Implementation in Action: The Benefits Blueprint

Funded by the Provincial and Federal Governments and Irving Oil, HSAL developed a series of action plans to anticipate and avoid challenges associated with rapid economic and workforce growth; harness and capitalize on growth throughout the Province; and direct benefits to all parts of the community including marginalized populations.

As planners, we are agents of change.  We play a vital role in putting ideas into action so that tomorrow will be better from what is today.  We all know change is difficult and that it requires much more than ideas contained in a strategic plan.  Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince offers perceptive insight into the politics of change and why innovation is so incalculably complicated to implement.  Machiavelli writes:

“And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.  Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” 

To create value for your municipal strategic plan, it is critical to develop effective actions in a context of accountability.  This is precisely the approach Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited took when developing actions plans for the Benefits Blue Print: Energizing Sustainable Communities.

The Benefits Blueprint was a community-led initiative to ensure Saint John, New Brunswick, and the wider region would have a plan in place to manage and maximize the benefits of a period of transformational growth in advance of unprecedented investment and a number of mega-projects proposed for the area.  The Benefits Blueprint is a sustainable growth management plan for Saint John and New Brunswick. And, in 2010, Enterprise Saint John, the project proponent was awarded the Silver Medal in the non-profit category at the 2010 IPAC- Deloitte Public Sector Leadership Awards.

The goal of the Benefits Blueprint was to put into place an action plan, a blueprint, to ensure growth occurred in a way that would benefit the most people across the province; that spin-off effects from new investment and infrastructure would permeate deeply into the community, including the most vulnerable and disadvantages citizens; and, to ensure that host communities would not be impacted negatively by anticipated economic growth.

In our experience, strategic plans are not implemented well (or at all) because the recommendations do not include effective actions.  Key to the Benefits Blueprint’s success was a set of business cases (action plans).  HSAL prepared 16 meticulously researched action plans to support (implement) seven identified focus areas to ensure that opportunities to benefit from planned investment in New Brunswick would be available to as many New Brunswickers as possible.  Using this model, many of the actions were well underway before the plan was completed.

The action plans also addressed expected areas of stress to ensure that any impacts from growth were minimized and would not negatively affect existing resources that contribute quality of life.  Each action plan identified the rational for the focus area, the supporting actions, the required funding, the necessary resources, as well as an ‘action champion’ who assumed ultimate responsibility for implementation.  A Benefits Blueprint Project Management Office (PMO) was also developed to support, oversee, monitor and report-in annually on the progress of implementation.  While action champions were held accountable for implementing their respective sixteen individual actions, the PMO was held accountable for the ultimate implementation of the Benefits Blueprint.

Andrzej Schreyer is senior environmental and land use planner with Hardy Stevenson and Associates and a provisional member of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners.  His experience includes developing public consultation and communications plans, managing social impact assessments and land use studies in support of major infrastructure projects in the GTA, preparing community strategic plans, and developing and implementing urban and environmental planning policies.

Peer Review Issues

This is Danya’s final post on the HSAL peer review process.

There are many positive aspects of a peer review process that I previously presented in my last three blog posts. However, there are also some areas that should be seen as a caution for any organization wishing to sponsor a peer review process.

The primary issue that faces a peer review process is cost.  Peer reviews for most projects can be scoped to the review of certain reports at a specific period of time. In many cases for smaller projects, it is easy to set a defined scope and corresponding budget. However, for more complex projects that may require an ongoing peer review element, costs will reflect any considerable amount of work to be done.

A second issue involves stakeholder/resident trust and credibility in the peer review process.  In our experience, there appears to be a general acceptance of the peer review comments we have put forth to our clients, but not all stakeholders or local residents may agree with our findings and recommendations.  For these people (which are usually few and far between), additional information from a peer review team is not likely to be influential.

Regardless of any issues that may arise during a peer review process, we believe that if you effectively manage the ‘people aspects’ of a peer reivew process, this can assist in building transparency and trust in all Project activities. Furthermore, collaborative, multi-disciplinary dialogue is another key element of any peer review process’ success.

