SPCI 500
Strategic Planning and Systems Analysis

Course Introduction

In this course, you will develop a systems approach to thinking, planning, and problem solving that you may find mind altering. You will learn concepts and relations that help you see the forest, when before you saw only the trees. You will learn to model a complex situation in a dynamic way, address issues systemically (and not just treat the symptoms), and recognize "solutions" that make the situation worse. You will learn about time lags in information flows and response time and see how to avoid a common trap: overreacting. You will learn to find and use the leverage points in situations where small changes, requiring few resources, result in major improvements.

Modeling a problem is the first step toward solving it. Strategic planning provides a suite of analytic and group process tools for understanding an organization's mission, its internal and external environments, and its decision-making processes. Managers in both the public and the private sector, by skillfully applying the tools and principles of strategic planning, can make future-oriented decisions that genuinely improve an organization's performance.

Overview

This course introduces you to two major analytic and planning processes: systems analysis and strategic planning, as applied to the public sector. These two approaches work hand in hand.

The first part of the course focuses on systems analysis, with the goal of understanding and modeling the nature and functions of an organization including both its material processes and its information flows. You will learn to identify and describe, for any given organization, its purpose, elements, information flows, performance, environment, decision-making processes, weak points, leverage points, time lags, and system archetypes .

You will learn to apply two systems-oriented approaches: the systems-thinking approach made popular by Peter Senge and the soft systems methodology developed by Peter Checkland and his associates. Through the assignments, you will develop analyses and diagrams of a public-service system and design measures for an aspect of the system's performance.

The second half of the course focuses on organizational and political aspects of public-service systems and dynamic planning and management processes. You will practice the various elements of strategic planning: setting the mission, conducting stakeholder analysis, scanning and assessing the environment (internal and external), identifying and stating strategic issues, developing a strategy, implementing strategic plans, and defining the role of leadership.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to

• compare the characteristics of the systems-thinking and the soft-systems approaches;
• define the basic concepts of the systems approach;
• analyze the structural and functional characteristics in public-service systems;
• develop systems models and diagrams of public-service systems;
• evaluate systems models and diagrams;
• identify weak points and leverage points in the systems studied;
• identify the environment and the sinks of systems;
• evaluate the performance of systems;
• develop and evaluate mission statements;
• conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of an organization;
• conduct a stakeholder analysis of an organization;
• identify strategic issues of a given infrastructure system;
• identify appropriate strategies to address strategic issues; and
• develop an implementation plan for a strategic issue.

Required Materials

 Textbooks

• Bryson, John M. 2004. Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 3rd ed. ISBN 0-787-9675-56
• Bryson, John M., and Farnum K. Alston. 2004. Creating and implementing your strategic plan: A workbook for public and nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2nd ed. ISBN 0-787-96754-8.
• Checkland, Peter B., and Jim Scholes. 1999. Soft systems methodology in action. Indianapolis: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-98605-4.
• Rosnay, Joël de. 1979. The macroscope: A new world scientific system. Trans. Robert Edwards. New York: Harper and Row.
  This book is out of print but is accessible online. You'll find links in Lesson One and in the course calendar.
• Senge, Peter M. 2006. The fifth discipline, revised edition. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51725-4

Articles

Following are required readings. You will find links to the articles in the relevant lessons .

• Cropf, Robert. 1990. Water resources. In Grecher, C., and R. Horton, eds. Setting Municipal Priorities 1990. New York: NYU Press.
• Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. 1989. Making Fast Strategic Decisions in High-Velocity Environments. The Academy of Management Journal. (32, 3): 543-576.
• Fogg, C. Davis. 1999. Pages 95–98 in Implementing your strategic plan: How to turn "intent" into effective action for sustainable change. New York: AMACOM.
• Khanna, Tarun, and Louis P. DiLorenzo, Jr. 2002. Morgan Stanley Japan, 2002. Boston: Harvard Business School.
• La Piana Associates Inc. Research Group. 2003. Strategy Formation: Beyond Strategic Planning
• Ringland, Gill. 1998. Chapter 1, pp. 9–27 in Scenario planning: Managing for the future. Indianapolis: Wiley.
• Sashkin, Marshall, and Kenneth J. Kiser. 1992. Pages 27–54 and 169–78 in Putting total quality management to work. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
• Wack, Pierre. 1985. Scenarios: Shooting the rapids. Harvard Business Review 63:139–50.

