Many of the decisions you face in your planning are about conflicting interests, and about winning and losing from different strategic actions. You can help members of your planning team understand these consequences if you have them play ("act") the roles of key personalities.
Take the example of whether to stop logging in South Region (see CH 6). You can assign different persons in your planning team to represent Juan Pedro Martinez, Silvia Salinas, a speaker for the indigenous group, a logging worker in South Region, the top political official in South Region, the director of the wood products association, your agency's supervisor for South Region, and so on.
Additionally, you appoint someone to play the role of your agency's director, and to ask questions such as: "How do you feel about this issue?" "What options should our agency tie considering?" "How would you solve this problem if you had the authority to do so?" To make the role playing as effective as possible:
· Make sure that your "theater" is informal and relaxed.· Encourage your "actors" to truly think and speak like the persons they represent. Allow them time to prepare. If this is not going well, make substitutions until you find the right persons.
· Use large name tags so that everyone can identify who is being represented.
· Humor is good, so long as you do not attack the character of the real people.
Exercise: Play out the drama described above for South Region, and answer the following questions. Or focus on a conflict that you are facing now, choose "actors," and begin!
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1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, based on what you observed? 2. If you will repeat this exercise in the future, how can it be improved? Consider place, time, choice of "actors," and preparations. |
