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Parks & Rec Business
| Manager’s Toolbox Round and Round We Go Using the program planning cycle for continuous improvement By Kim S. Uhlik Many if not most managerial obligations are sequential and cyclical. Budgets and reports are due at least annually, programs are designed for particular seasons, and payroll must be met once or twice per month. Yet the ability to stay on-task is not the same as striving for continuous improvement. Thus, some managers stagger round and round in circles, unconsciously repeating the same inefficiencies, while effective leaders are explicitly aware of organizational rhythms and skillfully discover and apply beneficial adjustments. One source of unthinking repetition is the inertia created by TWWADI – The Way We’ve Always Done It – but an equal influence is rooted in news/feature stories, trade books/magazines, and, ironically, even in academic textbooks. As authors in myriad management fields seek to distinguish themselves from each other through promoting their latest gimmicks, seldom do they acknowledge that behind all the shimmer and gloss exists a common model generally known as the program planning cycle (See Figure 1), and that this essential tool empowers productive operational areas within organizations of every stripe. Programmed For Success Originally developed as the Social Planning Cycle (Edginton, Hudson, Dieser and Edginton, 2004), this six-step process draws its strength and durability from the same fount that elite athletes do: the core. Underlying successful organizations – whether social, governmental or economic – is an unshakable foundation comprised of the values and beliefs on which the cycle’s first step is built: Philosophy. Notably, this all-important initial component is not always included in other models, which might explain why organizations struggle when attempting to follow such schemes. More significantly, Philosophy not only is the cycle’s cornerstone, but also is the touchstone to which every subsequent step connects in order to remain true. With Philosophy serving as an ever-present guide, Needs Identification and Assessment becomes the mechanism for overcoming inertia. In an ever-evolving environment, the past is not automatically a predictor of the future, and employing the Golden Rule may no longer suffice. Asking those you serve what they would like rather than doing what you have always done insures that TWWADI continuously is put to the test. Further, your Philosophy will help distinguish what you should do from what you could do. Although most models include a Planning or Design stage, fewer among them discuss its principal barrier, concisely summed up by the phrase, “If you haven’t the time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?” Cost-benefit analyses, program-budget development, timeline and script writing, and marketing-mix decisions remain time-consuming activities, and it’s no secret that harried professionals suffer from time poverty. When a new idea is proposed, or pressure to re-design or innovate is being felt, the instinct is to simply jump in and see what happens. Faced with the dual constraints of too much to do and too little time in which to do it, the endless temptation is to cut corners. Philosophy dictates that excellence absolutely requires attention to details; there is no shortcut and there is no “do-over.” If done well, the tedium of planning is amply rewarded during Implementation. Still, even the best planning cannot account for all possibilities, and effective managers will conduct a mini-cycle within the larger sequence. In this sense, the program planning cycle can be a formative device (used during Implementation) as well as a summative one (providing an overarching operating framework). As always, Philosophy will inform the decisions (doing things right, or doing the right things) that appropriately solve the great and small issues invariably occurring as ideas become reality. As Implementation nears its end, summative Evaluation begins. The keystone at this step actually is laid during the planning stage, where measurable outcomes are established based on goals and their objectives. Similar to Philosophy, however, Evaluation is omitted in some models or neglected in others. Typically – if included at all – exit surveys or interviews are haphazardly constructed and informally conducted afterthoughts. This imprecision leads to invalid, unreliable and unrepresentative data that produce useless or even dangerous results and conclusions: the only thing worse than no data are bad data. Once again, the values embodied in Philosophy ought to inspire rigor in Evaluation. When good data have been collected and analyzed, Modification is the venue in which necessary change occurs. If one of the organizational values is honesty, then the process of innovation becomes less painful, if not actually welcomed. If attention is being paid to the Product Life Cycle tool (to be featured in the February 2007 Manager’s Toolbox), then Modification is where the revitalization leading to new growth takes place. Wrong Turns The first truth is that if everyone followed every step of the program planning cycle with due diligence, quality levels would be uniformly excellent, and the expectations of those we serve would be exceeded regularly. In contrast, the combined influence of TWWADI and of the authors’ above-mentioned competitive posturing is that the cycle’s well-reasoned and time-tested steps are unnecessarily supplemented, rearranged or omitted. The second truth, of equal importance, is that the details must be addressed while simultaneously staying true to your organization’s overarching values. What’s the use of building a finely tuned engine for a car that is about to be driven off a cliff? How many organizations have been lured away from their core mission by pursuing initiatives – in the name of entrepreneurialism, for example – that ultimately run counter to it? In the face of quick fixes and the “next big thing” mentality, the elegance of the program planning cycle lies in its marriage of proven process to a clearly defined stabilizing philosophy that is reinforced at every step, a true path spiraling upward through the ongoing rejuvenation of both staff and service. Kim S. Uhlik is Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at San Jose State University, where he coordinates the Leadership and Administration emphasis. He can be reached via e-mail at kuhlik@casa.sjsu.edu. Work cited: Edginton, C.R., Hudson, S.D., Dieser, R.B., and Edginton, S.R. Leisure programming: A service-centered and benefits approach (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. |
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