Posts on this website are generally grouped according to the six topical areas of: 1) The historic lack of integrated strategic thinking at the federal level, 2) Why the federal government should have an explicit, fully developed strategic role, 3) Appropriate roles for national leadership in economic well-being, today, 4) Cautions and historic failures in “central planning” efforts, 5) Topics that a national strategic policy can most meaningfully address, and 6) Implementing and institutionalizing a national strategic plan.

1. The federal Executive Branch alone has 15 Executive Departments, and each of these has as many as 10-25 key sub-organizational entities (agencies, bureaus, services, administrations, offices, etc.). Within each of these organizations there are many policies, and some of these organizational units have strategic plans. However, there are few if any policies with a strategic focus that cross organizational lines, and few overriding national policies that are truly strategically conceived or developed. [link]
2. Why should the federal government have an explicit, fully developed strategic role? Because nations of the world are much more directly competitive with one another now, federal government actions affect all aspects of social and economic life, virtually all policies have strategic implications anyway, and strategic planning is a vital component of both the formal and informal leadership to which any national government should naturally aspire.
3. There are at least 3 components of appropriate roles for national leadership in economic well-being, today:
   1. Guiding the allocation of resources based on sound economics;
   2. Providing inspiration and incentives to entrepreneurs, other businesses, and even households; and
   3. Serving as change agent, where change is part of the an essential response to critical challenges such as preserving environmental services. [link]
4. Mixed results in strategic plans at the federal level, in the U.S. but especially elsewhere, have clouded the concept of a strong national strategic policy, and the potential for “over-planning” is a real and significant threat. [link]
5. What specific topics can a national strategic policy most meaningfully address? The core topics will almost certainly address economic conditions and economic development, and relevant policies must be carefully coordinated with states and sub-regions, and their respective planning efforts.  [link]
6. Implementing a national strategic plan starts with understanding why public-forum policy-making can be a win-win situation for politicians as well as society at large, and otherwise requires only the adaptation of existing tools and principles to become operational. [link]

The presumption in taking on human-suffering problems is that people in such straits will be motivated to resume productive lives once their underlying affliction no longer saps their individual and collective energies. This is what “we” would do, as citizens of developed countries. The developed world has so many, deeply ingrained support systems, however, that it’s easy to take them for granted but difficult to imagine, once we attempt to do so, progress without any one of them:

• The rule of law, which anchors all of the following.
• Governance by more-or-less democratic processes at local through national levels.
• Banking and other financial systems that provide efficient, secure, and reasonably stable economic transactions.
• Educational systems serving all people.
• Competitive, reasonably efficient markets that provide access to essentially all required goods and services, year-round, within a range of choices and prices.
• Finally, a society full of people who are accustomed to life under these support systems, and who support them politically, financially and behaviorally to at least some degree.

With all of these advantages, and a limited need to call on philanthropists to help solve endemic problems, progress in developed countries should be virtually assured. Sadly, we are all too aware that failure to respect these support systems, alone, with no help from disease, famine, and the like, can derail progress and demoralize the citizenry of the most advanced economies. If we so readily sabotage ourselves, how can we expect third-world citizens to transition from some crisis, once relieved, to full functionality? To go a step further with the example of the latest financial meltdown, we have still neither fixed the problems that created this crisis nor punished the perpetrators, with the exception of some very low-hanging fruit. Further still, we have also failed as yet to put the engines of progress back on track.

All of this discussion is simply a way of raising the question of whether philanthropy, corporate public service, etc. might better serve humanity by helping improve the fundamental systems by which people relate to one another, first within their own societies, and then across societies. Without doing a better job of refining and managing our basic institutions, developed nations will fall short of the capability and resources to truly raise standards of living across the globe, and the pain and suffering of the third world could very easily just take on other forms as present ills are alleviated.

• The more people who are using a particular finite resource, the more that resource, or the people using it, or both, needs to be managed. The more critical the resource is for survival, the more critical the management need. Different strategies, and perhaps different institutions, are needed for short-term and long-term management, as applicable to any particular resource.

