Strategic Planning and Progress Reporting

"Strategic planning helps an organization avoid waste and misdirection." - Jack Welch

"Every minute spent in planning can save ten minutes in execution.  That's a return of 1000%."  - Peter Drucker

Strategic Planning is the process of formally thinking about an organization's future course.  It is a disciplined effort to define an organization's direction and to make fundamental decisions about how it will achieve its mission.  The strategic planning process shapes and guides:

• What an organization is
• What an organization does
• Why it does it
• How it does it
• Whom it serves
• How it measures success

Strategic planning is about envisioning where you want to be in the future, determining where you are now, and deciding in broad terms how you're going to get there.

Strategic planning is how an organization determines and communicates its priorities.  It is a valuable management tool, guiding decisions on allocating organizational resources, including capital and people. 

A strategic plan is a living document. Situations and environments change.  An effective strategic planning process provides for innovation and adaptation - for revising or updating the plan to respond to changing circumstances. 

The Kentucky strategic planning statute (KRS 48.810) requires that each executive branch program cabinet and a few non-cabinet organizational entities submit a four (4) year strategic plan every two (2) years when it submits its biennial budget request (generally by November 1 of each odd-numbered calendar year, e.g., 2007, 2009, 2011).

Each agency required to submit a strategic plan also is required to prepare and submit an annual strategic plan progress report detailing the progress the agency has made in the past year toward achieving its strategic goals and objectives.

The last section of each biennial strategic plan is the progress report on the prior year, which meets the progress report requirement in the budget submission years.

By September 1 of each "off-year" (between budget submission years), the statute requires that each of those agencies submit a free-standing strategic plan progress report, i.e., in the even numbered calendar years (odd-numbered fiscal years), e.g., 2008, 2010, 2012.

The Governmental Services Center (GSC) provides guidance and support to Kentucky government agencies as they prepare their strategic plans and progress reports. 

GSC also puts each completed plan (an electronic summary without illustrations, charts, graphs, and photographs) in an online document repository to make each plan available electronically to the Office of the State Budget Director (OSBD), the Legislative Research Commission (LRC), and any other interested parties in government or in the public.. 

If you have any questions or comments regarding strategic plans, the statutorily required planning processes, or the required progress reports, please contact David Finely at GSC at (502) 564-7455 ext, 256 or at david.finely@ky.gov