Technology Requirements and Skills

In addition to the technology requirements and skills noted in the Online Student Handbook, for this course you will you will need some sort of professional presentation software; for example, Smart Draw (free download) or Microsoft's Visio, which you will use to develop systems diagrams and flow charts. The software must enable you to create circles, squares, arrows, and lines leading from one figure to another; write text above, beside, and inside geometrical figures; and encapsulate geometrical figures inside larger figures.

Organization of the Course

This course consists of 10 lessons, each of which has two components: an online commentary and a feature called "Think about It." In addition, Lessons Two, Four, Five, Seven, and Nine include projects.

The online commentaries are substantive. Take time to read them thoroughly.

About the Lessons

Lesson One: Primer on Systems

• What is distinctive about the systems approach?
• What is a system? A system's purpose, elements, performance, process of transformation, decision making, states and flows, emergent properties, closed vs. open systems, feedback loops, and environment
• Hard versus soft systems
• Modeling and diagramming systems

Lesson Two: Applying Systems Thinking

• Case study: New York City's water system, including structural and functional characteristics, systems diagrams of the water and wastewater systems, soft-systems analysis of the systems, and rich pictures of problematic issues.
• More commentary on feedback loops, leverage points, and time lags
• Explanation of Project One

Lesson Three: Conceptual Models, Problem Formulation, and System Archetypes

• The role of conceptual modeling in problem solving and planning
• Types of problems, including wicked problems and ways of
  approaching them
• Approaches for addressing wicked problems
• Applying the archetypes of shifting the burden and limits to
  growth, including how to diagram situations that fit under these archetypes
• Using behavior-over-time (BOT) graphs to determine which trends may involve feedback loops and which do not

Lesson Four: Measuring System Performance

• The relationship of system performance to problem solving
• Basic principles and concepts of two approaches (the Six Sigma approach and the TQM approach) focused on statistical measurement of system performance and quality control
• Applying the statistical toolkit to the measurement and analysis
  of the performance of an infrastructure system

Lesson Five: Introduction to Strategic Planning

• The nature of planning, strategy, and strategic planning
• Strategic planning process
• Strategic planning for public systems
• The role of mission statements and examples and characteristics of good mission statements
• Explanation of Project Three

Lesson Six: Stakeholder Analysis

• Stakeholder analysis and mission statements
• Issues and techniques in stakeholder analysis

Lesson Seven: Environmental Scanning

• Issues and techniques in environmental scanning and assessment
• SWOT analysis
• Scenario planning
• Explanation of Project Four

Lesson Eight: Strategic Issues

• Characteristics or criteria for identifying strategic issues
• The oval mapping method

Lesson Nine: Strategy Development

• Types of strategies
• Process guidelines for developing strategies and criteria for evaluating strategies
• Vision statements
• Explanation of Project Five

Lesson Ten: Implementation, Evaluation, and Leadership

• Desired outcomes, benefits of implementation
• Programs and projects
• Budgets
• Process guidelines for implementation
• Reassessing and revising strategies and plans
• Leadership roles in strategic planning

Assignments

There are two types of assignments in this course: projects and discussion four ms. There are five projects and three required forums for Lessons Three, Eight, and Ten (other forums are optional). You must complete all projects and participate in the three required forums to pass the course. There are no exams.

Projects

The five projects are based on the readings. Several of the projects build upon previous ones, so failure to complete any project makes it even hard to complete successive ones. Be sure to complete and submit all projects on time. Consult the course calendar on your online syllabus for assignment due dates.