Danya Al-Haydari is an Environmental Planner at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, where she specializes in public consultation, environmental assessment and energy policy. She has coordinated work for the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects, and conducted research on the Port Hope Area Initiative’s Property Value Protection Program. Most recently, she co-authored a paper for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on community well-being in nuclear host communities.  Danya is a member of the Canadian Nuclear Societyand Women in Nuclear Canada.

Strategy to Implementation: Getting From Here to There

With less than 10 percent of strategic plans being implemented effectively, now's the time to consider how planners can help this process to be successful.

One of the most challenging aspects of strategic planning (public or private) is implementing the plan – realizing the vision, goals and objectives set-out in the plan. There are numerous private sector studies that show a feeble relationship between strategy formulation and execution.  During a keynote address, Robert Kaplan, a paragon in the field of business management and Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School revealed that less than ten percent of strategic initiatives are effectively executed.

While there are stark differences between private and public sector strategic planning landscapes, this is a sobering revelation – if strategic plans of multi-billion dollar corporations have such an unflattering track record, what is the performance record of public-sector strategic plans?  While there are exceptions, how many municipal strategic plans are you aware of that are left languishing on a shelf?

Based on HSAL’s experience, we propose the following guidelines to ensure that your strategic plan gets implemented successfully and translates into real results:

1. Get buy-in from senior leaders. It is critical that senior leaders are committed from the outset and share support for the plan within the organization. This commitment will build organizational capacity leading to broader support for the plan.  While strategic plans should be developed from the bottom-up, organizational support for their implementation should be a top-down process. This will keep the strategic plan top of mind and off the shelf.
2.  Keep the plan visible. Keep the plan visible by incorporating it into staff meetings and other public events.   Identify strategic plan directions and demonstrate how they are related to daily activities.  Some municipalities have a synopsis of their strategic plan in every office and meeting room.  This maintains plan visibility and relevance by acting as a reminder to keep the big picture, vision and priorities in mind.
3.  Develop an action plan.  For each goal and/or objective, prepare an action plan.  The action plan should at minimum identify what resources are required to accomplish the action as well as a realistic deadline by which the action is to be attained.
4.  Identify action champions.  Designate a champion for each action.  This person assumes responsibility for implementing the assigned action.  Responsibility translates into urgency.
5.  Identify overall implementation champion.  Identifying one person to bear ultimate responsibility for overall plan implementation is vital. This responsibility should rest with someone with high visibility in the community and the organization and with someone how has the authority to make decisions.
6.  Create a clear sequencing blueprint, including quick-wins.  Set priorities to make sure actions are achieved in logical order.  Identifying and achieving quick-wins will build much needed momentum.
7.  Identify measures.  In order to track progress and have explicit expectations, it is vital to develop appropriate measures.  This will allow you to track how you are doing, if (and to what extent) progress is being made, and when a goal and/or an objective is achieved.
8.  Assess progress often.  Identify an internal project team member to assess progress.  The more frequently progress is assessed the better, but be realistic – quarterly assessments are appropriate.  Also, consider building-in action implementation progress into personal performance reviews.  If champions know their progress will be assessed, they will tend to do the job better and in advance of performance reviews.
9.  Track progress, but focus on implementation.  It is important to track progress.  Recognizing accomplishments is motivating and maintains momentum.  However, assign the majority of resources on implementing actions, not tracking them.
10.  Review and repeat.  During implementation, continually monitor progress, review the strategic plan and implementation approach.  Also monitor economic and political trends and make adjustment to your action plans accordingly.  Repeat the steps identified above.

Andrzej Schreyer is senior environmental and land use planner with Hardy Stevenson and Associates and a provisional member of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners.  His experience includes developing public consultation and communications plans, managing social impact assessments and land use studies in support of major infrastructure projects in the GTA, preparing community strategic plans, and developing and implementing urban and environmental planning policies.

Social Sciences and the Peer Review Process

Effectively dealing with the ‘people aspects’ of a project is often just as complex as the engineering associated with a technical peer review exercise - and just as important.

This is Part Three of Danya’s series on the peer review process.

I have previously discussed what a peer review entails as well as some of the questions a peer reviewer would ask when reviewing documentation, etc. This entry documents how the social sciences fit into the peer review process.

