Helping Callan Services develop a strategic plan for
Papua New Guinea

At the fourth meeting for the development of a strategic plan for Callan Services, Papua New Guinea, I asked the group to reflect on the journey so far. We had just named the strategic directions at this meeting.  My question was – ‘What image, colour, sound would you give to what has been happening?” Great images were shared, but one in particular seemed to speak to me about the people here and ToP processes.

Said one participant: ‘We are familiar with the leader out in the front and we are all in a line behind. He is pointing ahead and telling us that is the way but during these months we sit in circles and someone asks, what is the way?’

Callan Services has been operating in Papua New Guinea for over 25 years. A Christian Brother, Br Graeme, from Australia had been the driving force behind the establishment of this organisation.

Its core work is in education and training for teachers and workers in the field to ensure inclusive education for all, especially the hearing and vision impaired. Many specialist medical services are needed too, so it is doing much in that area as well. It has 17 regional centres with several sub-centres each. These resource centres are owned by the local diocese and governed by a local board. It is a structurally complex organisation  operating in a geographically challenging country with mountains and rivers that makes  connections very difficult.

Within PNG, Callan has an amazing reputation for contributing to changes in government policy in relation to education and people with disability, as well as being a positive force for people with disability.  It is connected to thousands of people.

At the end of 2008, the founding director retired. Another Christian Brother, Kevin, has become the director. He invited me to work with Callan Services to develop a strategic plan. Here began a fantastic journey for me, one that has given me energy and inspiration into how effective the ToP methods can be in the Melanesian culture as well as a great way of training and building the capacity of people. I have just completed my fourth visit, working for four days each time, with at least one more visit planned this year.

We began in January 2009, a few weeks after the faculty event in Brisbane. I had previously done some work in PNG with another group using the methods, so I had confidence that ToP processes were appropriate here. My role was two-fold, facilitation and training. These had a few steps: to facilitate initial planning to manage the change process for the first six months, to facilitate the development of a strategic plan and to train people in key roles in the methods. All my favourite tasks!

I would like to share with you the steps in this process as I think it will give a picture into a

wonderful people and place. In January 2009 we gathered. The ‘we’ was the retiring director, the new director and one other man who was the national coordinator of the Hearing Project across PNG. Another person was to come but he was stuck in Hagen and we were in Wewak. We had a small room in which we worked (the only place on the campus with air-conditioning, well, sort of). The room is one sticky wall wide and one sticky wall and a door way long, all walls covered with book cases and books. Until this time, only the director had been involved in strategic planning. Our themes for these days were, learning from the past, living in the present and thinking into the future.

We began with a focused conversation to form the group and then moved to a historical scan. The image emerging from this was a journey, and taking a journey in this country is very difficult venture. After listing and naming the current issues, concerns and demands that had to be met we developed a change map. This was a great exercise, as the PNG man really came to the fore with his images, drawings and stories. We then developed an action plan for the next few months, as this was such a critical time they were unable to look too far into the future, just make sure they survived and did all that needed to be done to manage the transition time.  Finally, I shared with the group the process of the focused conversation, as we had done many conversations throughout our two and a half days, and then we prepared one. The director was going to interview every staff member so we developed the conversation for this action.

In February I returned. Since the last meeting the two members of the initial meeting had shared the historical scan with the staff at Wewak and they had added their ideas. The

director had conversations with each staff member using the focused conversation prepared and in particular shared in more depth what we had done in our meeting with two people who joined us at the February meeting.  This group is now named as the executive team for Callan Services National Unit, extending the decision making group from the initial one to four

Any room will do

This second meeting began with a review of the action plan developed in January and identifying those actions that needed a specific action plan developed in order to move them forward. I unpacked the action planning process with the group and they each developed an action plan for some project that they needed to undertake in the next period of time. We began to critique the overall strategic planning process that I was proposing and refined it. One particular aspect was identified as a gap before we could commence the planning. The mission statement, or The Statement of Purpose, as they call it, was not up-to-date. So we

reviewed past statements and developed a new draft one. The group prepared a focused conversation to have with staff in the coming months to critique the statement of purpose.  One interesting dynamic was the electric power supply. It was quite an event on the move as the power would go out for hours at a time, so we were moving from our tiny room to a larger room – taking our sticky walls with us. Quite a sight!

