Services > Strategic Planning and Professional Development

Program Objective

A perfect training, planning and management package for the First Nation communities designed with a sole objective of developing the skill sets of the community workforce in the areas of basic operation of management, planning, workplan development and budgeting to carry out their jobs more efficiently and effectively. In today’s time, budgets and timelines are important in keeping your organization on target. We can assist you in creating the tools needed.

An exclusive custom designed and tailored capacity building program for the First Nation Communities, this package focuses its energy, to ensure that all the working staff of the community are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the community’s direction in response to a changing environment with all necessary skills to manage it under a desired time frame under a stipulated budget. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to build capacity for the community human resources to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what a community is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

A word by word dissection of this definition provides the essence of key elements that underlie the meaning and success of a strategic planning process:

The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way to respond to the circumstances of the community’s environment, whether or not its circumstances are known in advance, an individual often must respond to dynamic and even tough environments. Being strategic then means being clear about the community’s objectives, being aware of the community’s financial and other resources, and incorporating both into being consciously responsive to a dynamic environment under a predictive time frame. The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting goals (i.e., choosing a desired future) and developing an approach to achieving those goals.

The process is disciplined; it calls for a certain order and pattern to keep it focused and productive. The process raises a sequence of questions that helps ARK training consultants examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the community staff will be working.

Major Advantages / Benefits

1. Comprehensive training for the leadership (Chief and Council) to build capacity on basic leadership techniques, budgetary controls on how to prepare and utilize budgets. This also gives them an opportunity to learn developing various reports via a reporting structure. Finally a tool for developing strategic plans with a multiyear work plan.

2. Hands on financial training on basic accounting and budgeting techniques for band office staff, members of finance authority, members housing authority or community health center staff.

3. Specially tailored capacity building package for Community health center staff to help them set up a reporting structure for their FNIHB (first Nations Inuit Health Branch) programs and reports. A staged process tool to help the health center achieve and implement the Transitional Funding Model.

4. Specially tailored capacity building package for Housing Authority members for a comprehensive insight on different best practices on housing policies and management. Special reporting tool for the housing coordinator along with _ overall capacity building on budgetary and financial techniques.

5. A must attend package for all band office staff especially for the financial/accounts coordinator to develop capacity on financial management techniques and to bring the community financial reporting/auditing easier and transparent.

Finally, the process is about fundamental decisions and actions because choices must be made in order to devise the best possible management staff for the community, to get moving towards self development. The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set of tools about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it.

For a community, strategic planning can be complex, challenging, and even tough to achieve and implement, but with capable training professional and right capacity building models, it is always a better choice to implement this package for your community. Defined by the basic ideas outlined above you can always contact ARK for this training package to get your workforce into your own strategic planning process.