A Sample Strategic Planning Scenario
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Scenario: A community is in the midst of a transition from a resource-based economy to a something-else-based economy. Medical professionals are threatening to leave because they’re overworked and no new resources seem to be on their way to help out. Some clamor for more money while others say that’s a temporary solution. What’s required, they suggest, is a more livable community with more lifestyle choices to attract and retain people.

Tuesday evening: Karen and George arrive at the theatre and flip on the lights in the lobby that they use for their concert society meetings. They’re expecting more to arrive shortly. As everyone gathers, they chit chat about the latest newspaper stories of the town’s economic situation.

Call to order: As they get to “new business,” Karen describes an article in the latest Raising Curtains newsletter from the BC Touring Council on strategy development and management and how excited she is. Others roll their eyes. Persisting, she thinks that they could use a dose of strategic renewal and that it doesn’t have to be the same old never-ending, cast-of-thousands, produce-a-document-that-sits-on-the-shelf exercise. Karen emphasizes that strategy development is as much about execution as anything, that risk-taking and getting on with things keeps an organization vibrant and, anyway, she is getting tired doing the same old thing.

Sensing her passion, everyone starts to warm to the idea and sits up a bit. “What’s our mission statement?” asks George. “You mean, what’s our mission?” rebuts Karen. “Right.”

Later: Karen finishes going over the basic steps, as she understands them (she wants to send an email to clarify a certain point in the SWOT analysis technique). She leads them through a mini-strategy development session. This gives them a sense of how it will go when she organizes a full-day session, if they concur.

“Okay, first, let’s put up on the flipchart some key issues we think are facing our concert society,” says Karen.

“Losing members.”

“Too few volunteers.”

“Aging audiences.”

“Funding from the government not keeping up with operating costs.”

On it goes; they build upon each other’s issues. They then cluster their brainstormed items into five logical categories: finances, audience, performances, volunteerism, and economy.

They realize that they can’t have been the first arts group to come up with these categories and because of the relationships they have built up at Pacific Contact, Karen offers to exchange emails with some others around the province to see how they tackle these issues.

In any event, given these strategic issues, they think they should look at their current vision and mission statements (created a few years back now—no one can remember quite when) to see if they have withstood the test of time. At the back of a three-ring binder, Roger turns to the “strategy” tab and finds the mission statement.

It says,“We present high-quality performances for the enjoyment of the people of our community.”

“Hmmm, I guess that’s okay. It seemed meatier at the time. I guess you had to be there,” offers George.

After some brainstorming on the real contribution they make to the community, they draft a proposal that goes something like,“We contribute to a richer community—culturally and economically—by engaging all ages in the performing arts.”

“Well, it would be interesting to see how others react to it; it has a different spin than the old one, and seems to suggest areas that we could be working on,” muses Marianne.

“I think it’s on the right track,” says Jack, “it shows how a town is made up of more than just jobs.”

Karen takes over and enters into the strategy development phase. They take each of their categories and work through what kind of emphasis they should place on each. For example, they quickly come up with titles and thrusts.

1. Financial Stability: We will invest time and resources to retire our outstanding debt.
2. Audience Growth: We will invest time and resources to promote our performances to new groups.
3. Performance Quality and Variety: We will present performances that appeal to our current audience as well as targeted audiences and move to cross-pollinate both groups.
4. Volunteerism: We will actively seek out and engage people who value the arts in the community.
5. Community economy: We will work to integrate opportunities between the performing arts sector with other sectors.

Although Charlotte thinks some of the statements are self-evident, she sees that they are close to setting relevant measures that they can monitor over time and that there is an overall framework within which they can establish specific projects and activities.

In her notepad, she can’t resist jotting down possible measures for the Balanced Scorecard that Karen had enthused over.

Financial Perspective

• Total Revenue (from all sources, but especially tracked for ticket sales)
• Total Expenses
• Total Net Revenue (revenue less expenses)

Customer Perspective

• Average total audience size
• Maximum audience size
• Number of audience members from new market segments
• Number of season ticket sales to existing members
• Number of season ticket sales to new members
• Percentage of “very satisfied” audience members (via a survey they could put together)

Internal Business Processes Perspective

• Average cost to present a single performance (artist and production costs)
• Average single ticket price
• Average advertising cost per performance

Learning & Growth

• Number of performances from genres not offered before
• Number of new, enthused volunteers
• Number of new online computer screens

She knows that some of the data will be hard to get and there are probably too many measures (who would look after it?) but she can imagine that they could set short-term and long-term targets which will ensure that the financial objectives are met.

Suddenly, the aroma of coffee wafts over her and she realizes she has been deep in thought while others are having a break. She takes a moment to chat with Jack about the types of specific activities they could do to make the numbers come true.

Karen joins them and points out a desktop publishing workshop being offered by John McLachlan that would really help spice up their advertising, which could help bring in new people…

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