Process in the News: Understanding Process Through Everyday Life
By John Butcher
 

Life is process. If you doubt that, just read, watch or listen to the news any day of the week. Process leaps out at you. Whether you prefer "hard" news, commentary, sports, entertainment or anything else, process is there in almost every story.

 

The Importance of Process

 

“What do you think of plans to abolish daylight savings time?”

“They stink.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t consulted.”

“Yes, I know that, but what do you think of plans to abolish daylight savings time?”

“They stink.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t consulted.”

Variations of that exchange are heard every week. Content objections based on process failures! Citizens and elected officials along the St. Lawrence River lobby against the transport of nuclear fuel from Russia through their communities to a reprocessing site in northeastern Ontario. Ostensibly, they are worried about the potential hazard from highway accidents. But, over and over, they complain that they had not been consulted before the Canadian government took its decision to accept the fuel.

Environmentalists on Prince Edward Island object to a hotel planned for one of the province’s national parks. There are lots of hotels in Canada’s parks. The main problem with this one? No one was consulted. A private waste disposal firm wants a new dump. No consultation, no dump. A parole office is proposed for a downtown Ottawa neighbourhood, near a school. Residents complain that they were not consulted. The international community is slow to forgive perceived American and British unilateralism in Iraq, and so refuse to become involved in its reconstruction.

No one likes too much process  -  until something goes wrong. Then “the process let us down” becomes the common refrain. How many groups have developed the most brilliant strategies only to see them founder from lack of support by other key players? How many simple-looking schemes have proven to be great successes because everyone had ownership and commitment? “Not invented here” is the epitaph of many good ideas.

As process facilitators, one of our roles is to learn from process failures and successes so that we can help others to think and act more effectively. Many groups are afraid that the issues they face are just so complex, or the emotions around them so heated, that only unilateral action will get anything done. Today, that approach is usually self-defeating. As process facilitators, our job is both to design the thinking frameworks (processes) to enable people to consider their issues thoroughly, and provide the meeting management skills (facilitation) to ensure that people can talk openly and effectively with each other.

Many of our insights on how best to use process and facilitation come from the lessons in the day’s news. In reading, listening, and watching for process, we can increase our understanding of the news, and do some valuable professional development at the same time. Process facilitators can use the news to draw on shared experiences that illustrate how people observe and apply process in everyday life. We are then better able to understand the processes ourselves, and to provide clear, quick and interesting briefings to groups to set up and reinforce the use of specific processes.

Let’s look at five basic processes: Issue Analysis, Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Action Planning, and Action Research. We’ll use them to examine recent news stories and other public and organizational events through the lens of process.

 

Issue Analysis

 

We use Issue Analysis whenever a situation is vague or complicated-looking and we want to clarify things before acting. It’s nice when such a simple process is also so powerful. It is based on brainstorming the elements of a situation, then regrouping them into themes that can each be prioritized and addressed. The process works a bit like the prospector’s hammer. The prospector uses the hammer to break a rock sample off an outcrop, then smashes the sample open to expose the minerals within. The prospector can then observe and interpret the minerals into useful patterns. What was jumbled and indistinct now becomes meaningful. Sadly, Issue Analysis is used infrequently where it is needed most: in identifying and focusing public policy priorities.

Still, when it has been used, it has proven effective. The “Prosperity Initiative” sponsored by a recent Canadian government used Issue Analysis in a series of community meetings across the country to surface what “ordinary Canadians” felt must be done to reinvigorate the economy. It was gratifying to see the Cabinet Minister responsible trumpeting the results of these consultations. So simple, but so effective and so quick!

Canada’s National Forest Strategy was another example. Few Canadians have even heard of it. No wonder! Through effective process and facilitation, groups ranging from logging companies to environmentalists to provincial governments gradually built a common vision of where Canada’s forest management practices need to go. Issue Analysis was the foundation process. So when a national conference was held to finalize the strategy, and conflict didn’t break out, the story got buried. Effective process often turns potential “news” into “non-events”.

