3.1 Learning from Experience
3.2 Planning as Continuous Improvement: How It Should Work
3.3 At the End of a Process That Never Ends: What Are the Results of Planning?
3.4 Mission: You Cannot Plan Without One
3.5 Improvement Goals: Filling Performance Gaps
3.6 Objectives: Setting Targets
3.7 Strategies: Action Ideas
3.8 Negotiation: Seeking Agreement and Compromise
3.9 Implementation: The Management Dimension
3.10 Evaluation and Adjustment: Learning from Experience
In this chapter, we describe planning as a process that aims for gradual but continuous improvement in forest use and conservation in the framework of sustainable development. Planning is only as good as the number of constructive actions that come from it. It is not an end in itself. Rather, it has to be an instrument of policy and management.
In recent years, management consultants have worked hard to give planning an action orientation. This is because planning is inseparable from trying to promote excellence in the whole of a system. Planning aims for "total quality management," also expressed as "continuous improvement." We open with a review of conclusions from past problems and needs for improvement, then present an overview of the entire process, and finally consider each stage individually.
Reviews of forestry planning activities over the period since the 1960s is instructive regarding successes and failures. Additionally, numerous countries are acquiring experience in their planning for forests and the environment, especially since the 1980s. Many individuals closest to this planning come away with the following conclusions about past problems and need for improvement:
· Too sectoral. Much planning in relation to forests has been overly sectoral. Many agencies make a conceptual and political mistake when they talk about "sector" planning for forests. Here, we connect forests with national development planning, and call it "planning for forest use and conservation" (the title of this publication).
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COMMENTS ON THE "SECTORAL" APPROACH FROM THE DIRECTOR OF A FORESTRY AGENCY (IN WEST AFRICA) "Too many agencies are hampered by their narrow focus. Those operating in rural areas, such as livestock breeding, agriculture, etc., are unable to coordinate their forest protection actions with the Forestry Commission. This is unfortunate, considering that they all come together under the same umbrella ministry to support rational land-use programs. Almost always, each management agency ignores the larger issues...." |
· Too much political rhetoric, too little substance. Planning is a practice in almost all governments. But often, politicians and top administrators state grand goals for political purposes and these goals are beyond the country's capacity to implement. In this unfortunate situation, planning becomes an exercise in frustration and wasted effort.· Too top-down and centralized. Planning was too often used as the way to "command and control," resulting in: (1) little attention to workable bottom-up ideas and projects as the basis for planning; (2) little participation and support from interest groups and the wider population; and (3) corruption in order to avoid the government's top-down controls.
· Too much dominance by elites. When government officials invite outside participation in planning, the people in the best position to respond are the country's most articulate and politically influential individuals. It takes exceptional efforts for a planning team to learn about and successfully respond to people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
· Too little inter-agency coordination. This happens not only because of too much "sector" planning, but also when governments do not have effective coordinating mechanisms at higher levels.
· Too inflexible. Unless planning targets can be adjusted to reflect changing circumstances, plans are obsolete only one or two years after they are developed. This is the problem of one-time plans that do now allow for (1) changing conditions in the government and external to it, and (2) lessons that are learned as plans start to be implemented.
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COMMENT ON INFLEXIBILITY BY AN FAO FORESTER IN ASIA: "Lengthy planning exercises produce detailed documents which are largely irrelevant by the time they are completed. Countries then pursue 'THE PLAN,' without flexibility to react to evolving conditions." |
· Too vague and undefined. Many planning teams work with very broad goals such as "to improve the management of forests for the benefit of local communities," the statement is empty without specific sub-goals and measurable targets that describe exactly what is to be accomplished.· Too many priorities. The planning team that defines more than 5-10 priorities has no real priorities. A good planning system can decide upon a manageable number of first-order things to be achieved in a defined period of time. Of all the many desirable actions, which have to come first in time or importance? And which have to wait? This is the essence of genuine planning.
