"Is anyone tracking the data on these goals? We are already in year two of a three-year plan."
And just like that, the room went quiet. The Deputy Secretary's question landed with a thud. Around the table, every member of the executive team at the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) came to the same realization, me included. I was one of the goal managers responsible for that plan, and I had not followed up with anyone. Our strategic plan was not going to carry itself out. It was sitting in a binder, and it was going to stay there until someone took action.
How the Plan Was Built
Building that plan had been an exciting and inspiring time. We held a two-day strategic planning conference at a hotel and invited staff from across Maryland, from every level and every part of the agency. There were presentations from nationally recognized juvenile justice experts, data analysis sessions, breakouts, and facilitated discussions. In the evenings, everyone from direct-care staff to executive staff relaxed at social events and got to know one another better. The crowd favorite came on the last day, when our Secretary grabbed a hand-held microphone and walked the room for an "ask me anything" session, fielding questions from staff at every level.
After the conference, the session takeaways and notes were distilled into a set of goals, objectives, and data measures. With the Secretary's approval, the three-year plan was proudly announced to the entire agency and distributed to agency leaders.
And then life went on. Managing youth in our facilities. Supervising youth in the community. Responding to the media. Working with law enforcement and the courts. Our collective attention returned to the daily work of a juvenile justice agency, the way it always does.
None of that was negligence. It is what happens in any agency when a plan has no built-in mechanism to keep it in front of the people responsible for it.
From Strategic Plan to Strategic Implementation
When that question came a year and a half in, the executive team agreed on what had to change. The strategic plan had to become strategic implementation.
Quarterly meetings went on the calendar for every goal in the plan. Each goal manager was directed to pull together a team that included staff from data, budget, and the relevant operational units. I made one choice of my own. I got out of headquarters and held my goal meetings in DJS offices and facilities around the state.
The Unexpected Returns
The meetings started paying off in ways I had not expected.
First, they rarely stayed data reviews for long. A discussion about recidivism numbers would turn into a discussion about how to keep youth from reoffending in the first place. Facility staff raised a frustration they had been carrying for a while: how hard it was to transition youth leaving our secure treatment facilities back to their home communities. Hold that thought.
Second, my team genuinely enjoyed being together. They talked about work, their kids, and life in general. The camaraderie I had felt at the planning conference was back, and meeting where people actually worked, rather than at headquarters, was part of that.
The other goal managers had similar experiences with their teams.
What Grew From the Meetings
Those quarterly conversations planted the seeds of reforms, both big and small. The idea of giving youth in the community incentives for good conduct, rather than only consequences for bad behavior, started in a goal group discussion. So did boosting employee retention through college tuition reimbursement.
For my group, it came back to that frustration from the facilities. We concluded that DJS lacked the resources and structure to help youth return home successfully after a stay in a residential facility. The result was a dedicated reentry unit, with staff focused solely on building an individualized reentry plan for each youth heading home, connecting them with health care providers and getting them reenrolled in school.
Fittingly, those reentry reforms were later refined through a focused reentry strategic plan of their own. Following through on one plan gave the agency the footing to build the next one.
The Takeaway
Writing the plan is the easy part. The conference, the breakout sessions, the announcement to the whole agency: those are the moments everyone remembers. The hard part is the shift from plan to action, and that shift does not happen on its own.
Looking back, a few things made the difference at DJS. Every goal had a named owner who was accountable for it. The meetings ran on a standing quarterly schedule, so follow-up did not depend on anyone remembering to do it. Data, budget, and operations staff sat at the same table, which turned metric reviews into problem-solving. And taking the meetings into the field brought in the people closest to the work, who could see problems that were not visible from headquarters.
When DJS made that shift, ideas took shape, reforms were implemented, and connections among DJS staff grew stronger. The plan in the binder only started to matter once we took it out.