Who would benefit from this program?

Companies and organisations where critical decisions are made by a board, committee or team.

What does it involve?

Our vast experience in organisational development over this period puts us at the forefront of today's participative planning trends.

The key to a successful plan is the commitment of all those involved in implementing the plan. Where planning is undertaken as a specialised and exclusive activity, gaining commitment is at best difficult, at worst impossible. A more inclusive planning process — which involves the commitment of all role players from the very start — encourages participants to take ownership of the process and the results.

The success of Participative Planning depends largely on the process that is used to guide and encourage participants. Baskin Clarke uses a planning methodology with a participative approach, to encourage creative thinking in a practical, efficient, and logical framework. Organisational Development methodologies developed in the seventies and eighties have been refined to provide a range of techniques that assist synthesis and analysis. The methodology is based on the ZOPP process*.

Outcomes of each session are incorporated into a draft report that evolves into a complete plan. The final outcome of the process is an easily understandable and logical planning matrix, which incorporates indicators to monitor progress.

Our participative planning methodologies suit a range of planning functions, from strategic management to the process of managing a project through its life cycle, or conflict resolution.

Benefits of Participative Planning

The use of a participative approach in the development and implementation of strategic and business plans is widely recognised, and provides a number of supplementary benefits:

• Executives are encouraged to define common and definite objectives.
• Clarifies the scope of responsibility for all players concerned, encouraging accountability, ownership and sustainability.
• The process encourages all participants to be involved in planning, which leads to automatic support for the plan they have created (buy-in).
• Improves the implementability of projects, and consequently their impact.
• Management tends to focus on operational and medium term issues. Participation in planning raises their awareness of external and long term issues, and encourages their input to devise solutions.
• Board and Management members are usually “time poor” but “strategy rich”. The approach provides a vehicle through which strategic ideas and issues can be quickly recorded, with operational details to be dealt with at lower levels in the organisation.
• The process provides indicators for steering and monitoring on an operational or project level.
• Improves communication and co-ordination.
• Training and skills needs are identified and addressed at management level.
• Institutionalisation of the process improves an organisation’s ability to implement projects.

Cost and Duration

Baskin Clarke Consulting will prepare a proposal tailored to your specific requirements.

Contact Ronnie Baskind

Print this document

To download a prinable PDF version of this fact sheet, please click here.

* ZOPP is the acronym for the German expression “Ziel Orientierte Projekt Planung” or objectives oriented project planning. It is a methodology for addressing the planning function in the process of managing a development project through its life cycle. This methodology has specific relevance to organizations where joint decision-making is the preferred management style, and in organizations where profit is not the only indicator of organisational performance. In these organizations, it is extremely important that activities are aligned to achieve the stated goals.