The creation of a strategic direction is a big step toward identifying a long-range vision for your community. Bellevue’s strategic planning takes place at the department level and during Bellevue’s “budgeting for outcomes” process. Bellevue’s city council creates the longer-term vision and identifies key outcomes for the organization as it enters each two-year budget cycle. The next step is to make it a reality. For Bellevue, Washington, part of that vision was to become a “budgeting for outcomes” city. To make that happen, Bellevue spent a considerable amount of time with supervisors, leadership team members, and program managers to look at how they were operating and giving staff tools to help them view their program areas in a logical way.