15March96 Benchmark Notes To: "USGS Employees"<@gs_all> From: " benchmark, Reston, VA " (Benchmark) Subject: 15March96 Benchmark Notes X-Mailer: TO: All USGS Employees FROM: Director SUBJECT: 15March96 Benchmark Notes To send E-mail to me or my immediate staff, please use one of the following addresses: SMTP: BENCHMRK@USGS.GOV Groupwise: INTERNET:BENCHMRK@USGS.GOV Banyan Vines: BENCHMRK CCMail: SMTP_MAIL BENCHMRK@USGS.GOV Please share this message with other employees. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Program Coordination Workshop Held A workshop of institutionally historic significance took place in Reston on February 7 and 8. For the first time ever, a bureau- wide group, including the Theme Coordinators, senior managers and program coordinators from all three divisions, and staff from the National Biological Service, met to discuss future program directions for the USGS. The context for these discussions included the draft Strategic Plan for the USGS, government reinvention initiatives, and the FY 98 budget cycle. This meeting was a wonderful opportunity for people from throughout the bureau to discuss programmatic issues and future program directions. The Policy Council joined the group for parts of the meeting, and we were inspired by the synergy and creative spirit that prevailed. A copy of the notes from this meeting are available as a USGS internal Web page at http://www.usgs.gov.8888/USGS_program_coord/mtg_notes.html. Strategic Planning And now to the main topic of this Benchmark Note: the role of strategic planning in the USGS. Some of you may recall that during my first few weeks as Director, back in late March of 1994, I visited our three regional centers and convened all-hands meetings at which I shared my vision of the U.S. Geological Survey. I did so as someone who had returned to the Survey family after a very long absence, all of it spent in academic institutions. It was during this long absence that I saw the onset of many of the profound changes that are now sweeping across the societal and political landscape in which we function and to which we are, therefore, inextricably linked. These changes were brought forcibly to our attention through a proposal that the USGS be abolished, hardly a ringing endorsement of what we have long believed to be work that was vital to the well-being of the American people and to the advancement of earth science. One of the many things I proposed that we do back in March 1994 was to establish a process of strategic and continuous programmatic planning for the future. My serial experiences at Texas A & M, Iowa State University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory over a period of almost a decade had shown me the enormous value of strategic planning, and the USGS Transition Team had also recognized its importance in offering a recommendation that we institute such a process. The challenges to the USGS during the past months have made this planning process even more important than it seemed when I first proposed it. Let me share with you now where we are today on this vital issue.=20 The USGS Strategic Planning Team has been hard at work on behalf of all of us and is now putting the final touches on their work, which officially will end in April when the Policy Council releases the USGS Strategic Plan. In early February, the Policy Council met with the team for 2=BD days in Northern Virginia to begin the process of examining, discussing, and approving the plan that is a proposed guide to our future. The purpose of this Benchmark Note is to help you understand what it is that we are going to be distributing in April. In essence, I want to lay out the context in which the Strategic Planning Team has been working so diligently, particularly since I believe there are many differing expectations about what a bureau-wide strategic plan might contain. =20 Contrary to what some may believe, strategic planning is not about internal reorganization. Neither does it analyze or critique existing programs or their perceived value. A strategic plan is also NOT a set of marching orders. Fundamentally, a strategic plan is simply a road map drawn up to reveal most if not all of the different possible routes and options for moving from where we are today to where we need to be in 2005 in order to remain viable, strong, and relevant. Various optional routes are defined in the plan and in associated documents prepared by the team (e.g. reports on threats and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of the USGS, scenarios of the future, and so on), as are the perceived conditions we might expect to encounter along the way. I want to reiterate this point: the strategic plan will not tell us how to achieve any of our goals; rather, it will indicate strategic actions that will benefit the USGS in spite of the changing societal, economic, and political conditions that affect us. To help you further understand what the essence of strategic planning is about, as well as how and why we all need to be prepared to embrace it here in the USGS in order to get on with our future, I will borrow words from one of the Nation's most admired and articulate strategic planning experts, a man who has devoted his study of the subject specifically to nonprofit organizations, George Keller. In his highly respected 1983 book on the subject, Keller explains: "Strategic planning looks OUTWARD and is focused on keeping the institution in step with the changing environment. This is strategic planning's SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT contribution to organizational decision making. For decades most [organizations] have been INNER-directed, formulating their aims on the bedrock of their own [past] commitments, traditions, [existing staff], desires, and ambitions for growth, LARGELY IGNORING THE WORLD OUTSIDE..." (Uppercase type used here for emphasis; the words in brackets are generic words substituted for the academic words used in Keller's original text.) "... perhaps three-quarters of all change at most institutions... is now triggered by outside factors such as directives from the [White House]... an economic recession... a governor's change of politics, a new law from [Congress], a sweeping court decision..., [or] shifts in...job markets. The more aware institutions have realized that and have moved swiftly to improve their data collection and monitoring of the society external to their... gates. [Organizations] are switching from a SELF-assertion model of their existence to a biological model of continuous adaptation=20 to their powerful, changing social environment." The new USGS strategic plan was developed with enough flexibility to accommodate the development of strategic plans at all levels from division to program or even project. This plan should be a beginning point, from which employees can map out their particular future course in parallel with their colleagues, and a general framework and model, within which both near-term decisions and long-term programmatic goals can be established. Keller continues, "[an organization's] own direction and objectives need to be SHAPED in the light of the emerging national situation and new external factors... And because the external environment is in constant flux, strategic planning must be continuous, pervasive, and indigenous, not a blueprint or the work of a planning officer or a one-time experiment at some mountain retreat." Our new strategic planning process IS dynamic and continual. The next formal revision of the strategic plan will probably be only two or three years from now. In the interim, the theme coordinators, under the direction of Gary Hill, will be working with the Program and Policy Councils and senior program managers to look at the forces that drive change in our programs, evaluate the portfolio of programs that the USGS is carrying out to meet customer needs and constituent interests, and reexamine the relevance of our programs to societal needs. Implementation steps derived from this Benchmark effort will be developed, deliberated on, and refined by senior USGS management at a workshop scheduled for early May. The bureau strategic plan can be seen as an overarching plan, within which the strategic plans of programs and other organizational units will nest. This plan to be released in April is only a beginning, but it lays out the future road map into which all other plans will fit.=20 We face the arrival of the next millennium in less than four years. Now, more than ever before in our long history, we must be prepared to "think outside the box" of our past values, traditions, and processes in order to solve the problems of the future.=20 Gordie