How could visioning work?

In 2008, Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan supported a broad based visioning process that involved a thousand or more people in this town of 27,000. That was a tall order. The National Civic League outlines a process that has a slightly different approach and is based on the same principles that make polls results representative of a larger population.

In polls, you interview a random sample and if the selection is truly random, the expected accuracy of the result is defined mathematically. The National Civic League proposes selecting a representative group of people to conduct the creative and negotiative process of visioning. However, rather than selecting them randomly, the people are chosen based on demographics. The criteria is that the group as a whole closely represents the community and that each individual in that group has committed to months of meetings that make up the process.

The result is that you start with 100-150 people who are in for the duration and as a whole represent the town. This is in opposition to the earlier concept of wider participation and the accompanying issues of keeping them involved during the subsequent give and take where goals are reduced, compared and contrasted, ordered and prioritized into a consensus vision statement. I think that having these individual commitments is the key success factor to getting through the hard work of refining all the good contributed ideas into a workable set of goals that embody the best future for our community.

This is not to say that wider participation is not desirable. In fact, it is necessary. It is very important to have the widest possible number of people involved when the visioning process is introduced, when good ideas are being requested, when progress is reported, and when the final vision statement is released. This involvement could be described as gaining wide buy in from the public and keeping them informed throughout, which is far easier than having a large segment of our city carving out time over the course of several months to move visioning forward.

So how do these approaches compare?

The earlier format emphasized the act of bringing people together and reaching consensus since that is what this town needs. However the process outlined by the National Civic League looks more to assuring success by identifying representative people who are committed to the realities of intensity and duration required for real visioning. Both stand in contrast with top down processes which work by starting with the power brokers and ultimately presenting to the citizens the plan that is "right for them". Top down approaches get into trouble here in Oak Ridge.

I like the National Civic League's approach since it captures the public involvement in a bottom up, grass roots orientation with a practicality that emphasizes success.

Next, I would like to talk about if visioning is so great, what do we do with it?