In a peer review process, especially those for controversial projects (e.g. nuclear waste management), the social sciences dictate that there needs to be as much emphasis on dialogue about values and the ‘people aspects’ as is commonly conducted with technical and scientific data.  Equally important are the communications and public consultation processes that develop and maintain public trust.  An HSAL peer review team is headed by project managers, planners and social scientists trained to be sensitive to the ‘people aspects’ of the project as a major priority. When required, an HSAL peer review team is supported by engineers and technical specialists as sub-contractors.

Effectively dealing with the ‘people aspects’ of a project is often just as complex as the engineering associated with a technical peer review exercise.  It is important to get the ‘people-aspects’ of potentially controversial projects right.  This involves communications and public interactions informed by sound social science. We maintain that a broad dialogue between the technical and non-technical disciplines in a peer review team setting is as important as receiving individual advice from scientific and technical experts

The following are key principles of a peer review process from a social sciences perspective:

Transparency and Trust – The development of trust between all stakeholders is crucial to a peer review process. Trust can be divided into two categories: fiduciary trust and technical competence. Fiduciary trust refers to the trust in the decision makers, while technical competence refers to the trust in the technology and scientific data.

Objectivity - In order for a peer review process to provide an objective point of view, it should not function as an advocacy process. Whether the ‘scope’ of a peer review establishes a climate of advocacy or objectivity has an essential role to play in the success of the peer review process. A peer review process may in some cases be used as an advocacy process. Without ‘objectivity’ as the fundamental core to the scope of the peer review work, there is little likelihood that a successful outcome will result.

Visibility of the peer review team - In conducting peer reviews, it is important to define how visible and accessible members of a peer review team should be.  With some projects, the nature of the work is such that peer review teams are provided explicit directions to complete a technical review and then issue a report without any presentation of results to the public. The public concerns are then examined and considered where appropriate.   In other instances there may be a public presentation of peer review findings at a public meeting or forum or simply the release of a peer review report as a public document.  At that point the work of the peer review team is complete. For contentious projects such as nuclear waste management projects, we believe it is beneficial for a peer review team to have a visible presence in the community in order to be responsive to questions and concerns raised by individual citizens and local community groups.

Danya Al-Haydari is an Environmental Planner at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, where she specializes in public consultation, environmental assessment and energy policy. She has coordinated work for the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects, and conducted research on the Port Hope Area Initiative’s Property Value Protection Program. Most recently, she co-authored a paper for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on community well-being in nuclear host communities.  Danya is a member of the Canadian Nuclear Societyand Women in Nuclear Canada.

Peer Review Questions

This is part two in Danya’s series on the Peer Review Process.

When we conduct a peer review, we’re basically trying to determine if we would come to the same conclusions as the author(s) if we did the work ourselves. In reviewing documentation (e.g. environment assessment reports) we typically ask the following questions:

• Is the purpose of the work clearly stated and are all issues encompassed through the stated purpose?
• Is the methodology sound enough to permit the peer reviewer’s objective review of the issues, data and facts?
• Are relevant data and facts clearly and consistently used in the reports/ study?
• Are certainties and uncertainties of the studies openly and objectively stated?
• Can the we trust the data?
• Are the conclusions supported by the data and research undertaken?
• If we examined the data would it reach the same conclusions?
• Are there gaps arising from our examination of the issues?

My next entry will focus on what the social sciences can bring to the peer review process.

Danya Al-Haydari is an Environmental Planner at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, where she specializes in public consultation, environmental assessment and energy policy. She has coordinated work for the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects, and conducted research on the Port Hope Area Initiative’s Property Value Protection Program. Most recently, she co-authored a paper for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on community well-being in nuclear host communities.  Danya is a member of the Canadian Nuclear Societyand Women in Nuclear Canada.

Five Screenwriting Rules to Improve Your Writing

"The Anatomy of a Story" by John Truby is quickly becoming my favourite 'go-to' writing reference.

I’m currently enrolled in a fiction screenwriting course through Ryerson University’s Chang School of Continuing Education. Part professional development, part exercise in creativity, practicing the art of screenwriting is helping me to hone my communication skills, and is pushing me to think about writing in new ways. I’m also building a transferrable skill set that I can apply to my work with a variety of clients.

