The Destination?

The drive to grow and improve CIPFA is necessarily never ending. The organisation will need to keep adapting and developing to prosper in an ever-changing and, almost certainly, ever-more competitive world.

Notwithstanding this never ending journey, however, the Institute Council has been keen to paint a picture through this development strategy of the distinctive characteristics - the hallmarks - of the organisation which it hopes to have moulded in three to five years' time. They are highlighted at the appropriate points in this document and summarised, for simplicity, in figure 2.

In order to achieve real progress and to realise these hallmarks the Council recognise that the initiatives and actions which are to be pursued - explained here - must be carefully and systematically planned and that actual performance against plans must be managed effectively and reviewed regularly.

From time to time individual hallmarks will become relatively more important. For example, the need to 'uphold highest standards' has taken on a particular significance in the wake of Enron, WorldCom and other corporate failures. The Institute Council will reflect these changes of emphasis in the priority it gives to the individual projects and initiatives which underpin the plan.