On what ground stands strategic planning?

Abstract

We live today in a world where there is enlarged freedom for many of us to invent and reinvent who we are. This freedom, in late capitalist modernity, has also come at a cost. The freedom to invent and reinvent is grounded on an expectation that we can renegotiate the fundamental threads of what we are, and what we are known as. This freedom has spread beyond the individual to our institutions, political parties, and of course public persons. No longer is it possible to say definitively what or who someone is, nor is it possible to hold them to account for who or what they said they are or would be. Such holding to account would be tantamount to a reduction of their liberty. This paper explores what impact this lack of saying, and lack of accountability for what was said has on strategic plans. Starting from Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the loss of the public realm, we explore the consequences for strategic planning of this capacity to reinvent ourselves and consider how in this pluralist and individualised world a collectively arrived at vision of the future might be grounded and survive beyond the next saying of ourselves. Keywords: Heidegger, Arendt, Ontology of planner