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Public Planning, Change & Transformation Process
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From conflict comes change then transformation
-- Dr. James R. Welsh
Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.
William Pollard
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.
Ban Ki-moon
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Public Planning and Change Management
Public Planning, Change & Transformation Process
The Dynamics of STRATEGIC PLANNING: Assessing the Environment to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges
Sponsors, Transformational Leadership and the Strategic Planning Process
The Tools of Land-use Planning; Urban Design; Planning Focus and Desired Outcomes
Urban Renewal and Community Development; Transportation Planning; Clarifying Organizational Mandates and mission
Growth Management, Smart Growth, Sustainable Development, and Planning for a Catastrophe
Future Gate
Pick a subject and explore.
Education
Housing
Transportation
Food industry
Drug use and control
Migration
Immigration
Medical services
Ageing workforce
Crime related challenges
International relationships
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A Tool for the Planner
All Solutions are tomorrow’s problem,
Redefine the problem as a challenge,
then look for opportunities.
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Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired goal.
It involves the creation and maintenance of a plan, such as psychological aspects that require conceptual skills.
There are even a couple of tests to measure someone’s capability of planning well.
As such, planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. An important further meaning, often just called "planning" is
the legal context of permitted building developments.
Also, planning has a specific process and is necessary for multiple occupations (particularly in fields such as management, business, etc.).
In each field there are different types of plans that help companies achieve efficiency and effectiveness.
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The Paradox of Planning
The paradox of planning is influence by
Politics
Cultural Values
Economic Demands
History
Current events
Future needs
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Needs
Politics
Cultural Values
Psychological Aspects of Planning
Planning is one of the executive functions of the brain, encompassing the neurological processes involved in the formulation, evaluation and selection of a sequence of thoughts and actions to achieve a desired goal.
Various studies utilizing a combination of neuropsychological, neuropharmacological and functional neuroimaging approaches have suggested there is a positive relationship between impaired planning ability and damage to the frontal lobe.
A specific area within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex located in the frontal lobe has been implicated as playing an intrinsic role
in both cognitive planning and associated executive traits such as working memory.
Disruption of the neural pathways, via various mechanisms such as traumatic brain injury, or the effects of neurodegenerative diseases between this area of the frontal cortex and the basal ganglia specifically the striatum (corticoid-striatal pathway),
may disrupt the processes required for normal planning function.
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Opportunistic Behavior
Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles, or with what the consequences are for others.
Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives.
Life can be viewed as presenting "an endless series of opportunities", where the pattern of one's responses defines who or what one is (individual identity).
It can also be viewed as a striving to realize or express certain principles.
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Opportunism: A Moral Dilemma
The moral dilemma implied by opportunism concerns the conflict of self-interest with the interests of others, or
with following a principle: either to do what one wants, or to do "what is the right thing to do".
Thus, substantively, opportunism refers to
someone who acts on opportunities in a self-interested, biased or one-sided manner that conflicts or contrasts in some way with a (more general) rule, law, norm, or principle.
The fact that self-interested actions evokes conflict, it is often difficult for an outsider to understand why an action or an idea is (or is not) "opportunist", because
the outsider does not know the whole story, or the whole context, or the true intention behind it.
The way things appear can give an impression which is quite different from the real motivation that is behind it.
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Planning
Politics
Economics
Unborn
Culture
The Paradox of Public Planning
The paradox of planning is influence by
Politics
Cultural Values
Economic Demands
History
Current events
Future needs
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Needs
Politics
Cultural Values
Public Policy Planning
Public policy planning includes environmental, land use, regional, urban and spatial planning. In many countries, the operation of a town and country planning system is often referred to as "planning" and the professionals which operate the system are known as "planners".
It is a conscious as well as sub-conscious activity.
It is "an anticipatory decision making process" that helps in coping with complexities.
It is deciding future course of action from amongst alternatives.
It is a process that involves making and evaluating each set of interrelated decisions.
It is selection of missions, objectives and "translation of knowledge into action.“
A planned performance brings better results compared to an unplanned one.
A manager's job is planning, monitoring and controlling.
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The Power of Public Policy Planning
Planning and goal setting are important traits of an organization.
It is done at all levels of the organization.
Planning includes the plan, the thought process, action, and implementation.
Planning gives more power over the future.
Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who should do it.
This bridges the gap from where the organization is to where it wants to be.
The planning function involves establishing goals and arranging them in logical order.
A well planned organization achieve faster goals than the ones that don't plan before implementation.
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Forecasting & Preparation
An important, albeit often ignored aspect of planning, is the relationship it holds to forecasting.
Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like for multiple scenarios.
Planning combines forecasting with preparation of scenarios and how to react to them.
Planning is one of the most important project management and time management techniques.
Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal.
