Planning
Planning is not wishful thinking, nor is it a dreary statement of
objectives. It ought to be a way of or a blueprint for action to achieve a
desired goal. The goal has to be carefully fixed. If everything is important,
nothing receives attention. The beauty and at once the tragedy of life is that
choices are available and decision is called for. Planning has significance
since choices exist. When choices are available, they are often mutually
exclusive. We have no way of achieving everything at a time. We should make
hard decisions and make integrated planning to achieve the desired goal.
The randomness of the past could have been afforded then, but if pursued
today, would be a costly, if not fatal, error. It is why the country as a whole
plans and each sector of the economy and each unit of the sector plans.
Planning and diversification are the only ways to combat obsolescence and
mortality for a corporate entity. A corporate entity cannot be allowed to die
like an individual as it affects a large number of people in various ways. It
must be enabled to carry on forever like the proverbial brook. The promise of
continued life of a joint stock company needs fulfilment. It is possible only
if its vitality is preserved and strengthened
Some heretical views
Planning is a much-abused word. In today’s world, to say anything
against planning is a sacrilege. The protagonists of planning claim that even
the staunch believers in laissez faire have been forced to appreciate the
inevitability of planning to ensure survival. Hardly anything can be said to
detract from the merits of planning exercise if it means a simple way of
stating what we are trying to achieve, identifying the probable courses of
achievement of the goals and having suitable information on key variables.
But in today’s context of planning, it tends to be a self-sufficient
system becoming an end in itself. The extensive literature on planning is
written in compelling style by those who have the gift of gab and the almost
trouble free career it offers are luring enough to the idly intellectual minds.
Planning is reduced to an elaborate exercise of analysis and model building.
The most indeterminate and unpredictable variables are forecast and debated.
Goals are set from above with a pseudo-scientific precision. Planning is no
longer am option; it has come to stay. Nay, it has proliferated- long range
planning is a more attractive game. It gives a wider time frame to play around.
We are creating a new class of Brahmans in banks. I mean the personnel
in planning department. Brahmans live on the efforts of others, collecting alms
for their livelihood. They are supposed to do the thinking , generation of
ideas and other intellectual pursuits. The planning department in banks today
have a very similar role to perform.
Long Range Planning
When we talk of the efficacy of LRP, or planning, people quickly tell us
that it is the process that matters. I wonder whether in a business
organisation we can forget results and glorify the process. The results are
very important. A process has to be studied from the cost-benefit angle. I am
highly sceptical about the efficacy of planning as it is pursued today.
What is wrong with LRP?
First, it has become a catchy slogan. You have to be wary of anything
tat is sloganised. A slogan, like a mantra, tries to occupy your mind to the
exclusion of other ideas.
We have to clear our minds about the customary resistance to things that
are new. We have to examine the extent to which we are prepared to accept new
ideas. Without new ideas there will be no renewal. Life is a repetitive
process. Things change and renew. Old ideas appear in new forms, nevertheless
such a process is necessary from the survival point of view. But all that is
coined new is not a necessity for its sheer novelty. Let us then approach the
issue with an open mind, ready to accept its aspects that are beneficial and
also willing to discard its rituals that fill no real gap.
Why LRP?
We want to prepare for the unknown future, to make it as shock-free as possible.
We would like to choose a definite direction and steer staedily there instead
of sailing as the wind blows. We would not be happy to be a Columbus who
statrted on a voyage to discover India but discovered America instead. We are
keen to eliminate uncertainties as much as possible. Can anyone find fault with
this approach? Still, the sublimity of purpose and clarity of conceptual
thinking is no guarantee of its feasibility or organisational adaptability.
What uncertainties can we remove? We have to be clear about this.
Secondly, are we at a stage that helps us in the process of action aimed at
foreseeing and solving the problems of future? Have we solved today’s problems?
Have we taken to steps to ensure that we are not all the time solving problems over
and over again only because we seek escapes and never come to grip with the
real problems?
Planning: A few thoughts
The paper of Planning Departent has brought to focus the signinficant
fact that planning has not taken roots in the bank despite the lapse of over
seven years since we took to it. stated in a different way, the importance of
planning has been overlooked in its essence in almost all levels though the
paraphernalia flourish. People down the line have been cynical of the efficacy
of planning. What has gone wrong? Proper conclusions are not possible withouit
a scientific study of the whole problem, but a few off-the-cuff remarks may be
worth ruminating:
(i)
it is well said that there would be no need for
planning if everything is ordered and falls to its place without an effort.
Criticism of planning from the standpoint of the disorganised state of our
environment is pointless. However, it is worth stopping to think whether the
disorganised state of the planners themselves would not have a deleterious
effect on the philosophy and usefulness of planning (Lack of discipline at
various levels).
(ii)
It is of paramount importance to ensure that
the message we are attempting to convey reaches the operating level intact and
correct. For this purpose, we should use a style which will be easy to follow.
(iii)
More than anything else, proper men in proper
places is the key to success of any business or for that matter for fulfilment
of any objective. It is not as though planning was never substantial in the
bank. Here and there, we have had people who were capable of enlivening the
planning function. It would however appear to have been fortuitous that such
men have occupied these positions. The constraints in arriving at apt choices
for the key areas in the bank are obvious, merit having given place to
sociological considerations. But it is the function of management to meet this
challenge in the interests of the bank and it would perhaps be rewarding to
discuss how the planning functionaries could be chosen objectively. We may
perhaps evove a few criteria. One such could be that before assuming a post in
planning wing, one should have had a stint in operations.
(iv)
Probably the training facilities for planning
unctionaries are inadequate. Planning requires even greater skill than
operations. The planning man has to foresee events whereas the operations man
has to face the events. Unless the attitude of the planning man is shaped
rightly, he is likely to feel unwanted, and ennui sets in. To guard against
this he has to be given a fitting orientation.
