Strategic Goals
As an organization whose purpose is to help children and adult people with developmental and physical disabilities, the Indian Creek Foundation has to develop strategic goals that would drive its future initiatives and projects. One of the major weaknesses that characterize this organization currently is its plan of operation that is outdated and no longer fits the modern environment. Attempting to make its practices more relevant to contemporary customers, the leaders of the Indian Creek Foundation would have to study the specificity of modern society and its needs.
One of the major features of contemporary society in the United States is the fact that it is heavily affected by the process of globalization meaning that the level of diversity, as well as the social and ethnic composition of the American society, is growing (Homan, 2016). As a result, the organization willing to strive with this kind of client would have to adopt multiple trends brought about by globalization; among them, there are rapid technological development, social acceptance, communicability, and connectivity, to name a few.
The strategic goals of the organization that would help it become more relevant will include the creation of an accepting and inclusive mission and vision statement, self-promotion campaign on social media, and community engagement activities raising awareness about the organization and helping it form partnerships and alliances with other related organizations.
The formation of alliances is critical for a connected and active organization – first of all, it will help Indian Creek Foundation reach potential customers and spread information about its services; also, it will help the organization become known among investors and supporters; finally, the alliances will help the organization achieve its goals related to policy-making and the production of change at the community and state levels.
Indian Creek Foundation operates in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, an area with a strong health department that includes many organizations specializing in the needs of people with disabilities (“Resources for families of children with special health care needs,” n.d.). These organizations, as well as many healthcare facilities, support groups, and faith-based communities could become valuable partners for Indian Creek Foundation to share resources, exchange experience, and enhance one another’s performance (“Children and youth with special healthcare needs and their families,” n.d.).
Strategies for the Implementation of Goals
The first strategic goal for Indian Creek Foundation is the creation of an accepting and inclusive mission and vision statement. This goal could be achieved using reviewing mission and vision statements of the other organizations to see how one should be formulated ad then building it based on the collected knowledge.
However, this approach would be quite superficial. A deeper and more meaningful approach would be based on a discussion of the changes that have to be made in the organization and how they would create a new orientation for its mission and vision. Practically, vision and mission statements should come from within the organization and reflect its improved approach to its role in the community (Homan, 2016). Further, the appropriate values will need to be taught to the employees to adjust the organizational culture.
The second goal is the creation of a self-promotion campaign on social media. This campaign could be accomplished through the creation of a brand new promotion campaign in the form of banners and videos serving as social advertisements that would draw the attention of the potential clients to the organization; also, the existing social pages and websites of the organization could be transformed to become more interactive, engaging, and user-friendly. The latter strategy could require that the organization hires social network experts who could help it build its new image virtually.
The third goal is the organization of the community engagement activities raising awareness about the Foundation and its activities. This goal could be achieved through a series of seminars given by the professionals of the organization in different healthcare facilities to various target audiences – potential clients or employees, as well as the communities with the related goals, for example. Also, this goal could be accomplished through a set of publically held events organized by the foundation with the invitation of the leaders and members of relevant organizations in the community to get accustomed and sharing experience.
Accountability
For the strategic plan and the included goals to be measurable – the major milestones will need to be broken down into several smaller tasks and clear dates and deadlines will have to be assigned to each task and milestone (Homan, 2016). One leader or a group should be selected to curate the projects and all the major and important aspects and changes within the plan will be reported to this leader or leader. As a result, the steady and successful development of the project will be the responsibility of a certain person or people.
In turn, the leaders will be free to delegate and assign the management team for the project dividing the tasks thematically to different managers. Consequently, the managers will choose their teams of employees who will help them work on the projects. The completion of every task will have a plan with a sequence of steps, deadlines, the description of resources needed, and a team of professionals working on it. As a result, a team will either succeed or fail at meeting deadlines and, accordingly, their work will be evaluated based on their accountability for it.
