Strategic Planning for Economic Development

Through the planning process a community can choose priorities and allocate resources to work towards its preferred future.

Background

Any community serious about creating positive economic change, must develop and operate a strategic planning process. Such a process is well accepted as a technique in business and it is now being recognised as essential for effective community economic development. Through such a planning process a community can begin to define and work towards its preferred future in achievable steps. It can influence the course of development and take some measure of control over its destiny.

Strategic planning is essentially about making choices, determining priorities and allocating resources. It is about exploring alternative courses of action regarding the future. It is about designating a preferred future and identifying ways and resources to make it happen. It is not a "one off," static exercise. It is an ongoing process.

The fundamental issue in community economic development is "What type of community do we want?" Once you have posed this question, a strategic planning process helps your community to focus on key questions such as:

• What is our community like today?
• What do we want it to become?
• What values and principles should guide future developments?
• What is our current economic base?
• What opportunities can be captured to stimulate development?
• What development options will assist our community reach its desired future?
• What are our priorities?
• What specific strategies and action steps are necessary to achieve our goals?
• What must be done to ensure successful implementation? and
• How will we monitor and evaluate our progress?

Developing and implementing an effective planning process or framework does not simply happen like "turning on the light switch." It requires time and commitment and must be based upon five fundamental cornerstones, namely:

1. Establish an appropriate model

Any planning process needs to be tailored to the community who will work with it. Initially, you must invest time in identifying the appropriate steps and elements most suited to your community. There are many tools and models available for reference, but these should not be considered as "one size fits all" solutions. You must create your own responses to your own unique circumstances.

2. Identify Champions of the process

It is important early in the process that you identify and recruit a group of respected resident experts who can:

• Provide the leadership and co-ordination group for the planning process;
• Devote time and effort to developing and introducing the process and moving it through the various phases;
• Implement and review the plan; and
• Be enthusiastic advocates for the process, its goals and its initiatives.

Membership needs to be drawn from various sectors and groupings found in your community. It is important that the group members be action-oriented and reflect a gender and age balance. Group members need a strong commitment and belief in the future of the community. Above all, they need to believe in the value and power of involving the wider community in planning its future.

3. Establish broad based support, involvement and ownership

The community economic development planning process requires the support and active participation of your community, including its civic, business, political and community leaders, as well as the general public. It is important that you take time to communicate to the wider community the value, purposes and nature of the planning process and its potential to:

• Create new opportunities, especially in terms of new employment and sustainable growth;
• Improve the quality of life of the local community; and
• Achieve more effective community collaboration and use of local resources.

As a general observation, community structures (including Local Government) have not had a good reputation for informing, exciting and involving the wider community. Time must be spent in identifying and using the most effective means for communicating to and mobilizing the local community.

Also, one of the greatest challenges facing any planning and action initiatives which you take, will be how you maintain the active interest, involvement and support of your wider community. Promotion of all stages in the planning and implementation processes is essential. Your community must be aware that positive things are happening and they must be included in the celebration of achievement.

4. Seek relevant tools and information

There are a wide variety of tools and approaches which can be used at different stages of the planning process. Awareness and familiarity with these is vital. This Manual aims to provide a foundation for practical use of such tools and approaches.

Seeking relevant information is crucial to the success of your community in economic development. Being clear about what information is needed and spending time identifying and accessing relevant information, will ensure that your choices priorities are based on knowledge of best options available.

5. Be action oriented

Talk and action must balance each other. You must plan to act.

Too often community action is limited to the creation of wish lists and talkfests. What is important is the achievement and promotion of some "early successes" which demonstrate positive results to the broader community. The development plan must include goals, strategies and actions of varying levels of difficulty. If the development plan only includes projects of a large, long term nature, the visible results will be slow in appearing and may lead to disenchantment in the community and a sense of failure.

The act of engaging the community in a well thought out planning process has as much value as the products and outcomes that emerge. This process is itself a very useful tool in building consensus within a community and facilitating new forms of community collaboration. It brings new awareness to the community and demonstrates its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It identifies fresh leadership. It can enhance community confidence and build a pool of skills and knowledge within the community.

A Proposed Strategic Planning Model

Strategic planning should follow a simple and logical pattern. While different versions may use different language and follow different stages, strategic planning at the community level involves four broad concepts, namely:

• Community Analysis
• Goal Formation
• Strategy Development
• Monitoring

These concepts are encapsulated in four simple questions:

• Who are we and where are we at?
• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get there? and
• How do we know we are on our way and when we have arrived?

Who are we and where are we at?

This phase of the planning process aims to achieve a better understanding of what your community is like and why. It will provide basic information that will drive the rest of the process. It may also explode some myths about your community and create a more realistic picture. Community analysis is essential in building coherent responses to real issues.

Steps for such community analysis should include:

• Examining current trends, attitudes and characteristics of your community;
• Analysing your community's strengths and weaknesses;
• Scanning the wider environment (regional, state, national, global) and interpreting trends in terms of implication for your community;
• Collecting, analysing and presenting relevant data;
• Identifying possible opportunities; and
• Assessing initial community interest and commitment to economic development.

There are a variety of tools available to your community to help in gathering and interpreting information.

