Participatory Business Planning

PARTICIPATORY BUSINESS PLANNING

DR DAVID R STEVENS

Copyright © 2013 by David Stevens

Additional owners of copyright are named in on-page credits

This is an IndieMosh book

published at Smashwords by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

http://www.indiemosh.com.au

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

Dedicated to those employees, who shared their ideas with company owners and managers to help turn adversity into prosperity.

Dedicated to all those employers and owners who provided an environment in which employees could participate, make a meaningful commitment and be appropriately rewarded.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Banks are favourably impressed by those companies that are able to put forward a well-documented, comprehensive and articulate business plan. This provides them with a degree of security in knowing that the money they will be lending will be used to implement a business plan based on sound rationale.

This book will provide the blue print for such bank requirements.

In today's economic climate, it is more imperative than ever to have a clear well focused strategic direction. Equally essential is a comprehensive business plan which provides an ongoing framework for successful business activity. This book provides insight and guidance to business planning and in particular the participation and commitment of people to that process. It should be relevant reading for anyone who is involved in the future planning and direction of a business entity.

Chris Hadley

Former Managing Director

International Business Analysis Pty Ltd

A member of the Westpac Group

FOREWORD

Historically, with limited resources of labour, technology and basic mathematics, some of the greatest discoveries on this planet were made.

So are we now spoilt?

In today's society resources abound beyond our dreams, and all we want to do is run a successful company. Why then do so many people fail?

Is it because we squander our resources of talent, techniques, people power, ideas; because we can’t or don’t channel our energy into teams. We plan, or think we do in boom times, when all is okay. But logic dictates we should plan in the lean times.

Times are tight, and will be for a long time. Politicians are playing with figures to justify policies, instead of getting out into the market-place and finding out what is happening in the real world.

So, to bring back business optimism and start new growth and profitability, we need to take stringent measures.

We need to realise that we are at war; a new kind of war.

We need the utmost in commitment from our employees and managers. We need clear communication and decisive decision-making. We need to make our corporate troops commercially combat-ready.

In the current economic downturn, companies should be striving for increased productivity from employees and managers alike, for an effective, competitive strategy and tactics that work.

To achieve these goals we need to look at participatory decision-making and planning that gets the best from the team.

We need to maximise revenue, reduce expenditure, hang on by our teeth, weather the storm, and come out tougher than when we went in.

This book looks at harnessing the existing resources within our organisations to plot and plan our way through the recessionary troughs, and fight to get back onto the peaks. This book advocates a special approach that calls for bursts of energy, sustained over short periods of time.

It is necessary to find an efficient and a cost-effective way so we don't have to buy in expensive external solutions that are invariably never implemented, rarely credible or simply don't work.

A new approach is called for in recession-proofing our companies -participatory planning. This approach is based on a belief that eight or more experienced people in a properly facilitated group, can solve any problem relevant to that group.

In Australia, in the last year or so, we have seen the toppling of many entrepreneurs who supposedly held, or thought they knew, all the secrets of their business. They ran their businesses on the mystique of their omnipotence. Their unilateral decision-making is now under fire from all directions. They surely provide encouragement enough for management and employees alike to realise at last that they deserve and should demand more say in the direction of their companies.

David J. G. Taylor

Former Executive Director

State Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NSW)

Contents

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1 THE PROCESS OF PARTICIPATION

2 THE ROLE OF THE PARTICIPANTS

3 COMMON ELEMENTS OF THE FOUR PARTICIPATORY BUSINESS PLANNING MODULES

4 PARTICIPATORY STRATEGIC PLANNING (PSP)

5 PARTICIPATORY MARKETING PLANNING (PMP)

6 PARTICIPATORY HUMAN RESOURCES PLANNING (PHRP)

7 PARTICIPATORY EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY PLANNING (PEPP)

8 PARTICIPATORY POLICY FORMULATION

9 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLAN

10 THE WIDESPREAD APPEAL OF PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

INTRODUCTION

THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF PLANNING

Traditionally, business planning, strategic planning, or for that matter marketing, human resources, production, finance and other styles of planning have been approached in what could be called a directive manner.

The usual procedure is for a nominated expert from a chartered accounting firm or a management consulting firm, to be introduced to a company. Then after a series of one-to-one interviews, and occasionally some group interviews, the consultant will return to his head office and begin to produce a 100 to 200 page document, directing the company on how to manage its affairs.

Normally, after completion of the first draft, the consultant will talk to the politically most important decision-makers or the principals within the client company. He will seek feedback on what is the appropriate or 'safe' route for the plan to take.

The consultant will let the company heads read the draft and then adjust this draft based on their first level critique. Several weeks later the final document will be produced, with an invoice in the region of $30,000.00 to $50,000.00.

The gestation time for the production of this form of plan is around three to six months.

When the consultant 'tells' an organisation what its plan should be, very little input is provided by the individuals or executives working within the client firm. It is difficult therefore for any individual employee to identify his or her contribution to the final plan produced.

Consequently ownership of the plan is low. Commitment to its successful implementation is also correspondingly low.

With the fee paid, the plan in all its leather bound glory, will probably be relegated to a bookshelf or a deep drawer, rarely to be consulted.

So, what we need is a style of planning that will lead to plans that are actually carried out, with gusto and commitment.

In these recessionary times, we now have an approach to formulating business plans that not only gains the commitment of those who must make them work, but has many added advantages that turn business adversity into business prosperity.

This is called Participatory Business Planning (PBP). PBP allows a company both in lean times and boom times to:

- Provide optimal strategic direction

- Knock out competitors

- Maximise the bottom line

- Enable the small company to go public

- Give financiers credible evidence of financial understanding of the needs of the company

- Convert bottom line losses into profit

- Do it all in a short time-scale.

THE PARTICIPATORY BUSINESS PLANNING CONCEPT

Participatory Business Planning did not simply happen. It has been carefully researched and proven to be successful.

A considerable amount of time was spent by the author in Chicago in the mid-1980s evaluating what was then 'state-of-the-art' strategic planning being offered by an inter-national

chartered accounting firm. A thorough evaluation was made of the existing corporate and strategic planning offered by other major consulting firms, worldwide.

Subsequently on returning to Australia, these principles of corporate planning, as they were traditionally formulated, were taken and techniques deriving from counselling psychology were superimposed upon them. The fundamentals of participatory management and industrial democracy were then mixed together and this has produced a unique approach to strategic planning, called Participatory Strategic Planning (PSP).

It was through the evolution of the participatory strategic planning process, that three other modules of participatory planning precipitated out (see chapter 1). The composite of the participatory strategic planning and these three other modules then formed the basis of Participatory Business Planning.

Essentially this type of planning uses a team, or group problem-solving approach, for the formulation of business plans; utilising a think tank structure.

Whilst many people might claim there is nothing new in team planning; this book suggests that how team planning is carried out is the vital element.

HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

(a) Counselling Psychology

It is remarkable that the large impact