If a person does it effectively, they can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal.
A plan is like a map. When following a plan, a person can see how much they have progressed towards their project goal
and how far they are from their destination.
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Environmental planning
Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to:
the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to achieve sustainable outcomes.
A major goal of environmental planning is to create sustainable communities,
which aim to conserve and protect undeveloped land.
Environmental planning concerns itself with the decision making processes where they are required for managing relationships that exist
within and between natural systems and human systems.
Environmental planning endeavors to manage these processes in an effective, orderly, transparent and equitable manner for the benefit
of all constituents within such systems for the present and for the future.
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Elements of Environmental Planning
Present day environmental planning practices are the result of continuous refinement and expansion of the scope of such decision making processes. Some of the main elements of present-day environmental planning are:
Social & economic development
Urban development
Regional development
Natural resource management & integrated land use
Infrastructure systems
Governance frameworks
The environmental planning assessments encompass areas such as
land use, socio-economics, transportation, economic and housing characteristics, air pollution, noise pollution, the wetlands, habitat of the endangered species, flood zones susceptibility, coastal zones erosion, and visual studies among others.
It is the ability to analyze environmental issues that will facilitate critical decision making.
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What is Urbanization?
Urbanization refers to the population shift from rural to urban residency, the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas, and the ways in which each society adapts to this change.
It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas.
Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from urban growth:
urbanization is "the proportion of the total national population living in areas classed as urban,"
while urban growth refers to "the absolute number of people living in areas classed as urban".
The United Nations anticipated that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008.
It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized.
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Urban planning
Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the development and design of land use and the built environment, including
air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as
transportation, communications, and distribution networks
and the provision of municipal services to residents and visitors.
Urban planning deals with physical layout of human settlements.
The primary concern is the public welfare, which includes considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as effects on social and economic activities.
Urban planning is considered an interdisciplinary field that includes
social, engineering and design sciences.
It is closely related to the field of urban design and some urban planners provide
designs for streets, parks, buildings and other urban areas.
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Where is the Good in Urban Planning ?
In urban planning, land-use planning seeks to order and regulate land use in an efficient and ethical way, thus preventing land-use conflicts.
Governments use land-use planning to manage the development of land within their jurisdictions.
In doing so, the governmental unit can plan for the needs of the community while safeguarding natural resources.
To this end, it is the systematic assessment of land and water potential, alternatives for land use, and economic and social conditions in order to select and adopt the best land-use options.
Often one element of a comprehensive plan, a land-use plan provides a vision for
the future possibilities of development in neighborhoods, districts, cities, or any defined planning area.
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A Three- Step Planning Process
The following is a three-step result-oriented process for planning:
choosing a destination
evaluating alternative routes
deciding the specific course of the plan
In organizations, planning can become a management process,
concerned with defining goals for a future direction
and determining on the missions and resources needed to achieve those targets.
To meet the goals, managers may develop plans such as a business plan or a marketing plan. Planning always has a purpose.
The purpose may involve the achievement of certain goals or targets.
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Creating Public Value
Communities can create public value by promoting a sense of individual and collective identity, belonging, recognition, and security;
by providing people a place to live, work, learn, enjoy, and express themselves;
by building and maintaining physical, human, intellectual, social, and cultural capital of various sorts;
and by fostering a civically engaged, egalitarian, trusting, and tolerant democratic society.
Social capital in particular has been shown to have a broad range of positive effects on health, education, welfare, safety, and civic activism.
Communities are necessary for our existence as human beings, and serving communities provides a justification for our existence as humans.
As public problems have increasingly been defined in such a way that they are beyond the competence of single organizations or sectors to solve, collaboration has been
looked to as a way to pool competence to mount an effective response.
Cross-sector collaboration specifically is seen as a way to systematically harness each sector's unique strengths,
while minimizing or overcoming its characteristic weaknesses, to ensure the joint response to challenges is competent to successfully do the job at hand.
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A Conflict of Stakeholders Gives Us Purpose
A mission statement is a declaration of organizational purpose.
The following six questions helps us define public value.
Who are we?
What are the basic social and political needs we exist to meet or what are the basic social or political problems we exist to address?
In general, what do we do to recognize, anticipate, and respond to these needs or problems?
How should we respond to our key stakeholders?
What are our philosophy, values, and culture?
What makes us distinctive or unique?
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Who’s the Stakeholders?
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What’s Important to the Stakeholder?
Social and organizational complexity. The complexity is driven by a number of forces, including technological change, the globalization of information and economies, and the consequent interconnectedness of almost everything.
Reform and redirection of governments and increased interaction among public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Citizens around the world have been asking for more effective, and often smaller and cheaper, governments.
Continuation of technological change. Many see technological innovation as the major force driving change.
