Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Planning for Government Entities

Government planning reaches farther than business planning because most plans — whether community cultural plans, regional tourism plans, county plans, or neighborhood development plans — exist outside the realm of any single agency. Therefore, successful planning requires enough authority and resources to assure the plans' intentions are fulfilled. Basically, the majority of for-profit planning takes a single entity approach instead of a community or regional scale approach. When you're planning for a single organization, boundaries, authority, and responsibilities are well defined. When the planning scale expands beyond individual organizations to include a community, different methods are required.

The following sections highlight the key areas where planning for government entities differs from private sector planning.

Recognizing how government planning works

Because government entities operate as monopolies in most cases, have elected boards that change every four to six years, and provide services that are legislated instead of based on market demand, these organizations must recognize how those factors affect their planning. In the following sections, I show you how to accommodate some factors that affect government strategic planning.

Leadership

Leaders must win internal and external support for strategic planning. Often the agency that initiates a plan deliberately seeks community leaders outside its own organization to head the planning. ...