Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/markthall

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Strategic Plans

In my most recent blog, I disclosed my personal propensity for organization and planning. During my tenure as a school principal, I was asked to lead a city wide strategic planning exercise for the board of education. A consultant had been hired to travel to our jurisdiction in order to recommend various ways of getting stakeholders involved in the process. I was to coordinate these sessions and attempt to boil down the results into executable objectives and goals. Strategic planning has become very popular in the corporate and public sector in the last decade or so. My first experience at strategic planning was very early in the wave of popularity. Initially all of the stakeholders, who of course included parents, students, teachers, administrators and trustees, were very enthusiastic and attended so-called brain storming sessions usually held, especially for staff members and trustees, in retreat like settings. The amount of collected information was daunting. Processing the mountains of suggestions and directives was a very time consuming and expensive proposition. As the rising costs became evident to the board, the political will to continue faltered and the project was ended. One of the positive results of the aborted exercise was a now defunct slogan that was used on board letterhead and business cards for years. “Building Tomorrows Today” was a good attempt in my opinion to sum up just what education should do for the student.

What I did not realize at the time is that men and women alone cannot build tomorrows today. Without considering what I would term “the divine factor”, it is useless to attempt to plan for the future. The Bible tells us this in many ways and places. In Proverbs 16:1 this “divine factor” is stated very clearly.

1 ¶ The preparations of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

We can make all the plans we want, but the final word will come from God. He is in control and until we acknowledge that very fact our plans will go nowhere.

This thought is continued in the same chapter of Proverbs in verse 9. (Proverbs 16:9)

9 ¶ A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

We can plan all we want as mere mortals, but in the end God will direct our steps.

Finally in Proverbs 20: 24 we read:

24 ¶ A man’s steps are of the LORD; How then can a man understand his own way?

Each and every step we take comes from God. Until we understand that fact, we are incapable of understanding where we were and where we are going.

Should we continue to plan for the future as individuals or corporate bodies? Of course we should, but only with the proper consultant. We need to consider the “divine factor” and seek Him out as our consultant. He works in return for our faith and the results are so much better!

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

No comments:

Post a Comment