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