Process and facilitation are not magic bullets, but they’re a lot better for effective discourse than most of the alternatives out there. Sadly, many organizations don’t understand that process and facilitation can help channel public concerns into productive responses. One such breakdown in process occurred in Ottawa. The National Capital Commission, which oversees much of the Canadian capital’s green space and many national institutions, proposed an animal “leash law” to restrict dogs running loose in parks. A public meeting was held to describe the proposal, but no arrangements were made for public feedback or discussion. Organizers of the meeting were concerned that there would be confusion and acrimony if people were allowed to speak.

Not understanding that a simple process and competent facilitation would address those concerns, there were no public microphones at the meeting (a mistake repeated in later public consultations by the City of Ottawa over a major downtown redevelopment proposal). Anyone who knows pet owners knows that a small thing like this wouldn’t deter them. Participants simply stormed the stage, grabbed the microphone, and vented their outrage over both the content of the leash law and the lack of a feedback mechanism. The National Capital Commission looked incompetent, paranoid, and manipulative. Pet owners looked out of control (precisely a concern that prompted the leash law in the first place), and much more bad feeling resulted. An Issue Analysis exercise would have enabled the Commission and the public to identify common concerns and how to address them, and would have created a sense of shared ownership of the situation. That opportunity was lost.

In 2003, the City of Ottawa recognized the value of good facilitation in public consultations. As part of the International Association of Facilitators’ annual conference that year, several community Advisory Committees used volunteer facilitators to help structure and manage a series of public meetings around various policy issues facing the City  -  issues ranging from heritage and accessible housing to environmental regulations and taxis.

 

Problem Analysis

 

The process definition of a “problem” is very specific: a negative deviation from what is normal, desired, or expected. We do Problem Analysis when we need to separate “symptoms” from “causes”, so we can take action to truly correct the problem and prevent its recurrence. (A cousin of Problem Analysis is Appreciative Inquiry, which looks at what succeeds in organizations and identifies how to replicate that success.)

Problem Analysis is in the news almost every day. Coroners’ inquiries are problem analysis exercises. Investigations of riots, fires, and other disasters use the same approach. The December 2004 tsunami that struck southeast Asia killed almost 150,000 people directly, and threatened many more from diseases caused by polluted water and a lack of medical supplies and shelter. A Canadian expert has said that an early warning system would have prevented 90% of the immediate casualties. Or was the destruction of ocean-front forest that could have buffered the force of the tidal wave the “root” cause of much of the devastation? Answers to those questions are helping to guide re-building efforts.

In March 2005, RCMP officers were shot in Alberta while raiding a farm that hosted a marijuana “grow op”. How could these shootings have happened? Is such violence endemic with “grow ops”? Was it a failure of the gun registry system? Were the shootings the almost unpreventable actions of a mentally-ill and self-destructively violent loner? Was RCMP training deficit? Was there insufficient supervision and support for the officers involved? Were all of the above factors to blame to some degree?

The deaths of police officers always elicit much public attention. Policing is considered dangerous work. In July 2007, a police officer was killed in Peel Region, a growing suburban area north of Toronto. A large funeral was held, attended by police from across Canada. The event was tragic. But from a process perspective, just how serious is the “problem” of police deaths in the line of duty? In fact, this was the first police death in Peel Region since 1984. Agriculture, forestry, and construction are many times more physically dangerous occupations than policing. But we accept deaths in those occupations far more readily because they are so “normal”. In the First World War, single-day battlefield deaths were often counted in the thousands. Today, a single Canadian soldier’s death in battle (or even by misadventure) occasions front-page news.

Experts who follow crime trends and rates of criminal behaviour (as distinct from individual criminal acts) are always struck by how blind to the statistics of crime people are. The general population feels less and less safe, at a time when rates of most violent crime are declining. Why do people (and their elected officials and police leaders) consistently overstate the “problem” of crime? And how difficult it is to create workable public policies to address crime when we consistently refuse to recognize the “norm”.

Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of much of New Orleans in August 2005 has prompted great soul-searching about “what went wrong” and why. The effects of such a storm had been predicted by reputable climatologists, civil engineers, and urban planners for decades, yet strengthening levies and other measures had not been a high enough priority for federal or state funding. (Interestingly, resources had been found earlier for more comprehensive and effective measures in Florida in anticipation of another hurricane. But the Louisiana Governor was not the then-President’s brother.)  In the end, an under-qualified political appointee heading the Federal Emergency Measures Agency took the fall for shortcomings in the relief and rescue efforts. But his (and his agency’s) failures were surely not the root cause of New Orleans’ flooding. Nor were they the root cause of the looting and violence that occurred in the aftermath of the evacuations. Nor did they have anything to do with the fact that the vast majority of the victims of the flooding (or at least those who had neither the means nor the sanctuary to escape) were black. Researchers have now stepped up efforts to learn more about the “problems” of natural disasters and to design more effective measures to prevent or mitigate them.

In the spring of 2000, E.coli in the water supply of Walkerton, Ontario, killed seven people, made 2300 ill, and received international media attention. There’s an innate need among the public to understand the root causes of such a tragedy and so prevent its recurrence. In January 2002, Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor issued his report. It spread the blame among the provincial government’s cost-cutting measures and “red-tape” reduction initiatives, the slipshod and dishonest practices of the town’s water manager and manager of the public utilities commission, failure of the province’s Premier and Environment Minister to heed warnings of the dangers to public safety in their policies on drinking water testing, and inadequacies in the town’s chlorine dispensing equipment. In other words, there were several “root” causes that came together in one location and one point in time to kill and sicken. The provincial government quickly announced new legislation on manure disposal, water testing procedures, and water quality standards. Many responded that lack of legislation was not the “problem”, and that new legislation by itself would be unlikely to address what really caused the Walkerton tragedy.

For many Canadians, the failure of our national hockey team to win a medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics caused much analysis (of the Problem variety). There are many ideas about the root causes of the failure of a team hand-picked by arguably the greatest player ever, Wayne Gretzky, to get past the quarter-finals, and to even score a goal in three of its games. Slow, aging players unable to adjust to the larger ice surface used in international hockey, and the neglect of faster, younger Canadian stars who could have matched other teams in speed if not in experience. A head coach, Pat Quinn, whose own team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, had been conspicuously slow to adapt to tougher standards of rule enforcement both in the NHL and internationally. Over-confidence in light of the gold-medal performance in 2002. Similar soul-searching about Canada’s status as the premier hockey nation has occurred before: it all starts with the assumption that Canada should be consistently competitive (if not dominant), then looks for root causes of failure to achieve that status, and invokes corrective action to change the way we coach and play. (The Swedes, who won both the Olympics and World Championships in 2006, are no doubt still reveling in their own “Appreciative Inquiry”.) It will be interesting to see how the Canadian team fares at the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics, and what lessons from 2006 were absorbed.

Where else do we see Problem Analysis? One place is in aircraft design. Apparently, when new aircraft are being designed, people sit around and think about all the problems that could arise from the design. They then speculate on possible causes, revise the design as required, and develop maintenance schedules to head off problems before they arise. (Here is an excellent example of how Problem Analysis and Action Planning, especially the analysis of risks and the setting of preventative actions, come together.) All this is done before the first aircraft is even built and tested. No wonder they stay up in the air. And no wonder that, when accidents do occur, it is so hard to figure out what happened. All of the contingencies should have been covered. But the infrequency of serious aircraft failures demonstrates the power of process  -  in this case Problem Analysis and its cousin Action Planning.

A tragic exception was the disintegration of the “Columbia” space shuttle during its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003. The investigation into this event revealed a physical cause: foam insulation had broken off the fuel tank during launch and had ruptured the leading edge of the shuttle’s left wing. A panel member described this part of the investigation in classic Problem Analysis terms: “We look at what we don’t have. What we do have. What’s on what we have. We start from there, and try to work backwards up the timeline, always trying to see the previous significant event.” But the investigation went beyond this to explore NASA as an organization, and it was there that the panel found the root cause of what happened. Management had consistently downplayed the importance of foam breaking off the fuel tanks (a regular occurrence in the 89 flights since the “Challenger” explosion in 1986). The NASA culture discouraged real communication around engineering and managerial concerns, punished employees voicing opinions that dissented from those of senior management, valued the hoarding of information and decision-making authority, and displayed a sense of infallibility and complacency in its ability to anticipate and handle problems. While such a culture did not make the “Columbia” tragedy inevitable, it clearly made it more likely as the shuttle program continued. Efforts to change that culture are now said to be underway.

