timeline. When an individual or specific department is solely responsible for a goal, it’s more likely to be achieved.
A clear timeline also helps create structure, determining when the goal should end and showing when each tactic should be completed. For example, you may set a goal you need to complete by the end of the year and a few tactics that are scheduled to be finished quarterly.
4. Align Tactics With Goals
Aligning your tactics and objectives with your goals also helps ensure your plan is successful. Your tactics should support the desired outcome of your goal. Think of your tactics as smaller goals that help you work towards your larger goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase communication between departments, one of your tactics may be to implement bi-weekly meetings. Create your tactics to ensure they’ll help you reach your goals.
Your goals and tactics should also be measurable, helping you quantify your success. Find a way to measure the progress of each goal with indicators like leads or revenue.
5. Execute Your Plan and Track Your Progress
Your execution process will likely be unique to your municipality, though you should consider factors like who you’ll share the plan with. You should also plan to track your goals so you can see your progress. Goal tracking helps you see how far you’ve come and can help you identify areas that may need adjustments.
Tips for Seeing Your Municipal Strategic Plan in Action
Seeing your strategic plan come to life can be so rewarding. You’ll likely continue making changes to your strategic plan, even after you’ve executed it. Strategic planning software like AchieveIt can help you implement your plan across your municipality and see it in action.
Here are a few ways we can help you put your plan into action:
- Connect your initiatives: Most municipalities have several plans and initiatives running simultaneously. Being able to connect your plans and view them in one place significantly increases your visibility across your municipality. AchieveIt allows you to monitor your plans on a centralized dashboard.
- Get live updates: Collecting updates is tedious yet critical. AchieveIt automatically collects municipality-wide updates, allowing you to use your time more efficiently. You can choose when to receive updates or view them at any time from anywhere across your municipality.
- Hold teams accountable: Keeping your teams accountable helps ensure they’re completing their assigned jobs in full and on time. AchieveIt helps municipalities improve accountability with more visibility into what their teams are accomplishing.
Start Your Municipal Strategic Plan With AchieveIt
Strategic planning software like AchieveIt improves how your municipality plans and implements new initiatives. Creating a reliable strategic plan for municipalities allows you to stay on top of progress and on track to where you want to be.
Starting your strategic plan with our template provides some direction for your municipality. Our execution experts can also help you walk through your custom plan and properly implement it.
Download our municipality strategic plan PDF to get started today. To learn more about how AcheiveIt can help your municipality, request a demo.
