Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)
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to buffer, consult, bargain, and negotiate among the organizations and individuals affected by the change effort. Without such a mechanism, the effort is likely to flounder or fall apart completely (Trist, 1983; Bardach, 1998; Borins, 1998). Guidance about the composition and function of the coordinating committee is included in Exhibit 6.1. It is important to decide whether committee members will serve as individuals or as representatives of an organization. The organizers of the Vital Aging Network decided to invite participants as individuals. Jan Hively explained that if someone from the Senior Federation, for example, were invited as an organizational representative, he or she would have to engage in a lengthy process of gaining the federation’s buy-in. Instead, the VAN organizers have sought organizational buy-in only for specific
Exhibit 6.1. Characteristics of Effective
Coordinating Committees and Other Policy-Making Bodies.
A well-functioning coordinating committee is usually crucial for any major policy change effort. The committee typically includes representatives of key stakeholder groups, top-level decision makers, technical and professional opinion leaders, process experts, and critics. The committee and any other policy board that is involved should:
•Focus most of their attention on their policy-making role
•Develop a mission statement that clearly states their purposes as a policy-making body
•Establish a set of policy objectives for the change effort
•Concentrate their resources to be more effective as policy makers
•Control the change process mainly through the questions they ask of the people they are coordinating, such questions taking the general form of “How does this recommendation [whether a proposal, strategy, or budget] serve our purposes, values, or policies?”
•Use staff to help them be better policy makers
•Rely on various media (press releases, newsletters, television, e-mail) to transmit information to key stakeholders and the general public
•Hold periodic retreats to develop policies, plans, strategies, and programs for subsequent years
•Appropriately monitor pertinent performance data
References: Carver (1990), Eadie (1994), and Houle (1989).
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projects. Of course, participants in a steering committee should recognize that their participation may affect their organization. Even if people do not serve as an organizational representative, they are not shorn of association with their organization. They and others will view their organization as a potential resource for the committee’s work.
In addition, once the change effort has expanded beyond a small group, then a planning team, or at least a project coordinator, will almost always be necessary to prepare for coordinating committee meetings and other events. The planning team may include some coordinating committee members, and certainly champions and other workhorses committed to keeping the effort moving. This entrepreneurial team carries the change effort through subsequent phases of the policy change cycle, even though membership is likely to change as time goes by. Specific working groups may be needed. A group might be assigned to draft an initial agreement for consideration by the coordinating committee; other groups may be assigned specific research tasks. For example, in the AAMP various working groups organized stakeholder consultation and expert panels and compiled research on the experience of African American men.
Fourth, the participants may also want to assess stakeholder attitudes toward the status quo, using Exercise 6.4. The exercise should reveal whether stakeholders already have enough interest in doing something about the public problem or opportunity, whether they need to see the problem or opportunity as more important, or whether political changes are necessary, which might mean changes in elected officials, partisan distribution in an elected body, pressure group activity, or public opinion.
Crafting an Actual Agreement
An informal understanding may suffice as long as only a few individuals or groups are involved in the early stages of mobilizing action, few resources are needed, and the situation is relatively straightforward. However, a detailed, jointly negotiated agreement is indicated as the number of groups increases, significant resource commitments become necessary, or the situation grows more com-
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Exercise 6.4. Assessing Stakeholder
Attitudes Toward the Status Quo.
This exercise helps a group assess how satisfied stakeholders are with the way a public problem or opportunity is being handled now and what it would take to raise dissatisfaction with the status quo to a critical level.
1.At the top of a flipchart sheet, write the question, How well does the status quo satisfy stakeholder goals and expectations?
2.Down the left side of the sheet, list the stakeholders involved in efforts to remedy the problem or take advantage of the opportunity. Add more sheets if needed.
3.Ask the group to decide whether the status quo performs poorly, adequately, or very well against each stakeholder’s goals and expectations, and note the group’s assessment next to the stakeholder.
4.Once completed, the exercise can be the basis for discussing strengths and weaknesses of the existing policy regime (or nonsystem), the nature of existing and potential stakeholder coalitions, and the opportunities and threats to those coalitions.
plex. As noted above, a small group can be appointed to draft an agreement for submission to the coordinating committee.
A full-fledged initial agreement should include:
•A compelling statement of the need to respond to the problem.
•A list of the stakeholders whose support or acquiescence is necessary to build a winning coalition.
•A general strategy and next steps. The next steps should focus on the problem definition phase; the planning team may want to organize a retreat, conference, or formal discussion session (see Resource F). The team will probably conduct additional research to formulate the problem and explore solutions more thoroughly, to create enough of a preliminary issue to mobilize action (and further initial agreements) among a wider circle of participants.
•Guidance about the optimal design and use of forums, arenas, and courts.
•Preferred form and timing of early reports.
