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Creating Your City's Future By Kent E. Eklund and Cathy.]acobson eeting after meeting, city councils make decisions on behalf-of their city or town. Often, councilmembers will begin to feel there is no pattern or common vision driving the various decisions. This lack of a sense of a larger picture often frustrates councils. Strategic plan- ning is a technique to develop a vision for a city and create an understanding of that bigger picture. Strategic plan- ning offers a city a geater potential to guide and participate in its future. The alternative is to be directed by future visions developed elsewhere. Importance of strategic planning. In fast changing environments, it is often easy to feel a certain loss of control. The economy is in the midst of a major restructuring, "old" indus- tries are changing, and even newer companies come and go. The increas- ing rate of technolo~cal innovation affects all of us. Social institutions, such as the family and religious organiza- tions, are undergoing rapid change as well. In the midst of all these changes, it is often easy to feel helpless and sub- jected to forces over which you can exercise litde control. Strategic planning helps communi- ties reco~maize these forces and deter- mine long-term coping strategies for dealing with these changes. In many cases, communities are forced to recog- nize that their ori~nal purposes for even being in existence are no longer viable and the community needs to re-think its whole position within a larger, regional context. Such thinking helps develop proactive strategies for working with the trends to arrive at a more pleasing future than if conmauni- ties merely respond to outside forces. What is strategic planning? Strategic planning is different than comprehen- sive planning, land use planning, or facilities and capital planning. All of these planning processes are part of developing and implementing the vision that the strategic plan sets in place. A strate~c plan starts with a longer-term view of the city and answers key questions about the five to ten year vision of what the city wants to become. This long-tema thinkin,~ is hard work. The time horizon is beyond the normal, day-to-day th/nking and acting. Yet elected and appointed city officials have a unique opportunity and responsibility to think in the long term about the future of the whole commu- nity. A strategic plan is organized into yearly, incremental steps or goals that start a community down the path of making the vision a reality. Most plans identify only three to five goals for any one year. This is as much visionary work that any council normally has time to address. The remainder of the annual agenda is devoted to oversight of the daily functions of the city and responding to the issues that emerge during the year. Some of the hurdles. A very difficult part of strate~c planning is finding time in the busy operations of the city to focus on implementing the plan. This is why councils should focus on a lim- ited number of goals each year, and build those goals into the work plans of city staff. Keeping those goals in front of staff is a critical responsibihty of the council. A second problem with strategic planning is elections. With each elec- tion cycle, new councilmembers arrive with potentially little ownership of a plan authored by the previous council. This necessitates, usually in December after each election, the re-opening of the plan and a discussion among all the councilmembers--newly elected and veterans--about the vision and compo- nents of the plan. Even if dramatic changes occur as a result of elections, each council can at least select the key, three to five goals fhat will be the hallmark of their council. Questions to consider. Councils should start these types of discussions with the following questions: In the history of this city, what do we want this council to be known for? How does this answer fit into the vision of the previous council? Even in elections where there seems to be little mandate from the voters, this question gives the council freedom to think about its Vision for the city. A final question councils often ask is whether an outside consultant is worth the expense. The answer to this question depends on the availability of seasoned facilitators in the commu- nity. The individual who facilitates the strategic planning discussion cannot also participate in the conversation. So, whoever is selected to facilitate the discussion must be comfortable being a non-participant and have skills in forg-ing consensus and resolving dif- ferences, which will inevitably occur. An advantage of relying on someone from outside the community to guide the conversation is that they will be able to ask questions from an entirely objective perspective, with no agendas that obviously come with being a resident of the city. Final thought. Of course, there are no guarantees for any community. What strategic planning enables is a rea~stic assessment of a community's prospects and the development of longer-term strate~es for working towards a more desirable future. ~r Kent Eklund and Cathy Jacobson are with Cincinnatus, a member of the LMC Business Associate program. JULY 1999 MINNESOT^ CITIES