Planning for the Future

Striving for Excellence

by George Slaughter, Information Developer, BMC Software

One of STC Houston's priorities this year is to create a five-year strategic plan. In recent years STC Houston has made several attempts to create such a plan. (Your chapter president has the paperwork to prove it.)

To better focus on long-term planning, and to encourage a more member-inclusive process, STC Houston hosted a strategic planning workshop last October. Region 5 Director-Sponsor Linda Oestreich and Society Immediate Past President Judy Glick-Smith were our featured speakers. Linda and Judy shared with us their observations about strategic planning, and they also shared with us a process that the STC Board of Directors used to create its long-term plan.

Objectives

Using this process, we came up with six objectives:

promote ethical and professional behavior
encourage and facilitate professional growth
project a positive image of our profession and chapter to ourselves and to others
provide an infrastructure for career opportunities
foster valued personal relationships
strive for excellence

We put them in this order because the excellence we strive for comes as a result of meeting the first five objectives. Excellence is a byproduct of all the things we do for our community, our profession, and our Society.

Strategies and Tactics

Now that we have objectives in place, we need to develop the strategies and tactics to meet those objectives. For example, one of our strategies for promoting ethical and professional behavior is to develop and communicate an ethics policy. STC already has such a policy, and we look forward to creating our own chapter-level ethics policy.

As you read this, we've already developed strategies and tactics for the first objective. This spring, STC Houston will be developing long-term strategies and tactics for the other objectives. We welcome your input as we plan for STC Houston's long-term growth and success.

For more information, contact me at gslaughter@flex.net.