Analytical Consulting

What is the "Facilitate Planning Approach"?

The Facilitated Planning Approach has four critical components:

1. Collaborative, interdisciplinary (not multidisciplinary) approach
2. An expert facilitator, to implement and adjust the planning process as necessary, to increase effectiveness, and to focus inquiry and creative problem solving
3. Internal organizational participants provide the planning expertise, and organizational managers provide interpretations on policy and give direction for scope of the decision to be made
4. Results documented concurrently with the planning process, affirming and validating participants’ contributions in the format of the decision package, with in-process review and correction

Why Change from the Way We Always Do It?

Facilitated Planning Approach	The Way We Always Do It
Efficient because planning direction is self-correcting throughout process, with no “repeat planning”	Review of draft planning documents and direction at end of process when commitments and costs create barriers to change
Collaborative, integrated, interdisciplinary approach	Segmented, multidisciplinary approach that does not recognize interrelationships of analytic components
Working together to resolve clearly articulated problems and meet quantitative objectives	Validating a proposed action or direction, with inherent disagreements and conflicts and unrecognized options
Organizational cooperation and “buy-in”	Turf wars, disinterest, resistance, sabotage
Inherent cross-training	Narrow focused specialization, creating barriers to communication, understanding, and mutual respect
Objective, comprehensive, and integrated planning and problem-solving process, incorporating all necessary analyses and considering all reasonable options	Biased, incomplete planning and analyses, and uninformed decisions, foreclosing reasonable options
Decisions that are supported, implemented correctly, and monitored with self-accountability	Documents that gather dust on the shelves, decisions that either are not implemented or are implemented incorrectly, no accountability, even sabotage
Actions that work	Doing something hoping it works
Manpower and expertise incorporated efficiently and early for planning, with efficient use of resources and available funds	Intensive use of manpower and funds to repair and correct mistakes
Focus on long-term success	“Put the fire out.”

Why Care About the Long-Term Goals of Creating Trust, Communication, and Positive Relationships?

“People want the most effective, productive, and rewarding way of working together to achieve a common end. They want the process and the relationships forged therein to meet their personal needs for belonging, meaningful contribution…[and] having the opportunity for personal growth…Understanding and accepting diversity allows us to acknowledge that each of us has a need to be needed, to contribute in some way. It also enables us to begin admitting that we do not and cannot know or do everything and that we must rely on the strengths of others with complete trust.”

Dr. Chris Maser, I DelRay Beach, FL, St. Lucie Press, 1996.

Creating trust means that all participants treat each other with total respect:

• Expect, support, and acknowledge meaningful, well-prepared and creative contributions from each participant
• Assume that each participant is intelligent, deserving to be heard and involved
• Recognize your own strengths and expertise and that of every other participant
• Actively listen to the contribution of each participant and seek out the underlying meanings through positive, caring, and pertinent questions
• Speak and expect others to speak in “plain language” and ask for clarification and understanding with no fear of or attack for “stupid questions”
• Expect and provide accountability; learn to depend on others, and to behave dependably
• Expect and provide a personally “risk free” environment for encouraging risky ideas, being creative, building on failures, creating success, and having fun
• Recognize constructive conflict as a means for questioning assumptions and exploring new ideas and directions

What are the Critical Steps Involved in Fulfilling the Short-Term Goals that also Fulfill the Long-Term Goals Using the Facilitated Planning Approach?

1. “Telling the stories”
2. Defining the underlying problem/need for change
3. Focusing the scope of decisions through quantitative objectives/decision criteria
4. Defining the issues through analysis of cause-and-effect relationships
5. Documenting and reviewing/correcting the results of planning concurrently with the progress of the planning effort, in the draft format of the ultimate decision package

Conclusions

The “Facilitated Planning Approach” increases cost-effectiveness, decreases planning times, and substantially improves the quality of the decision package. Participants empower each other through symbiotic integration of skills, expertise, and strengths, which increases the levels of trust, communication, and interorganizational positive relationships. Using “in-house” expertise for planning makes responsible officials more responsive, energizes processes and relationships across organizational lines, facilitates additional cross-functional activities after the planning effort is completed, and creates organizational “buy-in” for the decision, making implementation and monitoring more likely. (J.R. Katzenbach and D.K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High Performance Organization. New York: HarperBusiness, 1993.)

Therefore, both the short-term goal of conducting quality planning, well documented for decisionmaking, and the long-term goal of creating trust, communication, and positive relationships are inherent benefits to the “Facilitated Planning Approach.”

Excerpted from paper presented at the American Planning Association Conference, Seattle, WA, 22 April 1999. ©Environmental Planning Strategies, Inc.