Values-based Planning and Management
(The Cornerstones Model)

Values-based Planning and Management (also known as the Cornerstones Model or CM) is a capacity building method that can help an organization get to the fundamental reason that it exists. This article attempts to clarify some questions raised about the use of the CM.

> What is it?
> What's so unique about the CM?
> What does it mean to be vision-based?
> Why is being values-based important?
> Who can use the CM?
> How does using the CM relate to organizational capacity building?
> Does the CM have clearly defined steps?
> What is the role of evaluation?
> Can the CM be used for Strategic Planning?

What is it?
It is a framework for values-based planning and management.

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What's so unique about the CM?
1) It is an optimistic approach in that it focuses on our vision, not our problems.

2) It is values-based, which recognizes that we are human beings, not machines.

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What does it mean to be vision-based?
Many approaches focus on the problems that are being faced. But simply solving the problems that we are aware of does not mean that we will progress to where we want to go. Problem-solving has to be done as a part of the overall vision. If not, we may be solving the wrong problems!

Take for example a broken down truck. First we need a shared, clear vision like, "we will drive this truck to bring our produce to market." Then everyone can focus on fixing the parts of the truck such as flat tires, engine, etc. that will help people use the truck to get to the market. Without a clear, shared, vision among the group, some people may want to take the battery to power the village TV, others may want to use the seats for the front porch of the youth center, etc. In other words, some people see the problem as a lack of a TV, some see it as inadequate seating in the youth center, while others think it as a lack of a vehicle to take produce to market. These are all legitimate problems, and they can all be solved, but not all of them will result in reaching the vision of, "we will drive this truck to bring our produce to market."

Having a shared, clear vision in an organization or community makes it much easier to decide among the important issues and how to deal with them.

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Why is being values-based important?
Values bring a new dimension to our activities, which are usually focused on material things such as building a road, planting elephant grass, or passing on offspring from a donated animal. But development is much more than about material things; if we want to consider wholistic transformation, we have to focus on what makes us human.

Each organization or group should come up with their own values. Some of these values may be actually practiced, such as sharing and caring. This may be listed in the situation definition as describing the values held by the community. Values also become an important part of the vision. For example, five or ten years from now, what values do you want your organization to be practicing? Using some simple monitoring and evaluation methods, the group can regularly check to see if indeed these values are being practiced.

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Who can use the CM?
Individuals, families, clubs, NGOs, large corporations, government institutions, basically everybody!

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How does using the CM relate to organizational capacity building?
Working with the CM, an organization deals with its values, strategies, and plans in a participatory manner. Organizations often neglect these aspects, which actually form the essence of an organization.

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Does the CM have clearly defined steps?
Only the four major parts of the model are clearly defined. How one does each of these steps depends on the individual circumstances. For example, there are many way to define the situation. Many PRA tools and methods can be used such as seasonal calendars, wealth ranking, mapping, or transect walks, among many others. The choice of methods depends on the situation and resources (like time, funds, labor) available to carry out these methods.

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How long does it take to complete the model?
The model is NEVER complete, it just keeps going around in an upward spiral. This allows organization to adopt to change.

Don't expect to get all parts of the model perfectly done in one session, or even in several sessions. Even though you may not yet have fully defined the situation, it better to at least get some basic parts down. Much as we have done in the LC. Each time you use the model, you can try to improve the weak parts.

Heifer International - Indonesia has used the CM in each of its eight Strategic Planning (SP) workshops over the past three years. We always go through all four parts of the CM during our SP meetings, but we focus our time on the parts that are the weakest. We did not complete the situation definition and our vision until our 3rd SP workshop. We have just become more efficient in our planning and have started to employ deeper levels of analysis to help us plan more strategically. We are weakest in the monitoring and evaluation parts of the model and hope to have begun to improve that aspect by our 7th and 8th SP meetings during 2001. This means that we will have had eight SP meetings over a period of three years before we will have felt as if we finally have a good foundation.

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What is the role of evaluation?
People may think that an evaluation is simply a donor-required step that signifies whether or not a project was completed or not and judges whether is was successful or not. A completed and successful project would then give an organization "proof" that it is worthy and capable of handling another project.

Evaluation in the CM is seen as a time for reflection, a time when an organization can learn from its prior activities. We should find out what went well and what did not go so well. This information is used to improve the way the organization works in the future. In this light, an evaluation is not seen as an end in itself, but as part of a continuous process.

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Can the CM be used for Strategic Planning?
Yes! In addition to using it for Heifer International - Indonesia, we are using the CM to do Strategic Planning in each of our LC Consultations! Strategic planning is not something that one does every 3-5 years and then hides away in the file cabinet. A Strategic Plan is a living, breathing document that we should always have on our desktop. In each LC Consultation we try to reflect on what we did, look back at our situation definition to see if it is still valid or if we need to strengthen it, revisit out vision (since everything that we do should be based on our vision, we always need to know what our vision is!), identify and analyze our key issues, and plan. This is Strategic Planning!

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