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Community Compass

138 East Court Street, Rm 807, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-1224
Ph: 513 946-4466   Fx: 513-946-4475   

Implementation Campaigns

Introduction | Implementation Campaigns | Implementation Approach

Implementation Approach

HCRPC received a mandate from its stakeholders and funding partners to not only prepare a comprehensive plan but also to assure the plan is implemented. The issues addressed throughout Community COMPASS and the challenges facing Hamilton County are too important for this plan to end up the same as so many other plans—unrealized and ignored. The coalition of individuals and organizations behind Community COMPASS are as committed to implementing this plan as they were in creating it. Harnessing the energy and resources of this coalition and aligning their individual efforts toward Community COMPASS objectives is the next step and requires a different way of thinking about community planning.

Community Results Accountability Framework

The Community Results Accountability Framework (CRAF) is the method that will be used to implement Community COMPASS. It is an award winning process developed at the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission based on proven methods for integrating and preparing vision-based comprehensive plans, results-based strategic plans and performance-based action plans. It provides a disciplined decision-making process, a focus on implementation, results measurement, and accountability which will be essential to sustaining community participation – including private sector and local government support. The framework includes a crucial distinction between results for whole populations and results for program customers. The process also incorporates best practices related to accountability. It is designed to improve community planning efficiency and effectiveness through community focus on measurement of results through objective data indicators provided in the State of the County Reports.

Description of the CRAF Program

CRAF breaks with traditional planning and its industrial/military model of mission, goals and objectives and goes directly to the questions of interest to local participants: “What do you want?” “How will you recognize it in measurable terms when you get it?” “What will it take to get there?” CRAF starts with results and works backward to means – continuously building and refining emergent strategies. As a result of this common-sense thinking process, research is highly focused and relevant and implementation is continuously supported. This implementation method incorporates some of the best practices related to accountability developed by Mark Friedman in the Fiscal Policies Studies Institute (a social service model for agency accountability) and by Peter Block (a citizenship /stewardship model for creating a community of accountability). Implementation of Community COMPASS will require the creation of a community of accountability where citizens, planning commissioners, and organization leaders take personal and communal responsibility for the well being of the whole community; where people act as owners and stakeholders in pursuit of possibilities rather than fragmented problem solving. This shift in accountability and connectedness enables our community to move away from “leader dependence” (and blame) and the related destructive culture of citizen entitlement and passivity.

Implementation will also require a shift in leadership towards associations and associations of associations (which are self-created, self-governed and volunteer) rather than professional agencies and traditional players, which are often system constrained, externally controlled, and mandate reactive. Our emergent initiatives must be organized around communities and citizens, rather than solely by professionals and system agencies. The experts, authorities, and agencies are needed as conveners and participants, but not the only participants.

The Community Results Accountability Framework has five basic components:

1. All plans must start with ends and work to means.

Instead of being preoccupied with identifying and cataloging various problems in a community, or creating an encyclopedic analysis of social and demographic data, implementing Community COMPASS starts with the question “What do you want”? It seems simplistic, but identifying the results that stakeholders and participants want to achieve is often overlooked in comprehensive planning efforts. This focus on results identifies specific measurable results that the whole community will be accountable for. It further describes how we will identify these results once they are achieved, and what kind of information will be required to track progress towards these goals.

2. Community results accountability must be separated from program results accountability.

Community COMPASS generated desired results for the entire community through The Vision for Hamilton County’s Future and its related goals and objectives. These results apply to the entire population of the county, and progress toward them will be measured through the data indicators provided in each of the 12 State of the County Reports. As implementation progresses, specific desired results for different strategic plans and programs need to be developed along with their own progress indicators. These goals will focus on the stakeholders or “customers” of a given program or strategic plan instead of the entire county population.

3. Analysis must be driven by data (indicators and baselines).

While identifying specific goals and results is vital to implementing Community COMPASS, perhaps even more important is designing a system to measure progress toward these results. CRAF requires that stakeholders be able use objective data indicators to measure progress toward each desired result. Analyzing the trend behind each data indicator helps to determine what needs to be done to reach the desired result in question, and what groups need to be involved.

4. Implementation must be integrated with a broad set of partners.

On any given Community COMPASS initiative, there are groups and individuals—in the public, private, and civic sectors—with experience and expertise that can help. Many of these groups have been involved in creating Community COMPASS. Many more need to be identified and brought into future implementation projects based on what expertise and resources they can bring to help achieve desired results.

Analysis of data trends help to identify desired results for strategic plans and track progress and achievement. This analysis is also important for identifying those groups and individuals who are best suited to help attain those desired results. “Who can help turn the curve?” is the key question to ask when building a constituency behind a particular strategy.

5. Moving from talk to action must occur as soon as possible.

Assembling the different components necessary for the Community Results Accountability Framework to work can take some time and resources. However, for Community COMPASS to succeed, this process needs to happen as efficiently and quickly as possible so strategies can be implemented and desired results achieved. The broad coalition behind this plan expects to see results and changes in the community, and HCRPC and its Community COMPASS partners are accountable to the larger community.