Implementation of Strategic Planning: Experience of the Florida State Government
Author: C. James Huang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Undoubtedly almost all organizations engage in planning on a daily basis. However, strategic planning is believed to be different from traditional long-range planning in that it is a way of “matching organizational objectives and capabilities to the anticipated demands of the environment so as to produce a plan of action that will assure achievement of objectives.” While public managers are increasingly recognizing the benefits of strategic planning, few are sure about what exactly strategic planning is, let alone how to implement strategic planning. This research is intended to provide the implementation experience of the Agency Strategic Planning system of the Florida State government. By the time of conducting this research, the Florida State agencies had had more than five years’ experience with strategic planning. This paper first provides a review of the literature on public strategic planning to establish a conceptual framework of this paper. Secondly, a historical overview on the planning system of the Florida State government was established through a document review and interviews with the key personnel of the state government. Thirdly, a group of exemplary strategic planning agencies and a comparison group of state agencies were selected through the author’s review on the agency strategic plans and an expert panel survey. Descriptions and comparisons are then made to clarify the practices of strategic planning in the agencies to provide policy recommendations.