The success of planning in the community college is linked less to the ability to develop new planning schema than to the development of an orientation toward planning and the time perspective required to analyze the past, supervise the present, and manage the future. Successful planning requires that the college administrator be able to differentiate institutional events from a temporal standpoint; to view the institution prospectively and retrospectively; to integrate events within a framework of continuity; and to view the future with optimism as something which can be controlled. To develop a successful planning model, the administrator must orient the perception of time within the institution toward the future, assume responsibility for the future, and announce an explicit public vision of what the future should be. Rather than viewing their decisions as programmed by the past or forced by contemporary pressures, administrators should look upon their decisions and behaviors as instruments for exploring the future and consider crises as opportunities rather than traumas. Practical ways in which administrators can emphasize continuity and a future orientation include the insistence that proposals be viewed in terms of their implications for the future, the attempt to portray time as a dynamic and moving energy, and the awareness that certain disciplines provide those who study them with different temporal orientations. (HB)