Diversity of workforce, clientele, and citizenry. The diversity takes many forms, including racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, political, and almost any other category you can imagine, including those related to knowledge, expertise, and competence.
Individualism, personal responsibility, and civic republicanism. Most envision a move away from reliance on large institutions, particularly governmental institutions, and toward self-reliance and greater personal responsibility.
Quality of life and environmentalism. Concerns for the quality of life are numerous, including the emergence of an era when time is more scarce than money for many.
Struggles for legitimacy and the changing American dream. Governments at all levels, churches of many kinds, a host of nonprofit organizations, and many corporations have seen their legitimacy undermined as a consequence of poor performance, scandals, or sometimes concerted ideological attacks.
Culture of fear. Mainly what we fear is the Other, meaning individuals of many kinds—
An emphasis on learning. Individuals, jobs, organizations, and communities cannot stand still, given the pace of change.
Transitions with continuity, not revolution. The American tradition emphasizes disjointed incrementalism involving partisan mutual adjustment among actors.
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Planning Reduces Risks and Maximizes Efficiency of Time and Resources..
Four key questions:
Where are we today in terms of our business or strategy planning?
Where are we going?
Where do we want to go?
How are we going to get there?
Please Note: Some might argue that stakeholder analyses involve a lot of rigmarole that produces not-too-surprising results.
However, the evidence is now quite strong that a failure to attend carefully to stakeholder interests and information can easily lead to failure
Given the evidence, and given how relatively simple and cheap the technology is, doing stakeholder analyses certainly would appear to be a smart thing to do.
Indeed, one can go further and assert that not doing stakeholder analyses would often be very dumb.
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The Diagram is a Planning Tool of Empowerment
There are three reasons for constructing the diagram for each stakeholder or at least for all key stakeholders.
The first is to help the planning team find the common ground—especially in terms of interest—across all of the stakeholder groups.
After exploring the power bases and interests of each stakeholder, the planning group will be in a position to identify commonalities across the stakeholders as a whole or across particular subgroups.
Second, this search will allow the group to find the common good and the structure of a winning argument (see the next technique).
Third, the diagrams are intended to provide background information on each stakeholder in order to know how to tap into stakeholders' interests or make use of their power to advance the focal organization's agenda as well as the common good.
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Stakeholder Analyses Promoting the Common Good?
As can be seen, a wide variety of techniques are available for performing the basic functions of strategic management.
Each technique provides a different kind of information that can at times be of tremendous assistance.
Some might argue that stakeholder analyses involve a lot of rigmarole that produces not-too-surprising results.
However, the evidence is now quite strong that a failure to attend carefully to stakeholder interests and information can easily lead to failure
Given the evidence, and given how relatively simple and cheap the technology is, doing stakeholder analyses certainly would appear to be a smart thing to do.
Indeed, I would go further and assert that not doing stakeholder analyses would often be very dumb.
But whether the practice is as wise as it can be depends on which techniques are used for what purposes and
when, where, how, by whom, and with what results.
Each of the techniques has a different purpose and reveals some things while hiding, or at least not highlighting, others. Like any other technique designed to aid strategic thinking, acting, and learning,
stakeholder analyses must be undertaken skillfully and thoughtfully, with a willingness to learn and revise along the way.
It is also worth noting that stakeholder analyses can be used to advance causes that many people would believe do not serve the common good or create public value.
Stakeholder analysis should never be seen as a substitute for virtuous and ethical practices though it may be a part of promoting such practices
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Here is some advice about how to get started with strategic planning:
Start where you and the other people who might be involved in or affected by the process currently are.
Have a compelling reason to undertake strategic planning.
Remember there is no substitute for leadership.
When designing a strategic planning process, always be attentive to the requirements for success in the situation at hand and tailor the process according to the needs of the organization, collaboration, or community and situation.
Remember that the big innovation in strategic planning is having key decision makers talk with one another about what is truly important for the organization, collaboration, or community as a whole, and then to do something about it.
Be aware that the resource most needed to undertake strategic planning is not money but the attention and commitment of key decision makers.
Remember that the biggest payoffs from strategic planning may come in surprising ways or from surprising sources.
Outside consultation and facilitation can help.
If the going gets tough, keep in mind the potential benefits of the process.
Finally, keep in mind that strategic planning is not right for every organization or community.
Please note that there may be reasons not to undertake strategic planning, those reasons all too easily become excuses for not paying attention to what is really important for the organization or community.
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Remember
Geography in of itself in of no value, it only becomes important in its use.
In addition, please remember that the big innovation in strategic planning is having key decision makers talk with one another about what is truly important for the organization, collaboration, or community as a whole, and then to do something about it.
Be aware that the resource most needed to undertake strategic planning is not money but the attention and commitment of key decision makers.
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