From Comprehensive Planning to 'Strategic Doing'

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Lessons from Trenton, New Jersey, on how to move seamlessly from planning to implementation
• How to use elements of the "Strategic Doing" program to increase buy-in and investment from stakeholders
• How to grow local capacities and trust through planning

MORE SESSION DETAILS

This "deep-dive" session will explore how the City of Trenton, New Jersey, integrated a traditional comprehensive planning effort with "Strategic Doing," a strategy developed at Purdue University. The result was a seamless integration of planning and implementation achieved by forming action-oriented collaborations around the identified initiatives of the plan, moving these initiative teams toward measurable outcomes, and making adjustments along the way. The powerful combination of a solid comprehensive plan with a disciplined approach to engaging stakeholders in implementation can create wider ownership in both making the plan a reality and leveraging public and private resources and assets to achieve success. "Strategic Doing" is being used in 46 states and in eight foreign countries to design and guide strategies to address a wide range of economic-development and quality-of-life issues. The City of Trenton, however, is the first to use it to implement a comprehensive plan. Participants will take part in an interactive, hands-on simulation called "Strategic Doing: The Game" that will introduce them to a new set of skills and tools. Attendees can arrange for CEUs through Purdue University.