Monitoring strategic initiatives

Enabling Strategies for Viable Futures (Part #18)

As noted above with respect to insight capture, it is extraordinary the lack of formal monitoring of major strategic initiatives, including the (summit) gatherings in which they are formulated. It is difficult to locate formal assessments of the dynamics and outcome of events like the Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), or its follow-up the Rio+10 Earth Summit (Johannesburg, 2002). The same may be said of many gatherings and initiatives, the meetings of the G7/8 Group, the regular conferences of the UN (or its Special Agencies), or the annual World Economic Forum and the annual World Social Forum. This is also the case with potentially more ambitious gatherings such as the Parliament of the World's Religions or the World Wisdom Alliance. Evaluations tend to be merely anecdotal and unofficial, thus inhibiting learning and improvement. Future events are then based on the absence of critical feedback -- necessarily framed as "negative" at a time of perceived need to "draw a line" and "move on" by ignoring the past and its potential learnings.

There is therefore a strong case for formal monitoring of potentially insightful events, notably those interrelating a diversity of perspectives articulated by people who may well have a long track record of participation in such events and problematic exposure to each other.