Achieving results in any endeavor requires you to perform four sequential steps: you must first PLAN, then ORGANIZE, then DIRECT and finally CONTROL the result to make sure everything happens as planned.

Any parent running a household does this. Businesses MUST do this to survive. And our federal government should do this also. But it seldom does.

Any parent considering a vacation must plan who will go, where to go, how long to stay, and what to take. He or she must then organize who is to be responsible for what and direct them to do it. And finally he or she must control the result by verifying among many other things that tickets are in hand, the right stuff is loaded up and gas is in the car.

Any business must plan what products to produce, the sources of materials and who will produce them. It must then organize obtaining the materials, having the people available to produce them and directing them to do it. And finally it must control that the products are of high quality and make certain they are produced efficiently enough to allow a profit for the business so it can sustain its owner or shareholders and be around over the long term to service them.

Our government should follow this same universal procedure but rarely does. It almost always fails on three of the four steps. To see this in spades one need look no further than the scandal in the Veterans Administration. At that agency it apparently neither planned nor organized to prevent the creation of a corrupt system which reported dishonest wait times of our veterans to the American public. For years. It did direct well in writing checks. But the government’s control in making certain of good and timely care for these veterans and preventing financial fraud did not exist. Continue reading →