· Too long and technical. Planning teams frequently produce very long documents, parts of which are too technical for most people to read. This is especially true if the planning is based on complex analytical models and specialized terminology. Long planning documents are expensive to reproduce and distribute. In long documents, main ideas get lost. Finally, nobody has time to read and review hundreds of pages.
· Too much premature detail. Planning for the next 5-10 years (or longer) faces many uncertainties and unanswered questions. It is unreasonable for planning commissions and finance ministries to demand exhaustive details about needed personnel, equipment, foreign exchange, and other required resources.
· Too little connection between planning and budgeting. The opposite of too much supporting detail (the preceding point) is too little of it. This occurs when planning teams define goals and targets without considering the demands they make on budgets, training, and re-organization.
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WHEN PLANNING DOES NOT LINK WITH BUDGETS "Despite over 40 years of formal macro-planning, no specific frameworks, approaches, and criteria have been laid down for strategic and tactical planning in forestry........Investments in forestry have shown no relevance to the efforts required. One reason for this was that requirements for goods and services from forests were neither quantified nor specified. They were only stated generally, which perhaps failed to convince those who handled the finances of the country of the validity of investments in forestry." |
· Too little learning from feedback. Planning teams are expected to forecast the future and act upon their forecasts. But good planners look backward to see what worked and what failed in previous plans. This requires serious attention to monitoring and evaluation, often neglected in practice.· Too little consideration of innovative alternatives. Planning is supposed to be a creative activity. But very often, planning teams fall short of proposing and discussing innovative solutions. This can be due to inappropriate composition of planning teams, as well as to constraints posed by rigid planning processes.
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ON THE NEED FOR CREATIVITY AND OPEN PROCESS: "Process must be emphasized over plans. Forestry planners are good at plans, but weak on process. What is most needed is creativity and an open process." |
· Too little emphasis on socioeconomic goals. Planning fails if it cannot translate physical goals such as planting X thousand tree seedlings with Y number of nurseries, and increasing protected areas by Z thousand ha into estimates of employment, income, benefits for disadvantaged groups, and other criteria important at the highest levels of national policy.· Too little internal planning capacity. Since the 1980s, several large planning efforts for forests and the environment have been funded by international sources. In these efforts, expatriate consultants play major roles in selecting planning procedures or approaches, reviewing draft documents, publishing the "plans," and recommending foreign-assisted projects on this basis. But this may make no real improvements in the planning system.
· Too much emphasis on projects. Especially for planning influenced by international aid (the preceding point), the result is often a long list of projects that need funding. Too much focus on projects robs attention from higher-level institutional needs. Yet, many current planning designs have feature projects first, and policies and institutions only as "enabling frameworks."
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PLANNING SHOULD NOT OMIT INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS "The planning process totally ignored the institutional aspects of forestry. It concerned itself with economic aspects in earlier plans and with ecological aspects in later plans, paying inadequate or no attention to social, institutional, and technological issues." |
Only some of the preceding "planning pathologies" are specific to forests and forestry. Most are present in development planning more generally. A good planning effort begins by discussing the problems of the past, and by proposing ways to overcome them (Box 13). Many problems are beyond the capacity of forestry agencies to resolve. They are due to defective institutions at other levels, or to cultural aspects of an entire society.
But other problems can be corrected with determination and good planning methods. The publication you are reading has two premises: (1) good planning can be learned, and (2) you can achieve improvements in planning if you will actually implement the guidelines in this publication.
