Creating a Strategy & Action Plan

An excerpt from Heritage Ohio's
Revitalization Roadmap
Logan
March 16-17, 2009

To read or print the full Revitalization Roadmap in a Adobe Acrobat

pdf version (164kb), click here.

Step 3. CREATING A DOWNTOWN STRATEGY & ACTION PLAN
A successful downtown revitalization program is created by leaders who:

Understand its purpose.
Develop realistic goals.
Establish priorities.
Assess its progress.

A crucial element in planning the direction of the downtown revitalization effort is the development of an annual Action Plan. To be a useful document that facilitates implementation, the action strategy must:

Clearly list the activities that need to take place by goals and objectives.
Assign deadlines for each objective.
Assign responsibilities for each objective.

The four purposes of the good Action Plan are:

To manage the wide range of activities that must take place for a revitalization effort to succeed.
To develop a timetable and budget for those activities.
To explain the organization’s purpose and activities to the public.
To help measure - in quantifiable terms - the downtown revitalization program’s successes.

The Action Plan

Should reflect the organization’s biggest priorities.
Be realistic in its scope.
Exclude items that cannot be accomplished in one year.
Should focus its efforts - do not force activities that do not fit the program’s purpose.

A. DEVELOPING AN ACTION PLAN
Before making any decisions about the downtown revitalization program’s priorities, it is helpful to identify the downtown’s assets and liabilities. By examining the downtown’s strengths and weaknesses, the downtown revitalization or Main Street program will be able to single out areas of immediate need and
develop a clear sense of direction. There are a number of ways to identify the downtown’s strong points and weak areas. Two of the more successful techniques are:
· VISUALIZATION EXERCISES

Volunteers think about, then describe, their vision of what downtown could be like in five or ten years.
Working from the assumption that their visions have become reality, discuss:

How the Main Street program was organized.

What its initial priorities were.

What its biggest achievements have been.

What steps it took to accomplish its goals.

Which groups and individuals were involved in the revitalization process.

· FORCE-FIELD ANALYSIS

Brainstorm and list all the positive and negative factors about the downtown.
Analyze each negative characteristic to see how its impact can be minimized or eliminated.
Repeat the process for positive characteristics with volunteers identifying ways to enhance these assets or use them to combat negatives.
When the positive and negative characteristics have been identified and some broad priorities for action specified, the Main Street program can begin developing goals, objectives and activities.

Once you have completed one or both of these exercises, you will have a much better understanding of the assets and strengths you have to build upon and the weakness and threats that pose challenges to you downtown revitalization effort. With this understanding you will now be able to develop an action plan that capitalizes on the assets and enhances the chances for realizing the opportunities and the assets while proposing steps to mitigate the weaknesses and eliminate or
minimize the threats.

B. ELEMENTS OF AN ACTION PLAN
An Action Plan should contain:

A clear mission statement explaining the purpose of the organization.
One or more goals for each of the four points of the Main Street Approach.
The specific objectives that must be met to reach each goal.
A list of activities necessary to accomplish each objective.
A timetable for completing each activity; the name of the committee, group, or individual responsible for implementing it; a measurable goal indicator for evaluation; and the estimated cost to complete the activity.

MISSION STATEMENT

The mission statement has one clear and simple message – it states the purpose of the organization.
The mission statement should be used to explain the downtown revitalization’s program in press releases, publications, media interviews and at meetings and conferences.
The mission statement does not include the actual goals or activities needed to accomplish the organization’s purposes.

GOALS, OBJECTIVES, ACTIVITIES, TASKS
The goals, objectives, and activities define the projects the Main Street program will implement in order to fulfill the directives of its mission statement

Goals state broadly what the program wants to accomplish in each of the four points of the Main Street approach.

Suggestion - each committee should have only 1 goal.
Goal should reflect general purpose or mission of committee

Objectives outline what the organization needs to do to accomplish each goal.