• The world is growing more complex on a daily basis, from environmental stresses, economic interdependencies, the growing juxtaposition of people with different religious orientations, etc. in the same areas. In the meantime, our social, economic, and infrastructure systems have less resiliency as we both expand and move into increasingly marginal territories.

• Given the above circumstances, some things that we did not necessarily need protection against a decade or so ago are now serious threats. Even the weather has become more extreme.

• The constituent base for long-term survival is not as obvious as one might assume it must be. Households with children should care about this, but are often focused on competing for immediate needs. Most U.S. households are childless. Corporations in theory live forever, but they are focused on short-term reporting of profits, growth, etc. Politicians are focused on the next election cycle a few years hence.

At a minimum, don’t we want government to keep us aware of the status of conditions that 1) potentially increase our wellbeing, and 2) threaten our survival, whether short-term or long-term? In practice, for the latter, this would mean that the government assembles the best possible set of facts about possible threats, then keeps us informed about the status of threats, the types and levels of risk we face under any given set of conditions (including “normal” conditions), why we should be willing to accept or reject that risk (and some form of risk is part of almost any human endeavor), and mitigating or defensive actions we should either take or be prepared to take, as individuals or the government or some other party. At the personal level, such actions might involve participating in a disaster-preparedness program, for example.

In other words, we should not be limited to just knowing the forest fire danger level. Why is it at that level (or any other level), What do any of the level designations actually mena, what should we be doing about dangerously high levels to remediate conditions, prepare for the inevitability of fires, etc.? This kind of focus would contrast starkly with the role that governments seem to prefer – brokering competing interests that represent different sides of a debate about whether something poses a serious threat, is an acceptable risk, or is actually good for us.

Can we afford to make nuclear energy safe, taking into consideration:

• An appropriate assessment of risk and estimates of present costs, ongoing social stress, etc. under various future failure-probability scenarios.

• Energy cost-competitiveness compared to generation with fossil fuels or other technologies, including consideration of the value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through nuclear generation.

• Comparisons with the value of enhancing renewable energy production technology and installations, by means of direct investment and subsidies, given the downward trajectory of costs for such systems and the fact that additional monetary support could subsequently drive costs down further.

All of these issues can be addressed within a typical strategic planning process that would begin with a panel of experts defining the appropriate research protocols and conducting the specified analysis. Without such a factual basis, which is readily achievable using the most basic analytical processes, the evolution of nuclear energy depends on political inclinations.

Earnest president has plan to save the country, is sometimes misunderstood, and struggles to stick with his principles in the face of plunging popularity as his policies do not solve all problems, and, worse luck, even seem to create new ones!

Besides the experience of déjà vu, why should this story trouble us? By way of an answer, we might ask why the U.S electorate should be stuck in endless cycles of choosing presidents who are, now more than ever it seems, expected to have sure-fire nation-saving concepts that they cannot wait to inflict on a public assumed to be essentially clueless. The credibility we are willing to assign to an individual who is first and foremost a politician is positively medieval.

When this country was in its infancy, strong, creative leaders, even if their ideas were less than perfect, were arguably essential to the nation’s sustainability. Checks and balances in the governing system helped us avoid the worst potential excesses of “strongman” leaders. With decades of experience in democracy, however, can’t we be more creative in researching, debating, and setting national policy – policy that would reflect something closer to the immense collective wisdom of the country, as well as more enlightened approaches to involving the citizenry in the business of running the country? If we believe in the validity of democracy, why not make it work harder instead of relegating the process to, for the most part, periodic elections in which many voters are effectively disenfranchised anyway? Explore this blog site for further discussions, and we welcome your comments as always.

However, we do not generally think of ourselves as “value adders” or partners in making our neighbors wealthy. More often, we perceive our role as workers within a competitive framework, where we strive to secure our piece of a finite pie of goods.