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Box 13. Planning Must Overcome Past Problems. |
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The following problems occur frequently in traditional planning: · Planning departments are separated from departments that control operations and budgets. In this circumstance, planners have neither the authority nor the information to be effective. · "Comprehensive planning" consumes too much time and effort in relation to the disappointing final result, especially when data are missing or poor. · Plan monitoring and evaluation do not translate into positive improvements (organizational "learning") when there is top-down inflexibility. Because of these well-known failures, the new style of planning emphasizes the following approaches: · Action orientation (act and evaluate, act and evaluate, and keep repeating the cycle). · Open and participatory structure (everyone is involved in planning at every level of the organization). · Multi-year planning that evolves from simple to complex in relation to actual needs (planning is not "comprehensive" except when that is justified by the importance of an issue and the adequacy of information about it) |
Even under the best of circumstances, planning may result in goals that are poorly selected, and strategies that fail. But if the experience produces a kind of learning, then planning becomes more "intelligent" as it learns from past mistakes. For most organizations, this is the most challenging part!
Our planning cycle consists of seven stages (Box 14). In this planning cycle, success consists of small positive accomplishments that reinforce each other through the years. Or as shown at the bottom of Box 14, progress expands outward in the form of a spiral.
The process appears simple, but this can be deceptive. You need capable management in order to (1) know when and how to organize and supervise the planning, (2) adapt planning to be appropriate for a country's unique circumstances, and (3) learn from planning's successes and failures. The whole of the process relies on management, creativity, and cooperation. Any of these can be limiting. But for each constraint, your response is the same: you work for continuous improvement.
Strategic planning never truly ends, but there are milestones along the way to mark the progress. The results of planning can be the following:
1. Bottom-up and top-down communications that help integrate the different units within your agency. In this way, planning contributes to team building and a sense of shared purpose. But when these communications are poorly managed, they create resentment and frustrations.2. Partnerships between the forestry agency, other agencies, and interest groups. For this to be effective, the forestry agency must genuinely want and respect the ideas it receives from persons not employed there. Just as importantly, the forestry agency cannot leave out any key groups - since that creates more problems than it solves. The risks of badly managing outside participation may partly explain the past reluctance of many forestry agencies to invite it.
3. A vision of the future and a path to get there. To plan is to create a shared vision of the future. Worksheet 19 presents a checklist of elements found in a good strategic plan for forest use and conservation, although your format may be different.
The rest of this chapter examines each planning stage to provide more explanation.
Each forestry agency has functional, geographical, and legal responsibilities that are different from every other organization. The mission - the broad general purposes for which an organization exists - of forestry agencies in relation to other organizations-both public and private - are changing dramatically. Your starting point is to focus on your mission in relation to the missions of all other groups whose actions affect forest use and conservation. Almost everywhere, this list of groups is longer every year.
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Box 14. The Cycle of Continuous Improvement |
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1. Define missions and roles. What is the mission of your forestry agency and of other groups (governmental and non-governmental) in protecting and managing forests? Planning begins by clarifying these purposes for your group in relation to others. 2. Select improvement goals. Goals state what you will do to carry out the mission. Because you are searching for improvements, goals should aim for a higher level of accomplishment ("national good") than previously. 3. Set objectives. Objectives are the details about expected accomplishments. What type of results do you want, and in what quantity? 4. Select action strategies. Strategies are the operational means to achieve the improvement goals. Strategies are specific actions. 5. Negotiate major issues. To carry out your strategies, you need cooperation from people within and external to your agency. Most of this cooperation has to be resolved in early stages of the planning. But for remaining issues, what are the points to be negotiated, and with whom? 6. Implement the strategies. Specific people perform specific actions as part of specific strategies. Implementation succeeds or fails in relation to communications, empowerment, supporting resources, and reward systems. 7. Evaluate results, make adjustments, and repeat the process. Are your strategies working? Are your objectives being met? You cannot know this without checking and evaluation. When there are failures, who is responsible for adjusting missions, goals, objectives, and strategies?
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Most readers of this publication are familiar with the almost continuous restructuring of agencies responsible for forests, watershed management, protected areas, wildlife, coastal zones, soils, and other natural resources. In numerous countries, forestry is moving from agricultural ministries to new organizations for environment and sustainable development. It is also quite common to find new units for agroforestry and community forestry. Some forestry agencies are removing themselves from wood processing and marketing. Others are privatizing their tree nurseries. For functional areas such as community forestry and protected areas, a number of NGOs now play a very prominent role. These many re-organizations are one of the reasons that planning environments can be chaotic.
