The successful
completion and launch of Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision has been an
interesting experiment in public policy and strategic planning.
اضافة اعلان
Many correctly cite the diverse cross-section of
expert stakeholders from the government, the private sector, and civil society
as being perhaps one of its unique features. Observers and pundits are now
preoccupied, looking at implementation, the mechanisms to achieve it, and its
chances of success. While this is important, other interesting features of the
effort appear to have gone unnoticed.
Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision will
undoubtedly have an enormous transformative effect on the country, but viewing
it as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, misses a critical point.
One of the most important overlooked outcomes of this effort is that it could
institutionalize the process of strategic planning in government. To paraphrase
US president Dwight Eisenhower, plans are nothing, planning is everything.
Management experts often say that plans effectively
become obsolete once the ink dries on the paper. Institutionalizing the process
of planning, on the other hand, has longer-term benefits.
Jordanian strategic planning appears to have
backslid considerably in recent years, as the country and authorities alike were
overwhelmed by one regional crisis after another.
Consider, for instance, the disruption created by
the regular influx of about 10–20 percent of Jordan’s population as refugees
almost every decade to the decimal, since 1991 (first Gulf War, US invasion of
Iraq, and the Syrian conflict, respectively). Even the most resourceful and
well-developed country would struggle to implement its plans under such
stresses.
The question then is: how can planning processes
account for shocks of this magnitude? No satisfactory answer may be given to
this question. Nonetheless, planning processes that account for worse-case
scenarios will do better in mitigating such risks than planning processes that
assume a stable environment. This is especially the case in our region, which
has been anything but stable. Jordan has witnessed a major conflict every
decade since 1948, and has been directly impacted by each.
Management experts often say that plans effectively become obsolete once the ink dries on the paper. Institutionalizing the process of planning, on the other hand, has longer-term benefits.
Accordingly, and while it might paint a bleak
outlook, future plans could benefit from taking into account conflict and
displacement as being permanent features of this region, and Jordan as being
the party that regularly pays the price for them. In risk management, this type
of risk would be classified as a “known unknown”, while shocks such as
pandemics and financial crises, much more difficult to predict or plan for,
would be classified as “unknown unknowns”.
The hope that the Economic Modernization Vision can
reinvigorate and embed the process of planning in Jordanian institutions should
not be underestimated. Planning processes can have second- and third-order
consequences that could reform and improve the performance of individual public
institutions from the ground up through better communication and coordination
among their cadres, and then across institutions, horizontally, and vertically
with the Prime Ministry.
Planning is an excellent and straightforward way to
reform the public sector and the consultative aspects needed for policy making.
It is a proactive way of discussing goals, objectives, strategies, and tasks
that need to be accomplished. Plans are simply the documentation of that
process. The alternative, a crisis management mentality to public governance,
has not served the country well.
Hopefully this can also be internalized as a lesson from
this experience.
Nasser bin Nasser is the founder and CEO of Ambit Advisory.
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