It’s easy enough to imagine an idealized scenario of an evolving value-adding society. People initially work at obtaining or creating essential products – food, shelter, protective clothing, and tools. They soon learn that specialization results in more efficient production, and a simple monetary system makes specialization even more convenient and also provides a gauge of value for every good and service. Specialization also allows the society to respond to challenges more effectively, as long as the social system remains intact. Specialization generates more surpluses, which allows people discretion in their use of time. People soon learn that surplus resources, including time, can be put to use in a number of ways:

• To create, collectively, public works that increase productivity, such as irrigation systems.
• To create public works that increase the quality of life for residents, such as plumbing systems, and can also increase productivity by virtue of making life more efficient.
• To teach/learn, either individually or as a collective social good, skills needed by specialists, so that greater quantities of a needed good/service can be produced.
• To create, usually as an individual effort, new goods or services and generate demand, and thereby value, for these new things through marketing.
• To bargain with neighboring societies to increase trade advantages.

All of these activities add value, at least within certain parameters. There are some not-so-simple tests that reveal potential problems as to whether the value created is truly additive. For example:

• Are public costs and benefits from a collective action properly analyzed and fully revealed, and are “opportunity costs” of potential alternative uses of public resources included in the analysis and disclosure?
• Do the actions encourage activities with potential long-term or hidden negative consequences? This issue can arise from either a failure to perceive unintended consequences or to account for them.
• Are goods, whether publicly or privately produced, priced fairly? This is less an issue of overpricing, since an informed market can usually sort out price levels easily enough, but of attempting to exercise monopoly power by underpricing, price rigging among bidders, etc.
• Are customers being seduced by marketing hype for which they lack the education to fully comprehend?

The bottom line of the preceding points is that as society becomes increasingly complex it must share at least some aspects of the knowledge of this complexity fully among its members. While end users need not know the technical details of new technology or services, they very definitely need to know the implications of adopting these things. This knowledge not only gives them guidance on what innovations to embrace, it also guides their own productivity and creativity, and political opinions, in the most socially advantageous directions.

Competition of any kind, even (generally speaking) warfare, always takes place within limits. Economic competition, as with competition generally, tends to result in improved products, greater output, etc., and is thus a component of value-addition. While the goal of any competitor is ultimately to prevail over others, competition is not necessarily a zero-sum game. If a good or service, or its pricing, is truly superior to other offerings in the marketplace, everyone in the society is, at least in theory, better off. Losers in that particular competition might very well be better off applying their energies to some other purpose anyway. By conducting competition in this spirit, and observing the framework of rules described above, competitors will tend to create truly additive value.

No matter where one is on the competitive scale, we can all recognize that we share a good position on the value-added scale, if we are evolving our economy within the right set of rules.

1. The tools we have developed, in not only technology but also in institutions and other systems.
2. Shifts in competitive advantage, among technologies, locations (at times a direct function of technology shifts), and cultures, where cultures can adopt policies that either harmonize or destabilize human commerce and other interaction.
3. Philosophical positions on progress:

• • Views of what constitutes acceptable work, the valuation of different types of work, and the use of collective will and energy for productive or other purposes.
  • The desirability, and practicality, of direct influence over change as compared to favoring “natural” forces such as the “guiding hand” of the overall economy (another system in transition by virtue of global linkages and other conditions).

Of these three contextual conditions, the first two will be driven largely by “economic determinism” to the extent we allow markets to respond free of conscious interventions. The third has to do with choices for the degree of intervention we will apply. Philosophical views on progress are largely influenced by the following:

• Institutional knowledge passed down through generations,
• “Progress” as a goal, and
• The competitive model.

Early in the civilizing process, institutional knowledge began to displace instinctive behavior. This knowledge was passed on by the family unit or village. Institutional knowledge is derived from actual experience, molded, consciously or unconsciously, by basic philosophical concepts. Philosophical concepts operative today to guide the creation of updated learning traditions are primitive at best, and generally unarticulated and unrecognized. We have been focused primarily on “making progress,” which embodies competitive behavior.

