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STRATEGIC ACTION PLAN: ALPHA DRAFT
[ADD A PICTURE]
GREENE COUNTY NETWORK
APRIL, 2009
D R A F T
C i t y, S t a t e • Te l e p h o n e : 1 2 3 . 4 5 6 . 7 8 9 0 • w w w. y o u r o r g a n i z a t i o n . n e t
Greene County NetworkOur Purpose
The Greene County Network aligns and leverages economic development resources to promote the prosperity for the people and businesses in Greene County, Indiana.
We seek individually and collectively to transform our county by focusing on collabora-tions that encourages productive investment in a dynamic, sustainable economy that protects and promotes the rural character of our county.
Our Vision
The Greene County Network will become a a nationally recognized rural collaboration to promote new approaches to economic development. These new approaches foster entrepreneurship, sustainable development practices, a commitment to long-term in-vestment, and a focus on our next generation.
We strive to be a collaboration committed to learning, measuring and improving our performance at every level. We will continuously evaluate our progress in achieving our vision through a range of regular evaluations by our stakeholders and comparisons with leading edge rural communities.
Our Values
As a network of Greene County leaders dedicated to civic leadership, we hold ourselves accountable for practicing our values of
• integrity and respect;
• personal responsibility and mentorship;
• innovation and entrepreneurship;
• partnership and civic leadership;
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• efficiency and effectiveness; and
• continuous learning and improvement.
Our Strategic Framework
Our strategy follows the framework of Open Source Economic Develop-ment developed at the Purdue Cen-ter for Regional Development. This framework provides clear “strategy maps” for our network to follow in designing and implementing our activities.
The Open Source model outlines that any globally competitive econ-omy must manage collaborations and investments in five areas:
•Building world-class brainpower
•Translating brainpower into wealth through entrepreneurship and inno-vation networks
•Holding wealth in the region by developing quality, connected places
•Creating a deep sense of commu-nity identify expressed through an effective brand
• Promoting strong habits of civic collaboration to spot opportunities, align re-sources and resolve disputes
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Brainpower
21 Century Talent
Innovation
Entrepreneurship
Networks
Branding
Experiences
Quality,
Connected
Places
CivicCollaboration
Invest in world class brainpower with 21st century skills
Convert brainpower into wealth through innovation and
entrepreneurship networks
Create powerful stories and branding experiences to
communicate a new path forward
Develop quality, connected places and innovation "hot
spots"
Strengthen leadership skills and civic disciplines of
collaboration to develop and implement "link and
leverage" strategies
The Strategy Base Map for Open Source Economic
Development
Source: Ed Morrison, distributed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License
Our Strategic Focus Areas
We cannot accomplish everything all at once. We must choose our areas of focus care-fully. At the same time, we recognize the lessons that Open Source Economic Develop-ment teaches: Prosperity will flow to communities and regions that follow a balanced strategy of investments: in talent, businesses, physical development, promotion and leadership.
To begin, we have chosen to promote the development of Home Town Competitiveness, as well as a handful of other initiatives initiatives that focus on:
• engaging civic leaders and practicing new skills of collaboration through our Greene County Network
• promoting youth development
• supporting entrepreneurs
• engaging our charitable assets to expand productive investments in our county
• emphasizing quality, connected physical development that preserves and pro-motes the rural character of our county
• build the new story of Greene County by providing engaging and fun experi-ences through festivals and other activities.
Our Commitment to Home Town Competitiveness
Home Town Competitiveness provides a prac-tical model for Greene County to follow. It is not, by itself, a complete strategy. At the same time, it focuses our leadership’s attention of critical opportunities for us to pursue. The strategy model of Home Town Competitive-
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• Mobilize Local Leaders
• Energize Entrepreneurs
• Engage Young People • Cultivate Charitable Assets to support these community building efforts.
En
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The Four Pillars of Hometown Competitiveness
ness represents four pillars: Entrepreneurship, Charitable Assets, Youth and Leadership. We have launched initiatives (projects) in these areas, and we will continue them in the coming year.
Other Initiatives to Complement Home Town Competitiveness
A range of other activities are underway in Greene County that will have major impacts on our future prosperity. These initiatives include land use and zoning, large scale infra-structure investments, and the successful promotion of our county through engaging and innovative festivals. That is not a complete list. We have other activities as well that are making significant contributions to the future prospects for our county.
Mapping Our Initiatives on Our Strategy Map
We need help in keeping track of all these activities so that we can align them. Through “link and leverage” strategies, individuals and organizations can accomplish far more working together than they can working separately.
Each of these activities represents a network of citizens within the county focused on a particular dimension of our development. Very quickly, we can lose track. That’s where a Strategy Map can help.
We all know the adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” In putting our county on a sustainable path to development, we need first to “see” what others are doing. The strategy map developed at the Purdue Center for Regional Development represents a simple tool to help us “see” the networks that form around different projects. When we begin to see these networks, and -- more important -- begin to link these networks to-gether, we start down a path of aligning, linking and leveraging our assets in new and different ways.
