#MONTHLYMYTH: Strategic planning is an undercover operation

Welcome to our latest not-so-monthly myth! Ok, we admit, we haven’t been publishing these every month. However, we can confirm that this one is being sent to you in the month of June and that counts. Right?

Either way, this is a great community and stakeholder engagement myth to get stuck into, because this is something that causes lots of problems for lots organisations.

Yep, we’re talking about strategic plans (or, more precisely, the approach to developing them). This is a breeding ground for missed opportunities and unexpected risks. But there’s a way to do better (and it doesn’t have to be hard!).

imagine this…

Going undercover for your planning work is a problem. That’s because, if you do, the story tends to go a little like this:

A plan is needed for something, so the organisation hands responsibility for developing to one or two people with technical expertise in that area.

It is assumed that most of the plan (and the background information related to it) is too boring or complex for the average citizen or even broader internal staff to understand. Only the highest-level stakeholders are given access to in-depth information or opportunities to contribute meaningfully.
Lots of internal, separate meetings are set up and disconnected discussions happen. The team trying to develop the plan tries to corral separate lists of ideas and issues. No one is on the same page.
There may be no community engagement. Or there might be a ‘light touch’ approach taken. Even if this step happens, it minimises people’s influence and participation, and asks participants for feedback on draft ideas rather than engaging them in shaping the plan’s direction early. People provide wish lists and talk about low-level, personal issues in their feedback.
The planning team tries to make sense of lots of data from the engagement and interpret it on behalf of everyone who had a say, attempting to make calls where there are competing viewpoints or where things don’t quite ‘make sense’.
To avoid all the difficult conflicts in opinion, and in anticipation of certain cohorts being unhappy with certain ideas, the plan is drafted with lots of motherhood statements. No big issues are really addressed, and the organisation has to make some big calls on some tricky stuff without clear direction from those impacted.
Plan is finalised, and implementation of the plan lacks impact, because there is very little community and staff ownership, and the plan doesn’t address the hard stuff it needed to in the first place.

This doesn’t have to be the story of your plan!

there is a better way …

Through thoughtful, connected planning that includes some considered engagement – and we promise it doesn’t have to be overly complicated – you can develop a meaningful, simple, implementable plan that isn’t too long and get’s immediately to what’s important.

Here are four tips to achieving this:

Bring people into the convo early!

As soon as you know there is an issue/project that needs designing, bring people into the conversation. These people can be internal, key external stakeholders, critical friends, even members of the public (if you are game!) to help you unpack the context and the issues before you go to deep into building a plan.

Share the problem not the solution

Too often people are worried about how they might look if they don’t have the answer to the problem, especially when fronting the internal decision makers or even your peers.

Reframe this narrative by identifying the core issue and involving people in fleshing out the dilemma and finding the right pathway/plan going forward.

Surprisingly, this approach will bring much more kudos than soldiering on with an approach privately.

Transparent Sensemaking

Once you have tested the waters broadly with your impacted communities, stakeholders and rights holders – you can bring that intel into a ‘sensemaking’ workshop. This helps you theme and analyse the data and get a shared understanding of the different views.

By approaching engagement in this way you are not only sharing the load but also sharing the understanding and shifting people from the individual perspective to a collective understanding.

Cross-agency agile sprints

By bringing people in for short agile sprint workshops to explore the problem/project and provide strategic input into the plan design, you not only get great input and a better plan, but you will find you energise the workplace, build cross-agency collaboration and ensure stronger ownership.

These sprints are exactly that – what about a series of short, sharp 90 minute sessions that are super interactive and enjoyable! Added benefit these sessions break up the everyday monotony of meetings inside an organisation and highlight the work you are doing – bonus!

interested in taking your plan to the next level?

We love all things strategic planning, and deliberative engagement is just one of our specialties (although we definitely do deliberation around big strategic plans too!).

We design and facilitate engagement processes that build meaningful, actionable plans. Whether it’s a few internal workshops, months of community engagement or a longer multi-phased process, we codesign an approach with you that meets your needs.

We can help make your planning process sing - ensuring the end result is something that decision-makers, staff, stakeholders, and communities can stand behind.

If you’re ready to explore a new way to engage people around planning, get in touch. We love a good chat, whether over a real or virtual coffee, and are able to offer complimentary ideas and advice or a good sounding board.