The clients’ and stakeholder’s role in the maintenance of accountability will be to provide timely and honest feedback thus driving the further implementation of the changes and helping the teams of employees and managers correct the flaws that they could miss or the errors that could occur while putting the plans into practice
Indicators of Success
The development of the appropriate and relevant mission and vision for the organization is a task that will impact its entire culture and attitudes. As mentioned previously, one of the weaknesses of the staff working at the selected organization is resilient to change and unwilling to embrace innovative approaches which also prevents it from adopting more client-centered practices that would make the organization a more inclusive place for the diverse clients who require approaches different from the old-fashioned methods used by Indian Creek Foundation (Kyounghae et al. 2016). Additionally, the number of such clients is growing annually due to the pressing impact of the process of globalization. In that way, the implementation of this change in mission and vision statements will require changes in organizational culture and attitudes. These strategies will require education and training sessions for the workers.
The aforementioned sessions will be built on a clear and detailed plan including the themes that it would cover, the explanation of the problems facing the organization, the preparation of the employees for the upcoming change in the culture and its acceptance, the current social trends and the changing needs of the client base, as well as the benefits of different kinds that will be generated in the case of the successful implementation of the change plan. To assess the impact and results of the education sessions and evaluate their effects, the attitudes and ideas of the staff members included in the sessions could be tested before and after the completion of this plan. The changes indicating its success will be a higher level of readiness for the organizational change, the understanding of social trends and clients’ needs, and a willingness to reap the benefits using adopting a new, more inclusive, and client-centered style (Kyounghae et al. 2016).
The indicators of the success of the self-promotion campaigns will be the increased activity of different stakeholder groups of the organization such as its investors, clients, and partner organizations. To be more precise, to present results visually and make them comprehendible about the scale of their impact, the relevant data will have to be created for the measurement of statistical results reflecting the performance of the organization.
Separately, the increased activity of investors will be translated into a between financial performance of the Indian Creek Foundation that could be reflected in financial reports. The increased activity of clients will, accordingly, be seen in the intensity of the client inflow. This indicator will also be in correlation with the number of views, shares, and likes of the organization’s social media campaign content. Finally, the engagement of partner organizations will be measured using the evaluation of the external connections and relationship of Indian Creek Foundation, and its participation in the community life.
To sum up, the first indicator is the change in organizational culture; and it will be measured using testing the employees’ attitudes and ideas about change before and after the educational sessions. The second indicator is the activity of investors that will be reflected in the financial performance of the organization that could be seen in its financial reports. The third indicator is the public awareness measured by the comparisons of the customer inflow and the user activity during the social media campaign. The fourth indicator will be the activity of partner organizations measured through the new resources, community acceptance, and the creation of alliances.
Performance Targets
For the first indicator, the performance target will be the creation of a more understanding and inclusive organizational culture for the Indian Creek Foundation helping it adopt client-centered practices and become a better competitor in the area. For the second indicator, the performance target will be found at least one or two new investors for the organization who would appreciate its changed culture and aspirations.
The performance target will be to increase the inflow of customers by at least 5% and also to see a higher level of activity at the organization’s website and social network pages. The desired increase will be at least 10%. Finally, for the fourth indicator of success, the performance target will be found at least two new partner organizations and becoming a participant of one or two new alliances. The terms in which these goals will be achieved will be based on the exact deadlines and milestone dates for each of the parts of the change plans targeting different strategies.
References
Children and youth with special healthcare needs and their families. (n.d.)
Homan, M. (2016). Promoting community change: Making it happen in the real world. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Kyounghae, K., Choi, J., Eunsuk, C., Nieman, C., Jin Hui, J., Lin, F.,… Hae-Ra, H. (2016). Effects of community-based health worker interventions to improve chronic disease management and care among vulnerable populations: A systematic review. American Journal of Public Health, 106(4), 3–28.
Resources for families of children with special health care needs. (n.d.)