(v)
Lay minds would discard planning as absurd
because a quick succession of uncontrollable events overtake he most exact
human calculations. This is to be expected in a country where preordained
destiny is a burning faith. While on the one hand it is necessary to educate
our men, on the other it would serve our ends well to close the time gaps in
the planning process. Speed is necessary if planning has to succeed. Very
often, we project for a ‘future’ which becomes ‘present’ or even ‘past’ when
the projections take final shape, but in a credibility game, the figures are
retained, but the ‘future’ gets shifted. This is fooling ourselves and not
planning.
(vi)
The most crucial has been the most delicate
area viz. personnel. People started losing faith in the process of planningwhen
settled budgets were held to be sacrosanct from the business expectations but
violable as far as filling the staff complement was concerned. More than the
numerical strength of staff, the quality counts. The planning functionaries
appear to have had little scope for assessing this area and formulating
corrective techniques. Qualitative areas would be ability to make credit
apparaisal and judgement on the part of lending officers, mental resilience on
the part of the branch manager to cope with behavioural complexes at the
branch, ability to communicate effectively, etc. These are of necessity
planning areas even though the people concerned are under the control of
operations men. We are not allowed to trespass into the personnel area but it
is worth considering whether the personnel department is not part of the
planning process and how to harmonise ‘planning’ and ‘personnel’.
(vii) Planning and operations,
as rightly observed in the note, are not mutually exclusive. The separation of
the two in the bank is purely functional.what is necessary is any amount of
interaction between the two. Planning cannot attain consummation unless vetted
by operations. In fact, ideas do not sprout from vacuum but from practical
experience. We should encourage the operations men to feed the planning wing
with their ideas. All ideas may not be practicable or brilliant, but we need an
assortment to work with. A planned encouragement given to the operations men to
come out with their ideas would help in building greater credibility and
involvement in the planning process.
In 1972 I went to LHO at Madras when I was on leave. I was then serving
as field officer in Madurai. I happened to see the A.O. who enquired about the
performance of the SIB division and I told him that we were ahead of the
target. The A.O. was quick in correcting me, “Say ‘budget’, not ‘target’.” I
felt small not having known the subtle but momentous distinction. Today, after
eight years, looking back, I wuld consider my inferior feelings as unwarranted.
The lesson, however, stays. Budgeting, though virtually synonymous with target
setting in every detail or lack of detail, is the preferred word more like a
mantra than anything of a different connotation.
Our planning functions in the bank appear to be no more than a
statistical gimmickry, more computer-oriented than purposive. We have standard
interpretations punctuated with ‘There is no room for complacency’, ‘We cannot
rest on our laurels’ and the like expressions where the pre-set levels have
been reached or over taken, and with expressions like ‘Greater efforts are
called for’, ‘We hope that the negative variance will be corrected in the
months to come’ etc. when we are awfully short of our goals. Budgeting and
planning are continued in practice as fixing a goal and explaining why we did
not get there.
*********
What does not come is more important than what comes.
Past experience is but a guide to refine our skill at assumptions on
future. It cannot be a susstitute for the assumptions themselves. If we fail to
make assumptions, we fail to plan for the future; we are attempting to
duplicate the past rather assess and prepare for the future.
The success of planning is not vindicated by the closenes between
estoimates and actuals, at least not entirely. For example, he challenge built
into the plan could be far short of the opportunities that unfurled in the
blossoming future. We would have then reached the goal; possibly, once the
‘underestimated’ goal was reached, further efforts might have been diluted and
our competitors wrested the initiative from us. Perhaps, we can dispense with
the idea of success or failure of planning. We can instead think of
‘perfection’ of the planning process.
Policy of the bank should issue in every bit of the planning done from
the grassroot level.
Are everybody’s objectives in the bank the same? Chairman to branch
clerk? Are all branches identical? Is profit the motive of the bank as a whole
or of the unit as well? Can we have a contingency plan? We plan for deposits
and advances. Advances pick up, deposits lag. What do we do? Have we thought of
this in the plan? Why not have a strict budget based approach?
*****
We as a nation took to planning as an indispensable tool for all-round
development soon after independence. In State Bank, we introduced the concept
of planning and budgeting in an organised manner in 1972. There are still in
our country at large and in the bank in particular a sizeable number of
sceptics about planning. What is this due to and how can it be changes? Will
time set it right or should we make efforts to achieve the desired level of
involvement?
Part of the malaise is in our glorious inheritance. The ways of God are
sacred and uninterceptible to us. What is destined will happen. Karma and fate
intertwine us in a cosmic cobweb of purposeless activity and it is our duty to
emancipate ourselves from this tangle. This seems to be the philosophy which
runs in our blood. The point at argument is not whether it is the essence of
our inheritance; it is irrelevant to the topic on hand. It is, however,
reasonably clear that we are most often resigned to the ‘natural’ turn of
events. Efforts are seen, attitudinally, as immaterial to results, as results
are believed to be pre-ordained. Frustrated efforts which far outweigh
successful ones account for this perhaps. But a moment’s reflection may help
cast aside this defeatism which is undermining, nay sapping the very vitals of,
the nation’s future.
We have to be clear in mind that all efforts do not lead to tangible
results. Look at nature’s way of multiplying the species. Not all the union of
spermatozoa and ova result in creation of fresh life. Out of the millions of
such union, just one manages to survive. Not all the rain water is useful. Much
of it goes waste. The gigantic universe does not seem to support life
extra-terrestrially. Therefore, it is not correct to expect that all we plan
for will come to pass in actuality.
