New Strategic Plan Approved and Circulated  

Includes four core strategies to fulfill Penn-Mar’s mission and brand promise.

Last week our team members were sent a recap of our Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Strategic Plan that was approved at our September Board Meeting. The document is based on where we find ourselves as an organization today and the opportunities we want to pursue in the future.

And while it’s described as a “long-range strategy” for Penn-Mar, it is not designed to be a fixed plan for the next 3-5 years. Most of our plans in the past have been updated annually as benchmarks are met and additional opportunities present themselves.

Our Strategic Plans are always about the “change work” we will be involved in outside of our routine day-to-day activities. They put in writing our commitment to implementing new initiatives that will continue to position us as a leader in our industry while ensuring continuous improvements in the lives of the people we support each day.

Penn-Mar’s new Strategic Plan focuses on 4 core strategies:

• Pursuing Empowering Technology Leadership. The tech segment is moving at breakneck speed. We want to be in front of all the new advances that will benefit people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These new tools affect the role of our Direct Support Professionals significantly and they need to be proficient in utilizing them. It’s one thing to give a person an iPad but equally important is knowing how to use its capabilities in a meaningful way. Our pursuit of tech leadership is not about finding a new gadget but about learning how to help our teams to leverage their advantages and provide opportunities for the people we support.

• Creating a Mission-Based Culture. Over a year ago I shared a book with our leadership team called, “The Culture Solution” by Matthew Kelly. In it he outlined six immutable laws of a dynamic culture. These tied in directly to our “Belonging” initiative which helped us to articulate the reality we want all of our team members to embrace and experience each day as they dedicate their lives to our mission and their specific role in the organization. This work became an actual strategy to further develop a mission-based, dynamic, healthy, present, and provable culture that touches every person in our organization. It’s a very big deal for us that rightfully emerged as a top priority when creating our plan.

• Exploring External Growth Opportunities. A lot of the work to be done here falls on my plate. It involves developing internal processes around how Penn-Mar will create parameters to determine how and why we would pursue opportunistic affiliations and mergers with other organizations, similar to our 2019 merger with Change, Inc. The strategy plays into how we as an organization identify partnerships out there that align with our mission and ultimately benefit the future delivery of quality services that will improve the lives of the people we support.

• Developing New Models of Support. This area is all about innovation, one of our premiere core values. Some of these opportunities will clearly blend into our technology leadership strategy. We always have great ideas here at Penn-Mar, but there are many more out there that we need to actively pursue, whether it’s in our industry or unrelated ones. This will require opening ourselves up to innovations in the marketplace that can directly enhance our mission to support people to live courageously in pursuit of their best life. We will need to be students first to study and bring these ideas into Penn-Mar in the hope of making them a core part of what we do here every day.

Our new Strategic Plan gives us much to look forward to in the future and much to be grateful for as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday. None of our accomplishments — or dreams — would be possible without the dedication and passion of our 600-strong Penn-Mar team. My thanks for all you do, every day.