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•The role, function, and membership of any individual, group, or committee empowered to oversee the effort of the planning team. Characteristics of effective policy-making bodies are outlined in Exhibit 6.1. The agreement may name a project coordinator (often a champion-in-chief) or include plans for naming someone to the position.
•Commitment of resources (time and attention of key decision makers and opinion leaders, staff time, and money) to begin the endeavor.
The agreement could be a written memorandum, or a chart with supporting text; it should be distributed to the coordinating committee and planning team. If outside consultants are to be used, a formal contract is desirable. Note that considerable research and consultation may be needed to put together agreement components. For example, the drafters should talk to trusted informants about the best way to approach a pertinent public agency, legislature, or civil or administrative court. They should also consider decision-making arenas that aren’t already tied to a failing solution, so that change advocates can engage in what Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993) call venue shopping, or seeking out the arena most favorable to a proposed solution.
Using their visionary skills, policy entrepreneurs might think of the initial agreement as outlining an anticipated story of policy change. A good initial agreement names the actors, outlines the plot that is about to unfold, designates the stage on which it will be played, demarcates specific acts and scenes, describes the general character of the story and the themes to be followed, and suggests how the endeavor will be underwritten. The story metaphor is appropriate as well as useful, given how dramatic many change efforts become, but policy entrepreneurs should recognize how difficult it is to stick to the script in a situation where no one is in charge (Mangham and Overington, 1987; Bryant, 2003). In particular, the initial agreement is likely to point out that there is no single “director” but many, and much of the “story” is made up as events unfold unpredictably (and perhaps dangerously). As leaders direct these dramatic processes, they must be prepared for their well-crafted play to change suddenly into improvisational theater, or even theater of the absurd! An initial agreement that has de-
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lineated themes, actors, and plots helps leaders know when it is time for key decision makers to rewrite their script for a happier ending.
Applying their political skills, policy entrepreneurs may highlight the gamelike quality of the policy change cycle, likening the change cycle to chess, in which a player must understand the purpose of the game, the rules, and the function of each piece, as well as the likely strategies of the opponent. A player must also have an excellent strategic sense, think many moves ahead, and know what it takes to win (Behn, 1983). Perhaps the best description of this way of thinking comes from one of novelist Amy Tan’s characters:
I studied each chess piece, trying to absorb the power each contained.
I learned about opening moves and why it’s important to control the center early on; the shortest distance between two points is straight down the middle. I learned about the middle game and why tactics between two adversaries are like clashing ideas; the one who plays better has the clearest plans for both at-
tacking and getting out of traps. I learned why it is essential in the endgame to have foresight, a mathematical understanding of all possible moves, and patience; all weaknesses and advantages become evident to a strong adversary and are obscured to a tiring opponent. I discovered that for the whole game one must gather invisible strengths and see the endgame before the game begins. [Tan, 1989, pp. 95–96]
The policy change cycle is far more complicated than chess, and the desirable conclusion is one in which everyone benefits. Nevertheless, the imagery is helpful, because more often than not policy entrepreneurs encounter clever opponents who design their own strategies in order to oppose important policy changes.
The entrepreneurial team might strategize how to include attention to leadership (especially leadership in context and personal, team, organizational, and visionary leadership) in a forum for developing additional agreement and proceeding with the phases of problem formulation and search for solutions. If the team is especially ambitious, it can plan a leadership development program to be available to participants in the change effort.
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Building commitment for the long haul is also important, since accomplishing a major policy change can take a decade or more (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). The team should urge forum participants to take the long view, yet at the same time inculcate a sense that the journey will be invigorating and filled with ample opportunity for achieving milestones along the way.
Additionally, the planning team should outline a media strategy for the entire change process. Their action plans for the initialagreement phase should include:
•Identifying mass media that reach the general public as well as the decision makers whose public support is valuable
•Identifying alternative media (neighborhood newspapers, public radio, professional journals, and the like) that reach specialized audiences, since most audiences may be characterized as cognitive misers (Nelson, 1984; Sabatier, 1991)
•Deciding whether and how to create new media
•Compiling, in useful form, media addresses, telephone and fax numbers, publication dates, deadlines, newscast schedules, format requirements, names and contact information for reporters interested in the general topic of concern, and the names of editors or news directors who may make decisions about when and how to cover the change effort
•Anticipating the change project’s reports, speeches, and other activities and deciding how they should be publicized; options include press releases, photographs, articles for in-house publications, listservs, Websites, audiotapes, and videotapes
•Deciding which interpretive schemes should be emphasized in any initial public utterance or report
•Determining what resources are needed
•Identifying supporters who are especially knowledgeable, articulate, and possibly attention-getting as potential spokespersons
•Deciding whether to publicize an initial agreement, through press releases and public ceremonies, for example; doing so makes sense when the agreement includes enough advocates (especially well-known and respected ones) to signal the effort’s importance and potential success
•Preparing for the effort to become public, even if participants agree not to publicize an initial agreement
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If an initial agreement cannot be reached the first time through, policy entrepreneurs may want to try again, wait for an appropriate focusing event, foster political change to make the climate more receptive, engage in further problem formulation or solution-search activity, or focus on an area in which key decision makers can reach agreement. Announcement of the agreement may itself be a focusing event.
