The Failed Strategy
Most of the people who persist in the wilderness leave nothing behind but bleached hones.
When a strategy or an action doesn’t seem to be working, the rule is, “If at first you don’t succeed, try once more. Then do something else.” The first time around, a new strategy very often doesn’t work. Then one must sit down and ask what has been learned. Maybe the service isn’t quite right. Try to improve it, to change it, and make another major effort. Maybe, though I am reluctant to encourage this, you might make a third effort. After that, go to work where the results are. There is only so much time and so many resources, and there is so much work to be done.
There are exceptions. You can see some great achievements where people labored in the wilderness for twenty-five years. But these examples are very rare. Most of the people who persist in the wilderness leave nothing behind but bleached bones. There are also true believers who are dedicated to a cause where success, failure, and results are irrelevant, and we need such people. They are our conscience. But very few of them achieve. Maybe their rewards are in Heaven. But that’s not sure either. “There is no joy in Heaven over empty churches,” Saint Augustine wrote sixteen hundred years ago to one of his monks who busily built churches all over the desert. So, if you have no results, try a second time. Then look at it carefully and move on to something else.
ACTION POINT: If at first you don’t succeed, sit down and ask what you have learned. Improve your approach and try once more. Maybe make a third effort. Then do something else.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning deals with futurity of present decisions.
Traditional planning asks: “What is most likely to happen?” Planning for uncertainty asks, instead: “What has already happened that will create the future?
Strategic planning is not a box of tricks, a bundle of techniques. It is analytical thinking and commitment of resources to action. It is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity, organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions, and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feed-back. The question that faces the strategic decision-maker is not what his organization should do tomorrow. It is: “What do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow?” The question is not what will happen in the future. It is” “What futurity do we have to build into our present thinking and doing, what time spans do we have to consider, and how do we use this information to make a rational decision now?”
ACTION POINT: Develop a strategic planning process that focuses present decisions on the future welfare of your organization. Establish responsibilities for the implementation and monitoring of these strategic decisions. Perform audits of the results of each strategic decision in order to improve your effectiveness in making strategic decisions.
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
Thomas Jefferson
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Henry Ford
“Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”
Suzy Kassem
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide — except perhaps Hogwarts.”
J.K. Rowling
[ads1]
“The drug war is a total scam, prescription drugs kill 300K a year, while marijuana kills no one, but they spend billions/year ‘fighting’ it, because pot heads make for good little slaves to put into private prisons, owned by the banks who launder the drug money, and it’s ALL DOCUMENTED.”
Alex E. Jones
“When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.”
Charles Dickens
“Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.”
Joseph E. Stiglitz
“A leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader.”
Suzy Kassem
“The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.”
Charles Moore
“The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,’ said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. ‘Like the profits made by banks,’ he went on. ‘This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way of making money without work.”
Leo Tolstoy
“A great leader must serve the best interests of the people first, not those of multinational corporations. Human life should never be sacrificed for monetary profit. There are no exceptions. In addition, a leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands being revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader.”
Suzy Kassem
“Banks do not create money for the public good. They are businesses owned by private shareholders. Their purpose is to make a profit.”
John Rogers
“The works which this man leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent; and yet his name will shine out with lustre in the history of the sciences.
{Cuvier on Joseph Banks}”
Georges Cuvier
“You could carve out the inside of a brick and hide your money in it for safe keeping. It’s certainly safer than keeping it in the bank!”
Nicole McKay