Development Solutions Consultancy

Strategic planning is a process of preparing what essentially amounts to a winning strategy of an organization for a specified medium term. It is a plan which, for service organizations, specifies results of enhanced service delivery to be achieved in a given period of time. The importance of the plan is that it acts as a well thought road map of the organization for a specified period of time. As a road map the strategic plan is a dynamic and responsive framework which guides the future but it must continually be critically reviewed during development of rolling annual operational plans to take cognizance of any pertinent emerging changes. Still a strategic plan is a winning plan because it seeks to ensure that this time round the organization performs much better than before in terms of serving its customers or service beneficiaries. Consequently, good consecutive strategic plans are important in order to maintain high level of an organization’s service delivery.

Such continuously improved and sustained service delivery has dual advantages. Firstly, it keeps customers satisfied and happy of the services the organization provides. Secondly, as a result of customers being satisfied and happy with the organization’s services, the organization itself benefits in that its existence is not only justified but more importantly its sustainability is enhanced. Higher customer approval rating will form greater justification for continued funding of any public organization than otherwise. The overall effect of this is, of course, increased contribution to national social economic development by the organization in question. To ensure winning the strategic planning process must be well articulated to ensure that important issues are considered, analyzed and assessed within the context of enhancing service delivery. Adequate time, resources, free thinking and involvement of stakeholders must be provided for to ensure rich and valuable contributions. To chart a good road map, strategic planning must not be constrained by pre-conceptions. It must be free thinking so as to allow the pooling of as many ideas as possible from which good choices can be made. Participation and communication with all involved are crucial in order to win the required commitment for implementation.

Since the emergence of public sector reforms, strategic planning has been widely adopted by public sector organizations in Tanzania. In the last two decades many organizations have been preparing medium term strategic plans. However, the quality of strategic plans is still highly variable leaving room for further improvement. The purpose of this posting is to share some of the common and major pitfalls which have come to light as a result of reviewing a number of strategic plans from websites of organizations or during consulting assignments. First, it must be recognized that strategic planning is still relatively young in Tanzania. Many public service organizations are in their third or fourth three year circle of strategic planning meaning that strategic planning has been going on for only about twelve or less than fifteen years. The following is an explanation of some the common pitfalls.

Business not often identified: Most strategic plans do not identify the business the organizations are in. Organizations seem to make the assumption that their business is a mirror image of their functional mandate as specified in the legislation establishing the institution. Unfortunately, this is not true. Defining what business the organization is in casts clarity on the strategic planning process. A business definition statement captures products, markets and functions. Such an understanding has implications on the quality of strategic focus as well as the identification of strategic objectives. Business identification is the starting point of strategy analysis. The business of the Ministry of Education for example may be defined as, Providing and coordinating the provision of education and training facilities and services from pre-school to university levels in line with the government of Tanzania’s Policy.

Products or services offered not specified: Products or services are what customers would pay for. Like business, products or services are not clearly explained by the functions of an organization. For example while the major function of a training institution is to train, its products are neither training nor the graduating students as has sometimes been implied by some institutions. Rather the products are the courses the institution offers. These are what the institution sells and customers buy on the premise that they embody specific skills that they need to enhance their personal performance. The selling process of these products proceeds for a relatively long time through training. For the Ministry of Education products are: Well-functioning Pre-Schools, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Universities, Primary and Secondary School Curricula.

Unclear customers: Like for business identification, most strategic plans do not identify the customers the organizations are serving. Lack of clear understanding of the customers an organization serves affects the articulation of both the objectives and strategies. Knowing the full range of an organization’s customers and their needs enables prioritization of strategies and objectives at any particular time based on the Pareto Principle. This ensures optimal utilization of often scarce resources.

Inadequate use of data and knowledge: It is absolutely essential to use knowledge and data based evidence in strategic planning as this not only clearly identifies and justifies needs but it also enables value identification to objectives and the setting of realistic performance targets. Inadequate use of knowledge and data often stems from poor focus on effective service delivery. Such inadequate focus on effective service delivery diminishes the need to gather knowledge and data and to develop systems for ensuring availability of data and knowledge. Inadequate use of data also results in the Use of non-measurable strategic objectives. Objectives serve as goals onto which to focus all available resources. But for goals to be effective in a way of motivating people to work hard and smart, they must be clear and mentally visualizable. In turn this enables periodic progress and end of strategic plan implementation objective assessment to be made. For example, Build primary schools, is not a good objective. A better objective is, A total of 359 primary schools built in Kasulu by December 2012 and percentage of children not being enrolled in school reduced from 30% to 8%. If this objective was to be achieved over a three year period then one can indicate yearly performance targets in terms of what proportion of the 359 schools will be built each year and the corresponding decrease in proportion of children not being enrolled. It must be noted that without data it is impossible to accurately gauge and establish a precise level of effort.