Strategic Planning Effort Underway

/in /by
Paul Mahlberg, General Manager

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” One of the many quotes of our nation’s 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower. I couldn’t agree more with this philosophical statement. Strategic planning is absolutely necessary for our agencies, especially in the quickly, ever changing world we live in with our electric and gas industries.

With that in mind, the KMEA/KMGA Joint Board of Administration requested that a strategic plannig effort be initiated during the current calendar year.  The president of KMEA (Mike Muirhead – Garden City) and of KMGA (Randy Frazer – Moundridge) created a Task Force (see below) to lead this effort.

2 Day Planning Retreat

The Task Force met in Wichita for a two day strategic planning retreat on August 28-29, 2018. This retreat was facilitated by an outside consultant, Tim Blodgett of Hometown Connections. The Task Force developed a list of meeting objectives, reviewed the trends in the electric and gas industries and in particular trends in the state of Kansas, developed a list of values and where we want the Agencies to be in 5 years, developed a list of critical issues and road blocks that could impede our progress, developed a list of members’ needs, and finally completed a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities/Threats) analysis. With the ultimate goal: set the direction for the two agencies over the next five years. The process resulted in the group establishing the following Three Strategic Areas of Focus:

  • Strategic Growth
  • Communications/Identity
  • Organization

 

Next Steps

There is still much work to do to finalize the plan.  Staff will be developing specific and measurable goals and action items under each of the 3 strategic areas for review. These will be vetted by the Task Force prior to presentation to the KMEA and KMGA Executive Committees. Eventually the strategic plan will be presented to each of the full boards in May of next year. We will briefly update you more at the next Board meetings during our annual conference on October 18 in Wichita.  See you all in Wichita and let’s go make Ike proud of his fellow Kansas’s!

Strategic Planning Task Force

  • Mike Muirhead (Garden City)
  • Nathan Law (Louisburg)
  • Randy Frazer (Moundridge)
  • Brad Ewy (Cheney)
  • Duane Banks (Russell)
  • Taggart Wall (Sterling)
  • Tyson McGreer (Colby)
  • Ethan Reimer (Halstead)
  • Merl Page (Wamego)
  • Jonathan Mitchell (Hoisington)
  • Rod Willis (Osage City)
  • Jason Rabe (Beloit)
  • Dennis Tharp (Ottawa)
  • Gus Collins (Winfield)
  • Bob Mills (Garnett)
  • Gary Emry (Hesston)
  • Mike Shook (Coffeyville)
  • Colin Hansen (KMU)