When I hear the words ‘strategic plan’, alarm bells start ringing. The Coalition for New Zealand Books has produced Mahi Tahi Work Together: A Strategic Plan for the Aotearoa New Zealand Book Sector 2025. I’m the last person to knock anyone working to improve the literary landscape. I congratulate the coalition for coordinating the effort. The plan gives the sector something concrete to discuss and deliver.

But …

It’s often said everything before the ‘but’ is ignored, not true here. It really is a solid start. However, if the aim is to deliver something better, tweaking the status quo will disappoint.

After I read the strategy, I took the dog for a walk to give me time to reflect. I realised that, while the plan covered all the key aspects, there was a vagueness that made it hard to engage with. Take the first strategy: “Collaborate with government and education sector to promote the cultural and economic value of reading New Zealand stories.” I have degrees in management and I’ve done time as a strategy consultant – I do not know what that means. I also can’t imagine what success would look like if it was delivered, and that’s a problem.

A key purpose of strategy is to articulate success (a ‘vision’ if you prefer the buzzword) with blinding clarity. Risk players handed the mission “Destroy all red armies” know exactly what success looks like. If their card read “de-risk the ecosystem by crowding out antagonistic collectives”, they would be clueless.

The first step in the strategy’s implementation must be to swap out the soft action verbs that dominate the strategy – promote, explore, boost, modernise, create, participate, invest, unlock, encourage. They sound purposeful but they’re vague. They signal intent without committing to measurable action which is why they’re so popular in corporate statements.

For example, take this: “Modernise the Public Lending Rights (PLR) to better reflect property rights for authors, including school/tertiary holdings and digital and audio formats.”

And turn it into this: “Have the PLR funding pool increased to $16M and extend coverage to all libraries, e-books and audiobooks.”

Now success is plain and it introduces stretch. Aim for $5M and you might get $3M (it’s currently $2.4M). Aim for $16M and you might get $8M – I’d view that as success.

The second area that immediately troubled me was implementation. This statement near the end of the plan set off those alarm bells again. “The further detailed implementation of these strategies will be determined by ongoing sector consultation.”

Kicking implementation down the road divorces the plan, and the planners, from the doers. The outcome from planning is not the production of a plan – it’s delivering what the plan promises. House plans are needed, but it’s the house we want.

Importantly, strategy must be developed so it can be implemented within available resources – time, money, people and skills. That’s a core responsibility of the planners. There is little point in having plans drawn up for a mansion if all you can afford is a three-bedroom townhouse.

Take Strategy 7 from the Mahi Tahi document: “Launch sustained campaigns to encourage the purchase of local books by consumers, libraries and organisations.”

Great! Who’s going to do the work? How much will it cost? Where’s the funding coming from? And, most importantly, what will success look like?

There may be answers to these questions but the plan is currently silent. It repeatedly uses the term “The book sector of Aotearoa” but that’s a concept not an organisation with deployable resources. Even if coalition members are all going to contribute significantly (I’m dubious), the what/who/how/where/when questions need answering.

Authors need something better.

The plan is a good start, but … there’s a lot of work to be done and I wonder who’s going to do it.

As it’s unlikely I’ll be asked to help, and even less likely I’ll be paid to help, I’ll continue to lobby Brooke van Velden to get the PLR changed. My simple strategy is based on Jim Anderton’s battle to get Kiwibank off the ground. I hope for a similar exchange with Brooke as the one that occurred during Cabinet discussions in 2001.

Annette King: “Michael, Jim’s beaten back every argument against the bank we’ve ever put up – for God’s sake give him the bloody bank!”

Michael Cullen: “Oh, all right then.”