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This sixth phase of the planning process is aimed at moving beyond the general framework of institutional goals (area-wide priorities) to identifying possible strategies to achieve the priorities. The statement of policy options is the list of all strategies generated to address area-wide priorities, to resolve internal capacity limits or to ameliorate external challenges. Policy options are generated from the experience of subject matter experts, from various sessions where inventive suggestions are created or from detailed diagnosis of the problem that created the priority issue.
Specialist’s Experience. For each community priority (goal), the planning team itself can generate possible strategies or project ideas from
1. Key Informants – Key leaders from area organizations can be interviewed or polled regarding different feasible courses of action to capture opportunities or overcome challenges that were uncovered as a part of the situation analysis and were determined to be a community priority.
2. Field Visits – Team members can use a fieldwork process; travel to cities that have first hand experience and knowledge of a strategy; and borrow from that practical experience (praxis) to address the community’s similar issues.
Group Creativity. For each community priority (goal), the planning team can make use of group oriented processes to generate possible strategies or project ideas, including processes such as:
1. Brainstorming – In brainstorming, a facilitator works with a group of community representatives to focus on an issue and come up with solutions to the issue. Initially all participants are allowed to generate as many suggestions as possible, evaluation occurs only after this free flow of ideas is exhausted. Similar ideas are combined, clarification is made if needed and a final list of alternatives is constructed.
2. Determine objectives and Strategies - For each goal, identify a set of objectives and for each objective identify a set of strategies.
3.Delphi Technique – In the Delphi technique, the planning team uses a group of subject matter experts to identify possible strategies. Experts are asked (by mail, rather than face-to face) to articulate the strategies most likely to resolve an issue, these responses are summarized and the summaries are circulated for comments until a consensus opinion emerges.
Problem Analysis. For complex issues, a problem-oriented analysis may be more appropriate for the priorities being considered. For each priority (goal), possible strategies or project ideas can come from:
1. Gap Analysis – Gap analysis is a technique of identifying gaps between the current state of affairs as compared to the preferred state of affairs. (The community priorities or goals would be considered the preferred state of affairs.) In this technique, attention is directed to generating a strategy or a series of strategies that will close the gap.
2. Pressure-State-Response – The pressure state response framework of analysis used by development agencies attempts to answer questions about: “what is significant that is happening, why is it happening, and what are we going to do about it.” It is holistic approach that attempts to specify the nature of human activities (pressures) that resulted in the current state and how various strategies (responses) could be used to change the original activities.
Other ideas ??? send your comments, suggestions, and examples to lced@aces.uiuc.edu
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