Imagine you are charged with creating the next Plan for your community. We can change the course of the future for the better. We can aim higher. We can aspire and reach, and realize it if we dare to try. For municipalities we so soulfully call “home” it’s quite an ability to influence lives.

And then we waste such amazing opportunity:

• We create endless engagement tails that wag the power of the plan dog, using techniques that are boring or too time consuming even for a goldfish. Consensus is impossible and pursuit of it is an appeasement process that arrives at average. Transformation is led…by leadership who make some tough decisions.
• We pay by weight for the output. Mantra seems to be the heavier it is and the further it falls down the stairs the better it must be.
• We string five syllable words together, barren of visuals, because they sound “smart.” In other words, we seem to do everything we can to make sure people don’t read plans.
• We produce so many plans that in the words of a frustrated councillor: “We have so many plans I don’t understand what the damn plan is.”

Neuroscience research (e.g. Buyology, Martin Lindstrom, Brainfluence, Roger Dooley) seems to be proving-in my pop-up and scratch-and-sniff book fixation of youth. Emotions – our reptilian brain – win out in decision making processes. Use of multiple sensory inputs generates 3-4 times the engagement level of simply seeing a product (e.g. a plan) displayed (Src: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/multisensory-marketing.htm). Our brain craves simplicity.

Frustrated by lack of community interest in municipal budgets that have direct impact on people’s lives, I once joked that “moat digging” around Town Hall should be included as a capital budget line item to attract a crowd at a meeting or two. Some might call that bait and switch but you get the picture: we need to be more creative and imaginative in how we engage people in discussion about our common future.

We can borrow neuroscience/neuromarketing insights and apply it to our challenge at hand. With some good starting advice (http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/reptilian-brain-2.htm) on how to appeal to the reptilian brain in hand, we can surmise that our brain is tired of “café’s,” surveys, focus groups, and meetings. Our brains would be interested in hearing storytelling, brainstorming ideas, or playing with sticky notes on walls to actively design the future, connecting the dots so people can see the single community development vision/strategy, and use of pictures, videos, kids’ doodles, Twitter Q&A, LEGO, or other interactive tools like ideascale.com…whatever it takes to hold attention spans and shake loose the ability to imagine.

Here’s some additional tips – which I call the Transformation Rule of 7 – for re-framing how we think about the (potential) power of plan-making:

• Be Bold with the Business – transformation comes from a process unafraid of tackling and creatively resolving longstanding issues, emergent trends, or community pain points.
• Strategize Concisely – SWOT, vision/mission, a single umbrella development strategy – linked to build out and prioritization of 3-5 sub-strategies with corresponding actions, target audiences, and performance metrics are a must. The beating heart of a great plan is identification of a critical challenge to overcome/opportunity to realize, and what actionable objectives and actions overcome the obstacle. This approach forces choice and focus of scarce resources on a pathway of differentiation vs same as and same old and the community down the road. We like the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy (Richard Rumelt) for its insight into putting strategizing on steroids.
• Tell a Story – all great stories have setup (character and plot), a key conflict, and resolution. Tell a compelling story of the future of your community, and what you are doing to get there. Weave a fabric together from the threads to create beautiful simplicity from the complexity. Remind people of the story and your progress…all the time…in every initiative. Make this your vision statement on the wall of a Council chamber and avoid the platitudes and clichés on today’s walls.
• Produce a Plan on a Page – force yourself to visualize your plan on a single page in a graphic. Think community development not topic specific to connect the dots for people. Leave the eye-droop inducing bedtime reading to an Appendix and to those who can use the details to implement the plan.
• Measure – a handful of well-chosen quantitative measures allow people to use their cognitive brain to measure progress. Take people along for the ride. Produce an annual Progress Report Card.
• Brand – use creativity in naming of the plan, lighter and simpler writing style, bolding of colours, and use of infographics, photos, and illustrations. Use emotive language in the storytelling. Use powerful words like “legacy” to build implementation commitments.
• Simplify – DaVinci said “simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.” From strategy to messaging to marketing execution, simpler is always more effective. People don’t rally around complexity, they rally around easily communicated solutions.

Pursue the path of change agent. It’s a transformational itch worth scratching – preferably grape flavour.

1 http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadians-now-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-portable-devices-microsoft-study. Reported by the National Post.