Plan or Be Planned for: The Growing Significance of Strategic Planning

Since the mid-1960s, corporate leaders have been using strategic planning as the “one best way” to design, create, and realize their organizations’ future. By the beginning of the 1980s, we began witnessing the use of strategic planning by many nonprofit organizations including churches, schools, and different types of libraries. Unlike traditional planning, strategic planning is ongoing and iterative, involves the development of cognition, and is a learning process. Moreover, its emphasis on the formulation of strategies (courses of action to achieve goals and objectives) sets it far apart and ahead of any other planning technique. During the early 1990s, we began seeing some pieces in the literature about the weaknesses/failures of strategic planning. I have heard/read comments about strategic planning no longer being relevant during our exponential rate of change in libraries. When the adversaries are questioned about what planning alternative they would offer in place of strategic planning, they cannot give any. One hears comments such as “total quality management and reengineering are better planning mechanisms than strategic planning.” When I hear such comments, I tend to bite my tongue and not speak what is on my mind. Total quality management and reengineering are not planning tools! They focus on current procedures and processes, not on the future. Both techniques offer much in the way of improving the way libraries are run and the services they provide. When I hear librarians beating up on TQM or reengineering, I ask one simple question: Who can argue with continuous improvement? For some unknown reasons, many library leaders and managers do not possess an understanding of leadership and management principles and practices. They prefer to lead/manage in an ad hoc, chaotic, or “by the seat of pants” approach. One former library director of a major research library told me that he would never develop any formal plan due to his preference for keeping the library staff confused. Rather than developing a strategic plan that will help the library identify and maintain an optimal alignment with the most important elements of its environment, some library leaders prefer to give flippant, unsubstantiated reasons why strategic planning will not work. I surmise that such leaders probably do not have the faintest idea what strategic planning really is. People generally do not like planning; they prefer action whether or not it is based on analysis and synthesis. There is a tendency to describe strategic planning as being inflexible, stuck in concrete, and not nimble enough for the changing environment of libraries. Again, such descriptions generally come from people who do not fully understand strategic planning. The genesis of strategic planning dates back to its use in the military. Can anyone imagine a military unit using a planning technique that does not include flexibility, redirection, and modification in the heat of battle? Of course, we will continue to know people who prefer to operate from