Our April meeting began the strategic planning process in earnest. All the Callan Services National Unit staff gathered – about twenty five. For most present this was the first time they had been involved in strategic planning. It was a great morning with many creative ideas emerging for the strategic vision for Callan in 2015.

Actions were gathered, clustered and initial naming was undertaken.  The executive team plus four regional coordinators then gathered to plan the process of consultation across PNG. They were to gather reflections on the statement of purpose and further ideas for the emerging strategic vision from all the resource centres, other NGOs, government departments and bishops where the centres were located. I thought it was a mammoth task, knowing the pressures of the immediate work to be done in continuing to deliver services as well as the travel involved. We designed a form for them to complete at the meetings and send to me for collation and preparation for our next meeting.

What a mad idea!!! I received about 200 ideas for future actions. My hall wall at home was a great place to put up a sticky wall, so over the next few month as I received these ideas I would print out the list from the centre, cut up the actions in little strips of paper and begin the clustering. This began with the initial clustering from the staff meeting but extended over the weeks to sub-groups within these main clusters as well as new clusters emerging. I gave them one-word headings so I could remember the focus.

Before leaving for PNG for this most recent meeting I typed all the actions into the columns and printed each off on A3 sheets of different colours.

The wall talks

My bag was heavy on the way to the July meeting with so many ideas for the future, and indeed so heavy that it did not arrive in Wewak with me on the Saturday before the meeting! There were 24 hours of concern hoping the material would arrive in time for our meeting on Monday, but thank goodness it did. All day Monday we worked at naming the clusters. The group consisted of a few more coordinators, so each time more people are exposed to the work and gain ownership of the product. We had to have all the naming done by the end of the first day as we were then taking the strategic vision to a wider staff meeting the next day to share and then identify the barriers and brainstorm some strategic actions. We did get the strategic vision named and the group was quite excited about what they had accomplished. They could not believe they could take the hundreds of ideas and come up with something so concise and meaningful.

The image that held the vision was that of a coconut tree –

The coconut tree vision

the roots represented the values and purpose of the organisation and they wanted this included in the strategic vision, the trunk of the tree represented the two vision statements that held the internal work of the organisation, and finally the fronds and fruit held the statements that were the work of the organisation. One member of the group volunteered to draw the image and bring to our staff meeting the next day.

One of the great outcomes of the next mornings meeting was the overall ownership of the strategic vision. There were five different key strategic vision statements with two, three or four sub-headings for each. Five different people from the Monday group explained a vision statement, what was behind it and how it linked to the work different staff members were doing at present. This part of the morning took longer than planned but the outcome was greater than expected. The barriers identified and named were very accurate and helpful to the next step. I used a dragon story that Elaine had shared at our last Module 3 session in Brisbane and it worked really well. We could keep saying when trying to name the barriers – it is not the dragon we need to focus on, but what is keeping the dragon there.

The next day we did the work on the strategic directions and the group made some critical decisions for their future. They were surprised at what surfaced, scared at times to really take the step but in the end decided that this was the way forward.

It’s all good fun - Sr Margaret Endicott

Their level of participation and depth of thinking are amazing. Their excitement about being involved and developing the future together inspires me. At the end of our session this time I told them I wanted to write about what we are doing and asked for some comments from them to include. The following comments have been sent to me and I share them with you.

“Here is what I have learnt and would like to share with you and other in regards to process of formulating the Strategic Vision for CSNU. I find it very hard to express it in one sentence but I’ll try my very best:

Wisdom is essential for productivity of Knowledge, Without wisdom Knowledge could be highly explosive – Your enriched guided and directive questions, has enhanced me significantly into help shaping the vision for the organization, CSNU!

An email from the Director to staff:
As I said during the course of our work together we are working through a VERY challenging time but you have dreamt a new future based on the best of what you have achieved in the past.  Thanks and congratulations!!!!!

Our final naming of the Strategic Plan sums up the process: