Life Planning interactions

Introduction

The community provides participants with the tools with which they can plan and closely integrate different aspects of their lives: business, social life, recreation, and health, and in so doing, enhance their chances of success. Through the Life Planning Agency, participants have an opportunity to consider their current circumstances, opportunities, and challenges, and foretell the future with a reasonable degree of certainty. In other words, the agency helps each individual perform a SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) with superior data and analytical tools.

The Life Planning Agency, which is served in every district by a district presidency made up of four presidents, helps participants in life planning. District presidents, assisted by the agency’s automated system, use their knowledge, experience, and wisdom to offer guidance and support to participants. Through the life plans, participants have a chance to live a successful and productive life, ultimately fostering prosperity, well-being, and cohesion in the community.

Data collection by community agencies

As participants work through the steps in the process to be formally admitted, they provide extensive information to the community. Additionally, they undergo various tests to enable community systems to map an individual and determine how they can be supported.

DNA testing is one of the most important ways through which the community collects information from a participant. The community employs various DNA tests, including whole genome sequencing. These tests collect important information such as ancestry, genealogy, ethnicity, and gender. DNA testing also helps establish the possible predisposition to some conditions and illnesses, inherited traits, and elements of human behavior.

Health is another important determinant of a person’s chances of success, and therefore, the plans they need to have. To gather information about a person’s mental health, a comprehensive psychiatric examination, which is a combination of clinical interviews, psychological evaluations, and lab exams, is conducted. Lab exams are mostly aimed at eliminating medical conditions that can affect a person’s behavior. They include hormonal exams and metabolic panels. Genetic exams can also be used to establish whether a person’s mental situation or disorder is based on genetics.

Physical health information is collected via a comprehensive evaluation, which considers all elements of a person’s health. Such exams can include MRI, scans, colonoscopy, physical examinations, and an assortment of laboratory exams. A diagnostic DNA test is also carried out to screen a person and identify any health issues that can be detected by studying genes.

As a participant joins the community, the system also collects information on other aspects of their life, such that it has a complete data set with which to perform various analyses as it offers them services. this includes their profession, nationality, financial status, personality traits, and any other relevant data.

All the data collection, evaluations, and tests are conducted before a participant is admitted. Therefore, the system already has most of its information by the time a participant interacts with the Life Planning Agency.

Life planning and education

Life planning in the community is a multi-stage process, which starts with the collection of data, analytics, recommendation of suitable courses of action, and any amendments to better suit a participant’s needs and circumstances.

The Life Planning Agency’s automated system employs algorithms to collect and analyze information, incorporating other information as well as the economy and society within which it operates.

The analysis results in a report that elaborates on a participant’s current circumstances, including their competitiveness as a business and how they can use what they have to prosper. In other words, it creates a set of courses of action that a participant can implement to ensure their success.

The participant is helped by a district president for life planning to finetune their plan. The district president has extensive experience in the community and can therefore give valuable advice, guidance, insight, and counsel to the participant. Over time, the life plan can be changed with the help of the automated system and the district presidency to reflect new developments that significantly change the recommended course.

The community does not directly provide education to participants. However, it puts the mechanisms in place to help education service providers and learners interact in an orderly arrangement.

The Life Planning Agency provides the necessary platform through which a curriculum is developed. It also enables different practitioners to interact and complement each other’s strengths and expertise. This helps the community to run education services that closely reflect its needs while maintaining the identity of each practitioner as a business.

Even after completing formal education, participants are expected to continue with lifelong education. This helps them improve their skills, reskill, and take on other endeavors that they prefer, or learn a new skill that makes their lives more enjoyable and fuller. The community, through the Life Planning Agency, provides the necessary infrastructure and framework through which participants can achieve LLL, and access to those who can help them in this.

In this paper, we will illustrate how participants interact with the Life Planning Agency, especially concerning life planning, education, and lifelong learning.

Illustration 1: Marketing Professional

Stella, a marketing graduate from the University of New Mexico used to work as a marketing executive with a regional company headquartered in Phoenix. Needing a means to make some money on the side, she started applying for marketing gigs and landed a short-term assignment with a business owned by a limited partner who had a business in a NewVistas community outside Phoenix.

After a while working for the client, who had highly competitive rates to offer compared to her current employment, Stella was persuaded to see whether she could make it within the community. She was recruited and has spent the last three years working her way to gain full admission, including investing, starting her own business, and signing the relevant agreements for workspace, residence, and any equipment lease agreements. She has also written up a business plan to get the necessary assistance from the community, and her stewardship is now up and running.

As she embarks on her new business within the community, she is strongly advised by her captain to make a life plan. This will help, her captain says, in accessing more assistance from the community, including insurance for her business, health, and life, as well as banking and factoring services. It will also help her succeed in the community by advancing her skills and educational qualifications, and therefore become more competitive in the community.

Stella goes to the Life Planning Agency’s automated system for the life planning exercise. Before continuing, the system requires a payment, in return for data analytics and recommendations.

To start, the system already has information about Stella that it has mined from other automated systems, which it presents to Stella. Stella helps the system to update the information where necessary.

The system also asks about the participant’s career and life goals. With this information, it employs algorithms and AI-powered analytics to come up with various scenarios that Stella can work with to attain success. It also includes factors that could torpedo her plan and goals.

