Why plan?
By Ryan Williams
Last week at Kwatlen University College I delivered a lecture about opportunities to involveemployees in corporate communications planning. The presentation received many goodquestions; however I noticed a general confusion about strategic planning. On reflection, Ithought it was useful to remind myself why we create strategic plans.
I would tell those students strategic planning involves ambiguity, and uncertainty. Planning allowsus to create order where we might not see any. This order is a step of faith. With our best effortswe gathering information and seek understanding. Faith comes from making choices about thefuture using knowledge given uncertainty.
Strategic planning has two basic purposes - to prepare for and predict the future. In plans forpreparation and prediction we have incomplete information. Incomplete information needs to beorganized to fill in the blank spots and create knowledge.
Planning takes ideas that may be counter intuitive and makes a coherent picture. This pictureinvolves actions and aspirations. Strategic plans become our explicit articulation of what is, whatwe should do, and what outcomes we expect from our actions.
Our plans are pictures which enable us to share what we see with others, get their input andcontinue to improve our understanding. A picture of reality can be tested, affirmed, challengedand improved. The frame through which we view the world offers choices about predictability, andchance. We plan then not for certainty, but to manage uncertainty.
Preparation
comes from organizing and retrieving information about our current realities. Some ofthe common questions we seek to answer are:
1.
What resources do we currently have?
2.
What audience do we currently serve?
3.
What is that audience’s current need?
4.
How have we been delivering our product, service or technology?
5.
How many resources have we used to produce our product or service?
6.
What level of satisfaction or performance does our current product or service provide?
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