Can things that count be counted?

March 9, 2013 12:07 PM

I work in education and I've always tended to view the whole strategic planning, action plans, targets, success criteria thing with extreme cynicism. However, I have to engage with this stuff more and more and feel my cynicism needs to be better informed. Is there any evidence that these processes make for better or more successful organisations AND/OR what are the most convincing critiques? Educational context good but not essential and I'm interested in a range of perspectives - sociological, economic, psychological etc.
posted by janecr to work & money (2 answers total)

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education made the rounds a couple of years ago: "The Strategic Plan: Neither Strategy Nor Plan, But A Waste of Time." It's an excerpt from Benjamin Ginsberg's full-length book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.

Ginsberg's basic point is that most strategic plans in higher education function as management tools rather than blueprints for the future. They are too vague and feel-good, they are absent of any real indication of how goals will be achieved, and they are too quickly jettisoned for a new version with every (increasingly frequent) change in administration. Instead, they function as a signal that the senior administration is in charge and are good leaders. They serve to encourage employees to work cooperatively and bond together, which can be good, but can sometimes be rather superficial. They can often mask a lack of actual progress because the sheer number of person-hours needed to work on the strategic plan is impressive and can overwhelm resources that should be dedicated to meeting the plan's lofty goals.

Here is a suggestion on how to improve strategic planning from Matt Read, author of the blog "Confessions of a Community College Dean" and contributor to Inside Higher Ed:

I'm becoming more convinced that strategy from the top should be simple and clear – set no more than two or three priorities, dedicate some resources to those priorities, and set the internal incentives accordingly. Let the organization spend its time getting the implementation right, since that's where things usually fall apart. If the incentives are right and the goals are clear, those who are capable of learning will respond, eventually, and those who aren't will become less relevant over time. If you spend your time parsing six missions and twelve visions, and the internal incentives don't move, you're wasting your breath.

I've participated in strategic planning in education and I have to say, though it is harsh, much of Ginsberg's critique rings true in my experience. But I think Matt Read's suggestion would solve some of the problems with the way educational strategic planning is done.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:53 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

I sort of work in this area in the UK (the brief version is that I produce and analyse some educational outcomes data, though my expertise is elsewhere in children's services). Not sure how relevant my thoughts are as it does depend which part of education you're in, and I can't point you to sources as you want, but for what it's worth ...

You may find it useful to unpick "the whole strategic planning, action plans, targets, success criteria thing" a bit more. There's a range of approaches in this. I'd totally agree that strategic planning is often limited to mission statements or jargon or top-level stuff that ignores realities. But looking at measures of progress or of children's attendance, say, does seem to me useful and has the possibility to be used to improve services. You have to do it in a nuanced way of course. For instance if you're looking at the attainment of children looked after, depending on the local context you might find it useful to use the headline national figure of "only 14.6% per cent of looked after children who have been looked after for at least a year achieved five good GCSEs including English and maths, compared to 58.1% per cent for non-looked after children" (DfE) to draw people's attention to a possible local issue. You probably wouldn't, however, immediately want to set a target of reducing the gap in attainment between the two groups to zero - not without some thought about what the factors involved are (eg high proportion of children looked after with statements of SEN). You might want to think about looking at the progress these children have made rather than using the 5 good GCSEs, or you might want to think about initiatives that are not necessarily measurable, like recruiting foster carers who can evidence commitment to children's literacy or numeracy (not saying that would necessarily be a good thing to privilege above other factors, just trying to indicate the range of actions you could take).

I found a useful book on performance management in general, with a public sector bias, was Trying Hard is Not Good Enough. There are notes on this approach on the IDeA site.

In terms of actual examples of planning and targets being used to improve services, the site I use most (Research in Practice) is subscription-only, so I can't link you to anything. But if you are thinking that action plans and targets never improve services, this seems counter-intuitive to me. I have to say I've never experienced services improving without additional investment, but I have also seen additional investment not improving services when there hasn't been enough planning, or any thought about how you'd actually know that things have improved.

Anyway, sorry, not sure if this is the sort of response you want. You could have a look at some of the comment and criticism around the Troubled Families / Families Matter initiative (eg thoughts in the Guardian, or similarly with "Every Child Matters" (eg Social policy in the noughties: 10 years of change and controversy. You mind also find the Wikipedia article on No Child Left Behind interesting.
posted by paduasoy at 3:40 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]