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Sept. 14, 2005 From the beginning of his time in Office President Bush and his entire Administration had screwed up time and again with regard to proper planning and organization, let alone the implementation and follow through for any of their ill conceived plans. Planning is perhaps the most valuable step in the process of organizing your approach to any given situation. Without planning you are sunk! The war with Iraq, which was bungled from the onset, is a wart on the nose of America and has created a rift between pretty much us and the rest of the world. IT was poorly planned and even more poorly organized and executed. We see more people die unnecessarily there each day. Their solution is to toss more money at it and perhaps it will go away. Not likely! We have no plan to leave there any time soon, no plan to capture Osama, and no plan to transfer power to the people of Iraq. Proper planning is paramount to the success of any endeavor. Did Bush ever have a plan or merely rush in and never acknowledge his errant ways? Could the Bush Administration possibly have learned anything valuable from their mistakes in Iraq? Apparently not!! Next important scenario-Hurricane Katrina. We need to look no further than Hurricane Katrina to see once more what planning and organization are not. In a pervious article I noted how remiss the mayor of New Orleans was in this process. However, he was not the only person whose head should roll as a result of this tragedy. This week we saw the head of FEMA step down, but does changing the guard remedy what is wrong with this administration? I say not! Responsibility and leadership begin at the top. Bush has been a very irresponsible and insincere leader. In most instances he has been no leader at all!!! Leaders are efficient and expert planners. They are able to develop and organize a plan and then use their key people to help them to implement it and add some controls to see if it is working to their satisfaction. No one in the entire Bush Administration has a clue about how to devise a plan nor how to organize people to execute that plan. They know not what resources it takes to undertake any given plan or care about the expenses of such plans. They stumble through each disaster as if sleep walking. When will they ever get it? My guess is NEVER! However, here are some cues that they can use to help create a plan. When one sets out to begin a project they need to determine the scope of the work or job they are going to undertake, assign some realistic timeframes for completion, set some milestones that show them they are making progress towards success, have some clear objectives, know their limitations and risks, have a mitigation or contingency plan, and allocate the appropriate resources to get the task completed. In addition to the above cues there are some other items that should be tied to your projects success and those are to know who is responsible or accountable for what function. In the Bush Administration they continue to pass the buck of responsibility down the line-where does the buck stop? Was it with FEMA or a higher federal level official? When working as a team there should be one designated lead that is responsible for the actions of their team. This way you always know who is responsible for what action. Planning needs to be addressed at the beginning, middle, and end, of your venture. Coordination of efforts and good communication skills can minimize misunderstandings and keep everyone on the same page and working towards the same end result. IF speed of completion is a factor then realistic deadlines need to be adhered to and someone needs to be responsible for overseeing this facet too. In the case of Katrina, speed of recovery was crucial and apparently remiss. The entire Gulf coast had a weeks notice that there may be a devastating hurricane to hit their shores. City planners and disaster relief personnel should have been mobilized at that time to assure a seamless effort. Our various governmental agencies waited days before they sent in people for search and recovery and before any of the victims of Katrina even got food or water. Why was this disaster such a mess? Who should be held responsible for the negligent efforts to get their people to safety? I say that Bush was remiss as were the people from New Orleans, MS, and AL. Everyone should have been evacuated to outlying towns and municipalities. All avenues for mass transportation, including airlines, bus terminals, and rail systems should have been utilized in this effort to evacuate. Car rental agencies should have offered deals to people that needed to evacuate and encouraged them to car pool. Hotels, motels, guesthouses, etc. in these outlying areas should have all been reserved and secured for people that had to evacuate these areas. This plan would have minimized the loss of life by providing an orderly exodus and mitigated the search and recovery efforts of all people involved after the fact. Always, plan for the unexpected! All cities, municipalities, counties, and state level officials should be forced by the federal government to create and have on file at the state level a comprehensive disaster relief and recovery plan. These plans would of course vary with the type of disasters that any given locality might be prone to. Contingency plans should be created and tailored to the worst case scenario. All people associated with these efforts should have the safety of their people as their first and top priority. All counties and states should work with each other to offer aid and relief for their residents. Can we do it better? I certainly hope so! Let's give planning a try! ------------ About the author: Michelle Malsbury was born and raised in Champaign, Illinois. She attended Parkland College and the University of Illinois before graduating from the University of Phoenix with her degree in Business Management. Currently she is working on her master’s degree in Organizational Management while concurrently pursuing her lofty writing ambitions. Ms. Malsbury moved to south Florida in 1983 and resides between the Keys and Apalachicola, allowing her to experience the seasonal fluctuations between the southernmost and nearly northernmost beauty in the state of Florida. Travels have taken her from Europe through the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and across much of the United States. Michelle has been a bartender, real estate agent, flight attendant, beauty contestant, yacht broker, and commodities broker over the years, but writing is her passion. She enjoys outdoor activities like sailing, waterskiing, hiking, bike riding, working out, and fishing as well as reading, music, theatre, playing with her two amusing pets (Abu Chez, her 6 year old Australian Blue Heeler and Zack, her two year old yellow tabby cat) and writing. Michelle is a regular featured author on the web site Useless-Knowledge.com and enjoys exchanging points of view with her comrades there. “Three Years With Adonis” is the first to be published of several books that she has written. In addition to “Three Years With Adonis”, she has authored four other books and three screenplays while continuing to explore all that life hands her. Check out my new web sites. They are; www.3yearswithadonis.com, www.threeyearswithadonis.com, and www.MichelleKayeMalsbury.com. Email Michelle Malsbury: zackywacks@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. 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