Strategic Planning begins with a description of current conditions. This applies to businesses, personal situations and the military. It requires an accurate assessment of capabilities and weaknesses, technology, financing and trends.
In businesses it is used to leverage capabilities to expand and develop strategies to remove weaknesses and accurately determine the financial costs compared to projected revenue.
In personal situations it is used to ensure we can function and support ourselves and may involve accurately assessing our marketable skills and adding skills that bring higher pay and more autonomy. It may involve decision to improve our health or well-being. God is usually our best advisor.
In the military Strategic
Planning is used to assess current capabilities and weaknesses and identify
remedies. A key question today is to determine how the Houthis and Al Qaeda
receive and store their missiles and drones. Al Qaeda controls southern Yemen.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/24/yemen-conflict-who-controls-what
If they use a system of underground tunnels like Gaza, it may require a ground war to stop the attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, unless they can use another strategy to accurately determine targets.
In 1984, I was selected to
begin a Fellowship in Strategic Studies at Western Behavioral Science
Institute. It was an on-line course with annual 1 week, in-person sessions in
La Jolla CA. We had 30 to a class that included Electronics Company Executives,
Government Executives, Military Colonels preparing for War College and
Academics. We examined case studies of failures like the DEC Rainbow PC and
others. I graduated in 1986.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Behavioral_Sciences_Institute
The DEC Rainbow was a
non-relational PC that couldn’t talk with the IBM PC and it was doomed. The DEC
CEO had appointed his buddy to be in charge of the Rainbow project who didn’t
see the problem and the CEO didn’t see the problem either. When it failed in
1982, we all bought Rainbows for $50 and used them as dumb terminals. You could
use the Rainbow to write documents and could create spreadsheets in Lotus 123,
but couldn’t send it anywhere without wiring software to let your mainframe
receive it.
https://digital.com/digital-equipment-corporation/#:~:text=It%20was%20the%20inflexibility%20of,co
My favorite failure story was
when Chevrolet introduced the 1962 Chevy Nova in South America. “no va” in
Spanish means “won’t go. They all had a laugh and then Chevy Novas were finally
sold in South America.
https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090
The worst failure in US strategic planning occurred when US companies thought they would gain access to China’s 1.4 billion consumers if they send their manufacturing to China for a 50% reduction in cost. It was a bad deal. China stole their technology and are selling their own brands in China at lower prices. This was a “Bandwagon” Scam.
Most failures are caused by Hubris, overestimation of capabilities, lack of information, inability to see the big picture, bandwagon scams and failure to think things through to their logical conclusions. Remember,” if it can go wrong it will”.
Voters’ failure to elect competent politicians should be obvious. Voters don’t know the current conditions. Voters don’t have candidates’ resumes they should have to see if the candidate has any relevant experience. Voters seldom have positions on issues from candidates to see if they have any Common Sense. Voters in my Congressional District in Georgia elected an Airline Stewardess who lived in Tennessee and whose son was shot. She appealed to their emotions with her quest to never let this happen to any mom again. She was a passionate activist devoted to gun control, which wasn’t going to happen because it would require the repeal of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. All the moms voted for her. She was replaced through re-districting, but the fact remains that we have a lot of dumb voters in my district.
I prefer candidates who have a business owner background that is not connected to government sales. I do not prefer candidates who are angry, passionate social activists. We need very smart cool heads with common sense, good judgment and relevant backgrounds to serve in elective office to unravel the mess.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea
Party Leader
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