Planning Together: How (and How Not) to Engage Stakeholders in Charting a Course

"Part of solving problems effectively with others isplanning effectively through joint effort -understanding problems, generating options for response, evaluating those options meaningfully,and choosing a roadmap for action. But over the past few decades, a wide array of trends have expanded the scope, participation requirements, and potential - and the potential abuses - of planning.

Designed and managed well, participatory planning can produce better substantive ideas, useful relationships and stronger civic institutions, new agreements across stubborn divides, and the kind of legitimacy and political support that's increasingly important for acting on social problems. On the other hand, opening up the direction - setting process, particularly if participation is more "ritual" than reality, can lead to frustrated expectations, power grabs in which parochial interests dominate, technically deficient ideas, and deeper conflicts and mistrust. Understanding the pitfalls and abuses is especially important as attention to diversity - in culture, gender, religion, and other dimensions - grows across societies. Unfortunately, most how-to advice dwells on participation tactics and techniques.

This tool helps you answer the four big questions that define effective participation strategies - and thus make better choices about techniques, too."

STRATEGIC QUESTION	DECISION ISSUES	CAVEATS
1. Why should we engage stakeholders in planning? Participatory work can serve a variety of overall purposes, such as creating a wider democratic mandate to act, better substantive ideas to drive action, and feelings of psychological "ownership" and investment in collective work.	Are we looking to define a broad issue agenda on which some group or community can plan and act? To set strategies for action on a pre-defined set of issues? To design a specific project or programme, given strategies in place?	Institutions (or alliances of same) often send confusing signals about why planning is happening, why now, and what exactly the benefits, costs, and limits of participation are likely to be.
2. Who should be involved and in what roles? Effective participation requires setting boundaries that define participants' roles and responsibilities to each other, not as a matter of imposing control but so trust and coordination can develop in place of chaos or "process paralysis."	Who are the primary stakeholders of the decision, project, or policy atissue? Who else might be consulted,or educated, in a broader "public"? Who should organise and sponsor planning events? Facilitate them? Who can observe, and who should make decisions?	Failure to sort out roles can lead to a "circus-tent" approach, in which "more" (players, ideas, events) is assumed to mean "better." Systematic process designs can help - or create the illusion of order, imposing roles and linear steps that may need to evolve over time.
3. What is the proper scope of our planning process? Few projects or institutions contemplate constant participation in every aspect of decision-making. So setting boundaries around the targets of participation - the issues and decisions up for discussion, the authority to decide - is key.	Does our work require broad boundaries, so new issues and interests can constantly be put forward? Are we to generate advice for decision-makers, or are we empowered to decide ourselves? How do we relate to those who make everyday (routine) decisions?	Confusion over the scope of participation can quickly undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of a planning process. Sharp conflicts often emerge when the players have different, and perhaps unstated, assumptions about the appropriate scope of participation.
4. How should we put our participation strategy to work? Smart tactics, well implemented, put a strategy to work. But tactics should encompass a variety of phases and dimensions of planning, evolving as the projector process evolves.	How should we identify, organise, and convene stakeholders? Build acommon knowledge base around the issues we will address? Present information and get feedback? Improve deliberation and shared decision-making itself?	Much how-to advice deals piece-meal with creating effective meetings or using info technologies to support decision-making. Beware getting lost in an overload of information, with too few useful ideas and legitimate decisions.