The year 2020 and the Covid Pandemic was especially hard for those in State and Local Government as well as education. Tax Revenues quickly declined, furloughs and layoffs were announced, and resources dwindled. In the midst of all this, budgets were slashed and processes that were already difficult became even more cumbersome.
So what can you do once a crisis is over and your plans are left behind? How can you ensure plan execution with little to no resources?
Begin with these easy steps below as a starting point for your strategy to stay a priority.
Build a Repeatable Success Model
As you begin executing across your plans and initiatives it is important to track all progress, updates, and any challenges you ran across. This helps to avoid arriving towards the end of the fiscal year and the end of your plans and not understanding what success you did and did not have.
Once you have direct visibility into how you achieved your success, you can build a repeatable success model for years to come. In the case that you do have limited resources and staff for some time, you will still have a process in place that ensures your successful execution.
Track Everything in the Cloud
The Cloud can be a scary word until you realize it can help you from losing all your work and progress in your plans and projects. Many in state and local governments suffer from cumbersome processes that stem from an unwillingness to migrate to the cloud. Imagine how many employees were cut due to the pandemic and if they were tracking in disparate excel sheets not backed by the cloud, their work is now gone forever.
You never want your plans and initiatives to fall victim to bad timing. Updating your approach to IT modernization will allow your team to track their work, all while knowing that it is backed by the cloud. You will know their updates and progress will still be there even if they leave.
Keep Everyone Focused on Strategy
Not everyone goes to sleep at night thinking about strategy and progress like you do. Most employees have their day-to-day tasks that must get completed and are assigned strategic tasks on top of that work. Keeping everyone focused on the strategic plan will assist in making sure items are completed on time, progress is being made, and your plan doesn’t sit dusty on the shelf.
To keep everyone focused, schedule a regular cadence of updates and team meetings so everyone knows they are accountable for their parts of the plan for key performance.
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Four Drivers of Strategy Execution
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Find A Way to Link Stand-Alone Projects to the Plan
With a dwindling budget, it is more important than ever to show the impact of projects across the organization. Stand-alone projects may seem like they cannot connect to your strategic plan, but try and find their area of impact anyways. If no direct impact is visible, you may end up with further budget decline and the inability to complete your project. This article provides more insights into the importance of connecting projects to strategic goals.
Experts warn the budget and resource crisis is only going to get worse over the next few years before it gets better. By building a repeatable success model, migrating to the cloud, keeping everyone focused, and connecting projects to strategic goals, you will help mitigate some of the risks associated with the current crisis at hand.
AchieveIt: A Proven Solution to Assist with Digital Transformation
With AchieveIt you have access to a unified platform for managing your workforce, planning, and carrying out your organization’s objectives and initiatives with ease. AchieveIt is a Software-as-a-Service platform that is widely utilized by organizations like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Joint Pathology Center (JPC-DHA), state and local governments, and hundreds of large commercial entities to track and report on mission-critical plans and initiatives. We empower these large organizations with the uniformity and visibility necessary to align and track their highest-level initiatives down to the individual tasks that drive execution and readiness. With everything in one central location, it’s easier than ever to stay informed, updated, and connected to one another while achieving goals and accomplishments as a unified front. AchieveIt Core Competencies:
- Track performance of long-term projects
- Monitor execution on mission-critical initiatives
- Track key metrics with reports & dashboards
- Coordinate important updates across the organization
- Maintain Continuity of Operations
That’s why everyone from global corporations, to regional healthcare systems, to federal agencies have turned to AchieveIt for their Integrated Plan Management. Let’s actually do this.
Ready to improve your plan execution?
Organizations of all types leverage AchieveIt to connect, manage, and execute their most important initiatives. Replace manual processes & siloed systems with interconnected plans in a single, automated platform.
