Where Are We Going?: Development of the Sonoma County Water Agency’s Strategic Plan

Strategic plans provide a roadmap for an organization to follow in order to achieve their mission. Often these roadmaps are written by senior managers and then rolled out to staff. However, the success of a strategic roadmap is dependent on many people buying into both the map and the destination. Often the lack of staff buy-in to management initiatives dooms great strategic visions. Additionally, having a larger group involved in strategic planning decreases the chance of a missing an important strategic opportunity.The Sonoma County Water Agency (Water Agency) provides wholesale water supply to over 600,000 people living in Sonoma and Marin counties, operates eight wastewater systems, maintains over 75 miles of flood control channels, manages stream flow in the Russian River, and produces electricity from hydroelectric and solar generation facilities. The Water Agency’s mission is to manage these resources so communities and ecosystems can thrive. The Water Agency updates its strategic plan every five years to renew its focus on important programs and to adapt to new challenges and opportunities.The 2013 strategic plan was developed using teams comprised of members from all sections and all levels of the organization. Each team addressed a particular component of the Water Agency’s duties and included a senior manager who, in some cases, “innovatively” encouraged staff members to sign up for and lead their team. These teams worked for several months, and in the process the team members formed new connections and broke down invisible barriers that existed between various parts of the organization. These teams also included many staff members who might one day replace the existing senior managers.From a senior manager’s view, having a robust strategic plan that already has widespread acceptance is priceless. Past strategic plans, which were prepared by senior managers with input from staff, were strongly focused on projects necessary to stay in compliance with a myriad of regulations and to meet the needs of our customers and stakeholders. This current plan, which was prepared by staff with input from senior managers, places additional emphasis on working conditions within the organization and how the organization goes about both implementing its longer-term initiatives and providing more routine day to day services.The end product was a high quality plan that was presented in two public workshops and was adopted by the Water Agency’s Board of Directors without any changes.