From time to time I get asked about the best way of preparing a local or regional development development strategy.
Most of these strategies, and especially Government funded ones, fail. They generate a report but no action. The reasons Government funded ones especially fail is that the terms of the grant usually focus on the report, whereas effective planning is all about process.
Peter Drucker, the management guru who did so much to define strategic planning, described it as the futurity of current decisions. By this, he meant simply that planning was effective to the degree that it influenced what we did now, taking the future into account.
Over the next few posts I propose to provide a nuts and bolts guide to the whole process, drawing from my previous writing and experience.
