Developing your strategy
Defining the strategy: methods
You can draw on the information you have gathered so far on current practice, organisational needs and your community and partners to conduct a gap analysis. A gap analysis involves looking at the current situation, deciding where you want to be, and identifying what needs to happen to move from the first state to the second. Again, you may find that a workshop with staff/ officers could provide a very effective forum through which to conduct this process. The workshop could provide an opportunity both to get input from a range of colleagues and to generate enthusiasm and 'buy-in' to the future direction of the community engagement work. You will want to conduct this analysis with regard to
- different departments/service area/organisations
- different outcomes and results
Mapping processes
Another way of comparing current practice with future needs is by mapping. Either as a small team or in a workshop, you can draw a map of all types of community engagement activity which are taking place in your organisation. You should then extend beyond the organisational boundaries to allow you to make relevant linkages with partner agencies/ other relevant organisations and to avoid overlaps. In order to do this, you may need to collect information from partners about what they are doing. (For more information on how to go about this, see 'External review: partner agencies)
Try to include detail on:
- different communities
- different methods
- different purposes
- links with different partners
REAL LIFE EXAMPLEA police authority and service are sharing survey resources in a current project. The authority project is in a locality area, the survey is police service-wide. By boosting a survey sample in that area, the service can provide the authority with useful data. |
Having made this map, you can compare the lists of different communities you engage with, methods you use and so on with the way you think you should be consulting.
If you have at least an idea of the activities undertaken by other partner organisations you work with, you may be able to share resources in community engagement.
Force field analysis
You might also want to consider the gaps you identify in more detail by conducting force field analysis. This technique enables you to determine the main 'push' and 'pull' factors that influence the outcome of your plan or project.
- Identify the change project or problem you want to work on. Do so in terms of a) the present situation and b) the future you desire.
- Make a list of the forces working for your desired change, and those working against it. These forces can be related to people, money and other resources, time, external factors, and so on - anything that can help or hinder you.
- Draw up a diagram from your list, putting helpful or 'driving' forces on one side and unhelpful or 'resisting' forces on the other and, wherever you can, identifying who controls the force.
- Estimate the relative strength of each force. An obvious way to do this is to draw the forces as arrows, using longer or fatter arrows for stronger forces.
- Identify those over which you have some control or influence and underline these.
- For each resisting force underlined, list the actions you could take to reduce or eliminate the force.
- For each helping force underlined, list the actions you could take to increase the force.
- Determine the most promising steps you could take toward making the change, and identify the resources that would help you to do so.
- Re-examine your steps and put them into a sequence, omitting any that do not seem to fit with your overall goals.
You can use the following partially worked example to undertake your own force field analysis.
Example of a police service working with the district council on improving street lighting.
Present situation |
Desired situation |
people feel unsafe on the streets at night |
increased feeling of well-being for the public |
helping forces |
|
individual - You believe joint working has a crucial role to play interpersonal - You have good influencing skills and a good relationship with chief constable who is a supporter group - There are some highly skilled people in your team inter-group - There have been preliminary contacts with the council about 'joint working' environmental - Government initiatives are encouraging user engagement |
individual - You are new and relatively inexperienced interpersonal - You have yet to build sound relationships with members of your team group - Your team see their job as providing a 'professional service', rather than contributing to the organisation's 'mission' inter-group - Most of the team prefer to work on their own or in the professional groups environmental - Staff have historically not paid much attention to 'initiatives' |
. actions to take ............................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... . most promising steps .................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... . resources I'll need ....................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... |
|
resisting forces You should now be in a strong position to revise or re-write your community engagement strategy, and detailed set of information that will also help with future review processes.
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