And in the village ...

This is a personal blog. The text could be written in the interests of the author or third parties. The 7x7 editors are not involved in its creation and may not share the author’s opinion. The registration of blogs on 7x7 is open for authors of various views.

The countryside of Russia has most experienced changes related to the reforms of recent years. Among the specialists, the concept of “old” and “new” economy has developed, and the main difference between them is the level of labor productivity.

And in fact, where three hundred workers were needed at the agricultural enterprise twenty years ago, after modernization with the same volumes of production today it takes thirty.

From the point of view of business, this is a very good result, and from the point of view of local governments - this is a sharp increase in unemployment.

On the other hand, only with increasing labor productivity can the problem of personnel in the village be solved, since only with high performance can a fairly high level of wage can be maintained, which automatically solves this problem.

So, modern technologies increase labor productivity, can provide a high level of wage and thus solve the problem with narrow specialists.

But how to ensure a decent standard of living for all villagers? What new areas can be given additional jobs? How to stop the abbreviation of residents in the village? And does this reduction be stopped?

It seems to us that here we need to apply a cluster approach.

When analyzing the available resources in the Arkhangelsk region, large forest reserves, environmentally friendly agricultural vehicles can be distinguished, of which most of which are not used, water and air, many half -empty settlements with preserved houses of traditional architecture, large reserves of wild berries and mushrooms, huge reserves of peat and other common minerals.

To combine these resources in a single chain is interfered with a system that has developed in the Soviet economy, which led to a departmental (vertical) approach to planning. The cluster approach requires interdepartmental (horizontal) interaction and linking of interests, for example, agriculture with tourist, forest and other businesses.

But besides this, it is necessary to understand that doing something in modern conditions is just a third of the matter. The main thing in conditions of rigid competition is to sell. This requires branding products, which costs a lot of money, which in the village simply does not. Therefore, here it is necessary to combine efforts and means and, preferably, at the inter -municipal level.

Thus, it is inevitable that at the first stage it is necessary to talk about the marketing of the rural territory as a whole to create umbrella brands under which future clusters will develop.

The tourist business needs high -quality hotels and houses from traditional materials, that is, from wood, agriculture must first expand the domestic market due to tourist flow, because entering the external market is several orders of magnitude more expensive, and small energy enterprises are ready to consider their investments when combining the efforts of the tourism business, foresters, agricultural enterprises and authorities.

Are officials and deputies ready to reason with modern concepts of public and private management? Are they ready to work on the investment attractiveness of the territory? What is needed for this?

It seems to us that to implement projects of this level, it is necessary to seriously turn to such a managerial instrument as a public strategy.

Of course, the development, and even more so the implementation of long -term strategic plans is an expensive job. But in this case, there is a way out in cooperation for municipalities, that is, in the development of horizontal connections, unless, of course, the value of the development of strategies for representatives of local self -government was created.

But the article will not be complete if we do not introduce into our reasoning the concept of “social capital”, formulated in the early nineties of the last century by the American sociologist Patnam, who, exploring the north and south of Italy, concluded that this or that territory is developing more successfully if the level of trust between citizens is quite high, and people are united in various formal and different formal ones. Informal unions, that is, there is a fairly extensive network of connections. So, in short, social capital is a level of trust, multiplied on a network of connections.

And in fact, cooperation is a formalized trust : subjects, only having a certain level of trust in each other, create a general formal business. Otherwise, either a cooperative cannot be created, or the organization will stop activities in the near future.

We can say that a cluster is informal trust . Investors create enterprises in a certain place, realizing that they will somehow work in the general technological chain, but uninterested in one legal entity. Trust here is formalized through civil circulation through contractual relations. And again, if the investor does not have a certain level of trust either to the authorities or to counterparties, the cluster will not operate effectively.

In the end, it is impossible to even raise a log by two people without a minimum level of trust, which is expressed in two matters of always facing people: it will drop or not specifically your partner on my leg, and is there enough strength to raise his end to the same result?

Unfortunately, in the practical public administration in Russia the concept of “trust” is given extremely little attention in rhetoric and in practice. But how can an organization of any level work effectively without a certain level of trust in each other: from an elementary raising of a log and ending with such an organization as the Russian Federation?

Moreover, we believe that the main strategic goal for public entities in Russia, ranging from the municipality-settlements to the Russian Federation, should be an increase in the level of trust in government to 60-70%. To achieve this goal, you can use any strategic scenario: from industrial to tourist. It is worth noting here that when decomposing goals in the first place will be the goal of holding honest elections, unless, of course, the election system in Russia will be preserved. We can also safely say that the head of any level, making decisions aimed at reducing the level of trust, is engaged in anti -state activities.

Thus, the integrated development of the territory cannot be sustainable if we do not pay attention to such a fundamental “brick” state as the level of trust at which our future will be built.

Are there any methods or experience that solve this problem?

