How the ‘Perfect Plan’ can lead you to Disaster
Today I have a bee in my bonnet, so please look away if my frankness might bother you. In the last couple of days I’ve had yet another conversation with a Local Council planning team manager about Strategic Planning for their Council that bothered me a great deal. What really has me bothered is that the conversation indicated that the reason that this particular Council had not managed to achieve its outcomes was the belief that their previous plans were not perfect. This is NOT the first time a similar suggestion from a Local Council has been offered.
And yet nothing could be further from the truth. The rationale that ‘lack of planning perfection’ could be the cause of inaction is based on the unfounded truism that it is better to do nothing, than to do something poorly. But this ’cause-effect’ approach (non perfection = poor outcome) is not how reality works, because reality shows that NO PLAN IS PERFECT.
Where planning processes often fall down is NOT from the starting position of ‘imperfection’ but from the unfounded belief that once you’ve got things perfect at the start, you can forget to monitor your progress or the need to build in the capacity to adapt and change. And that IS where planning breaks down. The annual, biennial, or triennial planning programs that ignore the need to pay attention to progress are the barriers to achievement – not ‘imperfection’. There is NOT a single Local Council in Australia that does not have the capacity to achieve most of what it wants to achieve.
Plans should, nay MUST highlight the core starting assumptions upon which a strategic decision is made. Indicators of likely progress or non prgress ought to be considered in advance as clues. But can we please stop aiming for the perfect planning outcome. Assumptions; Adaptation; Attention – these are the things that matter greatly in planning your future. If you want to get it right then a ‘Triple A’ approach will take you a very long way indeed. Perfection on the hand, will likely get you no where slowly or by lulling you in to doing nothing, land you at Disaster central quickly.
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
Read More >A few thoughts on what steps could be taken to overcome the ‘treat everyone like a nail’ approach that Interest Rate rises seems to do. Check out the idea under the ‘Latest Focus’ section Interest Rate Rises are going to penalise too many people who don’t deserve to lose their homes
Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
Read More >