• In Project One, you will analyze a public-service system (for example, a transportation, water-supply, fire or police system) into its systemic components: purpose, components, decision-making structure, information flows within the system, external inputs to the system, and so on. You will also identify the general systems principles operating in the public-service system as well as identifying one balancing dynamic (negative feedback) and one reinforcing dynamic (positive feedback) including time lags.
• Project Two asks you to identify an aspect of the performance of the public-service system you are studying and to design measures for evaluating its performance.
• Project Three has two parts. In the first part, you will develop a stakeholder analysis of the system. In the second part, you will either identify the mission statement for the public-service system you are studying and evaluate it and the process used to generate it, or devise a mission statement for the system you are studying, justify it, and describe how you would have organized the process to attain a mission statement.
• Project Four calls for a SWOT analysis and identification of strategic issues.
• In Project Five, you will develop appropriate strategies to address the strategic issues and create an implementation plan for the three major strategies.

Discussion Forums

A general discussion forum will be available for you to post questions about the material, to engage in ongoing conversation, report class news, and so on. Participation in the general forum is optional.

You are required, however, to participate in three topic-specific discussion forums, where you will respond to questions or situations as part of a small group. You will find the discussion topics for these forums in the assignments for Lessons Three, Eight, and Ten. You are expected to participate by providing thoughtful, substantive answers and also by responding to other students. In other words, engage in meaningful conversation! Your participation in these discussion forums is considered in evaluating your overall course performance.

Course Calendar

You will find a link to the course calendar on your online syllabus. The calendar lists the readings for each week and the due dates for projects and discussion forums.

Submitting Assignments

For instructions on how to submit assignments, please see the "About Your Instructor" page on the syllabus.

Late Assignments

To earn credit, you must complete all parts of each assignment, including all required reading and exercises, on time.

If unforeseen circumstances prevent you from completing an assignment on time, please contact your instructor before the assignment is due to obtain permission for a late submission. Without such permission, your assignment will not be accepted.

Grading

This is a credit/no-credit course. If your assignments overall are satisfactory, you will receive four graduate credits for this course. You will not receive a numeric grade, although assignments will be graded on a 1–4 scale (see table i.1, below), using the following criteria:

• addressing all parts of each assignment;
• providing adequate treatment of each part of the assignment—for example, if an item calls for an explanation of factors, an answer that lists factors without explaining them will be inadequate;
• relating your work on the assignments to course readings, lessons, or supplementary readings as appropriate;
• documenting your sources—that is, providing citations to published material, government documents, personal interviews, and so on; and
• submitting the project on time.

Table i.1—Grading Scale for Projects

Grade	Interpretive Statement
4.0	Excellent work—unusually thorough, well reasoned, and well written/presented.
3.5	Strong work—shows signs of creativity, few mistakes, demonstrates understanding of the topic.
3.0	Competent work—demonstrates proficiency with material.
2.0	Incomplete—reworking is required to bring the assignment to acceptable levels.

You will achieve the course objectives if you do the assigned reading, complete the projects, review the comments on your work, and meet the criteria for participating in discussion forums.

Study Tips

• Pace yourself.
• Set aside time each week that is dedicated exclusively to the course.
• Do the readings first; then, while information is fresh, respond to the prompts in the "Think about It" sidebars.
• Begin assigned projects as soon as possible after completing the readings. Use all available resources, including your classmates.
• For the projects, select a public-service system in which you have a real interest.

Academic Integrity

Students enrolled in this course are required to follow the University of Washington guidelines for academic honesty. Please review the "Academic Honesty Policy" section of the Online Learning Handbook.

About the Course Developers

Hilda Blanco is a Professor and Chair of the Urban Design and Planning Department at the University of Washington. She obtained her Master's (1984) and Ph.D. (1989) degrees in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. Her professional experience in public planning includes work for the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, the New Jersey Office of State Planning, and the NY and NJ Port Authority, as well as various national and international research grants and consultancies. Professor Blanco specializes in planning theory, including systems analysis and strategic planning. Her book, How to Think about Social Problems (Greenwood Publishing, 1994), and several articles focus on the planning process. She is an expert in state growth-management programs and teaches graduate courses in infrastructure and local finance.

The co-developer, Shishir Mathur, is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Regional Planning Department at San Jose State University in California. He obtained his Master's (1997) in Urban Planning in India and Ph.D. (2003) in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington. His professional experience in planning includes work in India as well as in the United States. In India he was a consultant in physical and land-use planning, infrastructure planning, and urban design. In the United States he teaches and does research in public finance, urban economics, housing, land-use policy, and infrastructure finance.

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