Predictive models tend to be based on competitive models, for example that people will act rationally to maximize conditions that serve their own best interests. Social commentators have attempted to broaden this concept to include the idea that certain social goods can be recognized by the individual to be in fact serving their personal interests, even if indirectly. These kinds of qualifying positions, however, also must accept an ongoing accommodation between society’s good and that of the individual.

The competitive paradigm leaves us with several challenges:

• Nature as model. Nature will eventually resolve all imbalances, but Nature works in extremes, and over a long time. We don’t have the patience or the prospects for social survivability to leave things to chance.

• Common good. What degree of consensus should we expect about the extent to which people are willing to forego their own perceived self interest – how much individual good should be sacrificed for even a social good in which they recognize some personal benefit?

• Progress. Progress follows the path of least resistance, to the easiest rewards. Today, that often means that new ways of producing and packaging goods and services, and expanding a market base, receive the most attention and earn the highest rewards commensurate with the effort involved. Productivity gains are in fact strong drivers of wealth creation. However, these advances force society to adapt so that new technological and organizational systems can be used most effectively, not necessarily in order to achieve a desired, targeted social goal.

• Creativity is not a substitute for wisdom. Progress without direction is a prelude to unanticipated problems. By failing to define explicit goals, we exercise the implicit goal of “competing interests will resolve into overall progress.” As society grows more complex, the danger of spiraling into a chaos of unfettered opportunism increases. A free society that retains a reasonable level of efficiency requires ongoing efforts to balance individual and societal rights.

The lack of focus in social progress has many dimensions:

• Ad hoc programs that seem to be inspired by political ambitions, with sound bites substituting for substance.
• No overriding strategic direction and consequently minimal direction at the programmatic level, and very limited strategic interrelationships among programs.
• Programs working at cross purposes.
• Unintended consequences going unchecked, and limited ability to respond to crises.

Even if we were living in a relatively stable socioeconomic setting, the rapid pace of change has hampered the kind of social learning that comes from working out solutions to living together harmoniously over time. We have very limited “social progress” skills, and must rely on contrived means of joint problem-solving – if we are willing to do this at all. These contrivances are however our only hope of meeting the challenges of rapid change in a rational manner.

The future will be managed. That is, a future in which the values we now hold dear still have currency will be arrived at by deliberate collective actions of our own devising, not the product of fortuitous outcomes in technology, political leadership, or national economic prowess. The world cannot continue to unfold at random, in our favor. We have real problems to confront, not just “work around, and hope for the best.” The values we cherish present us with both inspiration and philosophical challenges.

Indirect and direct convergences. For the farm-to-city migration story, it is no simple matter to define which influencing factors were the primary or the first-in-line cause of the migration, or how much each factor contributed. However, we can identify other common occurrences in which the lines of interrelationship are less obscure, and we would label those “indirect convergences,” in contrast to the “direct convergence” model, exemplified by the farm-to-city migration story.

The Internet is everyone’s favorite “new tool,” and there are hosts of predictions about how it is changing and will continue to change life on Earth. One specific value of the Internet is how it facilitates small-scale, specialized commerce, because prospective customers can not only find what they want fairly easily, but can also acquire it. Simultaneously, interest in entrepreneurship is probably higher than it has ever been. At least part of that enthusiasm is due to the flagging appeal of corporate employment, as aggressive worldwide competition has forced many firms to downsize their staffs and cut long-term benefits, perks, etc. Although the Internet has a role in making the corporate world a more competitive place, it is an indirect one. The two trends, of diminishing corporate appeal and enhanced entrepreneurship due to Internet access, are at least somewhat independent, but they converge, indirectly, to encourage increased entrepreneurship.

Free-society governments serve primarily as arbitrators of competing interests, or at least those interests with enough resources to make themselves heard. The arbitration function is another de facto check-and-balance system imposed on governments, and implicitly keeps governments’ attention on a multitude of sometimes-competing issues. There is a kind of free-economy parallel with this approach; that is, an implied acknowledgement that this way of doing things might be inefficient, but at least a lot of different “stuff” gets to be expressed. Besides, it’s the very soul of competition. May the best team win! Politicians favor this system because it gives them the most opportunity to do what they are most capable of doing, which is to exercise their own authority in bargaining among disputing interests.

