Long range planning in Rotary

On the next 5 years more changes will occur than in the last 30. The historic acceleration will show that the events will occur in growing speed, in a way that one century will be expressed in one year.

Because of this it becomes explicit the imperative need of a long range planning.

Planning nowadays is needed, not anymore as an anticipation of the future, but more than anything as a motivation to reach it.

The dazzling and quick evolution of technology and the democratization of the information promoted by the Internet, makes that concepts like authority and power be questioned from the way they were recently seen. Particularly, when this power and authority were exerted by the privileged possession of information and was maintained by restricting this same information to those under one’s command or subordinates.

It is growing the need to establish new forms of human relationship. And they are already changing for instance between teachers and students in schools or between managers and subordinates in companies. Our children are doing their college’s exams through the Internet. The teachers are losing their competitive advantage over their students just by possessing more information. They are becoming more and more knowledge orienteer than simply information providers.

What is the parallel that can be found between these subjects in organizations like Rotary, in relation to service rendering, ways that meetings are conducted and their periodic occurrence, the way to transmit information and the absorption of about the principles that move our institution?

How to use the information technology to maintain Rotary united as an organization?

Organizations that bases their power in their global coverage, in the quantity of of employees in their payroll as part of this so called “propriety” and that because of that feel themselves as members of this company, have the tendency to disappear.

In these aspects Rotary takes a great advantage, because:

 Rotary do not have properties in general (with exception of its headquarters), and because of that cannot be negotiated, sold or rented, its members are investors on the organization, without being owners of assets or property documents. Rotary is an organization beyond properties.  Rotarians are not employees, but volunteer members in the fundamental cells of Rotary which are its clubs.  Rotary is federalist. A concept that exists for more than 2000 years. Rotary is small and big at the same time.  Rotary presents itself as a way to obtain freedom, it finds its own answers without the need of the help of others, but instead by helping others.  Rotary has as an institution, mainly through its programs and the programs of the Rotary Foundation, the capacity to develop an international solidarity feeling to those we have never seen or met and may never do.

 Rotary do not depend to render its service of outside knowledge, neither of individuals that by what they know could fell that they are indispensables.

What are we doing then to influence our own destinies in this changing society?

What are we doing to influence the destinies of Rotary?

Because our history is vast, we may be creating to ourselves a trap, by imagining that our future will also take a long time to arrive. Attention! We may be surprised by the occurrences.

We don’t have to wait for the future; we must help to mold it now. It would be very sad and even dangerous, to lose our future by being stuck, just contemplating our past. We need to analyze our past and prepare our future in the most planned way, our journey to the future.

The power in Rotary, in the way it can be seen, is obtained in a consented way.

The management of Rotary is exerted by consent. It will only survive as in marriage, by trust in common goals and by consent autonomy. It is the management by the subsidiary method, typical on modern organizations over which Rotary have a great advantage for being applying it for a long time. Rotary’s management is exerted by the lower level possible.

What would be then the missing link on this administrative chain, which could give at the same time, strength, power, unity, competence, feeling of participation and motivation towards the future?

Without any doubt it is Planning, being it strategic (long range), tactic (medium range) or operational (short range).

By its federalist characteristic, like it was mention before, Rotary is big and small at the same time.

Rotary must be big, and is, because it has a worldwide coverage through the great number of communities it serves, or by programs like the Polio Eradication. But it is at the same time small, by the size of its representative units - the clubs - which are small in size, sufficiently for its members to know each other well enough to take actions in an organized way to help the needs of the community they serve and also to conquer their respect and commemorate their achievements. The size of the club should be the necessary to reach out with intensity, continuity and precision the locality that is their responsibility to take care of.

This means neither decentralization, nor an organizational subdivision. The strength of Rotary is to distribute its capacity and power to serve, its energy, in a consistent way through its many thousands of clubs and their more than million Rotarians.

All Rotarians in the world should be maintained united by a single vision from which we are all missionaries. The Headquarter and its branch offices will continue to exist to coordinate, not to control.

In Rotary we think globally and act locally.

The federalist administrations of Rotary, is the formula found for each club, through each of their Rotarians, feel at the same time independent to decide how to serve their community and compromised with a common cause.

This could indicate that in Rotary there is no centralized power, being the clubs autonomous to decide how they should render service to their community. But if we dilute totally the action, without a coordination link, clubs and Rotarians would lose direction,

standards of behavior or the elements that guarantee cohesion and that allow it to be great in its globe’s conquests. Would it be possible that clubs could function necessarily better acting by themselves, than with a long range international planning and a medium range district planning?

A few of each is needed.

But in order that a long range planning be a success it is needed that a tactic planning in the district level and an operational planning in the club level give it its feedback and vice versa.

Rotary International is administered by hierarchical processes that have the tendency to be identical. The RI Board is formed by a President and Directors that represent the various zones and coordinate the action of the districts through committees or task forces. With the introduction of the District Leadership Plan, besides training and allowing new leadership to the prepared, the districts start to act in an identical manner through the assistant governors coordinating the action of clubs through district committees and task forces. Maybe the only difference at the district level is the absence of a board. The clubs also have their president, a board and committees that act in a similar way in relation to the community they serve.

Rotary International also stays united by being known through the great causes it identifies to work with, like the eradication of polio. Hesitating in its beginning, this program gained strength when it was started to be worldwide planned and with a long range and well defined goal. The international presidential themes launched every year, renew the energies and give focus, emphasis and direction to the long range plan.

The Long Range Planning should be the link that promotes action, giving to it consistency, credibility and continuity.

The Long Range Planning, for its interdependence requires:

a) Basic standards of conduct (Constitution, By Laws and

Procedures) equals to all; b) Common form and quick intercommunication between all levels; c) Identical hierarchical processes; d) International vision and direction for local action through the concept of unrestricted world citizenship; e) Great causes, identified and renewed every year, as the back curtain of a coordinated and planned action; f) Autonomy to every club to manage the open spaces of service needed to help the growth of a better community;

Long Range Planning should than promote tuning of Rotary with current times, in which it is needed to give value and pay respect to to differences and diversity, in which idealistic people like Rotarians, want to promote its participation to change the community in which they live to be a better community and be part of something big.

The Rotary leaders, in its different levels, will only be effective in the accept this way of action.

The wheel does not need to be reinvented, but make the future happen in a planned way is something different.

The ten best words with ten letters in English express very well these needs: If it is to be it is up to us.