The planning environment is even more complex due to an inflow of new ideas, influence, and power affecting forest use and conservation. Some people refer to this as a "paradigm shift." This refers to the increasing number of people who oppose tree cutting, and who value forests primarily for preservation benefits.
Although these ideologies originate in the industrialized countries, they are by now increasingly attractive to opinion leaders in the developing countries. This is a relatively new presence that now challenges forestry agencies on matters of authority and competence in forest concessions, reforestation programs, and other traditional roles. In the face of these challenges, the mission of government agencies for forests is increasingly difficult to define. Perhaps it is broader than before? Perhaps it is narrower? For certain, it is changing.
For this reason, it is very important for strategic planning to begin by asking: (1) What do we do? (2) How is this changing, and how should it be changing? (3) How does this affect where and how we should use our influence and resources? In essence, you are trying to avoid the following frustrations:
· Important functions for watersheds, coastal zones, etc., are neglected because there is no accountability for them. Each agency (or department) assumes that "somebody else" is responsible.· In a functional or geographical area, your agency is doing the same type of work as another organization, but with conflicts or duplicated efforts.
· In policy and program development, your organization is slow to act upon the directives coming from top levels.
· In a geographic area, the missions of other organizations (e.g., for agriculture, minerals, roads, land reform, etc.) interfere with your role to protect and manage forests.
· Different agencies, NGOs, and interest groups misunderstand each other. Even worse, many do not talk with each other.
These problems are widespread. We know that each reader can identify several examples. Hundreds of management consultants agree that there is no easy way to solve them. But for planning, you must attempt to define a clear and concise statement of your mission in relation to other missions (Box 15). If this is done well at the national level, it can provide the basis for missions at subordinate levels (e.g., for regions, provinces, and districts).
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Box 15. What You Should Expect in a Good Mission Statement |
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A good mission statement should................ · cover all of your organization's functional, geographical, and service commitments; · complement (not conflict with) the missions of other government and private organizations; · be realistic, concise, and easy to understand. |
Discussions about missions can be long and seemingly endless. This is a situation to be avoided. Management experts make the following recommendations:
1. Convene workshops or meetings in a neutral place, and use the services of a preferably neutral person (someone outside your organization) to facilitate group discussion about roles and mission. Invite leaders from organizations (public and private) that have the greatest interest and most questions about your mission.2. Start by having everyone individually answer Worksheet 20. Then initiate group discussions about these questions. This has to be handled carefully. Each special interest, and each unit of your agency, will interpret the mission in a different way.
3. Based on these discussions, write a draft of a new or revised mission statement. This can be the responsibility of a small team. Do not be overly constrained by laws, regulations, and other legislation. In most agencies, many important roles are not written in laws and documents. Moreover, you are aiming to produce a statement of what your mission should be. This is the improvement you seek.
4. Circulate the draft to the invited leaders, as well as across and down your agency. Ask for comments, and revise the draft accordingly. When properly managed, this can be a powerful means of communication and team building.
Box 16 presents a sample mission statement for the fictional XYZ Forestry Department. The mission statement cannot be a "dead document," but on the contrary should motivate the work of the whole agency. In countries where it is appropriate, different regional and functional offices should write their own mission statements that start from the national model - modifying it to reflect the special circumstances of that region or office. At all levels, a clear statement of your mission is highly important for defining improvement goals, as follows.
