Module: Strategic Planning
Introduction
All organisations need to plan. In addition, all organisations need to be clear about their strategy. This module looks at strategy and broad strategic planning in very general terms. It will help radio stations to develop broad strategy and to plan how to achieve that strategy.What's missing is the detailed planning of day-to-day progamming and broadcasting.
Broad Aim
The aim of this module is to clarify the link between mission, strategy and plans, and to give participants a view of the strategic planning process. The hidden agenda in this module is to do some strategic analysis and strategic thinking about community radio stations and the sector as a whole. It is really important to challenge 'sloppy' thinking and easy answers in this module.
Training outcomes
By the end of this module, participants will be able to: Review the mission of the organisation Conduct a SWOT analysis Identify the critical strategic issues facing the organisation Choose from among a set of alternative strategies Set SMART objectives Plan how to implement the objectives
Process guidelines
This workshop is most useful when run in-house as part of a planning process. If you are planning to use the workshop to conduct an actual planning session, then you will probably need three days to run the planning workshop. If you wish to use the planning workshop as a learning experience, then you will need to discuss the steps and methods you are using and reflect on them with the group as you go through the workshop. For example you would remind people where you've been: "In our first session we re visited the mission, now we are doing the first half of the SWOT analysis - which is the analysis of the Strengths and Weaknesses of the organisation."
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Using this material in a purely training situation is more difficult, especially where you have a group made up of different organisations. In this case, you should either have people working with colleagues from their own radio station, or you could suggest that small groups focus on one station only for the workshop on planning. Please make sure that you are familiar with the material before you tackle this module, it is not easy!
Total time required for this module: Minimum time 12h30 min chosing selected activities as suggested below. To work through the whole module would take three to four days Materials required for this module: Flip chart Permanent Markers for the facilitator Prestick 1 set of notes/ manual per person
Time 15 min Notes and suggestions Do a brief introduction on strategy, then ask participants to buzz in pairs and answer the questions on strategies. The kinds of answers you are looking for:
Stations target different groups: e.g. youth/ middle aged, economic classes, etc Stations focus on education, music, talk shows, etc Stations are public broadcasters (supported by the state) or commercial (supported by advertising) or community - mix with some funding. Stations have different approaches to advertising etc
Session Activity 1: What is strategy?
Activity 2: The 'right' strategy
45min
Ask people to work in groups and develop a list of criteria.
If people do not understand the concept of criteria, ask them to think about what they look for when they are buying a new car (e.g. price, size of engine, age, speed etc), or if they were to chose a husband (age, temperament, economic status, health etc) Point out that the criteria should be prioritised and then applied.
Activity 3: What is strategic planning?
15min
Brief input on strategy, and overview of the flow chart.
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Session
Time
Notes and suggestions
You may not have time to do all the stages of strategic planning in a training workshop. The following are some of the important activities that you could usefully cover even with a group made up of people from different stations. Stage 2: SWOT 1h30 min 15 min intro, 1h in groups, 30 - 60 min plenary discussion The SWOT analysis - strengths and weaknesses. Do this in small groups, with each group focusing on one radio station, or on a 'typical station'. You could have one or two groups looking at a rural station, and one or two looking at urban stations. You can get a full report on the discussion - which will raise useful issues, or you could simply ask groups share their experience of doing the analysis. Point out that the more honest people are, the more useful this kind of analysis is. If we hide the problems from ourselves, we cannot find solutions. Make sure that people don't use glib judgments like: 'lack of commitment' or 'people are not serious' - encourage them to keep asking "But Why does this happen?" The analysis must unearth root problems (which may be internal or external) not just surface symptoms. Stage 3: SWOT 2h 30 min Stakeholder Analysis - you could do this for the community radio sector as a whole, as a way of illustrating it. It is quite useful to do in plenary. Start with a brainstorm of all stakeholders. Give each person two or three coloured cards and ask them to write one stakeholder per card, and then come and stick them up on the wall. Categorise them and then prioritise the 5 most important stakeholders.(Remember that the term 'stakeholder' does not imply either a positive or negative relationship: some stakeholders are friends, some are clearly competitors, and many are groups or people whose support and co-operation we could gain.) Put people into 5 small groups with one stakeholder each to analyse. The group will need to answer the questions on page 11, and report on them to the big group. Remind them that the stakeholder analysis must be concluded with identifying the Opportunities and Threats for the sector or the station.
Example of headings for a wall chart analysising stakeholders
Stakeholde r
Their aims What they (in general) want from us
What we want from them
Problems / comments
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Advertisers To sell a lot of their products
Large audiences of people who will buy their products
Money
Our listeners are not high income - so we are not seen as attractive by many advertisers
Note that in this example, I have used a broad category (advertisers), in fact to do a good stakeholder analysis, you need to name and analyse all potential advertisers (i.e. all the actual companies that you may want to approach for advertising). Your analysis must be as specific as possible, and may require you to do some in-depth research. In real life, you would do the brainstorm and prioritising of stakeholders in one session. Then allocate stakeholders to different people, who will go and do research and prepare their analysis for the next session.
Setting Objectives 4 - 5 hours Input and exercises : 30 - 45 min: Give a brief overview of what an objective is and why you need them. Then discuss 'SMART' objectives and do the exercise in buzz groups "are these SMART objectives?" (Activity 4 page 21). It is worth spending time doing this properly, as people really need to learn to write good objectives. Some people teach you to always write objectives in a set format. The format is not important, what is important is that the objective must describe the outcome that you are working for. The objective must give you a really clear picture of what you intend to achieve not what you will be doing! (So avoid objectives like: "we will run three workshops" and rather describe the outcomes of the workshops " … as a result of our education activity, workshop participants will be able to fix a transmitter without the help of outside technicians." Group work on setting objectives (1 to 2 hours in groups, 1 hour plenary) Put people into groups and ask them to set objectives for a radio station that one group member belongs to. (e.g. objectives for an education campaign, a health campaign, a fund-raising campaign, a year plan for the station as a whole etc.) Let them pretend to all be
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members of that radio station. Make sure that the Objectives they develop describe outcomes (what will be different at the end of the campaign, or year) not activities (not 'holding three events!). Events are part of the action steps, not the objectives. If you can see that groups are struggling, get them back into plenary, chose one objective that a group is working on and get the whole group to help you develop it into a SMART objective. Get them to present their objectives to the group for comment - and invite critical comment about the 'SMARTness' of the objectives. Planning Minimum of 1 hour in groups, 1 hour in plenary 45 min Group work on planning: Then suggest that each group does planning, using the planning tool (page 24) on one or two objectives. Again present this to the whole group for comment.
Planning to plan
This is a good concluding activity: Do it in small groups, and then have a plenary report from one group only.
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