By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer

ASHWAUBENON – The village board agreed Jan. 26 to proceed with the development of a strategic plan as presented by Village Manager Joel Gregozeski.

Following the appointment of three new trustees last year and the addition of new staff, Gregozeski said strategic planning “would be an important topic to discuss and to initiate, to help provide some direction and some vision for our organization.”

He said a strategic plan is a “process document” which is always evolving.

Gregozeski said the four focus areas of strategic planning are: financial; citizens and stakeholders; internal processes; and organizational development.

Joel Gregozeski

He said strategic planning takes into account all facets of the organization, “whether you’re in leadership and governance, such as the village board, or you’re on the management side, such as our department heads and supervisors, or if you’re staff that are delivering the services to the community.”

Gregozeski said the four stages of strategic planning involve: inventory (what do we have); formulating (what do we need); implementing (how we get it); and evaluating (are we getting it).

He said the strategic plan process will involve internal and external analysis.

Gregozeski said an analysis known as S.W.O.T. (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) will be used, to view strengths and weaknesses internally and opportunities and threats externally.

He said an online community survey will be conducted to provide an external point of view of how the village’s programs and services are perceived, while a staff survey will provide an internal point of view of how the programs and services are being delivered.

Gregozeski said the purpose of the surveys, which could be conducted on an annual basis, is for the village to be more efficient in the delivery of its services.

To identify issues and opportunities, typically over a five-year period, Gregozeski said the village would use an exercise known as start, stop, continue.

“Ultimately, the start component of that activity is what should we have in place or what should we do to improve our organization tomorrow – what should we start doing?” he said. “The stop is what’s not working. There may be a service that we should no longer provide – it’s ineffective, it’s inefficient – and so, what should we stop doing? And what are those elements that are important? We’re doing them now and we want to make sure that we continue to do those and continue to improve upon them.”

Gregozeski said strategic planning will identify key elements for the village to be a mission-driven organization.

“(Core values) are our beliefs, our principals, that kind of help guide the organization,” he said. “And they ultimately are shared, not only between members of the board, but also staff.”

Gregozeski said the village needs to identify its mission, which should be a statement easily recited by everyone within an organization.

“Ultimately, that will help us become that mission-driven organization,” he said.

Gregozeski said developing a vision in strategic planning relates to what an organization wants to become.

“As an organization, I think it’s important to have an end goal in mind,” he said. “We’re always working and striving to hit that achievement.”

To begin the process of strategic planning, the board agreed with Gregozeski’s recommendation to break down the initial steps over a series of events, such as with having retreats or workshops with board members and village staff getting together to go over key elements.

“Ultimately, what we’re looking to do as a group is to develop our mission, our vision and core values,” he said. “From there, we want to identify, ultimately, four, five, maybe no more than six broad-ranging goals that are going to basically cover the (five-year) planning period that we’re going to review and evaluate.”

Once those goals are established, Gregozeski said they will be taken back to village staff to internally prepare objectives and action steps for achieving the goals, which would then be presented to the board for approval to have a strategic plan to be working from.

“As we prepare our budget, and as we end out the calendar year, we will establish and adopt a performance management program or a balanced scorecard, if you will, to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts toward meeting the action steps and the objectives of the plan,” he said.

Board members spoke favorably about the strategic planning process.

Trustee Jay Krueger, who was appointed last year, said strategic planning “is extremely important for the village.”

“I think all of this kind of funnels together to really give us, as an organization, the direction that we need,” he said.

Another board member appointed last year, Trustee Steve Kubacki, said “it’s important to have the pulse of the community.”

“I think this is a good first step, and we’ve had a lot of changes here, be it Titletown, be it the riverfront, be it the mall and other things,” he said.

Gregozeski said there are two reasons why he would help facilitate the strategic planning process internally, rather than bring in an outside facilitator.

“One, I’ve done it before with other organizations, so I feel confident and comfortable doing it,” he said. “And then second, being new to the organization, I don’t necessarily have as much biases, if you will, of the organization or preconceived notions about how the organization has run or should run.”

Gregozeski said it could take from three to fourth months to go through the first four steps of strategic planning.

“Ultimately, my goal is to try to have this done sometime towards the middle or the end of summer, because I think it will tie into the budgeting process as well,” he said.