Title
Ignite! Strategic Plan and Implementation Process
Body
Issue/Request:
Attached to this packet form is the Ignite! Strategic Plan document. Because of the significant community input and the Mayor and City Council leadership throughout the process, we have produced a final draft of the Strategic Plan that includes:
• Vision Statement - “Lee’s Summit: A vibrant community ensuring the finest quality of life for all generations.”
• Seven Critical Success Factors -
o Strategic Economic Development
o Strong Neighborhoods with Housing Choices
o Cultural and Recreational Amenities
o Community Engagement
o Community Health and Wellbeing
o Collaborative Relations with Education Partners
o City Services and Infrastructure
In addition to the Vision Statement and Critical Success Factors, the Ignite! Plan provides an outstanding Organizational Mission Statement as well as Organizational Values. The Mission Statement and Values will provide guidance to city’s management team and employees in all operational matters.
Proposed City Council Motion:
I move to direct staff to prepare a resolution adopting the Ignite! Strategic Plan and Implementation process as presented.
Background:
The Mayor, City Council, and staff leadership has been actively engaged in the creation of a long-term strategic plan, Ignite!, that will provide guidance to our community, elected body, professional staff, and stakeholder groups for the next 10 years. Ignite! is the third “strategic plan” that has been based upon extensive community-based participation. The previous two plans, “Lee’s Summit: 21st Century” and “Lee’s Summit 360”, have been instrumental in creating many successful outcomes. Our hope is to continue this tradition through the City Council’s adoption of Ignite! Equally important, is the development of an implementation process. Our community efforts will need to remain focused on the Critical Success Factors established in the Ignite! Plan.
As a community, we have already assigned a significant amount of resources to the information gathering, planning, and creative stages to form the Ignite! Plan:
February - Community Conversations
Community Conversations regarding the strategic planning process were held February 27 and 28, 2019.
February/March - Focus Groups
Stakeholders from various organizations participated in Focus Groups on February 27, 28 and March 1 to gather their concerns, challenges and opportunities they see for the City.
April - Review Input and Prepare Draft
City Council held a strategic planning retreat on April 5 and 6, 2019 to review initial community input gathered during Community Conversations and Focus Groups. A vision statement and critical success factors were drafted for the strategic plan.
April - Seek Community Input
Community meetings were held on April 24 and 25 to gather feedback on the draft strategic plan elements.
June - City Council Retreat
City Council held a second retreat on June 14 and 15, 2019 to discuss the community's feedback on the draft strategic plan elements and finalize the vision, mission and critical success factors.
July - Finalize Strategic Plan
The strategic plan was written in a final draft form for the City Council’s consideration. Staff leaders began developing an implementation process.
August - Adoption of Strategic Plan and Implementation Process
The strategic plan will be presented to the City Council at the August 13 meeting for formal adoption by ordinance. The City Manager will also present an implementation process for the City Council’s consideration.
Implementation Process:
Strategic planning is an important investment for our community. We should feel a sense of accomplishment to have reached this point of having a forward thinking plan that will challenge all of us to create an even better Lee’s Summit, MO. The implementation process requires the same careful thought, energy and focus as the development of the Ignite! Plan. We will need to pay attention to the details, make the correct time and resource commitments, and provide a way to review our progress. Equally important is a process to acknowledge external forces unknown during the Plan’s adoption. These external forces may affect our path and require modification of the Ignite! Plan’s objectives. The “Critical Success Factors” are high-level and should not need to change over time.
Three critical factors to be considered in developing the implementation structure of the Ignite! Plan:
A. Assign adequate time to develop performance measures and targets:
Ample time will be necessary to create performance measurements that support the Critical Success Factors. The performance measurements will need valid data sources that allow metrics to be established. This work will take several months to complete. Some Critical Success Factors, such as “City Services and Infrastructure” will have easily identifiable metrics. Other Critical Success Factors, such as “Community Engagement” may be more challenging in finding performance measures that can be tied to existing databases. We would want to begin reporting on the known performance measures while working on the development of the other metrics during the next few months.
Many data points may be found in the ETC Citizen Satisfaction Survey. It will be important to conduct the survey on an annual or at least a bi-annual basis to establish benchmarks with other high performance communities.
B. Provide oversight:
We are recommending the formation of an implementation group to oversee the strategic plan. By-laws would be established to delineate the roles and responsibilities of the implementation group team members and the operating governance structure. The implementation group would be the plan owner, goal champion, supporter of city staff to track, monitor, communicate and market the plan. This group would also help in coordinating the work of our stakeholder organizations who have made commitments to support the Ignite! Strategic Plan.
A diversity of interests and perspectives would be helpful in assuring the strength and success of the implementation group. A suggested membership may include the following: Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Executive Director of Stakeholder Group A, Executive Director of Stakeholder Group B, and two citizen members.
Once the performance measurements and metrics have been established the implementation group would provide a quarterly update to the City Council. As a companion to the quarterly report we would publish a “dashboard” report on the City’s website. The “dashboard report” would be a quick reference guide to provide a status update on all of the performance measurements. Not all of the performance measurements would be reviewed at the quarterly City Council report. However, there should be an effort to have each of them reviewed at least once on an annual basis.
C. Manage the change:
If we create performance measurements that can reasonably be achieved in the first 3 years after the Ignite! Plan adoption then we could track our progress on an incremental basis . Similar to the Capital Improvement Plan, there could be an annual update rolling out the performance standards for the “new” 3rd year while updating the 1st and 2nd year plans based upon current conditions and past performance.
The City’s budget process would need to identify the performance measurements and assure correct resource assignments have been allocated. If necessary resources are assigned to other higher priority commitments, the performance measurements will need to be modified.
In Conclusion:
We have attached a matrix assigning the “roles and responsibilities” in a “C4” formation. “C4”is an acronym for; City Council and Mayor, Community, City Organization, and Citizens. The City Council developed this assignment plan as a part of the final two working sessions with Novak consulting. We think this is a good working model for our continued build-out of the implementation plan. As we create measurable performance standards during the next few months and the rolling three-year plan maintained, we will continue to refine the “C4” matrix.
Related to the adoption of the Ignite! Plan, city staff is ready to imbed the Critical Success Factors, Organizational Mission, and Organizational Values throughout the city operations. Below is a sample of operational systems that will show alignment to Ignite!
• Annual Employee Performance Review
• Priority Based Budgeting
• City Council Agenda items
• Development Policies and Programs
• Capital Improvement Project Development
Presenter
Stephen A. Arbo, City Manager
Recommendation
Staff recommends approval