What This Book Will Do for You
Planning is just a substitute for good luck. If you can count on having good luck then you don’t have to bother with rigorous results-oriented planning. Most of us don’t depend on luck, especially in a dynamic world.
Because the future is uncertain, Peter Drucker’s advice that “if you can’t predict the future, create it” is useful. Creating that better future is the subject of this book. You can be successful and the choice to do so is up to you.
This book
• allows you to identify opportunities and problems in order for you to define and deliver personal and organizational success;
• provides the key concepts for you to justify what to change and what to continue in your organization;
• provides practical and proven tools for successful strategic thinking and planning; and
• gives you what is required to define and deliver success and to be able to prove the value that you are adding to the organization, clients, and our shared world.
If you don’t want to succeed, there are many popular approaches available to you, but before you choose to follow the leader, do look at the wreckage of contemporary organizations—from Wall Street to Main Street and from Washington, D.C., to your home town—that will stand witness to the fact that “popular strategic planning” approaches are not necessarily “effective.”
The approach provided in this book works and has been successfully applied around most of the world. This proven approach looks at wholes and not parts; it looks at the entire system, not “systems” in isolation from all other organizational parts as well as the overarching purpose of the organization. When we look at the organization in the context of external clients and our shared society, that is a “system approach” and not a “systems approach” that fragments the various pieces and parts and usually treats them as if they were the only variable that is important.
For example, when we seek a surgeon, we are not only interested in his or her skills and training, but also must be concerned with his or her success in returning patients to a healthy life; we go beyond how the surgeon practices to also be concerned about his or her success. Another example of the important distinction involving looking at the whole and not just the parts is demonstrated in Chapter 9. Instead of only looking at individual “systems” of a city, such as housing or water and sewage, all such subsystems are assessed both individually as well as in interaction with all others to deliver a common good: the health, safety, and welfare of all residents. For example, one could fix the water supply and distribution of a city and leave the rest of the city in jeopardy by not all looking at other important variables such as crime, poverty, transportation, jobs, or electrical services. What we suggest, a holistic or system approach, is a shift away from the conventional single-issue politics and planning.
When we do planning, there are some realities for us to consider. One is that the world is not divided into individual jobs, organizational sections, divisions, policies, laws, rules, or regulations. It is not divided into splinters or “systems.” We should examine the total organization as well as its social context, for organizations are just means to societal ends.
Another reality is that we cannot solve today’s problems with the same thinking and tools that caused the current problems; we must be open to new ways of thinking and managing. Also, we should not stop at being the best of the best; we must be the only one who does what we do and deliver. Because of these new realities, we provide an alternative to conventional wisdom and methods.
Our world is changing and is changeable. Successful planning will define where we should head, justify why we should go there, and provide the criteria for judging our progress and success.
Our challenge is to create the future of our organization and its partners. Before talking about the practical tools and techniques for successful planning, we first define the full landscape of planning and delivery of success in which these tools must contribute.
Some basics about this approach to keep in mind include the following:
• Mega Thinking and Planning1 has a primary focus on our shared society to which we must contribute. While other approaches don’t deal with the society where all of us live, this strategy will and it will deliver unique success.
• There is a fundamental difference between ends (or results, consequences, or impacts) and means (processes, activities, programs, projects, funding, and resources). This emphasis on ends, results, and consequences is throughout successful Mega Thinking and Planning.
• Needs are not the same as wants. Needs are gaps in results— gaps between current results and desired results. This is a part of another basic concept; a focus on ends and not means.
• There are three levels of organizational results: societal, organizational, and individual. They must all be included and linked.
Navigating the Minefields of Conventional Wisdom and Sloppy Thinking
Now is the right time to clear up some commonly used concepts and words that are still popular but won’t work well for you. Let’s look at some common but potentially damaging things that can get in the way of your success.
Words and what they actually mean are central to successful planning, so let me ask for your thoughtfulness since the words we use will have the precision and rigor required to define and deliver success. After all, planning and organizational success and the rigor associated with it is different from that of Humpty Dumpty who told Alice that “when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”2 There is a glossary of terms at the end of this book, so you never have to feel lost.
Here are the basics of this approach:
a) There are three levels of planning and three levels of results. From conventional usage, every result is an “out-come” and every level of planning is “strategic,” and that is not true.3 Table 2.1 in Chapter 2 provides a useful relation.
b) You can do useful strategic thinking and planning for every area of your organization, including manufacturing, human resources, shipping, and marketing. Planning fails when you fail to knit all parts of your organization together to add value to external clients and our shared society.4
c) “Needs” are portrayed as something you really have to have; that is not a “need,” it is a “want.” Most needs assessments are wants assessments and will be wrong about 80+ percent of the time.
d) Mega is not shorthand for “really big,” Macro is not code for “big,” and Micro is not code for “small.” Mega is societal, Macro is organizational, and Micro is individual or small group. It is not about size, but focus. Using comfortable words might be tempting, but doing so will likely keep you from really defining and delivering success.
