Don't lose your grip on priority No. 1 by obsessing over Nos. 3 and 4.
Wednesday's video seminar by the Lebanese Management Association featured business guru Peter Drucker on planning and goals
The Lebanese Management Association (LMA) focused on business planning at its fourth video seminar on Wednesday, with a speaker in one film defining it as a means to consider what a company needs, not what it is going to be.
“Planning is not an attempt to foretell the future but a tool to think through what work and actions are needed now so that one secures a future,” Peter Drucker says in the series entitled Planning and Goal Setting Time Waster or Management Tool.
In the film, Drucker says planning helps sort out the most important demands, enabling people to think things through and decide where to concentrate resources. It is the lifeline to make the best use of one’s time, one’s people and one’s self.
The planning process can be frustrating due to the difficulty of foreseeing changing circumstances and an apparent over-concern by the company with forms rather than substance.
The attitude of the senior management toward the planning function plays a primordial role and determines the actions of other managers, he adds.
Kamel Abdullah, seminar facilitator and assistant vice-president of Regional External Programs at the American University of Beirut, said the end product of planning “is not information but always work.
“The focus is always on performance. Planning is a waste of time if it does not entail increased performance and productivity,” he added.
According to Abdullah, savoir faire, science and cultural values play a major role in management and the planning process. What might be applicable in the West will not necessarily be valid in the Arab world and vice versa.
“Imagine what would be an American’s attitude when confronted with the thought that his actions would bring shame to his family,” said Abdullah. “He couldn’t care less whether his actions are sanctioned or not by his parents’ or grandparents’ morals.”
Drucker’s advice is to start by looking at one’s excellence and allocating the available scarce resources to a very small number of priority areas. After mulling about the contributions to be made over the coming four or five years, work must be started and finished on the first two priorities listed.
It is useless to try and implement priorities three and four before a thorough rethink of first priorities, as by that time the former would become obsolete.
“Fifteen years of war and civil strife led the Lebanese to forego any planning process, as it wasn’t applicable with too many external factors out of one’s control,” said Abdullah. “Unfortunately that mood is still alive in the Lebanese psyche today. Most of our planning is limited to adding a 5 or 6 percent increase on the previous budget, hoping that management will at least approve of 4 percent.”
The validity of Drucker’s approach is based on setting goals and developing realistic work plans. One must concentrate where the results are, always keeping in mind that a good project, to generate results, requires at least one full-time, hard-working and capable individual.
“If one’s plans cause him to bite more than he can chew, he will end up looking incompetent and well deserving it,” he says in the film.
According to Abdullah, managers always request more staff and resources just to get the bare minimum they really seek. Most always expect an overall plan from the top before they prepare their own plans.
“Strategic management and planning are based on creating a balance between the top down and the bottom up approaches,” said Abdullah. “Top management must offer a clear picture of the direction it wishes to follow with the lower echelons providing all the details such a course entails.”
Goal-setting, says Drucker, is of paramount importance as the goals, priorities and strategies are specifically defined. Managers must welcome disagreements by their superiors, as they help clarify a situation. Effective communication, as opposed to wishy-washy differences of opinion, is the ideal tool for clarifying any moot situation.
According to Drucker, in dealing with uncertainties one must solicit the various points of view in the organization. Dissent will enable each and every individual to better understand their commitments and what the decision is all about.
“Successful managers say ‘no’ more often than they say ‘yes,’” said Abdullah. “Otherwise the situation is similar to going over a restaurant’s menu without really knowing what you want to eat.”
“There is much talk about management by objective, but the focus is too much on management and not enough on the objectives,” says Drucker. “The best question is not how to attain objectives but what are they and what should they be.”
According to Abdullah, most people think that planning is someone else’s job or is the exclusivity of giant organizations like the Pentagon or the White House. Instead of thinking of planning as a company exercise, each manager should learn to use planning to get the best out of people or a department.
“If you don’t change rewards and penalties regularly, you will not change performance and patterns of behavior,” said Abdullah. “The basic litmus test for any organization is whether the employees know if the top man is ‘watching’ or not. You can never have an overdose of good and effective communication.”
“Abandon ‘yesterday’ in your plans for the future and get rid of those things which no longer make sense or have already attained their objectives,” concludes Drucker. “Otherwise the organization will get ‘fat’ and will no longer be able to work for the future.”
Ara Alain Arzoumanian Special to The Daily Star
© The Daily Star 2003
