Ron Rowe: Reacting ahead of time ....

Ron Rowe

Recently there have been numerous calls from our local leaders (the HBRC Chair being one), to become much less "reactive" toward a number of recent events and situations and look to develop strategies that are based on sound, or better understood, "risk assessment", leading to our providing a much more "proactive" stance toward the issues, events and situations.

Nationally the same call has been made too. The recent stranding of over 100 tourists and their vehicles on the West coast has brought such an assurance from the NZ Transport Agency.

Some would argue that this is more easily said than done. No it's not! The really well led visionary organisations have this well in hand. Certainly this is the case of those with whom I have worked with in the recent past.

Yes even 100 year old organisations have turned the corner of "doing what's right"... and "what's right" is to be much more proactive so as to more adequately meet the current and future requirements of customers and other stakeholders.

Being "reactive" implies that you don't have the initiative. Events, as they occur, set the agenda. I do fully acknowledge that events such as earthquakes, weather bombs and other situations and what they require can be seen as "reactive events.". Quick reaction is critical. But based on what?.'

What we know of the past issues and matters and their value and importance is a major factor. Instead of being tossed and turned by the immediate panic of the event today there must be well thought through proactive planning in place to be able to deal with those situations requiring immediate reaction. Civil Defence, nationally and locally, is a good example of this.

One senior manager said to her team that "proactivity" is one of grace under stress or pressure. Now I don't know where she got that from but it does, at least for me, sum it up well.

Every organisation and every person has the ability to be "proactive". But it requires very good leadership from the "elected or recruited" top and middle management. Being proactive is not a mysterious quality that we have, or don't have. It is a way of dealing with things that we can develop and strengthen.

The best expression that I've come across is that being proactive is the same thing as being reactive. The only difference is you do the reacting ahead of time.

With pretty much everything in the life of any organisation (or ourselves) there's a degree of predictability. And that's one of the keys!

Anticipate what the future will be, and to react accordingly before it actually happens is not so difficult if you develop strategy based on three things:

•Ask yourself what is likely to happen, based on sound historical/current data/intelligence and react to it before it happens. Risk analysis really.
•Rise above the difficulties of the moment, to see the big picture (vision) to make the changes in your planning which is needed.
•Watch, Read and Listen to, and for, the TRENDS they are there to see. An acronym - (To Read Every New Development Strategically)... . there is no better way to be ahead of the game than to continually have your antennae up. This allows organisations to refocus on what they're doing and how they're doing it using what the big corporates call environmental scanning.

Yet remember that "ALL" strategy is emerging or emergent strategy. Nothing today is sacrosanct (at least in planning terms) .. the environment in which we ply our trade or lead our organisations is vastly different from what it as just a few years ago when "planning" was done over mid to longer term. And there it stayed. Not so today… sure planning is required, mid to long term, but equally it requires that "we" have the ability at every level to amend and alter them as the volatility and revised information comes to hand.

In 1947 when Field Marshall Viscount Bernard Montgomery visited NZ he said… "Be prepared .. We went into the late war totally unprepared, we have entered other wars the same way, and the tragic thing is that we start and end wars in disasters. Tens of thousands of young men and young women lose their lives. When times of peace come, we should be prepared for it, if someone decides to start a roughhouse."

Britain (and NZ and the commonwealth) had to "react" in 1939 when appeasement didn't work. So it's not so new after all…..

Ron Rowe is a Life Fellow of the NZ Institute of Management, a former Judicial Justice of the Peace and has more than 50 years of active leadership in community-based and volunteer organisations. He is a governance and strategic adviser and is based in Hawke's Bay. All views expressed here are the writer's and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.