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Box 16. Example of a Mission Statement for a Forestry Agency |
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The XYZ Forestry Department contributes to the protection, utilization, and management of the nation's trees and forests in ways that are socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable by: 1. Continuously assessing areas, conditions, and trends in tree and forest cover, and making the information widely available. 2. Protecting public forestlands from encroachments, fires, insects, diseases, and other threats to the healthy condition of trees, forests, and associated natural resources. 3. Maintaining a system of natural areas protected from harvesting and other intensive uses in order to promote ecosystem preservation, environmental services, and scientific research. 4. Providing harvesting and other utilization rights to individuals, communities, and commercial enterprises in selected zones of public forests, and insuring that harvesting is sustainable. 5. Assessing and efficiently collecting a fair revenue for government from the individuals, communities, and enterprises which utilize products and services of the public forests. 6. Providing low-cost and efficient extension services in relation to trees, forests, and associated resources for farmers, communities, and private businesses. 7. Providing policy analysis on forest-related issues to the highest levels of national authority and decisionmaking. 8. Interacting cooperatively with international assistance agencies, donor groups, and NGOs in the programming of external aid for forest protection and management. Interacting cooperatively with authorities in public and private organizations on matters of shared concern relative to trees and forests in national defense, agricultural and pastoral development, water and power supply, public health, infrastructural development, and cultural and educational affairs. |
Goals are statements of what your organization intends to do in order to carry out its mission. But unlike missions, which are indefinite and continuing, goals can be accomplished. At any point in time, an organization's goals should determine its main activities.
Your agency's search for continuous improvement is driven by the following question: In what main functions must your agency perform well in order to succeed? This question can be asked for each element of a mission statement. This will identify the key factors affecting your agency's performance.
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WHAT ARE "IMPROVEMENT GOALS"? For each mission element, what is not working as well as it should? Alternatively, what new opportunities should you consider? There is a performance gap, defined by the difference between current and desired levels of results. What can you do to close this gap? This avenue of thinking leads to your improvement goals. |
Box 17 illustrates improvement goals for a mission element of the XYZ Forestry Department. You should define your own improvement goals with the help of Worksheet 21. Worksheet 22 is a supplementary framework to bring out institutional issues that cut across many different parts of a mission. Strategic planning cannot go far without attention to institution building. The combined use of these two frameworks should produce many improvement goals to be compared, sorted, and given priorities.
In view of past problems, many forestry agencies will do well to pursue socially-oriented improvement goals. It is perfectly acceptable to state qualitative goals such as "to improve the Department's relationships with indigenous communities." Other acceptable goals are "to employ more women in professional and technical positions," and so on. Many such goals are not forestry goals per se, but they may be social goals for the country as a whole. Therefore, you should include them.
Many people find it difficult to specify the factors that determine their performance. Their answers may be too general, such as "our budget is too small." And individuals on technical staffs often leave out the social goals. By convening workshops and providing assistance, you may be able to raise the quality of how people state their improvement goals.
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Box 17. Example of Improvement Goals to Support a Mission Element |
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Mission Element |
Improvements Goals |
Factors for Success |
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"Providing harvesting and other utilization rights to individuals, communities, and commercial enterprises in selected zones of public forests, and insuring that harvesting is sustainable." (see fourth mission element in Box 16) |
To increase field monitoring where harvesting takes place |
Understanding where, when, and how harvesting is occurring. |
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To work with Dept. of Land Reform to improve where and how concessions are granted. |
Resolving conflicting tenure claims. |
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To grant more forest concessions to regional and local interests, especially in South Region. |
Revised criteria for granting concessions. |
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To refine and expand the method of selling timber by competitive pricing. |
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To obtain more support for the Department's programs from indigenous leaders in South Region. |
Improved relations with indigenous communities. |
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To apply and evaluate positive incentives for good logging. |
Effective sanctions and incentives for appropriate harvesting methods. |
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Sometimes, a forestry agency can have so many improvement goals that they become meaningless. Any single goal is lost in the middle of others, and it is impossible to monitor all of them. Almost always, there are more improvement goals than can be implemented at one time. For obvious reasons, the effort to consolidate and prioritize goals has to be a careful exercise in diplomacy.