Lots of other examples of Problem Analysis show up regularly in the news. Are guns a root cause of crime or is their use merely symptomatic? Do welfare payments mitigate or cause poverty, teenage pregnancy, school leaving and other social problems? Why is attendance declining in mainstream religious denominations and rising in evangelical ones? Is the extreme right wing reemerging as a force in European politics and, if so, why? How does avian flu and SARS jump from Asia to Canada? How do strains of these diseases mutate? What needs to be done to return to the “norm” of an effective public health system that prevents or mitigates such outbreaks?

And speaking of the Iraq war, there is already a massive industry around analysis of what has gone wrong with the U.S. intervention and why it failed to quickly achieve its stated goals. Never mind that the “norm” of a stable, democratic civil society in Iraq supported by a “market economy” might have been wildly inappropriate in the first place: the U.S. is stuck with the standards it set at the outset. 

Here is an example of Problem Analysis in one of the most contentious areas of public policy and law enforcement  -  sexual assault. The norm in many parts of the world is that people are free to report when a crime has been committed against them. At the same time, we do not accuse others frivolously. The problem (in Canada, at least) was that many women were refusing to come forward to report instances of sexual assault, even when the evidence appeared to be overwhelming. The root cause of this reluctance was that a woman’s medical and psychological records, as well as her sexual history, could be made public during a trial. Trials became defense inquiries into whether a woman had “deserved” to be assaulted, or had “asked for it” because of her lifestyle. The action to address this “root cause” was legislation protecting women from having certain types of information introduced during sexual assault trials. As a result, more cases of sexual assault, often many years old, began to come forward.

Most of the above situations involving Problem Analysis are difficult and emotional. The process facilitator brings to the discussion a perspective and skills that can be useful in helping people to understand the nature and source of serious problems, and to identify viable ways to address them.

 

Decision Analysis

 

The news is full of examples of Decision Analysis in action. Groups use this process when they need to make a choice from among alternatives based on pre-determined criteria. Inherent in Decision Analysis is the use of mandatory (“screen”) and non-mandatory (“comparison”) criteria. The former are used to eliminate inappropriate alternatives (“The sports car just won’t seat five kids”), the latter to assess the surviving alternatives so that we can make a preliminary choice before running it through risk assessment (“Purple and tangerine trim on the house would be cute, but the neighbours will laugh”). We avoid using too many screen criteria, because failure to pass through any one of them will eliminate an alternative from further consideration.

Public referenda  -  which are very popular in the United States and have been used in Europe to decide such major issues as membership in the European Economic Community  -  are, for process facilitators, intriguing examples of Decision Analysis. We’ll use the 1992 constitutional referendum in Canada as our “test case”. (The situation might seem a bit dated now, but it is still one of the clearest examples of Decision Analysis at work in a complex public policy issue.) In this referendum, Canadians were asked to approve a package of constitutional amendments (worked out by the Prime Minister and the provincial Premiers) designed to update jurisdictional and group relationships. The campaign around that referendum was as heated and emotional as any event in Canadian history. Decision Analysis was right there on the front page every day of the campaign.

Any process facilitator could see how things would shape up from the time the federal and provincial governments sponsoring the referendum decided to have only one question (“Do you approve the proposed package of constitutional amendments?” or words to that effect) and only two possible answers (“Yes” or “No”). We all know the danger in yes/no questions: we have a 50/50 chance of getting an answer we won’t like.

What were the criteria used to frame the question and the format of the referendum? They appeared to be based on a view that the public should not be allowed to “cherry pick” among specific elements of the package. This would be too confusing and inconclusive. The governments also hoped that by having one, indivisible package, the public would be afraid to reject it because of the potential consequences for national unity and the lives of many group members (such as women and Aboriginal peoples).

