What Exactly is Strategic Planning? Do I really need it?
Planning Basics
We focus on the planning needs of communities of 10,000 or less. You may be required to have all the documentation in place as a larger municipality but not the budget or resources to do so. This is often a catch 22 situation. We take a best of breed approach and work backwards into something that fits your municipality’s needs.
Do You Need Strategic Planning
Are you required to have a comprehensive plan?
Do you have a comprehensive plan that is over 5 years old?
Do you have individual plans for police and fire services?
Have the needs or budget of your town changed significantly?
Is your planning budget less than what you can get services for?
Is strategic planning outside the capabilities of existing town staff?
What I Can Help You With
Visioning
Branding
Planning
Marketing
Research
Outsourcing
Networking
Operations
My Approach to strategic planning
Here’s a quick overview of our strategic planning process for police departments. Unlike traditional planning projects that lasts for months and start from a clean slate, this approach uses our library of law enforcement goals and objects to create a robust strategic plan of 50-70 pages in a matter of weeks. If your department has recently been defunded, or is in danger of losing funding solely on the basis of public pressure, our approach can get you back on track with a plan forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is your philosophy on Strategic Planning?
I’ve been doing planning for larger government agencies for several decades. After seeing what was happening to police departments in recent years I created an approach that would work for communities that were in need of a new direction. Whether it is police, juvenile justice, or mental health treatment, it’s part of an ecosystem of how society works. Moving pieces, or taking pieces away from the puzzle invariably has unintended side effects. Whether you do it before change or after, planning is important to ensure things are thought out for whatever direction you are moving forward with.
How Do I Know if we need strategic planning support?
It is always a good idea to have a strategic plan, but many communities only do one every decade or so. In today’s world, a strategic plan has a shelf life of about 36 months, if you are lucky. Most towns will put it off for budget reasons, but the reality is you need to do planning more often. Our approach lets you do that.
If you need a grant to do the planning, we can help you with that too.
How long does a police or fire department plan take?
Since we work backwards from a best of breed model, we can have a functioning, fully customized plan in place in a matter of weeks. We will need a few paragraphs for certain sections, but the rest can be worked out in just a few short weekly meetings.
How long does a comprehensive plan take?
Comprehensive plans can take a few months, but we still work backwards from our best of breed library. There are simply more areas to get input from. It is likely to take about 1/2 the time of other approaches with a similar price tag.
How do you keep plans up to date?
We offer fractional planning services so you can keep your plan up to date and keep track of your progress over time. Ideally we would do quarterly sessions to update progress and adjust goals and activities as needed, but we can work with whatever works for you.
Contact
Phone
Address
88 Old Goshen Road Williamsburg, Ma 01096