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Putting it all Together: Developing the Habits of Strategic Doing
Pulling a strategy together is no longer an event; it is a continuous process. Most of us learned the disciplines of strategic planning, an industrial age set of practices that works when the world is relatively stable, and command-and-control organizations dominate the landscape.
That is not the world in which we now live. Change is turbulent, and to be effective in economic development, we must rely on consensus and alignments. Open networks -- not stiff hierarchies -- dominate. In a word, no one can really tell anyone else what to do.
Yet, we must undertake some very complex projects to build Greene County in this open environment. We undertake these projects in a “civic space” outside the four walls of any one organization. Coordinating festival promotions, strengthening entrepreneur-ship networks, managing land use, implementing effective youth initiatives: none of
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• Mobilize Local Leaders
• Energize Entrepreneurs
• Engage Young People • Cultivate Charitable Assets to support these community building efforts.
En
trep
ren
eu
rsh
ip
Ch
ari
tab
le A
ssets
Yo
uth
Lead
ers
hip
The Four Pillars of Hometown Competitiveness
Brainpower21 Century Talent
InnovationEntrepreneurship
Networks
BrandingExperiences
Quality, Connected
Places
CivicCollaboration
EntrepreneurshipYouth
Charitable Assets
Leadership
We can map Hometown Competitiveness
on to the Strategy Base Map of
Open Source Economic Development
We can also map other
initiatives underway in Greene
County. By putting all these
initiatives on one map, we can
keep track of them. More
important, we can see
connections among them.
Land use and zoning
InfrastructureFestivals
these projects are easy. At the same time, we cannot do everything, and we want to fo-cus our efforts on initiatives that matter. In short, we need to think and act strategically.
Strategic Doing is a set of practices developed at the Purdue Center for Regional Devel-opment to meet the challenges of designing and implementing strategy in an open envi-ronment. There are three components to Strategic Doing:
• Strategy Maps.-- Keeping track of a strategy requires visual tools. The Strategy Map we have introduced earlier provides the basic tool for keeping track of who is doing what and how different projects connect (or don’t).
• Disciplined Conversations.-- We need to learn to manage our conversations. The reason is simple. We have a limited time together in the “civic space”. We need to use this time wisely. Strategic Doing teaches us that four questions are critically important:
1. What could we do together? We must continuously explore the connec-tions among our assets and initiatives. By spending time on this question,
we open ourselves to the possi-bilities for “linking and leverag-ing” our assets together.
2.What should we do together?
We need to focus our attention on a handful of priorities. In or-der to develop enduring part-nerships, we need a clear view of the outcomes toward which we are working. Without a clear understanding of our outcome,
our collaborations can quickly break apart at the first sign of difficulty. In contrast, if we have a deep understanding of where we are heading, our partnerships are far more durable.
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Find
Execute
FocusLearn
What could we do
together?
What
should we
do
together?
What will we do together?
How will we
learn
together?
Strategic Doing guides conversations
3. What will we do together? We can only accomplish complex projects if we each contribute something. Gone are the days when civic leaders could come up with ideas and expect someone else to “do the work”. This ques-tion insures that we re clear about the tasks ahead and who is committed to completing them.
4. How will we learn together? Strategy is a process, not an event. It re-quires continuous adjustments as circumstances change. So the last key question of strategic doing develops a clear understanding of how we will come together again to evaluate our progress.
• Commitment to a Process.-- Complex projects take time to complete. They re-quire a clear, simple and continuous process of evaluation and readjustment. These Strategic Doing gatherings (or forums) should be conducted every 30, 60 or 90 days. Each gathering can be short -- from 1 to 3 hours is enough to review a strategy and make adjustments.
Keeping it all Together: Managing Our Projects in an Open Network
We will organize our projects within the Network with a flexible structure, one that can accommodate both focus and flexibility. The Network is not designed to take over the responsibilities of any individual organization. Rather, the Network connects these or-ganizations into a larger, easy-to-understand pattern.
Our Initiatives for 2009
For 2009, we are focused on the following transformational initiatives:
• Initiative 1
• Initiative 2
• Initiative 3
We will add transformational initiatives from time to time.
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Managing Our Strategic Activities
The Network Core Team.-- Our Network’s core team is committed to carrying forward this process. The core team consists of leaders of civic organizations -- business, gov-ernment and non-profits -- committed to working together for the future of Greene County. We will start with a relatively small core of individuals, and we are committed to expanding this circle with people who share the commitment to work together and contribute their assets, networks and resources to a shared future.
The Role of the Professional Staff.-- The professional staff of our civic organizations are individuals best in the position to guide this network. They have the skills, net-works, and experience to guide the network. At the same time, they cannot do the work of the Network. That is a responsibility that must be more broadly shared.
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