What's the point of creating a strategic plan if you have no idea what success looks like?
That's why when you create your strategic priorities within your strategic plan, you want to attach a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to each initiative so you can have measurable progress towards your ultimate vision.
While the process seems straightforward, it can sometimes be difficult to get the ball rolling. To start the process, check out some examples of strategic priorities.
If you're going to be choosing KPIs, you can use this framework:
Going from X (current state) to Y (future state) by date (Your target date).
Set your goals and KPI's using that frame work and use measurable targets instead of doing "more" or "less" of something.
When the City of Vancouver created their Greenest City Action Plan, a strategy that aims to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020, they knew that the needed to include some KPIs that were going to let them know if they were doing a good job or not.
For their plan, they chose 20 KPIs that they felt they could take action on to move forward and measure.
While we think that 20 KPIs might be too many for some organizations to focus on, it's possible that climate change might require a multi pronged approach towards moving it forward, justifying their choice to have so many.
In the most recent update, the city shares that it hit 3 of their 20 targets for 2017:
- Green house gas emissions: reducing 2007’s 1,630,000 greenhouse gas emissions per square meter from existing buildings to 1,300,000 by 2020.
- Making walking, cycling, and public transit the preferred mode of transportation for the majority of its residents. Over 50% trips taken by the methods above.
- Waste Reduction: To reduce its landfill-bound solid waste by 50 percent (from 480,000 tonnes to 240,000 tonnes) by 2020,
You can find the complete plan here.
The plan includes a number of policies and measurable targets in order to achieve this in areas related to climate leadership, transportation, clean air, and more.
You can take their strategies and tactics and use them as an example in your own strategic plan.
Our starter kit will walk you through the entire strategic planning process,
and is complete with tools, templates and tutorials:
