Estate Living Magazine Smart Moves - Issue 38 February 2019 | Page 40
C O M M U N I T Y
L I V I N G
House Rhino at Crossway Farm Village
BEST
PRACTICE
STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY ASSOCIATIONS
No matter how well things are going, you can’t just sit back and hope the situation will continue, and
when things are not going well, you need to make sure they get better. Both situations require strategic
planning. It’s an essential, ongoing feature of good management.
Strategic planning definition and philosophy Benefits of the long-range plan
Strategic planning is about projecting where your association
expects to be in five, 10 or 15 years – and how your association will
get there. It is a systematic process of planning, scenario setting,
forecasting, and identifying the impact of occurrences before they
happen. It involves a number of phases of thinking and application
that identify the current status of the association – including its
mission, vision for the future, operating values, needs and goals –
and where it is going. Some of the benefits of strategic or long-range planning are that
they:
• stimulate thinking to optimise the use of the association’s
resources
• ensure that responsibility and work schedules are assigned to
individuals or teams that are best equipped to fulfil that role
• ensure coordination and unification of effort
• facilitate better control and evaluation of the association’s
activities and the association’s mandate, thereby ensuring
accountability
• create awareness of obstacles that may occur well in advance so
that they can be overcome through sound decision making
• identify opportunities
• ensure that creative thinking is used to solve potential problems.
History
Accomplishments
Failures
Current Status
Internal
External
Desired status
Strategy
Review and amend
Applying strategies in community associations
Drawing up a strategic plan involves:
• recruiting core leadership and team members including
representatives from all stakeholder groups