These include:

• Use of SWOT analysis to identify the community's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
• Compilation of a community profile document to provide a "snapshot" of the community's economic, social and environmental features at a particular period in time
• Undertaking community surveys to ascertain the patterns and attitudes of households, customers and the local business community
• Preparation of a community interest index to ascertain community perceptions of local economic development
• Use of community consultation options (events /meetings) to identify community opinion and stimulate debate
• Use of computer aided collection programs to assemble economic data relevant to the community
• Compilation of a community skills register to ascertain the skills and interests of community residents.
• Goals which provide statements as an expression of your desired future and a desired outcome. They are usually designed to capitalise on the strength of the community or a favourable future trend, or mitigate a limitation or potential threat. Usually goal statements are general and qualitative, i.e. they describe the nature of the solution without providing quantitative measures of it; and
• Objectives which seek to identify exactly what will be achieved, how it will be done and when it will be accomplished. They derive directly from the goals, are specific, quantitative and above all they are measurable.

The development of a shared vision must be achieved in a way that promotes community consensus and solidarity. Community planning forums such as those outlined in the Best Practice examples are a very good way to develop that shared vision. They enable the coming together of as many people from as wide cross-section of the community as possible. They allow residents to have their say about what type of community they would like to see.

How do we get there?

Now that information about the community has been collected, analysed and a shared vision for your preferred future has been established, how you get there is the next challenge. This phase of the strategic planning process deals with " the who, what, where, when and how". It translates your values, goals and objectives into strategies and action steps. A strategy describes a set of actions, which when implemented will help in the achievement of the objective. Action steps represent the "to do" list required for the successful implementation of the strategy.

HINT - Look to see if it has been done before

Learning from and leapfrogging on other communities experiences should be a key principle of development activities. It can ensure your community-has a tremendous head start in choosing particular strategies.

But a word of caution - very few success stories will be totally transferable to your particular community and set of circumstances. The essence is to "translate" not "transplant", or to "adapt" not "adopt" experiences. Critically review others experiences, checking what worked and what did not work and why.

Formulation and determination of strategies and action steps often involves the following:

• Generating possibility thinking in your community
• Defining what your community thinks is possible
• Considering the array of development options
• Examining what has worked elsewhere
• Evaluating and selecting the best options
• Estimating, identifying and mobilising resources and determining who has authority for what
• Assigning responsibilities and tasks
• Identifying and recruiting leaders and taskforce members
• Forming appropriate structures to manage and implement the strategies.

A variety of tools are available to assist this phase, including:

• Idea generation workshops
• Brainstorming sessions
• Idea competitions
• Idea generation through media initiatives
• Idea generation through exposure to external expertise, knowledge and experience
• Study tours

Underpinning the formation of strategies and actions and the various tools for achieving these, are a set of Key Ingredients which need to be incorporated into your planning and action processes. These are:

• Establishing and maintaining community interest and involvement
• Creating an appropriate organisation
• Identifying and mobilising resources
• Developing an effective communication strategy
• Monitoring, evaluating and revising plans
• Developing leadership.

How do we know that we are on our way and when we have arrived?

This phase of the planning process focuses upon the design of appropriate monitoring, evaluation and feedback mechanisms. It is important that your community determines the following:

• Appropriate time frames
• Evaluation criteria and monitoring mechanisms, including appropriate and practical performance indicators and key success factors
• Ways to ensure ongoing community interest and support, including:
• keeping your community fully aware and excited by developments
• receiving regular community feedback
• rewarding participation
• involving as many people as possible in practical tasks
• having fun.
• Mechanisms to ensure documentation and recording of the processes.

Strategic planning is about guiding action towards shaping the future. It is by nature oriented towards action. It provides the basis for a community to become involved in their own economic future. As a process, it obviously has many potential benefits for your community as well as potential pitfalls.

Strategic Planning for Community Economic Development

Potential Benefits

• Better understanding of the community
• Realistic base for making decisions regarding the future
• Enhanced community consensus
• Improved community collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination
• Strengthened community competitive advantage
• Provision of short and longterm action plans
• Focuses community efforts on key issues
• Stimulates interest and involves residents in their future
• Identifies and involves new leaders
• Encourages strategic and forward planning.

Potential Pitfalls

• Can be used to avoid action
• Raises unreal expectations
• Produces reports that remain on shelves
• Creates impossible wishlists without any priorities
• Lacks organisation to implement
• Lacks adequate evaluation
• Planning by the few for the many
• Fails to maintain community interest and involvement

Conclusion

Strategic planning is not for every community. There are three sets of circumstances under which your community should carefully consider whether it becomes involved in strategic planning for economic development.

First, if you lack the skills, resources (human and financial), or commitment by key community stakeholders to produce a viable plan.

Secondly, if your community is not able or willing to involve all the key stakeholders. Community ownership is fundamental to successful strategic planning.

Thirdly, if implementation is unlikely. Strategic planning does raise expectations and leads to community frustration when no action eventuates.

If you do commence a process of strategic planning you must consider it as an ongoing process. The world never remains static. As events and circumstances impinge upon your community your planning process must be one of continuous development.

As Dwight Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing, planning is everything".

Source: Ready, Set, Go. Action Manual for Community Economic Development. Prepared by Peter Kenyon for the Municipal Association of Victoria, 1994.