Enhancing Strategic Management Capabilities: Empowering Strategic Planning with PASAI’s Facilitation Skills Workshop

Author: INTOSAI Journal

Introduction:

One of the Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions (PASAI)’s programme activities is to ensure all member supreme audit institutions (SAIs) develop and implement their own comprehensive and realistic strategic plans. However, SAIs may lack the ability and capacity to develop their own strategic and operational plans, as well as establish frameworks to monitor and report on their performance against these plans. In February 2023, three member SAIs did not have a strategic plan, and five had strategic plans that were set to expire within the year. 

PASAI supports its member SAIs develop strategic plans by providing both SAI-level support and support through regional programmes. Throughout the years, PASAI has supported SAIs using both modalities.

PASAI stepped in to provide member SAIs with the “Enhancing Strategic Management Capabilities” Programme, a seven-month long regional programme to build SAI capacity to manage the organizational strategy development and management process, and promote strategic thinking in SAIs. A key part of the programme was for SAIs to take ownership of the strategy development process, and to empower them to develop their own strategic and operational plans with dedicated guidance from the programme facilitation team. Six SAIs participated in the programme: Chuuk, Palau, Guam, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Tuvalu. 

To start the programme, PASAI held a week-long online course open to all members of staff from each SAI. This initial stage focused on building foundational knowledge, where participants engaged in learning modules to build awareness of strategic management processes, including communication and change management. 

In March 2023, PASAI hosted an in-person workshop in Guam to help SAIs build strong process facilitation skills for SAI heads and their selected staff. The “Empowering Facilitation Skills” workshop was a dynamic, hands-on approach designed to empower SAIs in building essential skills to become effective process facilitators, and be able to manage facilitation of strategic planning processes within their own SAIs. 

Facilitation Skills Development:

The core of the workshop revolved around the development of facilitation skills. PASAI recognizes the importance of empowering SAIs with the ability to facilitate strategic planning sessions internally to ensure that SAIs are equipped not only with theoretical knowledge, but also with the practical skills needed to guide the strategic planning process effectively.

The facilitation skills workshop, led by Pritom Phookun, capacity building facilitator of Empower By Design, started by establishing a goal driven, open environment that facilitated learning and active participation. 

The Public Auditor of Guam, BJ Cruz, delivered the opening remarks, highlighting Guam’s commitment to strategic planning. Cruz emphasized the importance of having a published strategic plan and an issued annual plan in Guam. The welcoming gesture and well wishes for a successful week set a positive tone for the workshop.

Upon learning about the qualities, knowledge, skills, and attitudes that make an empowering facilitator, workshop participants learned the best ways to ask powerful questions, listen effectively, and respond appropriately. The discussion on the role of external facilitators highlighted the importance of preventing biases and ensuring the right questions are asked. Importantly, the advantage of a facilitator lies in their facilitation skills rather than domain knowledge—participants learned that they themselves do not need to be subject matter experts to be good facilitators of a discussion on a certain subject. 

Empowerment, according to the workshop, involves wide engagement, deep exploration, and a steady focus on goals. Building trust between facilitators and participants is crucial for the success of strategic planning initiatives. The workshop encouraged participants to question not only if they are doing things right, but also if they are doing the right things.

The facilitation workshop had a hands-on approach to learning, and participants were encouraged to lead objective-driven discussions using their newly gained questioning, listening, and responding skills on a topic selected by their small break out groups. The facilitators ensured each person had an opportunity to share their perspectives, asked questions to probe deeper, and listened to what each person had to say, instead of inserting their own opinions into the conversation. 

Participants also learned best practices of giving and receiving feedback, in a way that was encouraging, educative and empowering, as well as learning how to effectively deal with challenging behaviors of participants, and positively engaging them in the strategic development sessions. By honing good feedback skills and understanding how to approach challenging situations, facilitators will be able to maintain a group’s trust, and continue to improve upon the open discussions for strategic development. 

The facilitation workshop then had each participant plan, prepare, and practice their own facilitation sessions over the course of the final two days of the workshop, with their colleague participants providing constructive feedback on how they could improve further. 

Conclusion:

Following the workshop, participants were encouraged to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in the previous stages to create strategic plans tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities of their respective SAIs.

After the ESMC workshop in Guam, the SAIs worked on developing their strategic plan, operational plan (first year of their strategic plan) and monitoring and evaluation framework. The SAIs developed a work plan which detailed the activities and timelines for developing these documents. Between March and December 2023, the SAIs implemented their workplans with remote support and guidance from the consultant. One of the key activities in developing the strategic plans was having consultations with the SAI’s key stakeholders. 

The main objective of the Guam workshop was to build facilitation skills of the strategic planning team so they can facilitate consultations with their stakeholders, and most SAIs ultimately held consultations through a workshop with stakeholders. There was a lot of preparation work done before the workshops. SAIs prepared their plans for the consultations including the structure, design, and issues to be discussed. These plans were reviewed by the consultant before having the workshops, to ensure relevance and quality of consultations. To date, all SAIs have completed development of their strategic plan, operational plan and monitoring and evaluation framework, with the exception of Guam, which is finalising its operational plan in early February 2024. 

The programme has led to success at the SAI and regional level, and supported three SAIs which did not have a strategic plan. For the SAIs of Chuuk, Kosrae and Palau, the strategic plans that they developed are their first. One of PASAI’s strategic priorities is that SAIs should have a comprehensive and realistic strategic plan to deliver their mandates and be able to implement and report on their performance against their strategic plans. Out of 20 SAIs in PASAI, only one does not currently have a strategic plan, but PASAI aims to support that effort this year in 2024. 

The PASAI Facilitation Workshop is a pivotal initiative in empowering SAIs to independently undertake strategic planning. The combination of knowledge building, skills development, and practical application ensures that Pacific SAIs are well-prepared to face the challenges of the auditing landscape. With collaborative efforts and strategic partnerships, PASAI aims to strengthen the capabilities of SAIs in the Pacific region.

You can view the full photo album from the PASAI Facilitation Workshop here.