Some Rules of the Mega Thinking and Planning Road¹

1.   Professionals are responsible for not only what they do, but also the consequences of what they deliver. Results and value added are the coin of the professional realm. If you—or anyone else—do less than deliver useful results, there is an ethics problem.

Application guides: (a) Act as if you will read about what you did and accomplished in tomorrow’s newspaper² or act as if you had to appear in court tomorrow and prove—using the strict rules of scientific and evaluative evidence—that what you did and delivered was effective; (b) never do anything simply for the money or to please someone else if you know what you are doing will not achieve the goal; and (c) continually improve. Use performance data for fixing and never for blaming.

2.   There are three linked levels of planning—Mega, Macro, and Micro³—and three associated (and linked) levels of results— Outcomes, Outputs, and Products.⁴ Mega focuses on society as the primary client and beneficiary—societal value added—and measures results called Outcomes. Macro focuses on the organization itself as the primary client and beneficiary and measures results called Outputs. Micro focuses on individuals and small groups and measures results called Products.

Application guides: (a) Link everything you deliver to the value it will add within and outside of the organization; (b) organizations must be treated as a system, not a loose confederation of isolated subsystems; (c) if what you use, do, produce, and deliver does not add value within as well as outside of the total organization, don’t do it; (d) people’s impressions and observations are useful, but they must be substantiated with hard performance data. If the two don’t agree, work together, using facts and data, until they do agree.

3.   Use the extensive literature that improves every year— including scientific studies of how people learn, master required performance, and actually perform—to determine and justify what you use, produce, and deliver.

Application guides: (a) Use scientific information, methods, and tools for designing, delivering, and revising any intervention. Science is based on defining and testing hypotheses. If there is no scientific proof, be skeptical. (b) Look for existing tests and evaluation data for the products or services you want to implement. It is likely that someone has already done part of your work for you. (c) Behavior is not the same as performance. Define the performance you want then identify the behaviors that will deliver the performance. Then identify ways and means to get both the behavior and performance. The growing field of evidence-based management, like the same approach in medicine, fits well with Mega Thinking and Planning in that decisions are best made on the basis of solid research evidence and performance data.

4.   Define needs as gaps in results, not as deficiencies in resources or methods.

Application guides: (a) Prioritize needs on the basis of the cost to meet the need as compared to the cost to ignore them; (b) focus on results before selecting means and resources; (c) needs assessment ≠ needs analysis, ends ≠ means, and needs ≠ wants; (d) if you start performance improvement at the individual performance level and without linking that to internal and external performance contributions, you will be wrong—if you believe Deming and Juran—80 to 90 percent of the time; (e) select resources and methods on the basis of that which will meet the needs at the least cost in time, money, and human resources. Look for positive costs-consequences that show “what you give” as compared to “what you get”—costs-consequences.

5.   Major resistance to change is usually based on fear: fear of not knowing how well the change will be accepted, fear of not knowing how to implement the change, fear of finding out what one doesn’t want to know.

Application guides: (a) Change is painful for most people. The less the discomfort from change, the more trivial it may be. (b) Useful change is not usually incremental: it often happens in large leaps and when you find the right incentives, change can be quick. (c) Be proactive. If you wait for things to happen so you can react, you will always be trying to catch up. Define the kind of world you want to help create for tomorrow’s person and then contribute to that. (d) Systematic planning helps reduce the pain and the fear in change situations. (e) Don’t attack a person for their fear—help them. (f) Use evaluation data for improving and not for blaming.

6.   Don’t trust any solution that will fit on a bumper sticker. Short and snappy might be appealing, but don’t lose the rigor and precision in order to get acceptance.

You might have some more to add. The important thing is that we deal in scientifically based results and add value inside and outside of the organization. If you don’t have that in mind, what do you intend to do to prove you are a professional?

Here is a list of the seven stupid things people do when they do conventional strategic planning:⁵