Here are five things I’ve learned from screenwriting that can assist any communicator improve their writing:

1. Start with a premise

You should be able to sum up any writing endeavour in one or two sentences. Use this premise (or logline) as a vision statement for your work. Refer back to it when you feel you’re moving off-course. You can also use it to ‘pitch’ your work to the client, or to your boss.

2. Format matters

In screenwriting, format is king. Your script will get tossed in the trash if the formatting isn’t correct. Not all communication plans are created equally (I’ve seen many templates used successfully in my career), but style does matter. Be consistent, be clean and focus on streamlined design (no Comic Sans, strange Capitalized Words or clip art).

3. Be succinct

Flowery prose are great if you’re writing a novel, but when writing a screenplay you have to imagine action – quick dialogue and lots of visual cues. When communications planning, you might not be working with big screen effects, but you aren’t doing a major character study either. Keep your descriptions sharp and focused on meeting your vision.

4. Use white space

Whether you’re writing a newsletter, a blog or a magazine article remember that short paragraphs (three to four sentences) are not only acceptable, but preferred. White space helps the eye to focus, and allows the reader to scan the page more readily. Headings, and bulleted or numbered lists, assist with reading and flow as well.

5. Develop a plan

Use your premise to create an outline of your work before you get into the details. For example, the premise for this article might be:

A blog post that will assist communications professionals improve their writing using the rules of screenwriting.

Next, outline the steps that you will use to reach your goal. For this post, I listed all of the concepts that I’ve learned in the course (so far) that I thought would help other communications professionals to build on their writing skills. Then I refined the list, and began to fill in the blanks.

You can start by listing your audience, the goals you want your communications plan or piece to meet, and the headings that will organize your work.

These tips sounds simple and intuitive, but it’s surprising how often we lose our focus when writing for ourselves or our clients. The rules of screenwriting can help us to visualize how our plans might be realized, how our audiences will relate to our stories, and how to write in user-friendly, highly readable formats.

For further information, I suggest you read The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier and The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby.

Bryna Jones is the Director of  Communications at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, and a member of theInternational Association of Business Communicators. Bryna’s  project experience includes communications and marketing planning, advocacy campaign development, social media strategy, government relations, and project management. She also has considerable experience in copy writing and public speaking.

What is a Professional Peer Review?

This is part one in a series. 

What exactly is a professional peer review? A professional peer review focuses on the performance of professionals, with a view to improving quality, upholding standards, or providing certification. A professional peer review should not to be confused with a scholarly peer review, which is conducted in an academic or research based setting. Rather, professional peer reviews are common with large engineering processes (e.g. environmental assessments) whereby an independent peer reviewer (which may include a whole team of experts) reviews the study findings of a project proponent and their consultants. Moreover,  a peer review process is often used to assist a client (e.g. a municipality) in their understanding of highly specialised technical documentation.  We refer to a peer review process for a municipal client as a ‘municipal peer review’.

The purpose of the municipal peer review process is to instil confidence and accuracy in the scientific findings over the course of  a project. Independent research is not conducted. Instead, the a peer review would indicate where there are studies missing or if there are significant gaps in the analysis.  HSAL has conducted peer reviews for a variety of municipal clients, most commonly for nuclear waste management and resource management issues. Currently, HSAL is leading the peer review for the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects for the Municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington for the clean-up of low level radioactive waste and marginally contaminated soils.

In the case of the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects, the peer review process is also conducted to enable the municipalities to be involved in the decision making process as an equal party by providing them with a team of experts who understand the complex issues involved in a clean-up process. For example, the issues involved in a radioactive waste clean-up process (e.g. nuclear and health physics, air quality, hydrogeological engineering, etc.) cannot be addressed by most municipalities because they do not necessarily have the staff and resources to deal with them.

My next entry will focus on the questions that a peer reviewer asks when reviewing project documentation.

Danya Al-Haydari is an Environmental Planner at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, where she specializes in public consultation, environmental assessment and energy policy. She has coordinated work for the Port Hope and Port Granby Projects, and conducted research on the Port Hope Area Initiative’s Property Value Protection Program. Most recently, she co-authored a paper for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on community well-being in nuclear host communities.  Danya is a member of the Canadian Nuclear Societyand Women in Nuclear Canada.