Worksheet 23 classifies improvement goals by three levels of priority. Also, you can employ methods in CH 2 to show how proposed goals relate to each other, to national priorities, and to feasibility factors. The mix of goals should:
· respond to the highest level of national priorities;
· complement and reinforce each other; and
· be within the capacity of your agency to supervise, monitor, and evaluate.
Objectives (see BOX 14) state specific results to be achieved. For an improvement goal, an objective should be clear about: what, who, when, and how much.
Objectives rely on indicators to quantify how much. For technical goals, this normally does not present a problem. But for intangible and institutional goals, the desired improvements may be difficult to measure.
The higher is the administrative level, the more challenging it can be to quantify your objectives (e.g., objectives to improve communications and public relations). But the planning is no less rigorous even though you cannot quantify everything in it. Rather, you state your objectives in terms that are indirect and qualitative.
In setting your objectives, you need to know where you are now! That one simple truth can cause enormous frustrations. The frustrations are constructive if they lead to an honest search for information. They are not constructive if they make planners invent "creative" numbers that have no basis in reality. But if the search for baseline data is diligent and earnest, everyone will learn an enormous amount about current operations.
Worksheet 24 provides suggestions on how to write objectives, and Box 18 shows examples. For strategic planning that looks ahead many years, do not invest too much time trying to make the objectives precise. You are aiming for a reasonable approximation.
Strategies indicate how objectives will be achieved. For any objective, what obstacles stand in its way? And what positive factors increase the chances that it can be achieved? These are excellent questions for group discussion, such as through the techniques of brainstorming and force-field analysis (see CH 2). Each strategy group should invite wide participation from outside the agency in order to enlarge the range of ideas. The various ideas are screened, grouped, and studied for administrative and budget feasibility. The actions for each objective:
· follow a logical sequence;
· are placed in a time schedule;
· specify resources (e.g., budget) to accomplish them; and
· are assigned to individuals who are accountable for carrying them out.
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Box 18. Examples of Objectives in Support of Improvement Goals | ||
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Improvement Goals |
Performance Indicators |
Objectives |
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To increase field monitoring where harvesting takes place |
No. of forest concessions regularly inspected for harvesting impacts |
To increase monitoring from present 30% of concessions to target of 80% by end of year 2002. Responsible: Chief of Forest Utilization Section, XYZ For. Dept. |
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To grant more forest concessions to regional and local interests, especially in South Region |
Share of forest concessions (by area) in hands of companies and individuals who live in South Region |
To increase this share from current 18% to target of >40% by end of year 2002. Responsible: Executive Director, XYZ For. Dept. |
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To obtain more support for the Department's programs from indigenous leaders in South Region |
No. of "positive" exchanges between Department and indigenous groups in South Region |
To increase the "positive" exchanges from current <50% to target of >90% by end of 1999. Responsibility: Regional Coordinator for South Region |
Planning often fails at this stage of proposing action ideas. For example, you usually make a mistake when you propose actions "for" somebody who does not actually participate in the planning. Secondly, action ideas may suffer due to unrealistic cost estimates. Often this is because of too little attention in your office to budget and financial management.
Box 19 illustrates actions to accomplish objectives (and see Worksheet 25). The action statements should be prepared by the persons directly responsible for the objectives. Note, too, that not all actions have to be written on paper, especially if they do not need approval at higher levels.
If the planning is done well, many disagreements will have been resolved by this stage. Ideas are moving laterally as well as up and down when people discuss mission, goals, objectives, and actions. Obviously, the quality of this discussion varies with:
· the amount of careful preparation to support the planning,
· the diversity, knowledge, and creativity of the people who participate in the planning;
· the level of genuine interest in making the planning succeed, and
· the managerial skill to coordinate the planning.
