After months of planning and several stakeholder meetings, our Board of Commissioners adopted a revised Strategic Plan on November 16th. The plan is called "Blueprint" because, like in construction, a blueprint gives us guidance and shows us what the results should look like if we're doing things the right way.

Greenville Utilities has been guided by the same vision, mission, and values for over a decade. These elements were developed in 2004 as part of a strategic plan that helped focus our resources and efforts to meet our customers' needs. Using them, we have been able to achieve a great deal in recent years. As with any good plan, times change and revisions must be made to ensure that we are still meeting our customers' needs and headed in the right direction for the next 10 to 15 years.  

In order to make sure we fully understand our customers' utility-related needs, we began holding stakeholder meetings in April 2017 with GUC employees, business and community leaders, builders, property management companies, and legislators. We also dove deep into the customer service survey we conducted earlier this year, analyzing the results. GUC's Management Team and Board of Commissioners used all of this input to understand where our customers said we have done really well and where we should focus our efforts in the future.

"Our stakeholders provided valuable input that helped us look at GUC's strengths, opportunities, problems, and threats," said Anthony Miller, Director of Gas Systems, who is the Management Team sponsor of the plan revision process. "As a result of where the input fell under these categories, we were able to see that GUC's mission, vision, and strategic plan are still effective, and only needed a few updates for moving us forward. This process really validated that the original strategic plan was set in the right direction."

Vision and Mission Updates

The GUC Board revisited our vision statement and affirmed its support of the current mission and values with some minor adjustments. Vision statements are used to express a long-term view of the ideal future for an organization, while mission statements describe why that organization exists and what it will do to help achieve its vision.

"The slight modifications that were made to the vision and mission statements focus on certain things that weren't emphasized before, like safety, environmental stewardship, and our role as a foundation for the Greenville region's growth," said Anthony.

Our updated vision and mission statements will guide the work of GUC, ensuring that all activities it undertakes will help achieve the vision. The vision and mission are then rounded out with GUC's Core Values, which represent the stakeholders' shared beliefs that will provide a framework for decisions and drive our GUC culture and priorities.

Updated Vision Statement

To provide safe, innovative, and sustainable utility solutions that serve as the foundation of growth for the Greenville region.

Updated Mission Statement

Greenville Utilities is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for those we serve by safely providing reliable utility solutions at the lowest reasonable cost, with exceptional customer service in an environmentally responsible manner.

Other Updates

As illustrated, we now have eight core values (up from six original values) and three strategic themes that will guide GUC toward the six main objectives of:

• Providing competitive rates while maintaining financial stability
• Exceeding customer expectations
• Safely providing reliable and innovative utility solutions
• Recruiting and retaining an exceptional, motivated, diverse, and agile workforce
• Developing and enhancing strategic partnerships
• Embracing change to ensure organizational alignment and efficiency

While the strategic themes did not change, the Board modified one core value and added two others. The value of "being dedicated to meeting the needs of our customers" was updated to "dedicated to exceeding the expectations of our customers." The two new values are:

• Safety of our employees and customers is a priority.
• We support building the community because it is our community too.

"I want to thank everyone for the input, time, and effort put into the process of updating our strategic plan," said General Manager/CEO Tony Cannon. "We will continue to use this in guiding our decisions, including our upcoming budget process that we're getting started with now. We will base our priorities on the vision and mission statements so that we're making strategic investments for the long-term benefit of our customers."

Copies of the revised plan have been distributed throughout GUC facilities, and an electronic version is available on MyGUC under the News Headlines.