Water Haller: Time to Revise the Strategic Work Plan
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Warning: There is a call to action at the end of this column.
First, instead of reading this column, you should be packing your bags to go to Winnipeg for the National Water & Wastewater Conference…or on the way to the airport…or at the airport. But if you are not, I promise you will regret it later when you hear how great it was.
I will arrive early and meet with our Board of Directors all day Sunday in strategic planning sessions where we take a deep look into who we are and why we exist as an association. The Board has been meeting already to redefine our "ends” or our "purpose” as your national advocates and your national network for utility management.
My task, as the Executive Director, is then to create a work plan that directs our resources (money, staff and volunteers). This is now a long running joke, but when I started with CWWA 12 years ago, I developed what I called a "strategic plan,” but a colleague said it was just a "work plan” – so I called it my "strategic work plan” as my strategy is to get some work done.
While part of the board’s role is to oversee me and monitor my activity, they also serve as your representatives – giving insight and advice to me as the chief of staff. We will be looking at our events and how we run them, how we foster national networking and information sharing. How do we communicate with and engage you, our members? How do we carry out our advocacy efforts through our technical committees and staff? How do we represent our sector to the public through the media? And, of course, how do we ensure we remain financially sustainable?
Do you have any comments on how we are doing as your association? What are we doing well? What are we missing or could improve upon? How can we make our conference and webinars better? You can let me know directly, but you should also share your thoughts with the Board of Directors (especially if they are compliments about me!). You should reach out to your provincial rep or your regional association rep. All their contact info is on the website here:
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