Lecturas

Mega Thinking and Planning: An Introduction to Defining and Delivering Individual and Organizational Success
Roger Kaufman

dding value to our shared society using your organization as the primary vehicle is Mega thinking and planning. It is straightforward, and sensible. From this shared societal value-added frame, everything one uses, does, produces, and delivers is linked to deliver shared andagreed-on positive organizational as well as societal results. This societal frame of reference, or paradigm, I call the Mega level of thinking and planning. If you are not adding value to our shared society, you have no assurance that you are not subtracting value. Starting with Mega as the central focus of strategic thinking generates the data base for strategic planning. A central question thatevery organization should ask and answer is, If your organization is the solution, what’s the problem? This fundamental proposition—using a Mega focus—represents a shift from the usual attention only to oneself, individual performance improvement, and one’s organization to making certain you also add value to external clients and society.

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All organizations are means to societal ends, and thusMega thinking and planning starts with a primary focus on adding value for all stakeholders, including our shared society. It is pragmatic, realistic, practical, and ethical. Defining and achieving continual organizational success is possible. It relies on three basic elements: (1) a societal value-added ‘‘frame of mind’’ (your perspective and commitment about your organization, people, and ourshared world), (2) shared determination and agreement on where to head and why (everyone who can or might be affected by the shared objectives must agree on purposes and results criteria), and (3) pragmatic and basic tools. The article presents the basic concepts for thinking and planning Mega to define and deliver value to internal and external partners, defining and delivering individual andorganizational success.

An Overview of the Basic Concepts and Tools for Mega Thinking and Planning
There are three basic guides, or templates, that help define and achieve individual and organizational success. Each is described in much greater detail in a number of books (see the references), but for our entry into Mega planning and strategic thinking here is a short introduction to these three guides.5
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, 22(2) PP. 5–15 & 2009 International Society for Performance Improvement Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/piq.20052

Guide 1: The Organizational Elements Model (OEM). It is important to define and link (align) what any organization uses, does, produces, and delivers to achieve external client and societalvalue-added. A tool for making sure that everything an organization uses, does, produces, and delivers does add value to external clients and society is called the Organizational Elements Model (OEM) and is shown in Table 1.1 For each element, there is an associated level of planning: strategic planning (and thinking) starts with Mega while tactical planning starts with macro and operational planningwith micro. Adding value to our Note. These definitions of strategic and tactical are shared society, using different from other conventional usages. I suggest that your organization as the defining strategic as adding value to society and tactical as defining the best ways and means to achieve societal primary vehicle, is Mega results is more pragmatic and encourages planners to thinking and planning.justify any organizational mission in terms of Mega. These elements are also useful for defining the basic questions every organization must ask and answer, as seen in Figure 1. Guide 2: Six Critical Success Factors. A number of factors provides an essential framework for this approach and for Mega planning. Unlike conventional critical success factors, these are for successful planning, not just...