Don’t we all get what we want under this system? Any individual issue has at least some chance to be heard, politicians are kept busy appeasing competing interests, and the spirit of competition is given more-or-less free reign. However, special interests, even acting en mass in all their diverse expressions, cannot represent a comprehensive, let alone balanced, cross section of the issues that need to be addressed by a healthy society. Their actions are even less likely to result in logical, structured analysis of problems and their interrelationships. We can’t assume that a collective good can come from this sort of system.

Worldwide competitive pressures and influences are increasing, in many economic sectors, and in fundamental ways such as competition for resources. Individual firms attempt to make the best of this situation, by serving emerging markets or devising strategies to meet increasing competition. No single firm however can be as effective as a concerted public-private partnership, starting with the national level, designed to address comprehensively issues such as maximizing national advantages, understanding emerging markets, managing fair trade issues, leveraging information and the combined forces of collaborating firms, and the like. However, instead of policies and actions driven by strategic decision-making, we have for the most part politically expedient, fragmented policies and a complete lack of overall vision about how to maximize our competitive position.

Reactive government is in some ways easier. It elevates the profile of elected representatives and allows them to “make up their own rules.” Elected leaders can also point to numerous examples of “government planning” gone awry. Communist and fascist regimes, in their own unique ways, have made people leery of an over-organized government presence. We did not design our own country’s experiments in federal planning (even at the minimal levels attempted) particularly well. The American landscape is peppered with the small failures of 19th-century utopian dreamers. As a result, in the federal government, especially, ad hoc policymaking is the current default operating mode.

On the other hand, government has proven it can mobilize toward a goal, as in the Apollo program, however ill-conceived it might have been from the standpoint of a long-term strategy. However, with no plan, leaders seeking to “make their mark” still contrive their own “strategic visions” and then feel free to pursue them, however reckless it may be, in the face of no alternative, sanctioned guidance.

• Convene a diverse group of interested parties, representative of the range of interests in the society, within a process structured to obtain the views of the participants.
• Inform stakeholders through presentations of facts focused on certain critical issues.
• Through a progression of steps for identifying visions, goals, objectives, and finally actions, formulate specific action steps to the most practical level of detail.

Such a plan would help ensure that U.S. national policy is well informed, democratically balanced, and strategic – that is, deliberately directed toward well defined, complementary goals. It would guide policy makers beyond the compulsion to focus solely on immediate threats, or fads.

In spite of its complexity, a national plan can still follow the general planning model. The methods are straightforward. The role of leadership must be identified with an entity that is capable of fulfilling that role. It cannot be simply a particular person or even political party. It must be an institution that is subject to a high level of scrutiny. This can be accomplished by an oversight group that has an interest but not a strong vested interest in the outcomes of the leadership organization. In this particular era, the use of “Guiding Principles” is becoming more prevalent and, possibly, more effective than in the past. This is one aspect of the “information age,” which also includes the following:

• Inter-organizational communication within multi-national organizations, which offers the potential for widespread and rapid diffusion of alternative viewpoints on any debate – based on the kind of differences in perspective that are only available, save for a few highly experienced participants, to people living in societies distinct from one another.
• Near-instantaneous response/feedback on any issue.
• Very rapid, focused learning about a situation, place, etc.

Planning must occur within a process, and produce output, where all problems are vetted within a comprehensive framework of both problem-definition and analysis. Without these steps, such a system can lapse into the kind of routine that characterizes much “environmental impact” work today.

Processes must never be controlled by a single discipline, organization, or person. New systems must be developed for coordinating multidisciplinary evaluations, diagnoses, and remedial actions, and such systems need to be “refreshed” periodically. Models for this type of system should already exist within our most functional, broad-ranging organizations.