Step 5 in Action

Step #5 in Action

Tough Issue: Deeply Divided Interests Try to Work Together

Business leaders, educators, taxpayer groups, and parents agreed to tackle the overcrowding issues at their elementary school. (See the example in Step #3.) Following the ten-step process, the task force enlisted a wide range of people, discovered their shared hopes, uncovered the real issues, and identified a number of options for resolving the overcrowding problem, including the status quo solution of doing nothing. Many people on the team held strong opinions about which solution was best.

Then it was time to gather information about all the possible options. Since there was too much for everyone to do together, they needed to divide up the work. "Let's set up separate groups to gather information about each option and report back," suggested one team member. Other volunteers on the community team nodded in agreement. Why not let each person work on the option he or she preferred?

Fortunately, Daphne, one of the volunteers, spoke up. "Hey, if we form a separate information-gathering group for each option, we will simply divide ourselves into the old factions. That won't help us find a solution that fulfills our shared hopes." Daphne valued the understanding and goodwill the group had generated through the previous steps and didn't want to see it lost.

A Great Decision Solution

Daphne knew in her gut that researching and defending positions in factions would lead to a dead end. "We've been down that route many times over the years and have gotten nowhere," she commented. "If we do it that way again, I can see that most people will simply follow the option they preferred at the start. Why would they choose any differently? There would be nothing to encourage them to consider different points of view."

The team agreed to gather information based on the three hopes its members shared: educational quality, cost-effectiveness, and neutral growth. One group examined all of the options from the perspective of how they would fulfill the objective of educational quality. This group included educators with relevant expertise as well as residents who had been skeptical of the need for a new facility. Another team including both planners and concerned taxpayers, pursued the hope of a cost-effective solution. These participants delved into the projected costs for each option and compared them with similar projects. A third team pursued the hope of being growth-neutral, a hope that surfaced in the community's discussion of thoughts and concerns as they followed Step #3. This group researched how each option would help the community live within its resources. It included environmentalists and school administrators as part of the team.

By using their shared hopes to focus their information gathering, the task force came up with an efficient way to obtain all the facts they needed to find outstanding solutions to the problem of overcrowded schools and the support to implement them. Each work group reported on how the different options supported a hope they all shared. The experience of working together toward a common objective helped the fractious interests move forward together. They made the transition from being advocates to learners. This was a critical development in the process of achieving a decision with broad support. (You'll learn more about their results in Step #7.)