Very early in the referendum campaign, “Yes” and “No” committees set up to focus support and opposition, respectively, to the constitutional proposals. Look at how the committees positioned themselves in relation to our two types of Decision Analysis criteria. The “Yes” committee tried to use comparison criteria to convince us to support the package. It was described as “the best we could get”, “a way to correct past wrongs”, “the cornerstone of a revitalized Canadian economy and society”. All nice stuff, but very soft and hard to get a grip on. Just right for comparison criteria. But to make a complicated decision based solely on comparison criteria, people have to feel good about a lot of things. And they may not be able to quantify or justify everything that they feel. The dangers in positioning around comparison criteria soon became clear to the “Yes” committee. The public opinion polls told it so.

Now look at the “No” committee. It intuitively understood Decision Analysis. It knew that one screen criterion is more powerful than a hundred comparison criteria. It knew that if the constitutional package failed to pass even a single screen in a voter’s mind, the voter would likely reject the entire package. And each voter could have a different screen criterion. So the “No” committee set out to find screens through which the package could not pass.

It was so easy! And the “Yes” committee had made it even easier by refusing to allow voters to pick and choose from within the package and by the “Yes/No” voting requirements that make referenda such poor substitutes for reasoned public policy discourse. If you were worried about the potential costs of Aboriginal self-government, there’s a screen. If you felt that there wasn’t enough Aboriginal self-government, there’s a screen. If you felt that women’s issues were not recognized, there’s a screen. If you were worried that too many “minority rights” could come forward, there’s a screen. And if all else failed, the “No” committee had the ultimate screen. It simply described the package as the “Mulroney Deal”. If you disliked the Prime Minister (as most Canadians did by that point in his career), there’s a screen.

The campaign was never a “war of equals”. The “No” side had it won from the day the question and the format of the vote were announced. The only surprise was that the margin of rejection was only a few percentage points. What that tells us is that if the “Yes” side had been able to neutralize the power of screen criteria, or develop its own screens to eliminate the credibility of the “No” side, the “Yes” forces might have won. But that’s the whole point about criteria in decision-making. Screen criteria are powerful and cannot be neutralized, so long as they remain screens. The “problem” from the “Yes” perspective goes right back to the question and the format of the referendum itself. That “problem” could not be overcome in any campaign.

In the 2006 Canadian federal election, the Conservative Party successfully focused on five policy areas: accountability in government, child care, reduction of the Goods and Services Tax, health care (specifically, waiting times for procedures), and crime. What were the criteria that the election planners in the Conservative Party used to pick those five areas from among the many alternatives? That they would be popular simply begs the question: why would they be popular? What criteria does the Canadian electorate use to assess competing policies, parties, and leaders?

For that matter, what criteria did members of the Liberal Party use in choosing Stephane Dion as their new leader in December 2006. Why did the early favourites, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, fall out of favour? Had members’ selection criteria changed, or did certain candidates improve or decrease their alignment with those criteria? Did members’ change the weight they assigned to various criteria, and so change the relative “scores” of various candidates? And how many of those delegates who voted for Mr. Dion in the hot-house convention atmosphere came to regret their decision? Mr. Ignatieff’s selection to succeed Mr. Dion in late 2008 might have confirmed (albeit in a rather tardy way) what many Liberals felt should have happened two years earlier. However, Mr. Ignatieff’s difficulties in positioning himself in the minds of Canadian voters as a credible potential Prime Minister  -  in October 2009, he trailed Mr. Harper in polls on this question  -  raises the possibility that the federal Liberals might have gotten their criteria and/or their alternatives and/or their final decision wrong a second time (if “wrong” is defined as failure to choose someone who leads the party back into power).

The decision made by millions of Americans to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election was no doubt based on many criteria: a new personality not tarnished by Vietnam-era politics; a shared vision for America and its place in world affairs; a promise of renewal domestically after 8 years of one of the most unpopular Presidents in U.S. history. In the euphoria around Obama’s victory, it was quickly forgotten how close it was and how few Americans would have had to vote for McCain for him to have won the popular vote. It is also interesting to note how many respected commentators (including former President Carter) have been quick to accuse many members of the American public of racism in their opposition to health care reform. In other words, Mr. Carter claimed that the racial background of a policy’s advocates is still one of the criteria at work in the American public’s decisions on whether to support that policy.