Suggestion – state how the goal will be reached.
Turn issues into positive action statements.
Outline major responsibility for committees.
Give structure to numerous activities.

Activities are specific projects that have an identified time frame. When finished they are the tangible accomplishments.
Tasks are specific steps required to complete an activity.

TIMETABLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Assign deadlines and responsibilities for every activity identified.
Make deadlines realistic, taking into account committee meeting schedules, holidays, and other busy times of the year.
Activities that rely on earlier activities - for instance, a facade improvement program that will not be announced until a low-interest loan pool is established - should reflect this in their time-lines.
An individual or team should be assigned responsibility for implementing each activity on the action plan.
Responsibility might be shared by one or more people in the organization, including members of the board of directors, a standing subcommittee, or a special task force created for that particular activity.
When assigning tasks, remember that the Main Street or downtown manager’s role is to coordinate volunteer activity, not take its place.
Be careful not to overload any one individual or group - whether staff or volunteer - with too many responsibilities.

ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITIES - WHO DOES WHAT

Goals

The board of directors should establish goals for each of the four points of the Main Street Approach.
This task should not be delegated to a committee or task force because, ultimately, the board is responsible for the downtown revitalization efforts direction and thus is accountable for its activities.

Objectives

One or more objectives for each goal should be developed by the appropriate standing committee, and approved by the board.
The committee and board should list as many objectives as required to obtain the goal(s).
To ensure as productive a discussion as possible on objectives, the committee chairperson should:

Encourage participants to suggest all their ideas: everyone should feel that his or her suggestions are valid.
Discuss which objectives can be combined. Often, objectives will overlap and it may be possible to consolidate them.
Give participants the time to advocate for the objectives they feel are the most important.
Vote to establish priorities; each participant should vote for only half the objectives. For example, 12 possible objectives means six votes for each participant.
Rank the objectives according to number of votes to establish priorities for the action plan.

It is helpful to have one person serve as facilitator, recording the group’s decisions on chart paper and keeping the group on schedule.

ACTIVITIES

Developing activities to achieve the objectives should be the job of the standing committees that will be implementing them, thus fostering a strong sense of involvement and commitment among participants.
If specific tasks are assigned to smaller ad hoc groups, these groups should also be involved in the planning process.
The committees should then submit to the board the list of activities they have developed for each objective along with recommended deadlines and responsibilities for each activity an estimated cost to complete each activity and a quantifiable measure for the activity in question
The board then reviews the entire action plan and ensures that:

Projects are realistic and can be achieved within one year. If a project is long-term, the portion that will be accomplished within the year should be included in the action plan.
Committee activities do not duplicate one another. Sometimes a committee will develop activities that are similar or identical to those outlined by other Main Street committees. While a small amount of overlap indicates that committees are working in the same direction, too much overlap can cause confusion and dilute the Main Street program’s focus.
Activities are quantifiable. Objectives and activities must be measurable if a Main Street program is to gauge its progress, set standards for future activities and demonstrate its successes. Almost all projects can be measured in quantifiable terms - for instance, rather than adopting the objective “increase volunteer involvement,” a Main Street Program might decide that “increasing volunteer involvement by 15 percent” is a reasonable and measurable expectation.
Board should develop an overall time-line for all of the activities in all four areas of the Main Street approach, then review the completed action plan with each standing committee.
It is crucial that each committee know what the others will be doing.
The action plan should be published. It might need condensing or editing, depending on how detailed the activity descriptions are.
All individuals and organizations that participate in the Main Street program should receive a copy of the overall plan. In some towns, the Main Street or downtown revitalization organization distributes the plan throughout the community; some even publish it in local newspapers.

Updating the Action Plan

The action plan should be updated each year after the board has reviewed the goals to see if they are still relevant or if they need to be modified.
During this process, the board, committees, and ad hoc groups go through the same process of identifying objectives and defining activities as they did the year before.