Local governments find themselves, time and again, surprised when projects don’t go to plan. They’re often surprised when the politics of a project don’t go to plan.
That surprise may have a hundred causes, but I’d guess one is among the most common: that plans advance not on their merits, but through ill-considered deals between large organizations. Rather than look first at what someone’s proposing, some officials look to see if the proposal begins with another organization they support, need, or (sadly) fear.
It’s not the contents, but container, that determines how many officials line up behind an issue. If planners were always of the highest quality, and if they were infallible of judgment, then relying on past performance would be prudent. But, they’re not and not.
The impressionable, the over-awed, those who are mad for a place at table no matter how poor the fare, they’re the ones who will ignore contents for containers.
Did the idea come from another official? Back it, as we of government are all in this together.
Did the plan come from a big institution? Push it, as we can’t afford to question these (so-called) people of influence.
Support like this is almost a reflex, as mechanically predictable as the jerk of a leg following a tap by a rubber hammer.
Speak to this ilk in a certain way, and they’ll yield to just about anything. Obi Wan, while in Mos Eisley, used a jedi mind trick of this sort on storm troopers looking for two particular droids.
It’s better to start from the other direction, with a person and a well-conceived idea, the product of thought, study, experience, and later testing. One takes the plan – properly fleshed-out – and then presents it to others after all that work of thought, study, experience, and later testing.
One can quickly see the difference between these approaches. The institutional approach lines up supposedly big fish after big fish, but they’ll offer nothing but generalities or vague answers. That’s because they’re not asking for support on the merits, but expecting support from a sense of entitlement. That world’s nature: vague but demanding.
The individual approach begins with a well-formed idea, and it’s on the basis of specific and clear propositions that the planner seeks to convince others. This other world’s nature: thorough and persuasive.
A place without opportunity for review and scrutiny will favor the institutional but mediocre approach. A place of scrutiny and criticism will tend toward the more considered approach.
Starting backwards leaves a community finishing last.
Whitewater’s flowing down the long, but inexorable, course from the institutional to the individual approaches. Some people will be left behind, if they’ll not adjust, but many more will thrive.