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Start by carefully selecting your planning team
One of the most important things you can do is make sure your planning team includes individuals who have the power to take action and implement the plan rather than people who want to tell other people what to do. Implementation may include development and adoption of policy, outreach and education, permitting, purchase of land easements, private fundraising, grant writing, funds management, construction or other components. Consider who is authorized to approve, qualified for, has time for, or is good at the various tasks that will be included in your plan? In some cases, specific entities must agree to the project or qualify for related grants. Even when you get the appropriate people to the table, remember, those people have to want to implement the plan, so respect their participation through the entire process.
Invite the People Who Will Implement Planning needs to be followed by action!
A common example is development of community trails plans. Although citizens can meet to develop a county or city trails plan, they are well-advised to invite city and or county personnel to the table at the beginning of the conversation. Many community trails advocates fail to understand that public grants for development of trails in Iowa must be submitted by a political entity, usually a city or county, and many require that a political entity agree in writing to maintain the proposed trail. Once public trail partners are at the table, they need to be supportive of the route, the surface type, supporting infrastructure and other considerations. They may have other projects or know of other nearby projects that will impact decision making and planning. Property owners along a proposed trail route are also often left out of important discussions. Without their support, you can quickly build vocal opposition that will stop your project before you begin.
Selecting your power team is not easy. In addition to recruiting a diverse group of community leaders, the make up of the planning team should reflect the gender, race, ethnic and social characteristics of the planning area to ensure implementation among all sectors. It takes vision and foresight to imagine all the potential players for any project. One way to maximize the team is to continually ask, who should be here that isn’t and how do we engage them?
Planning Strategies
Invite a diverse group
Bring together a diverse group of planning participants who reflect the planning area and include the people, businesses and/or organizations that control the resources.
Find and meet at the best time for the most people
A common error is to ask the people at the meeting if the meeting time you picked is a good time. Of course it is for those people that came, but what about everyone else?
Set expectations
Encourage participants to walk into every meeting with an expectation to learn, to share information, to better understand each other and the issues, and to walk away with an action step. The learning can be a recap of the last meeting, a presentation from a planner or expert or even participants learning from each other. The participants should always get a chance to tell the group what they think or they will wonder if they are valued or why they are even attending. If participants leave with an task or expectation of future action, they will be more likely to attend the next meeting.
Set an agenda but allow time for creative thought
Create and send out an agenda ahead of time but ask for input from the group regarding the agenda. Once in the meeting, follow the agenda, but recognize that the agenda topics may lead you down unexpected and creative paths that can enhance your plan. The more creative the participants are, the more likely they will tend to deviate from the agenda. If you feel uncomfortable with allowing free discussion or you feel like it is getting out of hand, deliberately dedicate times in the meeting to pursue new ideas. You can set up a white board or post-it board in front where you can post off-topic ideas that you want to discuss later in the meeting.
Encourage everyone to contribute to the conversation
Make a point to add agenda items that require input from all attendees. One or two people who dominate a meeting, even if they are the lead planners, can destroy any chance for team building or synergy by dominating the conversation and inadvertently squashing fresh ideas. Over time you will have fewer people attending the meetings and sometimes people get up and leave in the middle of or before the end of a meeting. Have the participants set and self-enforce group rules that encourage respect and discourage participation dominance.
Create positive energy
Community leaders and volunteers attend dozens to hundreds of meetings annually. They get burned out. If you want them to keep coming, recognize their humanity. They are not robots. Group laughter, shared meals or snacks, idea sharing, group dialog, and pre and post social gatherings can all encourage attendance and relieve stress.