Case Study /

City Municipality: Aligning Around Vision for Strategic Planning

The
challenge

Facilitate a future-focused leadership summit for a large city municipality that included 10 individual program managers and four senior leaders, including the interim director + new director. The purpose of the summit was strategic planning to evaluate the effectiveness of all department programs from KPI and budgetary standpoints.

GOALS + APPROACH + PROCESS

The original scope was to facilitate a one-day retreat for change management training and strategic planning. However, our knowledge of the audience dynamic revealed more meaningful opportunities for impact. Strategizing with the summit’s senior planning team, our new approach honored the original scope alongside the group’s specific challenges to achieve the best outcomes. Summit goals included generating feedback, creating the next steps, and obtaining group buy-in for programmatic decisions.

PROGRAM MANAGERS

Aligning Around
Programmatic Decisions

SENIOR LEADERS

Including Interim +
New Director

25+

DEPARTMENT PROGRAMS

Planning Session
Focused on Impact

TACTICS

Program managers who are incredibly passionate about and invested in their programs have experienced so many iterations of “the new direction,” that there was a hesitancy to buy in. Crucially, The Creative Executive needed to foster an environment where the program managers could find alignment to determine the future viability of department programs.

The Creative Executive team observed pre-summit meetings with key stakeholders and participated in internal planning meetings.

Working with the leadership team, we developed a statement of purpose and presentation format for the strategic planning engagement that would highlight the effectiveness and impact of the programs they manage.

LEADERSHIP SUMMIT RESULTS

A productive strategic planning session focused on presentation programs and impact for 25+ department programs.
Everyone was engaged, took ownership, and set aside siloed priorities to align around
a vision. Program leaders were open to feedback on their projects instead of guarding their program at all costs.
The leadership and program teams achieved program recommendations and a timeline of actionable steps.

TAKEAWAY

Through consistency in the communication of program effectiveness, and acknowledgment of gaps and areas of opportunity, the leadership planning team aligned around the greater vision and put strategic steps in place to determine the process around programming decisions for the department’s future.