My planner, busy planning...

Today, a rare day in the office this week, was choc-a-bloc with more-or-less important meetings, but one meeting in particular was, to my mind, of great importance. Now that the Committee’s new establishment plan is fully recruited and in place I can start to concentrate in a more focused fashion on strategic issues and one of those is the drafting of a serviceable development plan for the Committee’s administration. I am allergic to bureaucratic exercises for their own sake, but the administration needs to have a sense of direction, particularly in view of the challenging times ahead, and that sense of direction must dovetail with the political vision of the Committee’s members. As a first step, a member of my secretariat, Bernard Thysebaert, has been consulting with all of the Committee’s senior management, seeking to make the plan a management tool generated by management itself. Further consultative stages will see Bernard consult the political authorities and the Committee’s management board will then consider a first draft of the plan. It is looking good, thanks in no small part to Bernard’s talent in both encouraging people to elaborate and in listening attentively.