Week 4: Creating a "Strategic Plan"

The Tacoma-Pierce County Sports Commission is entering an new phase of business. For the longest time the Sports Commission was a two man show ran by the Executive Director Tim Waer and the Assistant Executive Director Jon Graef. With a recent influx in money, the commission has had to put on their thinking caps and decide what direction they want to take this organization. Whereas before the commission was solely focused on sustaining the events that they had received from their predecessors, now they are looking for bigger and better events to bid on. With all the potential in the world and the financial resources to completing extensive projects, the commission has turned to Dr. Lowell "Duke" Kuehn an expert in organizational development and strategic planning.

Duke's job has been to organize the commission's thoughts and ideas into a strategic plan that will serve as the blueprint for many years to come. So far as a staff we have met with him twice. Just like in the course MGT 622 Strategic Management Duke is running us through a series of exercises that directly parallel the "strategy-making/ strategy-executing process" discussed in our text book entitled "Crafting and Executing Strategy". These meetings have helped the commission define our mission and vision. Duke has emphasized that the organization that does not have a well defined mission does not have a direction. The Sports commission does have a mission; a rather large one at that. in fact these meetings have unveiled to us that in years past we have not been meeting the mission in it's entirety and that now we finally have the capacity to reach every component of it.

Part of the mission we ARE meeting: To promote Tacoma-Pierce County, Washington as a destination for major amateur sporting events.

Part of the mission we are NOT meeting: Assist in the development of amateur athletic programs throughout the region.

From here we discussed creating a stronger more succinct vision, a business plan, and have begun to draft a strategic plan. We are going to begin setting goals and will be creating flow diagrams of all our different work systems. There are so many integral steps in trying to lay out a succinct quality strategic plan that it is going to take months before this plan even takes shape. For now we will continue to meet twice a month and will begin molding the organization into a strong mission driven force that will ultimately optimize it's maximum potential. What an exciting process to be a part of!