The majority of states have already, or are about to introduce, more rigorous legislation in relation to council and community planning.
This requires Councils to better resource their planning processes to ensure a much higher plan predictor value than ever before.
This is not a bad thing.
Any organisation that has an effective long-term strategy will invest considerable time and effort initially, and on a regular basis, to collect and analyse information.
Regrettably, having done much of the hard work I frequently see two upfront issues that cause this effort to be largely wasted.
There seems to be an inability for many of us to properly define outcome success measures and targets.
We are much more comfortable in nominating inputs to support vaguely worded objectives.
A bit like jumping in a car and not knowing where we are going.
Of course, then we never really know if we get there.
A bonus is that if we take the time to formulate the right outcome measures upfront, we actually save time in plan preparation.
It is much easier to develop effective supporting inputs to allow us to achieve unambiguous successes or otherwise change them to something that is more realistic in the context of available resources and time.
The other issue I see too often is that the practical consideration of efficient and timely reporting systems to support council plans is not given due consideration during plan preparation.
Timely and well-designed reporting practices will expose deficiencies before resources are needlessly wasted.
Putting the brakes on after the car crash never helps.
Today there are much better solutions, available to all Councils, large and small, to effectively and efficiently manage their corporate planning requirements.
Gary Bourke is the Managing Director of Cambron Pty Ltd
*Copy supplied by Cambron
For more information visit: www.cambron.com.au
