ABSTRACT
Strategic planning is the new game in town, and no self-respecting manager wants to be left out of the action. Although it has been developed and applied principally in the for-profit sector over the past quarter-century, strategic planning has become the object of considerable attention in the public sector, among both practitioners and academicians. Making practical use of strategic planning in government will be no easy task, however. Cleveland Heights has experimented with the application of strategic planning. Cleveland Heights is a medium-size city of some 56,000 residents, located in Cleveland's eastern suburbs in Cuyahoga County. Cleveland Heights has not utilized formal long-rate planning across the board, but it does follow a long-range capital maintenance plan. The city's planning and management improvement program took shape between January and July 1983. The strategic planning was to be done largely in-house, by two interdepartmental staff task forces of between 10 and 15 members, each headed by a senior executive.
