The council of Musina Municipality recently met its management team in a three-day strategic planning session in order to come up with fresh ideas and plans aimed at maintaining a high standard of service delivery.

Mayor Mihloti Ramoyada said the exercise was fruitful as the deliberations would help to maintain the positive image of the municipality. “We met to define our strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating our resources to pursue this strategy, including our capital and people. This was our opportunity to analyze our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, which include political, economic, social, and technological matters.” She added that during the meeting they had also evaluated how the resolutions of the previous financial year had been implemented “and we were satisfied that we did a wonderful job during the previous financial year.”

She said she was happy to note that the municipality had developed its strategic plan in a way that was easily translatable into action plans. “We need to move away from the traditional way of addressing high-level initiatives and over-arching goals which end up not being articulated into day-to-day projects and tasks that will be required to achieve our plans. We are surely going to turn things around this time.”

According to her, the strategic planning session assisted the municipality in “clearly defining the purpose of the municipality” and to establish realistic goals and objectives consistent with the mission in a defined time frame within the institution’s capacity for implementation and how to communicate those goals and objectives to the municipality’s constituents.

“This has also assisted us in developing a sense of ownership of the plan and to ensure the most effective use is made of the municipality’s resources by focusing the resources on the key priorities. The session has also provided a base from which progress can be measured and establish a mechanism for informed change when needed.”

The occasion also served as a team-building exercise for the councillors and employees of the municipality. 

Ramoyada says team work and team building were essential in a corporate environment to make the organization a better place to work. “Employees are the assets of every organization and its success is directly proportional to the hard work every employee puts in.”