What about other instances of Decision Analysis in the news? The issue of the ordination of homosexuals in mainstream Protestant denominations has been fought out through Decision Analysis. Should homosexuality be a screen criterion that eliminates candidates for ordination from further consideration, no matter what other qualifications they bring? Or should homosexuality be simply a comparison criterion, one of several against which candidates are assessed within their overall lifestyles and “calling”? In Canada and the United States, “same-sex marriage” became a contentious public policy issue in 2003. What are the criteria for a “marriage”?

What criteria justify the amount of attention paid to Palestinian/Israeli relations? What criteria lead us to intervene in Bosnia but not Chechnya, in Somalia but not Sudan or Zimbabwe? What are the criteria for criminal prosecutions in Canada when tobacco company executives responsible for a multi-billion dollar fraud are not prosecuted (their companies were simply fined), yet we incarcerate young people who rob a convenience store? How could we be short of funds to combat the AIDS pandemic in Africa, while summoning up billions upon billions of dollars on the spur of the moment to combat terrorism? What criteria made Iraq such an international villain that it was invaded and its government overthrown, while other regimes that appear to be similarly brutal and potentially dangerous are not targeted in the same way? (Never mind the fact that the 9/11 perpetrators were mainly Saudis and that much of their planning took place in Europe  -  two areas of the world that the US certainly had no intention of invading.) These questions are not meant to be judgmental. They are simply the kinds of questions that facilitators ask when they think about Decision Analysis and the criteria that govern what groups (including governments) do.

In a lighter vein, for you Broadway musical buffs there is even a Decision Analysis song. It comes from Oliver, and it has a nice process-sounding title: “Reviewing the Situation”. Fagan is trying to decide whether to leave the life of crime. His preliminary choice is “yes”. Then, in each verse of the song, he scrolls through the risks of finalizing this initial choice. In the end, the risks (from having to get up early in the morning, to meeting a magistrate on the street) are too great. Fagan remains a crook.

    

Action Planning

 

This is a process we all feel we’ve nailed down. Who hasn’t planned an “action”? In process terms, Action Planning is “the framework for accomplishing a task”. The purpose of Action Planning is to ensure successful completion of the task by anticipating and controlling the things that can go wrong. As a result, risk assessment  -  and the setting of actions to prevent those risks from arising  -  are central to Action Planning. This process is much more complicated (and useful) than simply running around doing things.

Organizational change initiatives (including downsizing and mergers) ultimately focus on Action Planning. The full process plays out when staff reductions are involved. These reductions must typically satisfy the twin criteria of saving costs while maintaining service or production standards. One approach is to let attrition take care of most of the reductions. The “risks” in using attrition are that key staff may leave, that staff reductions won’t necessarily be in the most appropriate areas, and that organizational memory will be lost. The “preventative action” to mitigate these risks can be to phase in the reductions over a longer period, based on a thorough human resources needs assessment. If this preventative action fails to have the intended results, the “contingent action” is often to make the phase-in period even longer, to do more contracting out, or to temporarily hire back laid-off staff (although this may upset the cost-saving criterion). The “trigger” for implementing the contingent action is skill shortages or mismatches, and falling service or production standards.

The organization of Olympic Games are among the most complex Action Planning exercises imaginable  -  all carried out under the glare of local and international scrutiny. Architectural plans and building permits, security systems (with all of their preventative actions and contingency plans), environmental assessments and construction, ticketing systems and public relations, athletes’ health (never mind the feeding of all of those high-performance bodies), transportation systems, opening and closing ceremonies, scheduling of events, testing for drugs  -  literally millions of tasks all focused on a single, short window of time. And there is not even a real “break in” period: everything works or it doesn’t (see “Problem Analysis” above).

