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Contents

Chapter 6: Process Model

Establishing Issues & Action Priorities

Establishing Issues & Action Priorities

Building now from a thorough understanding of the available information, related gaps and needs, and public perceptions, the next phase requires moving to developing at least the initial stages of your action plan.  Fundamental to any engagement project’s success is developing an effective and stakeholder-driven Action Plan.  As you’ve seen in Chapter 4 it is a key engagement principle;  a core goal and motivator for your participants’ continued involvement; and a critical step in ensuring your initiative  addresses the issues, and develops the solutions most appropriate for your community’s context.  In our experience, and consistent with much of the literature, this represents an important pivot point from consideration and collaborative learning to “getting something tangible done” – building a plan to address both the short- and long-term challenges. 

This section provides an overview of some of the most important steps you will want to consider to:

  • Identify and prioritize the issues you most want to address
  • Develop and prioritize the solutions that are most likely to address your high priority issues
  • Develop effective communication and engagement plans
  • Develop the steps, timelines and responsibilities necessary to ensure your solutions and projects are successful

You will find a worksheet and other resources to assist your group in taking these important steps in the last section of this chapter.

Practice Tip:  Prioritization Process

Much of this discussion assumes your process has been relatively deliberation-based up to this point – identifying issues, information and data, past experiences, root causes etc., as described in the situational assessment section. If this is not the case, your process will benefit from taking at least some time to identify and discuss the most critical issues before undertaking the prioritization approaches described here.

Tools & worksheets

Solutions and Actions Identification Worksheet

Once you have reached a consensus with respect to your priority issue(s) you can use this worksheet as the basis for thinking through the potential solutions your group may want to develop to address them.

Stakeholder Identification Worksheet

This worksheet is designed to help you identify and match the five engagement goals to the stakeholders you hope to participate in your efforts. This worksheet focuses on helping you identify your broadly defined stakeholders and groups.

Situational Assessment Worksheet

The purpose of this worksheet is to help you consider the range of topics, issues, programs, and people you will want to explore with your participants or leadership group.

Background Research and Information Worksheet

The purpose of this worksheet is to help you explore some of the types of data you may want to collect as you begin your engagement project. This might include technical, legal, regulatory, programmatic, or environmental data.

Implementation Plan Template

This template provides a suggested guide that can be used to collaboratively develop an implementation plan for an engagement process.

Engagement Planning Worksheet

This worksheet is intended to serve as a starting point in the development of your overall engagement plan. It is designed to provide a framework for you to increase your ability to:
• Inform citizens and stakeholders about your project and/or goals
• Gather input from citizens and stakeholders regarding their opinions and support for, and assessment of, various actions, goals, and priorities
• Help you better understand and consider citizens and stakeholders concerns, aspirations, and ideas for addressing your specific need
• Assist you in identifying alternatives, consequences, and preferred solutions
• Help you identify stakeholders groups, leaders and citizens that can guide decision-making and contribute to implementation or contributing to solutions.

Developing Effective Surveys

“This outline provides you with a range of concepts and issues you will need to explore as you consider developing a survey.”

Communications Plan Worksheet

This worksheet offers a number of prompts designed to support you in thinking through issues you will need to consider as you develop a Communication Plan for your organization or engagement initiative.

Additional resources

Six Strategic Steps for Situational Assessment

This guide, published by Public Health Ontario, offers steps to conduct a systematic situational assessment. “A situational assessment is a systematic process to gather, analyze, synthesize and communicate data to inform planning decisions.”