Insights

Creating a strategic plan is a major achievement. You've brought together stakeholders, wrestled with priorities, and set a powerful vision for the future of your local government or utility. That's the blueprint. Now comes the hard part: implementation.

A strategic plan is your organization's roadmap to the future – a powerful vision for growth, innovation, and impact. But too often, these meticulously crafted documents end up gathering dust.

In today’s utility world, where regulations evolve rapidly, public expectations grow, and workforce challenges persist, having a clear direction is no longer a luxury, it’s essential. The answer for the Laurens County Water and Sewer Commission (LCWSC) in South Carolina wasn’t another infrastructure investment. It was something more foundational: their first-ever strategic plan.

Strategic planning expert Catherine Carter digs into the challenges utilities face in developing and executing strategic plans. In this interview, she talks about aligning goals with actions, prioritizing limited resources, and engaging stakeholders for successful implementation. From her experience developing strategic plans with some of the nation’s leading utilities, she shares best practices, common pitfalls, and examples of how strategic planning drives real change for utilities in a changing world.

The strategic planning process can be a big step for many organizations, but oftentimes we find the greater challenge to be the implementation process. Here we share the story of the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans' journey with strategic plan development and implementation and offer recommendations for you to use in your own organization.

On a scale of always to never, how often does your organization post to social media? If you’re intimidated just by the thought of it, it might be never. If you’re a big fan of communication, it might be always. Every public agency should be using social media regularly and it doesn’t need to be hard.

In 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and provided State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to help communities who experienced financial losses due to the pandemic.

As the new year begins, it’s valuable to take stock of the policies, procedures, and practices you have and evaluate what’s been working and what hasn’t. We polled our staff who lead different Raftelis service areas and asked them to share their predictions for key trends they see coming in 2023.

Join us as we discuss how to integrate your strategic plan into the fabric of your organization to guide your initiatives and accomplish your goals.