Strategic Planning: SWOT Analysis, Strategies, Policies,
2.2 Program Alternatives
Program alternatives provide the fundamental building blocks for strategic planning. A program can be defined as a set of closely related, interdependent activities or services that contribute to a common objective. A program is concerned with a time-span of expenditures that often extends beyond the current fiscal period. The description of each program alternative should include all of the costs associated with its execution.
One such set of activities, cutting across several agencies or departments that focuses on problems of juvenile delinquency, can constitute a program. The establishment of a trauma unit in a hospital emergency room is another example of a program. The internal auditing process within the controller’s office may be defined as a program. A university research center concentrating on the environmental sciences may be treated as a program, or may have a number of programs associated with its research mission.
Identifying program alternatives is perhaps the most critical part of the strategic planning process. While some program alternatives may focus on issues that are relevant to the organization as a whole, the majority of these alternatives will relate to management (programmatic or budgetary) concerns and operational or tactical activities. Program alternatives should be quantifiable—an effort should be made to specify a key result to be accomplished within a specific time period. While program alternatives should be realistic and attainable, they should also present a challenge to improve conditions consistent with existing organizational policies, practices, and procedures. They also should be consistent with the resources available (or anticipated) and should assign responsibility and accountability, even in joint efforts.
Under traditional management practices, decision-making frequently be- comes input-oriented. That is to say, the analysis of objectives and alternative methods of achieving these objectives is based primarily on cost-related issues rather than being policy-based. Under this traditional approach, the effectiveness of these inputs seldom is assessed in terms of meeting identified constituent/
client needs or the performance of services. As a consequence, there is no guar- antee that the adopted strategies will be coherently responsive to comprehensive objectives.
The formulation of precise, qualitative statements that areoutput-oriented, however, is not an easy task. A common tendency is to describe what the organization does instead of addressing the question of why these activities are appropriate within its mandate. The objective of a public employment agency, for example, is not to interview, test, counsel, and place unemployed persons in jobs. This statement focuses on what the agency does—on a process—rather than on the strategic objectives of the agency. A more appropriate objective would be to assist the unemployed and underemployed in securing satisfactory employment appropriate to their abilities so as to contribute to an increased
standard of living for individuals and families within the community. More specific management objectives might focus on accomplishing the principal purpose for specific target groups, such as the disadvantaged, handicapped, youths, residents of urban ghettos, and the rural unemployed.
Program alternatives describehow andwherespecific resources (person- nel, equipment, materials, capital expenditures, and so on) will be used in the accomplishment of a strategic objective. Program alternatives often reflect or are drawn from management objectives. They specify the means for achieving a single key result based on the resources (fiscal and personnel) available or an- ticipated. These program alternatives, in turn, should be related to performance measures and measures of effectiveness that identify the products, service units, and the constituents/clients associated with the activities of the organization in carrying out the operations of the program. Appropriate measures of efficiency and effectiveness provide a base line against which to test the overall perfor- mance of the program. In the absence of such measures, the traditional “least cost” compromise is likely to prevail.
Assume, for example, that one of the strategic objectives adopted is continue to provide for the overall welfare and prosperity of the City and its citizens by developing and enhancing the City’s economic base. Strategies formulated to achieve this objective may include to:
Further develop the City’s infrastructure to accommodate future economic growth;
Seek to diversify the economic base;
Enhance the attractiveness of the area for “high tech” companies;
Identify prime areas that have the potential for future industrial and commercial development;
Improve the downtown commercial area; and
Further capitalize on the City’s status as a regional trade center
Several program alternatives should be developed for each of these strategies. The strategy that pertains to the City’s infrastructure, for example, may yield the following program alternatives:
Study the feasibility of expanding the City’s water supply to accommodate the anticipated demands from growth and development anticipated through the year 2005.
Expand the service area and routes of the public transit system to meet the needs of new residential, commercial, and industrial development over the next five years.
Acquire and develop new sites to further expand the City’s parks and recreation system in accordance with the recommendations of the strategic plan.
Most public programs extend beyond the period of the annual budget.
Therefore, decisions regarding the allocation of resources can have significant implications well beyond the fiscal year under consideration. The extended time horizon of strategic planning makes explicit provision for this characteristic of public resource commitment by shifting the focus of decision from the traditional one-year cycle to a longer time frame. Multi-year program plans should be developed as inputs to each year’s budget deliberations. These multi-year plans must be more than linear extrapolations of the current commitments and must reflect the complex shift in demands from increasing or decreasing client groups or constituencies.
Emphasis on program alternatives involves a shift in focus from traditional groupings of activities, based on organizational lines of responsibilities, to pro- grams and subprograms directed toward the achievement of explicitly identified public objectives. The result is also a shift in the approach to resource allocation (budgeting). The traditional line-item/object of expenditure budget focuses on inputs, such as expenditures for personnel, material and supplies, travel, and equipment. The programmatic approach tends to emphasize the outputs of par- ticular efforts that may involve more than one department or agency. These distinctions will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 8.
While these procedural steps may be initiated sequentially, more often they are carried out through a series of iterations. In identifying management objectives, for example, further clarification may be achieved as to the programs and subprograms of an organization. This amplification, in turn, may assist in determining which activities should be placed within each subprogram.
Sometimes it will not be possible, however, to formulate precise statements of objectives until the schedule of activities have been examined in some detail.
The establishment of such schedules, in turn, may require a further examination of alternative strategies and associated measures of efficiency, economy, and effectiveness.
3 EXPLICIT POLICY SETS
Policies include guidelines, rules, procedures, and administrative practices that are established to support the efforts to implement strategies and achieve objec- tives. Policies provide guides to decision making and facilitate solving repetitive or recurring problems. Policies are especially important in strategic implemen- tation because they outline an organization’s expectations of its employees and managers. They clarify what can and can not be done in pursuit of an organi- zation’s objectives. They set boundaries, constraints, and limits on the kind of administrative action that can be taken to reward and sanction behavior. Policies provide a basis for management control, promote consistency and coordination across organizational units, and reduce the amount of time and effort that man-
agers must spend making decisions. Policies clarify what work is to be done by whom, and they promote the delegation of decision making to appropriate managerial levels where various problems usually arise.