Planning phase: Introduction

If you fail to plan... you plan to fail.
(George Hewell)

To plan: v. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result
(The Devil's Dictionary. Ambrose Bierce)

According to leading business thinker Paul Gorman, most businesses owners spend more time planning their holiday than they do planning their business. Then they wonder why their business struggles so hard to achieve the success they hoped it would.

It is probably fair to say that this lack of attention to planning is just as endemic among National Agencies. There are good reasons for this. Planning takes time and time is money. If your NA works with particularly difficult profiles of young people and a large portion of your day is spent in crisis-management, taking time to plan is probably not at the top of your list of priorities. After all, why bother to plan for a future that you cannot control?

When you work out a plan for your NA, you are actually thinking about the future so that you can do something about it now ("where tomorrow?").

A well-thought out plan enables you to identify priorities and determines your course of action (Shapiro). Your plan is the tool that charts your direction and which maximises the effectiveness and impact of your daily inclusion work.

Your plan is your answer to the key question:

Where do I want to go?

When you make a strategic plan, you are developing a framework which outlines "the big picture". This framework will help your NA to determine the priorities and shorter-term objectives which will bring you closer to achiever your long-term goals.
A strategic plan clarifies what exactly it is that you are trying to achieve and the approach you intend to use (Shapiro).
It does not, however, spell out specific actions to be taken. This will come later in the Implementation Phase.

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What is involved in planning?

If the Analysis is the most time-consuming phase of strategy development, then Planning is the most challenging. It is here that you have to make choices for your NA.
This is where you must decide what you will and will not do.
You must also sort out which information is relevant for your Agency and which is not.

The process is not always easy. Keep in mind that making your plan is very similar to making a budget. You are putting together a framework which makes sure the most important areas are identified and taken care of. This framework will guide you as well as protect you. The good news is that if your NA has invested the time and effort required for a thorough needs analysis, you are already well on your way.

There are many different ways NAs can approach the Planning phase but in essence the process consists of three main steps: identifying potential action areas, choosing priorities and defining objectives and desired results. These steps are the same no matter what the size of the NA and no matter what your level of involvement in inclusion.

The best way to visualize the planning phase is to think of an inverted triangle (see the diagram above). The inclusion field is very large and there are many needs which all require urgent attention. It is simply not possible for an NA to respond to all of these needs. The planning phase involves a series of steps which takes the wide range of potential action and narrows it down to a short list of priorities. Those priorities are then narrowed down even further into concrete objectives and specific results the NA aims to achieve.

 

How long does Planning take?

Depending on the size of your NA and your approach to strategy-making, it may have taken several months to complete your needs analysis. Many people wonder if the Planning phase will again require so much time.

The good news is that once an NA has invested the time in a needs analysis, the planning phase can move quickly. The needs analysis provides most of the information an NA needs to make its strategic plan.

Although there are several steps involved, it is quite possible for the strategy team to put together a plan in as little as 1-2 days BUT this depends on the quality of the information gathered in the needs analysis and a large amount of preparation work being done in advance.

If the strategy team gets bogged down and finds it difficult to make the choices and decisions required in the Planning steps, it is likely that some information was missed in the Analysis phase. In such cases it is better to go back and fill in the gaps.

Keep in mind that planning is not a one-off activity. If life were predictable it would be easy to make a long-term plan one time and then forget about it. In reality the situation around us is always changing - particularly in the field of inclusion - so there is a good chance that at some stage your NA will need to review its plan to make sure you are still going in the right direction.

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