With this report, Stella sits with the relevant district president for life planning. They go through the report for a few minutes, after which the president also gives her input. This does not happen instantly, since the president has to study Stella using the information available, prevailing conditions, and their experience in the community. The president then emails Stella an assessment to help her implement the preferred life plan. This way, the president and Stella personalize the plan to specifically fit her profile.

The life plan is posted to her portal so that other agencies can view it to the relevant extent if they need it to make any decisions on granting her a service. The plan can also be used to connect Stella to other limited partners. For instance, if Stella wants to learn baking as a hobby, or improve her training as a marketing professional, the system can recommend the necessary resources and people to her, while alerting those who offer these services to pitch their plans to her.

Stella’s business in the community as a marketing professional includes working with various businesses to help them navigate the Marketing Agency’s automated system, formulating marketing campaigns and publications, monitoring and corrective action, and marketing risk management. Quite a few other businesses are working in the same field, and she is vying with them to maintain or earn more clients.

She has indicated in her life plan that she would like to upskill and compete more favorably. The system gives her extensive information on where she can get this training, pointing her to tutors, their reviews, areas of expertise, and when they are available. It also helps her come up with a plan that will lead to the attainment of a recognized qualification. She then contacts the tutors, discusses lesson plans and fee structures, and thereafter makes a decision on when and how she will start.

Illustration 2: Alice and Dan

Alice and Dan used to live and work in Niagara Falls, across the border from Canada, before joining a community started in the city. Alice is a graduate electrical engineer, who, with 10 years’ experience in the field, led a team of technicians working with the local power supplier. Her role, among others, included handling customer complaints, designing electricity distribution infrastructure, and exploring new business opportunities for the company.

Alice and Dan met at the university and married soon after. They have 2 children, who are currently in elementary school. Dan did not seek employment, instead starting a company with his former schoolmates. Among other things, the company offers logistics solutions to its clients.

The couple and their children have successfully joined the community. They have also gone through all the business set-up processes, and are each currently running successful businesses. Alice works with businesses to find better power consumption means, and is occasionally given design contracts by the community. Dan offers logistics services to businesses and community agencies and is based in the mirrored industrial block.

After advice from their respective captains, Alice and Dan interact with the Life Planning Agency’s automated system to find out about the process. They make the necessary payments, and each starts the process.

Alice helps the system to update the information it has on her, especially concerning personal details. She also shares her career aspirations, personal plans, hobbies, life interests, and other relevant information.

With this information, the automated system performs its analysis and provides a detailed report. Among other things, it recommends that she upskill in project management, as well as customer service. It also recommends some life skills she can learn to enjoy life more and have a chance to interact with other people from different professions.

The plan also includes details on how she can join professional bodies for engineers within the community and beyond, and what she stands to gain from this. In the future, the report recommends furthering her education to become more specialized in design, which she likes more than other elements of her profession.

Dan also interacts with the system and provides any additional information to what the system already has. He intends to offer automation and more advanced control systems for supply chain management for his clients. He is an avid soccer fan and would like to link up with other people, and if possible, coach amateur teams in the community and elsewhere.

The system analyses this information and suggests some ways through which Dan can achieve his goals. The plans recommend, among other things, where he can gain additional skills to power his business, places he can engage in and learn more about soccer, and professional affiliations. The plan also includes suggestions on how he and Alice can work together to safeguard the future of their children and give them a head start as they work towards becoming full limited partners.

Dan and Alice each go to their respective district presidents to review the reports. The district president that Alice sits down with has previously had a copy of the report and recommends a few changes, already having extensive knowledge about the field of engineering, and having been a limited partner for several years. The president recommends a stronger emphasis on the family Alice has with Dan and a discussion on how the couple can start training their children on life planning early. She also recommends a few trainers who can help her with her interest in bowling. They work together to personalize the plan so that Alice can implement it.

The district president that Dan consults also has extensive experience in community life. While he feels the automated system has already done a good job in planning his professional life, he feels there are gaps in Dan’s private life, for which he discusses some changes. He also asks Dan to explore the possibility of setting up a soccer team within the community, since there is none organized yet.

Each limited partner’s life plan is posted on their portal. Some elements can be viewed by relevant agencies, presidencies, and businesses. For instance, when determining whether to lease equipment to Alice, the Business Operations Agency will use the life plan to determine whether she needs training to operate it, based on her experience. Businesses that offer bowling lessons could also reach out to her as a prospective client.

The Life Planning Agency uses the life plan when offering business insurance, as does the Risk Management Agency when determining a limited partner’s risk exposure and the best risk management strategy. Other agencies that use the plan include the bank agencies, and the Recreation and Arts Agency, among others.

Monitoring and evaluation

Every quarter, the automated system analyses the progress that each limited partner has made in implementing their life plan. If there are marked deviations from the plan, it can recommend a new life planning session, where information that might have escaped it is synthesized and used to make good adjustments to the plan. In other cases, just a few amendments may be needed to align the plan with the reality.

A limited partner must implement the plan faithfully. It should serve as a template on how they will run their life and business, and how they will continually improve to prosper. It also ensures that the community can deliver on its promise of sustainable prosperity and stability for all.