A similar methodology is offered by the authors of the Vaga Project, which has been implemented in the Arkhangelsk region for several years. The goals of the project are to increase the level of trust in the authorities and the creation of a positive vision of the future among young people.

The project provides for the development of a general development strategy for several municipal areas to create a common rack brand with the widest participation of the population (the areas are located along the Vaga River North Dvina River).

The need to combine strategy development efforts is, firstly, by the fact that the development and implementation of the strategy is a very expensive matter, and cooperation in this matter can sharply reduce the costs for municipalities, and secondly, the cultural traditions of the districts are very close, so it makes no sense to develop this territory according to individual plans. In addition, unification of efforts can more effectively solve issues, for example, on the construction of linear facilities.

The project consists of three parts. The first part is “defrosting”, that is, the creation of value among the wide layers of the population of the need to develop a common strategy and branding the territory. The second part is the development of a strategy and the third part, the most difficult, the implementation of the strategy.

In order to reduce resistance to changes, the project developers involve the widest segments of the population both in the development process and the process of implementing the strategy.

The population involvement takes place, firstly, by holding seminars at the level of municipalities - settlements in which officials, deputies, representatives of small businesses, social activists, and youth participate. The task is to mix different groups of the population, which in ordinary life communicate little with each other. Secondly, the authors of the project, as far as possible, carry out a continuous bypass of the population and conduct deep interviews.

Seminars are held in a playful way and also consist of three parts. In the first theoretical part in the regime of questions and answers, the basic concepts of modern management are given, listeners learn to formulate problems, set goals, begin to realize what interested parties are, resistance to changes and learn how to overcome it. Of course, this part explains the value of the development of strategic plans and why control cannot be full without them.

In the second part of the seminar, students are divided into teams and carry out a training task to develop a TOS project (territorial public self -government). Why TOS? Because it is on the development of the TOS project that you can teach listeners to see resources that are usually not noticed. Here it is worth noting that the teams are obliged not only to tell about their project, but to draw schemes that are usually used in MBA. After the team reports, the listeners are mixed again, new commands are created, and an independent task is given for the evening and night. The teams themselves choose the problem that they would like to solve and disassemble it "on the bones."

In addition to obtaining practical skills in social design, students gain skills in time management and commanding, but the most valuable is that by the end of the second day the level of trust between participants is sharply increased. And this, in our opinion, is the most important result from training.

In 2012, the first stage of the project ends. The second stage of the project - the development of a strategy - is also supposed to be carried out by conducting discussions at seminars. The main goal is to “get out of the inhabitants” a positive vision of the future, together with them to formulate problems and goals, develop a detailed plan, and the system for assessing the achievement of the intended goals. Only in this case, this plan will be part of the resident himself, and not by someone’s whim-an official or a highly expert.

To implement the strategy, the authors of the project propose the creation of an inter -municipal organization of LLC VAGA (the owner of the same trademark), which on the one hand will on a professional basis engage in brand promotion, and on the other hand, coordinate the activities of local authorities to form software products to achieve strategic goals.

The creation of an inter -municipal organization solves one of the most serious problems of modern strategic management. Many developers of strategies at the level of the subjects of the Federation are faced with the fact that the whole process ends with the development of a strategy. For the implementation of the strategy, experts are not invited, so the development of targeted programs is carried out without taking into account the long -term plan. This led, in the end, to the devaluation of the value of the development of strategic plans.

The second problem that the creation of an inter -municipal organization solves is that several power centers for decision -making are involved in the project. To coordinate and coordinate all actions, these power centers will have to share part of the powers. Otherwise, the project cannot be implemented.

And thirdly, the creation of the brand is not an end in itself. The brand is created so that local business can use it to more efficiently promote its goods. When business representatives feel that the brand is working for them, Strana Vaga LLC will begin to receive contributions for further work from business. Thus, the authors of the project are offered not some abstract plan for the development of the territory, but a specific public-private project to develop business and create jobs in order to replenish the budget of citizens and the state.

Another most important task of the project is to preserve traditional culture, since the cultural traditions characteristic of the nation are formed primarily in rural areas, and not in cities and will be preserved in its original form only if there is some minimum threshold of people in the village.

Based on this understanding, the authors of the project were as follows as the mission of the project: a change in the everyday culture of management in order to preserve traditional culture as the basis of economic development in the interests of national security.

Thus, the modernization of industrial agricultural production leads to a reduction in jobs. New jobs can give the service sector in the form of a tourist business, deepening forest processing, other activities, but subject to a cluster approach, which in turn can be successful if there is a sufficient level of trust and business to the authorities.

Improving the level of trust is a matter of changing consciousness, it is a matter of changing culture that change extremely slowly. That is why strategic plans cannot be developed less than twenty years.

If public managers put this indicator as a strategic goal at the forefront, then in our opinion, projects of any level can be implemented.