Achieving Strategic Goals with Business Planning
Toronto Public Library
Operations & Management
| 2021
Innovation Synopsis
TPL has embraced the discipline of business planning to define urgent and strategically important projects, and to align and focus resources on priorities. To support business planning, TPL adopted industry-standard project management disciplines, balanced scorecards and a unique tool for evaluating in-flight projects.
Challenge/Opportunity
- Competing and unclear project priorities meant that strategic initiatives were not getting required resources
- Projects were started without articulating the anticipated benefits, and without evaluating capacity to do the work or to absorb the change
- Staff struggled to keep up with the number of projects and initiatives, while feeling uncertain how their work aligned to TPL’s goals
Key Elements of Innovation
- Establishing an enterprise project management office to oversee business planning and execution of strategic projects
- The Ecocycle (Liberating Structures, adapted by Lipmanowicz & McCandless from Zimmerman. Facilitated by Tammie Plouffe, Innovative Pathways): look beyond lists of work, see projects by stage, explain why so little was progressing
- Cascade objectives and explain connections through balanced scorecards and interactive communications
- Quarterly reviews to stay on track and evaluate new opportunities
Achieved Outcomes
- Senior leadership has the information needed to make tough decisions. Staff understand the organization’s priorities and feel empowered to implement change
- Quickly and efficiently reprioritize strategic initiatives and resource distribution: of 29 projects in process or planned for 2020, 19 were paused to allow for pandemic response projects that ensured staff safety, kept operations running and supported the gradual reinstatement of services
- Regular check ins using data and analytics to review progress