Summary
A successful initial-agreement phase results in a shared commitment among at least some key stakeholders to undertake a policy change effort to remedy a public problem. A formal initial agreement can be a guide for working through the ensuing phases of the policy change cycle. It can help foster group identity, clarify individual and group roles in the change process, tap resources, and offer a compelling sense of the importance of the problem and the possibility of problem-solving actions that will achieve the common good. We turn now to the problem-formulation phase, in which the nascent advocacy coalition prompts public deliberation on the causes and interpretation of the problem at hand and develops direction for a solution search.
Chapter Seven
Developing an Effective Problem Definition
to Guide Action
It is not difficult to tally preferences in this era of instantaneous electronic polling and sophisticated marketing techniques for discovering what people want and how much they want it. It is a considerable challenge, however, to engage the public in rethinking how certain problems are defined, alternative solutions envisioned, and responsibilities for action allocated.
ROBERT REICH
The world is made of stories, not atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
As they work in the problem-formulation phase, wise policy entrepreneurs know that much has to be done to cultivate a sense of urgency and possibility among ever-broader groups of stakeholders. These leaders must be willing to hold their own problem definitions or favored problem frames lightly and promote a deeper investigation of the causes, effects, and possible interpretations of the problem (Nutt, 2002). As part of this work, they may need to reframe the problem as an opportunity to achieve beneficial societal goals.
Leaders exercise extraordinary power over policy change processes when they help people see a new problem, or see an old problem in a new way. As John Kingdon notes, this change in people’s
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perspective is “a major conceptual and political accomplishment” (1995, p. 115) because how a problem is formulated has a powerful impact on how it is addressed, and indeed whether it is addressed at all.
Purpose and Desired Outcomes
The primary purpose of the problem-formulation phase of the policy change cycle is to develop widespread awareness and appreciation of an important public problem, along with a sense that it can be solved. A secondary purpose is to specify directions for the rest of the cycle that help ensure proposed and adopted solutions actually address the problem and are technically and administratively workable, politically acceptable, and legally and ethically defensible.
These are the desired outcomes for this phase:
•Clear and apt identification of the nature and range of the problems for which solutions might be sought
•Clarification of differences among stakeholders in relation to the problem and its effects
•Criteria for measuring stakeholder satisfaction with proposed solutions
•Attention to stakeholder feelings and attitudes
•Agreement on which existing and new organizations are needed to respond to particular problems
•Direction and plan for solution search
•Sense of the outlines of a coalition that can support the change effort through subsequent phases
•A clear problem statement
Especially in the problem-formulation and search-for-solution phases, policy entrepreneurs engage in what Paul Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith call “policy-oriented learning,” which they define as “an ongoing process of search and adaptation motivated by the desire to realize core policy beliefs” (1993, p. 44). In the process, stakeholder beliefs may be altered. Robert Reich argues that policy making “should entail creation of contexts in which the public can critically evaluate and revise what it believes” (1987, p. 8).
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Awareness and Appreciation of Public Problems
In Chapter One, we say that public problems are complex, affect diverse stakeholders, defy simple or easy solutions, and are likely to require collaborative solutions. Usually these problems affect an entire geographic community or community of interest. The problems are important (that is, serious consequences or major lost opportunities result from not dealing with them), and—at least in principle—solutions or improvements are possible. This last point is worth making because a problem without hope of remedy is more aptly called a “condition” or “difficulty” (Wildavsky, 1979). For example, physical mortality is part of the human condition; only a tiny minority of our fellow human beings have seriously proposed that humans could live forever. Instead, policy entrepreneurs highlight such problems as inadequate health care for poor people, the inability of older adults to obtain affordable prescription drugs, and the need for hospice care for people with a terminal illness.
Several analysts refer to the “wicked” nature of public problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Most public problems are wicked in a number of ways:
•They have no definitive formulation, and there are many ways to frame them. The criteria used to determine what constitutes a “better” or the “best” problem definition are themselves likely to be disputed.
•The problems are not solved but re-solved, again and again. For example, problems of poverty, gender, race, war, and peace are never solved conclusively; they reemerge, in the same form or differently, with great frequency.
•Solutions to the problems are not true or false, but good or bad. Stakeholders use their own (often fundamentally conflicting) expectations or criteria to judge solutions.
•Typically, the full consequences of any solution cannot be known immediately—and may never be known. Sometimes, a solution solves a problem other than the one it was intended to solve, exacerbates the original problem, or causes a new one.
•One-shot solutions don’t work. These problems require a solution process that permits midcourse correction and even substitution of a new solution when necessary.