Planning

A plan is a guide to action—action that takes us from a situation in which we sense that:

• something in our organization is not right, or
• an opportunity is being missed, or
• our organization has reached a turning point,

to a situation in which some important aspect of our organization has changed for the better.

The sense that something is not right or an opportunity is being missed is sometimes called the "urge to plan". But that’s not quite right. What we feel is not an urge to plan, but an urge to change. We don’t want a plan. We want our organization to improve.

The two most common errors in planning are first, to think we need a plan rather than change. And second, to focus on how we will prepare the plan, rather than on what should be changed. The metaphor I use to illustrate these errors is:

When organizations ask me to help them with planning, I ask the organization’s managers, staff and board members to tell me what they want to change. This leads to a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. As we talk, the nature and amount of change desired gradually emerges. So also do the values and character of the organization.

Once the amount and nature of the desired change has been determined, then "planning" becomes something that a) shows how the organization will move from here to there, and b) is consistent with the values and character of the organization. Sometimes, no plan is needed: the managers simply make the obvious decision. In other situations, a long planning procedure, involving many parties (including the people served, called "customers" in this document) is required. But, in every instance, the process is driven by the amount and nature of the desired change.

Plans

There are two kinds of plans: implicit plans and explicit or formal plans. Implicit plans exist in the minds and guts of people. They are richly evocative and filled with emotion; at some level, they contain our hopes and dreams for our organization. Implicit plans are the real guides for all but our most complex actions, because we turn first to our memories when we need to know what to do next.

Explicit plans are documents. They are usually rather dry and intellectual, containing little of the emotion and richness of their implicit counterparts. And since they are a shadow of the real plan, they need to be used with caution. But they do have their uses: as summaries of our original intentions; as stimulants for our implicit plans; and as detailed guides to action in complex situations. Further, the process of writing a plan helps us identify gaps and disentangle issues. Thus, most plans should be made explicit.

Ensuring that all members of an organization have the same implicit plan and are committed to making it happen is called leadership. Getting everyone to do the day-to-day work outlined in the written plan is called management (endnote 1).

Two Planning Processes

As Henry Mintzberg (2) first noted, there are two planning processes: strategic thinking, and strategic programming. Both processes are mental activities.

Strategic thinking is intuitive and creative. It typically involves synthesis of seemingly unrelated bits of information into a coherent and meaningful whole. Strategic thinking is used to find:

1. what we want to change, and
2. what to do when we know what to change—but don’t know how to make that change happen.

Strategic programming is analytical. It typically involves dividing something we know into ever smaller parts, until we understand the details of what we are to do. Strategic programming is used when we have a general sense of how we want to proceed, but need a better idea of the steps that should be taken, and the time and resources that will be required.

Strategic thinking helps us cope with change. It is a leadership activity. Strategic programming helps us get today’s work done today. It is a management activity.

Planning Procedures

Organizations use a planning procedure to prepare their plans. Planning procedures typically use a number of processes, including assessing customer needs; evaluating the effectiveness of the organization; gaining a better understanding of the environment in which the organization exists; engaging in dialogue with customers and other organizations; strategic thinking; strategic programming; budgeting; priority-setting; recording and writing; etc..

At the most general level, the aim of all planning procedures is to answer what Peter Drucker has said is "always a difficult question: What is our business, and what should it be? (3)"

The best planning procedures are designed to fit the circumstances facing a particular organization, so there are a great many tested planning procedures. Nevertheless, all procedures can be placed in one of five categories:

• Self-understanding procedures, in which an organization seeks to better understand itself. The change desired is clearer answers to four fundamental questions:

• Next steps procedures, in which an organization identifies what it should do next, given its purpose and values, its history, its position in the community, its staff, its customers, or its operations: Serve more people? Reallocate resources among current projects? Charge for some services?
• Change procedures, in which an organization seeks to improve its effectiveness by doing something that breaks the pattern of the past: serve a new group of customers, change its operations, hire different people, become entrepreneurial, etc..

Most real-life procedures combine elements of self-understanding and next steps procedures. Usually, these procedures lead to relatively small changes in the organization. When done right, they produce a sense that things are the same, but better.

The two remaining procedures produce much bigger, and frequently more disruptive, changes:

• External change procedures, in which an organization deals with major change that originates outside the organization. Typically, this occurs in nonprofits when a funder changes its priorities or cuts a major grant; when a natural disaster occurs; or when a paradigm shift occurs, as in welfare reform. In this situation, the questions facing the organization are:

• Transformation procedures, in which the organization self-initiates fundamental change in its purpose, strategies or operations.

Regardless of the name given to the procedure, the issues are the same: what is the nature and amount of change desired, and how do we get from here to there in a way that is consistent with our organization’s values and character?

Strategic Planning

"Strategic planning" is a planning procedure that gives special attention to four issues of central importance to any organization (4):

• Core values: the "small set of timeless guiding principles" (5) at the heart of the organization.
• Core purpose: "the organization’s reason for being" (6).
• Long-term goal: "a huge, daunting challenge" that will take years to achieve, and that serves as a "unifying focal point of effort and acts as a catalyst for team spirit." (7)
• Program strategies: The way the organization lives its values, expresses its purpose, and moves towards its long term goal. Some nonprofit organizations have always faced strategic issues. Legal aid programs, for example, have had to choose between achieving their purpose by disseminating information ("community legal education"), providing advice and brief legal services (such as making a phone call to an opposing party), providing representation (e.g., going to court on a client’s behalf) or supporting community development activities. Lately, many other nonprofits have begun confronting strategic issues. Organizations funded by Medicaid Managed Care, for example, often must decide whether to secure long-term funding by cornering the market for a single highly specialized service, or by becoming a multi-purpose organization able to provide a wide variety of services under a single contract with a Managed Care Organization.

Doing Planning

Most people think of planning as something so fundamentally different from action that you must stop taking action in order to do planning. This might be called the "plan-action" approach: first, there is a period called "planning", in which decisions about the future are made; then, there is a much longer period in which the plan is "implemented".

There is another, much more natural, approach to planning: what might be called "continuous planning". In this approach, planning and action exist side-by-side. Planning is always underway, as is action. When a sense that something is not right emerges, or when an unexpected opportunity presents itself, a group comes together to think creatively about what might be done. When they have a good idea, they take action. Seen over time, there is effective change. But there are no obvious periods of planning—when all action stops—or periods of action, when all thinking stops.

December, 1998

Endnotes

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By: John B. Arango. Copyright © Algodones Associates Inc., 1998. We encourage non-profit organizations to reproduce these materials. Please send an e-mail to jarango@algodonesassociates.com describing how you will use what you have reproduced. Profit-making organizations: contact us before reproducing anything in this site.