The City of Richardson's City Council spends a day at the beginning of each term developing its Goals, Strategies, and Tactics. For the last several years, this was facilitated by Rick Robinson of Ramsey Consulting Group. He explained the terminology involved in strategic planning that would be used in this exercise. He started with Mission. He explained why he doesn't do mission statements for cities "because every city has 99% the same mission — to create a clean, save place for people to eat, work, stay, play, visit, blah, blah, blah, alright?" Exactly. So let's move on.
Unfortunately, pretty much the same thing could be said for Richardson's Goals and Strategies. As far back as 2013, I said, "I can't see anything that makes these goals and strategies unique to either 2013 or to Richardson. They could just as easily have been written by any city council, any time in the last few decades, anywhere in America."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Rick Robinson had this to say about the Vision statement: "When I ask on the survey, five of you said it was perfect, your vision statement, two had some minor changes." Robinson explained why this might be the case. A vision statement is "your aspirational statement for the future of what it is you want to be. At some point in time, what do we want to look like? And by definition, it's going to be a little fuzzy, you know, and I've had people say, well, we need to have a measurement on that. No, you can't measure it because it's fuzzy. Visions are out there. They're in the future, they're in the clouds. And because they're fuzzy, they need further definition. We further define it by goals." Alrighty then. Visions are fuzzy, pie-in-the-sky. And that's OK. So let's move on to goals.
Rick Robinson framed the goal discussion: "A balanced scorecard set of goals. We typically take the standard four. We have a goal for our financials, customer experience, internal processes, and employees and culture. Those are the four goals." Where the mission forms the foundation of a company, Robinson compared the goals to the rooftop of a building. He said the stairs are the strategies used to climb to the rooftop. He defined objectives as landings on the stairs for where we want to be at intermediate points on the way to the rooftop. He says objectives are where measurement comes in. "So your mission, vision, goals and strategies aren't necessarily measurable. Your objectives are, and the individual steps you take to achieve the objectives are your tactics."
I would argue that if the building blueprint doesn't have measurements for how high the rooftop is, then you have a bad architect. I want to see SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. I want to know exactly how high the roof is before I start up the first set of stairs. But I have a bad feeling that as long as the city uses Ramsey Consulting Group, this city council is not going to get SMART goals.
I noted that the City of Richardson's Statement of Goals lists Vision, Goals, Strategies, and Tactics. It doesn't list Objectives at all. So let's avoid cluttering this exercise with objectives (or interim goals, or staircase landings). A Council term is only two years long. I'd say two year goals are the right time increment for this exercise. Let's leave it to the City Manager and staff to break them down into interim objectives.
By now we're an hour into the city council's meeting time. We haven't even gotten to reviewing last term's goals, to say nothing of setting this term's goals. Needless to say, we haven't gotten to strategies or tactics, either. Will we get there with enough time left to develop some good ones? Who knows? I'm writing this as we go, without knowing how this is going to turn out. Stay tuned for the next installment of this account.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
End of Part 2.
"Saturday wears on.
Vision, mission, goals to come.
Still no clear rooftop."
—h/t ChatGPT
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