ESC Chicago Consultants Develop Strategic Plan for Streamwood Park District

The Public Agency: Streamwood Park District provides diverse recreational opportunities that are responsive to the needs of area residents to enhance the quality of life in the community.

The Need: Strategic Planning with defined objectives, measurable outcomes and realistic timelines to focus Commissioners and staff.

ESC Solution: ESC provided a consultant team with Park District expertise and experience creating Strategic Plans with community buy-in. They focused Streamwood’s leadership on prioritized and tangible goals, including: improving Commissioner and staff cohesion for greater efficiency, developed a master and capital improvement plan that addressed the community’s needs equitably and strengthening the customer service-focused organizational culture to harness input from the growing resident population.

Immediate tangible benefit: Since beginning their three-year Strategic Plan implementation in 2008, Streamwood Park District has aligned their Commissioners and staff around their shared goals and priorities, improved their finances and bond ratings, upgraded their employee force with enhanced skills and abilities, undertaken much-needed park renovations, enhanced their website to better inform the community they serve and created a systemic process to gather and act on resident input.

Support in implementation: To guarantee Streamwood’s success ESC has supported them in every step of their three-year implementation. The Commissioners worked with trained ESC facilitators to undergo a self-assessment of their effectiveness, create Team Operating Principles to keep them focused on their critical role and assess the Park District’s process toward measurable targets along the way. Streamwood’s Executive Director worked one-on-one with an ESC coach to identify road-blocks, improve process agency-wide and impartially hold everyone accountable to the defined goals.