The Challenge
The world and our communities are changing at a rapid pace. How can the leaders and managers of public and private organizations cope with these changes and the challenges that confront our communities, now and in the years ahead? How should they respond to the increasingly uncertain and interconnected environments in which they operate? How should they respond to dwindling or unpredictable resources; new public expectations or formal mandates; demographic changes; deregulation or reregulation; upheavals in international, national, state, and local economies and polities; and new roles for public institutions and NGOs, including calls for them to collaborate more often? What should their missions be? How can they create greater and more enduring public value? How can they build on institutional strengths and take advantage of opportunities while maximizing institutional weaknesses and overcoming challenges to the issues of governance or their organizations? How can they formulate desirable strategies and implement them effectively?
The Solution
These challenges are all too familiar. Public institutions and communities are confronted with a bewildering array of difficult situations requiring an effective response, the type being proffered by SK Optimal Solutions Konsult. Our Public Policy and Planning for Government and NGOs is based on two premises. The first is that leaders must think, act, and learn strategically—precisely what is required of them to grasp the challenges they face, figure out what to do about them, and follow through with effective implementation that fulfils their missions, meets their mandates, satisfies their constituents, and creates public value in the years ahead. These leaders and managers will need to exercise as much discretion as possible in the areas under their control. They need to develop effective strategies to cope with changed and changing circumstances, and they need to develop a coherent and defensible basis for their decisions. They also need to build the capacity of their organizations to respond to significant challenges in the future.
The second premise is that leaders and managers are most likely to discern the way forward via a reasonably disciplined process of deliberation with others when the situations faced require more than technical fixes. They will need to design and construct, remodel, or repair existing processes or pathways for deliberation among speakers and audiences that include analysis, synthesis, and judgement; intellect and emotion; reasonable objectivity, but also partiality and passion; at times transparency and publicity; and at all times listening to and respecting what others say, at least until final choices are made.
We’ll Work Together: Public Private Partnership (P3)
Here at SK Optimal Solutions Konsult we are at our best in making extensive use of analysis and synthesis in deliberative settings to help leaders and managers successfully address the major challenges that their organization (or other entity) faces. Public and NGO leaders need skills, knowledge, and tools to respond effectively and swiftly to translate planning into action. Our Public Policy and Planning approach enhances strategic planning that is linked to leadership, stakeholder involvement, the budget process, systemic redesign, and performance management helping our clients to accomplish the political work of leadership and progressive governance through strategic change. Our time-tested strategic planning model has helped many organizations in resolving complex social problem issues as well as being helpful for:
- Gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information to consider its strategic significance and frame possible choices
- Producing considered judgements among key decision makers about desirable, feasible, defensible, and acceptable missions, goals, strategies, and actions, along with complementary initiatives, such as new, changed, or terminated policies, programs, and projects, or even an overall systemic design
- Addressing key institutional challenges now and in the foreseeable future
- Enhancing institutional learning and formative and summative evaluations
- Creating significant and enduring public value
The SK Optimal Solutions Konsult Public Policy and Planning approach combines both practical and useful insights with realistic examples, intellectual rigor, and clarity to help public and NGOs successfully navigate the complexity of an ever-changing environment. It has been described as a “must-have” for government institutions and serious-minded leaders of NGOs who wish to be successful in thinking, planning, and improving systems and institutional outcomes with strategic results.