Mega Thinking and Planning can deliver success to you, your organization, your external clients, and our shared world if you will use it and apply it properly. You are in charge of your own success and future. What is offered here about strategic thinking and planning using Mega Planning will provide you with useful options for you to select. But it is different from the conventional approaches. (If it was not, why should you bother?)
This Manager’s Pocket Guide to Mega Thinking and Planning5 is based on what has been successfully applied around the world, yet is different from “standard” approaches taught in most business schools and those we read about every day—the ones that have led to the Gulf of Mexico pollution disaster, Enron, 9/11, financial meltdowns, bursting of the tech bubble and then the housing bubble, among many others. Because of the failure of conventional approaches, Mega Thinking and Planning provides the opportunity for you to be correct in an atmosphere of the failure of other approaches. So instead of following the leader, this will allow you to be the leader by adding value to yourself, your organization, and our shared society.
The simple truth is that conventional approaches to strategic thinking and planning—the ones taught and those quoted in newspapers, magazines, and journals are flawed.6 Using them will make you appear to be “in the mainstream” but will likely lead to drowning. Here is what they miss and we do not:
• All organizations are means to societal ends, and thus successful strategic thinking—Mega Thinking and Planning— starts with a primary focus on adding value for all stake-holders, including our shared society. It is pragmatic, realistic, practical, and ethical. The conventional approaches, ones you should avoid, start with the organization (and its profit-and-loss sheet for the coming quarterly report) as the primary client and beneficiary and miss considering the impact on where you and I live and work: society.
• Organizations tend to be structured in individual silos— departments, bureaus, groups—and these splintered organizations cannot look to the common good but tend to optimize on their own funding and political survival. Budgets are allocated to functions and not to common results. From this comes internal competition for resources instead of cooperation based on a common destination upon which resources will be allocated. This is also true for federal, state, and local governments.
• Conventional tools for planning, design, implementation, and evaluation are based on an incomplete view of what organizations must deliver, so using them will maintain the status quo but not deliver success for you and your organization.
The intention of this book is to provide you with a viable approach to planning—Mega Thinking and Planning—so that you won’t repeat the failed or failing ways that are tempting everyone in the field. All that is asked is for you to carefully consider the definitions and meanings of words and concepts here and not automatically think this is semantic quibbling or just another way of saying things. Just as you want your physician to be very precise about what he uses and does, so do all of those you deal with expect precision, rigor, and competence from you.
Defining and achieving continual personal and organizational success is possible. It relies on three basic elements:
• a societal value-added “frame of mind” (your way of thinking, your perspective and commitment about your organization, people, and our shared world)
• shared determination and agreement on where to head and why (everyone who can or might be affected by the shared objectives must agree on purposes and results criteria)
• pragmatic and basic tools
Action Steps
1. Decide to be successful and create your future and not accept at face value the existing popular approaches and models for “strategic planning.”
2. Personally adopt a frame of mind that you will add measurable value to yourself, your organization, and our shared society.
3. Continue questioning things, keep an open mind, and continue with the rest of this book.
Endnotes
1. Mega Thinking and Planning has been evolving for many years, perhaps first formally with Kaufman’s 1972 Educational System Planning (Prentice Hall) and further developed in Kaufman & English, 1979 (Educational Technology), and continuing through today. In one form or another, using a societal frame for planning and doing has shown up in the works of respected thinkers, including Senge and more recently Prahalad and Davis. Recent work by Mariano Bernardez has provide additional substance for measuring Mega Planning results and consequences.
2. Lewis Carroll, 1872. Through the Looking Glass.
3. Now, when someone mumbles “learning outcomes,” you will make a note that they are really talking about “learning products” and they likely have failed to link the learning results with organizational results (Macro/Outputs) and those to external client and societal contributions (Mega/Outcomes).
4. A number of years ago I was asked to review all of the “strategic” plans created by each of the commonwealth agencies in Australia. Using Mega as the baseline, I reported back publicly that the plans varied from inadequate to awful. Then I added “but that is not what really worries me. What really bothers me is if each agency is doing their own strategic plan, who is doing the strategic plan for Australia?” That landed me on the Australian magazine cover of Directions in Government with the headline “Where is the Mega Plan?” Directions in Government. (June, 1989). Where’s the Mega Plan? Interview with Roger Kaufman, Sydney, Australia.
5. This guide builds on much of my previous work, including:
Kaufman, R. (2006). 30 Seconds that can change your life: A decision-making guide for those who refuse to be mediocre. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
Kaufman, R. (2006). Change, choices, and consequences: A guide to Mega Thinking and Planning. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
Kaufman, R., & Guerra-Lopez, I. (2008). The assessment book: Applied strategic thinking and performance improvement through self-assessments. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
6. Stewart, M. (2009). The management myth: Why the “experts” keep getting it wrong. New York: W. W. Norton.
Kaufman, R. (March–April, 2010). Review of The management myth: Why the “experts” keep getting it wrong. (W. W. Norton, 2009). Educational Technology, pp. 48–50.