Strategic planning - you have a role
On Oct. 21 managers, supervisors, and other informal leaders at the Iowa DOT will come together for a day-long event focused on developing their leadership skills. During the Leadership Development Conference attendees will have the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and identify issues and barriers related to leadership, strategic planning, performance management, culture, and communication and propose possible solutions to overcome barriers and become more successful as an organization in each of these five areas.
But attendees of the conference are not the only ones responsible for improving our agency. Everyone has the ability to make improvements that help the Iowa DOT become smarter, simpler and customer driven. Even small changes in how you approach your day-to-day work can make a big impact on the way we operate as a team. The purpose of this blog is to give an introduction to each of these focus areas (Leadership, Strategic Planning, Performance Management, Culture and Communications) and suggest ways you can work to make improvements.
Today’s topic is strategic planning.
You don’t have to work here long to realize the mountain of work that employees at the Iowa DOT accomplish. To get everything done requires the organization to have a well thought out plan. In addition to the work that must get done, an organization’s leaders - both formal, like managers and supervisors, and informal leaders - must work to identify what changes need to be made for improvement.
Strategic planning is the process of identifying and managing change.
A plan is really a means to organize resources to accomplish a something. A strategic plan is the piece of organizational planning that is focused on change management. It is a way of separating the focus and priorities of day-to-day work each of us does from the efforts to identify and make changes to improvement the agency.
The ability to go through a strategic planning process is quite similar to building an improvement plan for an employee. It is important work still gets done, but a plan is needed to identify those things that need to change or be implemented to improve. A strategic plan is really just an improvement plan at the organizational level.
Why is it important?
Change at an organizational level can be confusing for employees. The goal of a strategic plan is to identify, develop, and help explain proposed changes clearly. A strategic plan is not going to necessarily impact every employee directly, but we are all in the same organization, so indirectly, we should all know what is happening.
You can think of it this way. You work on the kitchen staff of a cruise ship that travels regularly from the mainland to Hawaii. Now the cruise line has decided that your ship will be changing its route and going to the Bahamas instead. That’s a change in strategy. Since the cruise duration will not change, your day-to-day job really won’t be impacted much by the change in direction.
Now think about if you were a navigator on that same ship. Your job will change a lot with the new course. You will have to chart out the new direction and make sure everyone gets to the Bahamas and not some other destination.
The same can be said for our organization. Some people will be directly impacted by the changes seen in the strategic plan, but for some, duties won’t change at all. The important thing is that we are all aware of the general direction the organization is going.
Haven’t we done this before?
Many of you who have been around the Iowa DOT for any length of time might be asking, “We seem to do a strategic plan every few years. Why?”
To be most effective, the strategic planning process is done in cycles. It involves looking at information to find out the condition of things, identifying areas to address, creating and implementing initiatives for the identified areas, and monitoring progress and impact of the initiatives. The monitoring of progress and impact feeds into the next cycle of assessing condition.
The Iowa DOT has had a strategic plan of one sort or another for more than 20 years. Some of you may have participated in efforts to create earlier versions. Before the most recent effort, staff researched what makes strategic plans and strategic planning efforts ineffective and used the information to develop a modified approach to strategic planning.
The assessment portion of the process didn’t change that much. The part of the process that changed the most is in the development and implementation of initiatives.
In most instances, strategic plans consist of multiple initiatives that are all underway at the same time. The primary difference in this strategic planning cycle is that Management Team has committed to limiting the number of initiatives in order to not to water down available resources. The areas identified to be worked on are important, and working on one (or a limited number) at a time enhances the chance of helping the Iowa DOT improve.
What can I do to be involved in the strategic plan?
The most obvious way to get involved with the strategic plan is to use the website to better understand strategic planning and to stay up on the work being done. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask those working on the various teams. If approached about getting involved with one of the efforts, see it as a chance to positively impact the agency.
As we have already discussed, not everyone will be directly impacted by the strategic plan. Even if you don’t have direct involvement you can still make the strategic plan, and it's approach, a part of your daily work life. As you are doing your day-to-day work, ask yourself if what you are doing meets the mission of the Iowa DOT, either directly or indirectly, by helping our customers get there safely, efficiently, and conveniently. Periodically step back and ask if there are changes you could make that would result in things being smarter, simpler, or more customer-driven?
Look for more information in future blog posts about what was discussed during the Leadership Development Session.