toc 400 College & Research Libraries September 1997 Editorial 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 be- gan witnessing the use of strategic planning by many nonprofit organi- zations including churches, schools, and different types of libraries. Un- like traditional planning, strategic planning is ongoing and iterative, in- volves the development of cognition, and is a learning process. Moreover, its emphasis on the formulation of s t r a t e g i e s ( c o u r s e s o f a c t i o n t o achieve goals and objectives) sets it far apart and ahead of any other plan- ning technique. During the early 1990s, we began seeing some pieces in the literature about the weaknesses/failures of stra- tegic planning. I have heard/read com- ments about strategic planning no longer being relevant during our expo- nential 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 im- proving 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 prac- tices. 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 de- veloping a strategic plan that will help the library identify and maintain an op- timal alignment with the most impor- tant 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 re- ally is. People generally do not like plan- ning; they prefer action whether or not it is based on analysis and synthesis. There is a tendency to describe stra- tegic 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 un- derstand strategic planning. The gen- esis of strategic planning dates back to its use in the military. Can anyone imag- ine a military unit using a planning tech- nique 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 400 Editorial 401 happenstance, not knowing where they are beginning and where they are head- ing. When I was teaching the advanced management for libraries and informa- tion agencies course at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, students in my class delved deeply into the components of strategic planning. They examined the weaknesses and strengths of this particular planning pro- cess. Among other things, they discov- ered that good strategic actions are largely a matter of feel, intuition, art- istry, and luck. Also, they concluded that a sharp analysis of strategies contrib- utes little to the synthetic moves of the successful strategist. Human nature and inertia favor the old way of doing things. Shaping change must happen more quickly than ever before in libraries. Performing a major strategic transformation without much forethought and involvement of the li- brary can certainly backfire and result in serious impairment of the credibility of library managers. “Ready, fire, aim” usually results in unnecessary commo- tion and counterproductivity. Certainly, as the tempo of change increases and the complexity of life accelerates, the future of libraries can be cruel and un- forgiving. The future of libraries need not be the dark world of the unknown. The heart of strategic thinking and planning is the creation of a set of initia- tives allowing an organization to main- tain stability or win a new position amidst a blizzard of discontinuities, un- precedented threats, and surprising changes.1 The rate of change in librar- ies is expected to quicken; library man- agers cannot just respond to change but, rather, must drive it. If the strategic planning process is carried out to its fullest extent, most of the library’s staff will have some involvement in the cre- ation and implementation of strategies. Real strategists get their hands dirty digging for ideas, and real strategies are built from the occasional nuggets they uncover.2 Some of the best thinking op- portunities for the library staff occur while they are developing strategies. Real strategic change in libraries re- quires inventing new ways of doing things, not simply rearranging existing things. The strategic plan should be viewed as a working document; it is never com- pleted, and it certainly has to undergo a rigorous updating/refinement on a regu- lar basis. If the strategic planning pro- cess is done properly, the participants may find the process (e.g, conducting the environmental scan, determining strengths and weaknesses, and formu- lating strategies) as useful as the docu- ment itself. Recent management and higher edu- cation literature contains several works focusing on strategic planning and its utility during the change process. Not- withstanding the many fallacies of stra- tegic planning, it remains the best plan- ning tool. It is particularly suited for li- braries and institutions of higher edu- cation. For today’s colleges and univer- sities, no longer immune from the world in which they live, strategic planning can be a logical and effective method of in- tervention, defining an appropriate di- rection toward a future in which they will flourish.3 DONALD E. RIGGS Notes 1. Marvin W. Peterson, et al., Plan- ning and Management for a Changing Envi- ronment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 160. 2. Henry Mintzberg, “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” Harvard Busi- ness Review 72 (Jan.–Feb. 1994): 107–14. 3. Daniel J. Rowley, et al., Strategic Change in Colleges and Universities (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 320. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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