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| Sunday, 11 July 2004 |
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Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The Way Ahead - with Consensus and Strategic Management By Lloyd F Yapa. The purpose of this short article is to illustrate a simple methodology, which will help in realizing a vision or a goal without wasteful digressions. It can be used to plan an individual's career or the destinies of a multinational company or even those of a country. It has been given various names such as Corporate Planning or Strategic Planning /Management. Unfortunately, the words 'plan/planning' may bring back unpleasant memories of the complex and tedious command and control methods used by the failed Communist regimes of the past. Corporate planning has proven to be much more effective, especially when it is kept simple and used as a management tool. The emphasis should be on management rather than on planning. The first step in using this methodology is to identify a vision or a goal, such as alleviation of poverty, the most serious problem faced by this country. Setting a vision or goals This is precisely the goal, President Kumaranatunge has unerringly set for her government vide her recent policy statement. The next step is to be more specific and set quantifiable objectives/targets, to help in estimating the resources necessary and for monitoring of implementation by comparing actual progress against planned targets. This initial step is the answer to the question, where do we want to go from here? Situation analysis The next logical question, is where are we now vis a vis the goal/s? This is an analysis of our internal strengths such as our strategic location in the Indian Ocean, the high literacy rate, as well as weaknesses like our penchant to get bogged down on vital national issues due to our notorious inability to reach consensus with disparate stakeholders, the debilitating ethnic conflict, our failure to maintain national assets in working order and make new investments to increase job opportunities or even our low levels of productivity. These strengths and weaknesses may help or thwart us respectively from achieving the desired goal/s. Countries no longer are insulated from the rest of the world, as in the middle- ages, for instance. We have, therefore, to be cognizant also of the opportunities and threats presented by our external environment. Exploitation of opportunities like the rising demand for goods and services consequent on the recovery of the major world economies may help us to move towards our goal quicker. Strategies Then there are the threats like oil price hikes, which push up costs and terrorist strikes or wars, which disrupt shipping/ trade and slow us down. Completion of such an analysis, makes us ready to pose the next question how do we get there? This is the stage of formulation of strategies by identifying ways and means of building on our strengths, overcoming the weaknesses, exploiting whatever opportunities and side stepping the threats smartly, instead of quixotically ranting against them. Of all the strategies, that may emerge, it is prudent to select only the key result areas, changing them as circumstances demand. This is the essence of Strategic Management, which we Sri Lankans have failed to master, perhaps due to our system of learning by rote, overlooking ways of solving problems. Obviously the major key result strategy is investment both in infrastructure (including services such as health and education) as well as production facilities to create jobs, distributing the resulting higher incomes equitably to prevent the poor becoming poorer, either due to market or government failure or both. Is there a more powerful way of alleviating poverty than increasing the size of the 'pie' in this manner? No. Then of course, one has to realize, that people would not invest their savings, if social, political and macro economic/ price stability is not ensured. It is therefore necessary to adopt suitable strategies to obtain such stability as well, while improving our competitiveness, especially by judicious opening of labour, land and capital markets. This is the path to prosperity followed by the high performing economies of the world. A committed leadership and implementation The problem, however, is mere formulation of such pragmatic strategies will not help us to reach our goal/s, in this instance of eradication of poverty. These good intentions or dreams have to be turned to reality by organizing ourselves to implement them. This requires highly committed leaders able to convince the people of the efficacy of selected strategies (having internalized these themselves), creating a lean and efficient public service, selecting capable officials, motivating them to convert strategies to feasible action plans and to implement them to deliver tangible results to realize the goal/s (the acid test of the process as well as of leadership). However, even such a planned/managed effort will fail, if the people in turn do not motivate the leaders to deliver, at least by being disciplined and encouraging them to reach consensus quickly on vital national strategies with the various stakeholders to reach goals. This brings us back to basics- creation of a culture conducive for gaining consensus and desired ends without unnecessary fuss. |
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