In “post-Communist” Eastern Europe, we continue to see complex Action Planning unfold. One issue involves how to minimize the risks to ordinary citizens of reduced price regulation and other economic decisions. Another centres on managing traditional ethnic strife that more totalitarian regimes suppressed. A third tries to balance freedom and order  -  less intrusive states and mob rule. All this is going on as markets are actually opened, prices deregulated, political institutions changed, and borders moved. The process has been compared to changing the tires on a racecar, while it’s going 150 kilometres an hour. Should it surprise us that Russia’s former President Putin soon began acting in an increasingly authoritarian manner, and that the public supports him?

The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that successfully deposed Saddam Hussein was an example of very complex action planning. Leaving aside the logistics of the military operation itself, much of the action planning around the invasion clearly concerned itself with potential risks following a successful attack. How could Iraq be prevented from falling into civil war when the central power was broken? How could the international community prevent that civil war from spilling over into neighbouring countries? How could “democratic” institutions and economic liberalization be introduced into Iraq? How could a disarmed Iraq be protected from invasion by heavily-armed surrounding countries that have designs on Iraqi territory? What effects would an invasion have on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? How long and how deeply would the invading western states be involved in the day-to-day governing of Iraq, especially in the absence of a credible national opposition ready to take power under democratic principles? How could ethnic and regional divisions within Iraq be addressed in a durable Constitution that had widespread support?

Much of the action planning now related to Iraq revolves around disengagement strategies that save face for the western powers, without leaving the country in a state of civil disintegration when the foreign troops leave. The Democratic Party’s victory in the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections, and again in the 2008 general election, and America’s selection of Barack Obama as President, have made this situation even more interesting as a new set of principal actors (including Hillary Clinton) now wrestle with, and become accountable for, a situation that was initiated by the Republican Party’s leadership.

Action Research

 

This is just a straightforward term for the “continuous improvement cycle” and other expensive-sounding exercises. Action Research gives us the opportunity to assess what we have done  -  either retrospectively or in real time  -  so that we can identify what has gone well, areas of concern or mishap, and how to address them. (In this respect, Action Research combines some of the thinking approaches of Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis and Action Planning.)

International election monitoring teams are on the lookout both for signs that the democratic ethic is taking hold and for signs that it is being trampled. (See Afghanistan’s Presidential election in the fall of 2009.) They then recommend how to protect and nurture it. Action Research in dangerous settings! Parent/teacher evenings are Action Research sessions. So are site meetings between architects and building contractors. Any time you ask someone “How’s it going?” you’re doing Action Research.

Every well-functioning organization uses Action Research, by whatever name, to ensure that its services, policies, products, people, structures and processes are aligned with their needs and ambitions. This process is the basis for much of what we call the “learning organization”. When used consistently and well, it is a powerful little process that can keep things on track and prevent major problems from occurring.

 

If It Was Only So Simple!

 

Public and personal events rarely include only one process. Almost all of the examples used in this paper tie together several processes. Peacekeeping and disaster response, for example, are complicated exercises to disentangle issues, determine criteria for intervention, anticipate problems, act to mitigate those problems, and maintain a clear eye on the guiding criteria, regardless of the distractions once the intervention begins. All complex organizations continuously monitor issues in their environments, assess and react to problems, decide where to invest resources, plan actions to ensure success, then do it all over and over again as conditions change.

Perhaps the biggest “process” news story in the past 25 years was “Y2K” leading up to the new millennium in 2000. This simple, innocent-sounding term became shorthand for everything from “Your computer may lose your shopping list” to “You will die a horrible and agonizing death from the complete breakdown of all basic functions in our society”. Y2K had all the ingredients of the full range of processes:

-         a tangled group of issues (leavened by millenarian angst);

-         an anticipated problem with clear root causes;

-         decisions on where individuals, organizations and society should invest to preempt the problem;

-         large-scale action to marshal the human, financial and technological resources to implement those decisions; and,

-         continuous monitoring to see whether unanticipated concerns were arising and whether the actions were really working.

When nothing happened at midnight on December 31, 1999, many news outlets declared Y2K the “non-event of the millenium”. As facilitators, we could well see it as a clear triumph of effective process!

 

       

January 2010

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“Process in the News: Understanding Process Through Everyday Life”

John Butcher, CPF, Associates in Planning Inc., Ottawa, Ontario

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