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Box 19. Examples of Actions in Support of an Objective | ||
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Objective: "To increase monitoring from present 30% of concessions to target of 80% by end of year 2002" Responsible: Chief of Forest Utilization Section, XYZ For. Dept. (from Box 18) | ||
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Actions |
Responsibility |
Time Frame |
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Make at least one visit to every forest concession to review harvesting practices |
Self (Chief, Utilization Section, XYZ Forestry Dept.), with staff assistance |
By December 1998 |
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Select, hire, and train 7 staff members for harvesting inspection teams |
Self in collaboration with Training Director, Technical Services Division |
1st group - June 1999 |
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Obtain transportation and operational budget for inspection teams (vehicles, fuel, travel allowances) |
Self in collaboration with Budget Director, Central Office |
By June 1999 |
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Evaluate effectiveness of inspection teams |
Self in collaboration with Training Director, Technical Services Division |
1st review - June 2000 |
But even in the best circumstances, some issues will need further negotiation at this point. On this, there is a huge difference across societies in the amount of bargaining and negotiating that is expected. There are also differences in the amount of decision authority at subordinate levels of your agency.
Therefore, you need to determine the major actions that need to be negotiated, both within your agency and with people external to it (Box 20 and Worksheet 26). This can be organized by objective, by administrative level, and so on.
The time arrives when the planned actions need to be implemented. You should plan on having implementation problems virtually 100 percent of the time. Many of these problems are impossible to foresee, but others can be anticipated. For those difficulties that can be foreseen, what are the strategies to avoid or minimize them? The leader of a planning team should make a simple worksheet to show: (1) potential problems, and (2) strategies to avoid or minimize them (Worksheet 27).
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Box 20. Examples of Issues to Be Negotiated | |
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Objective: "To increase monitoring from present 30% of concessions to target of 80% by end of year 2002" Responsible: Chief of Forest Utilization Section, XYZ Forestry Department (from Box 18 and Box 19) | |
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Issues That Need Negotiation |
With Whom Is Agreement Needed? |
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1. Hire personnel for inspection teams |
· Executive Director, Central Office · Personnel Manager, Central Office · Green Future Society (NGO that promotes forest protection) · National Association of Forest Products Industries (industry association) |
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2. Transportation and operational budget for inspection teams |
· Procurement Manager, Central Office · Regional Coordinator, South Region · World Bank Representative (regarding grant funding) |
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3. Training for inspection teams |
· Training Director, Technical Services |
Many planning guides rely heavily on the Critical Path Method, Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), and related scheduling methods. These methods indicate the most efficient way to schedule planned activities in order for others to begin immediately after them. These techniques are widely available in computer software at reasonable prices. The leaders of planning groups should become familiar with these techniques, and possibly apply them.
However, we will not give them too much emphasis. They work best where organizational systems are stable. They are far less useful where politics are volatile, the government is re-organizing every six months, and your agency's budget may be cut by half. Many managers do just as well with a big chart on the wall, and an eraser to correct it every month.
This publication is not about management per se. However, strategic planning implies a management orientation. The strategies have to be broken down into the parts that can be implemented, evaluated, and improved. Essential elements in this are communications and supporting resources (budget, training, organization, and supervision). Additionally, the people who are responsible for carrying out objectives must have the authority to do so. Finally, there must be a system of incentives to reward good performance. All of this is management.
You need to anticipate how you will evaluate the successes and failures of your planning (Worksheet 28). How will you know what went wrong? What has to be done better next time, and why? This is the self-correcting feedback for continuous improvement.
There are ways to be conscious of both the planning process and its results. First, you should study the previous strategic plan and evaluate its successes and failures, and the reasons for them. Secondly, the people who participate in your current round of planning should discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the process. This also refers to individuals outside of your agency who have been participating.
Finally, the individuals responsible for carrying out the specific actions of the plan will be reporting their problems and progress over the years. Was the planning too ambitious? Or too cautious? Did anything happen that was totally unexpected? What was the role of good luck and bad luck? Or was the luck created through human factors? Where problems occurred, were they because of faulty concept or poor implementation?
This kind of reporting is very instructive. However, it demands an "institutional memory" to track results and make them available for the next generation of planners.
