Align your business plan with local council policies and objectives

Andrew Overton, of Overton Creative Consulting, discusses how to integrate a strategic plan into the broader planning process and connect with the priorities of local and state governments. Andrew has worked extensively in local government cultural service delivery and now actively assists organisations in their planning processes.

At a recent seminar held in conjunction with the Regional Public Galleries Association, Andrew offered tips and insider information to help navigate the process of business planning.

• Meet and talk with colleagues and peers and share that information.
• Use a mind map or visual process to chart and connect these strategic links, issues and key trends.
• Assess both the internal and external environments.
• Identify your strengths, weakness, challenges and opportunities.
• Detail your markets, key community stakeholders and strategically important partners.
• Strategic planning is a process that is not fixed and should always be ongoing.
• Go beyond operational and day-to-day concerns.
• Build a narrative to describe your overall strategic approach.
• Distil the research that underpins your artistic rational and goals by formulating guiding principles.
• Use language that is consistent to council vision and ways of working.
• Synthesise your priorities into five or six top goals.
• Detail those strategies that will satisfy a number of goals.
• Above all prioritise.

Presented by Museums & Galleries of NSW in partnership with the Regional Public Galleries Association of NSW with support by Arts NSW.