In the right-hand drawer of just about every CEO's desk in corporate America is a strategic plan that charts the organization's future. It provides a crystal-clear path of growth as the business prepares to compete. By necessity, there is an emphasis on bottom-line results. The plan takes the organization from a mission statement through the goals and objectives that will move the business forward and finally to a set of well-defined outcomes.

Through the application of strategic thinking, the American entrepreneur has created a model of business efficiency that is the envy of people around the globe and has created the world's strongest economy. It is time to look at the management of South Carolina state government in the same light.

Too often, our state government represents a collection of programs that are no longer relevant to the needs of our 21st century South Carolina economy. We spend too much time and money solving yesterday's problems and not tomorrow's. We focus on nibbling around the edges of state government by making current programs more cost-efficient and pay little attention to answering the more fundamental question of exactly what should state government be doing to bring the state into the new millennium.

Around the country, other states are beginning to respond to this challenge. Oregon, faced with a 10 percent drop in state revenue, first came up with approximately 200 benchmarks that represented the major things the state wanted to emphasize. These included such goals as reducing child poverty, increasing employment and improving a whole host of health indicators. These benchmarks were created not by the governor or other elected officials, but by the people in a series of town meetings.

After these goals were set, the governor slashed state spending allocations by 20 percent to all state agencies. To cushion the blow and to encourage state agencies to be more relevant to the people, an additional 10 percent was made available for agencies that wanted to come up with innovative ways to address these newly identified goals.

At that point, an interesting thing began to happen. State agencies fell into two categories: those that sat still and complained about the draconian cuts, and those that reached out to other agencies, both public and private, to bid on the set-aside funds. Those agencies that increased their focus on meeting the newly identified needs of the people experienced little revenue loss, while unresponsive agencies faced sizable cuts.

State agencies began to talk to agencies that they hadn't talked to in years. State government began to operate as a cohesive whole, and not a collection of independent fiefdoms. Throughout state government, there was a renewed emphasis on serving the needs of citizens.

Through its innovative effort, Oregon was able to survive a potentially destructive drop in revenue and, at the same time, create a more entrepreneurial state government that was more focused on achieving results for the people of the state.

Our state has the potential, through Gov. Mark Sanford's renewed emphasis on governmental efficiency, to create a similar entrepreneurial climate here in South Carolina.