Greater Vancouver:  Strategic Planning

By Tim West

It’s been said that ‘predicting the future is a fool’s game—yet to not influence the future is foolish’.

On October 16th, President Dave Munday, directors and other members of Greater Vancouver devoted a good portion of their Saturday to hold a strategic planning session. The session was hosted in one of the well-appointed meeting rooms at Hemlock Printers arranged by Ron Lloyd.  The starting point was an assessment of the Greater Vancouver club against the 8 standard points established by the CPC National Executive.

It was gratifying to see Greater Vancouver meeting and exceeding in seven of the eight standard points.  From there the planning session looked out on a 3-year horizon, to visualize the club as we wish to see it, and to set a number of objectives to support that vision.  Terry Clarke, National VP, Western Region, graciously accepted the invitation to participate.  The planning session benefited from Terry’s depth of experience and perspective.  Ken Thorhaug facilitated the session and did an excellent job in balancing the need for open discussion with the need to summarize and bring focus on specific objectives.

Greater Vancouver has identified 24 key objectives—some are focused around increasing self discipline around basic business administration and communications, while others deal with expanding the membership, increasing sponsorship participation, and generating further exposure for CPC in the community, including greater contribution to service hours.  The three years’ horizon allows for a realistic approach toward some of the more ambitious targets. Each director has been assigned a set of objectives and asked to assemble small teams as needed to develop supporting action plans.  The action plans will be presented to the club in late November for review and adjustment, and to gain consensus.

Soon we will shift from planning the work, to working the plan!