Interpretive Planning

Very often, a planner is called upon to take an existing plan or background material to the next stage. Maybe the client, or group of coworkers, has developed a preliminary approach and the planner (whether hired or part of the staff) must review that approach and move forward. So what happens if the approach is off-base, either a little or a lot?

I like the idea of “tweaking” rather than throwing someone’s work effort out wholesale. This activity can require some delicate footwork, depending on whose work is being tweaked. Let’s face it, you don’t want to be the one to tell your boss straight out that he or she doesn’t know anything. And the good news is, you rarely have to. Usually, it’s a matter of making a few minor adjustments before forging on. Let’s take an example:

You’re handed a document entitled “exhibit content” and have been asked to populate an exhibit gallery with interactive exhibits. The document consists of six pages (single-spaced, double-sided) with sentences and sentence fragments related to things that might be included in your new exhibit hall. Some are stories, some are design ideas, some might even be called things you want to accomplish or objectives. It looks like someone took the results of a brainstorming session and simply recorded notes without any filtering, but you’re new here, don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and you really can’t make any sense out of the document because it gives no real direction about what to do next.

Rather than starting from scratch entirely, take the time to review the document in detail and perhaps color-code the individual items (red dot in the margin for stories; blue for actual design ideas; green for objectives; etc.). Now reorganize the document according to your color coding system. Where are the holes? Starting with what you have, begin plugging those holes.

Is it clear what you’re trying to accomplish in support of the mission? Take the suggested objectives and tweak them into a logic model that makes sense with measurable factors for impacts and outcomes that also help define your audience. Once everyone agrees on what you’re trying to accomplish, see if you can tweak the miscellaneous facts and stories into a theme-subtheme-storyline construct to land on a strong, central message that everyone can support.

Test the design ideas to ensure that the suggested concepts communicate the desired message to the targeted audience so that the objectives can be accomplished. Are there objectives, audience segments, or messages that haven’t been addressed by the ideas in hand? If so, let your creativity take over to fill in those gaps. Round out the effort by preparing a budget and an action plan for next steps.

The people who participated in developing the preliminary document will feel that their efforts have been honored, but you will feel better having a more usable plan that is well-organized and gives clear direction for what needs to happen next. Along the way, trim away the ideas that don’t seem to fit, but retain and build on the ones that do. Salvage what you can and praise the efforts of those who provided the starting point. Sometimes the nuggets you will uncover will be pure gold and sometimes they will require a little polishing to make them worthwhile but learning to tweak rather than toss can save time and effort, build stronger working relationships, and capture the valuable ideas that may otherwise fall by the wayside.

Your boss has just walked in the door and said, “we need an interpretive plan and you’re going to write it.” Because you’re a good employee, you nod and smile and agree to get it done as efficiently as possible. But you’ve never done it before – maybe you know something about interpretation and maybe you don’t, but you’ve never had to actually write an interpretive plan. Where do you start?

Even experienced planners find themselves asking this question with every project. And the logical starting point is not always the same (remember principle #4 – Every process will be different, because every project is unique). But there are some simple questions you can ask to get the ball rolling.

First, ask if you can have help. Is there any money to hire this done or do you have coworkers who can serve on a planning team? If you can hire it done, it doesn’t mean you can abandon the project once your contractor is hired – you’re still going to need to know how to do this so that you can work with your contractor to get what you want and need. If you can put together a coworker planning team, be sure to assign someone (maybe you) as the project leader to make sure that the project continues to move forward. If you have time, consider taking an interpretive planning class or reading a book to get some familiarity with process and products.

Next, determine the scope of the project and what purpose you want the plan to serve. Is it long-range, short-term, for a single location or multiple units? What is the planning “bubble” that your work will encompass? Perhaps the most important question to ask is what are you really trying to accomplish? Once you know that, then you can begin to look at background material that might be relevant to the challenge you’re trying to resolve.

Certainly, reviewing (or creating) the mission of the organization is critical at this stage because it can help you determine whether the project you’re attempting is even appropriate to the agency. Some plans get, or should get, stopped in their tracks at this point because a quick review of organizational mission and goals reveals that the project isn’t a good fit and shouldn’t be pursued.

Next, you might want to create the impact and outcome levels of your logic model (see previous blogs on logic models). These will help inform what you’re going to do next and what background resources you will need to create the most effective plan.

From there, you’re going to have to start making choices about what to do next. Certainly, gathering information about your resources (not just the natural or cultural artifacts and features, but also operational resources like staffing, facilities, and budget), and your audiences is critical. The analysis of the information you gather and matching that analysis against your objectives will begin to reveal what options you might want to pursue next.

Simply put, the interpretive planning process can be fairly simple and straightforward or it can be extremely complex, depending on the individual project situation. But you have to start somewhere. Pick your starting place and get going – it’s the only way it’s going to get done.

The interpretive planning process is a fluid thing. It would be much easier if there were a simple fill-in-the-blanks template and all you had to do was literally fill in the blanks for your site. But I’ve never thought that made much sense because of the number of variables that influence each project’s success or failure. That fluidity can give you freedom to explore a variety of planning techniques and options if you’re disciplined enough to still get the job done or it can simply make you crazy if you don’t know where to start and find yourself unable to make decisions and move forward through the process.

So which comes first in the process – theme or objectives? You’re right . . . it depends. For the most part, I will always want to know the mission, goals, and objectives of a project before proceeding any further down the path. My theme or message might entirely depend on what I’m trying to accomplish if I’m taking a management-based or market-based approach to the plan. If I’m taking a resource-based approach, then maybe my theme is what tells me what I must accomplish, and in that case, I may develop my theme first and then write objectives that support it.

Which approach is better? If by better, you mean has a better chance of success (defined as meeting your objectives) overall, then I would have to go with writing objectives first, then crafting a theme statement that will help communicate whatever needs to be communicated to targeted audiences so that they can help in accomplishing those objectives.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t need to know the important stories of the place before starting to write objectives. If I don’t know why a place or collection has value to somebody or what its significance is, then why am I even trying to interpret it? But let’s look at a concrete example.

The topic is diamonds. We could probably all agree that diamonds are a valued resource. If my objective is get people to buy more diamonds, then my theme might be “diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” But if my objective is to reveal the sordid side of the conflict diamond industry and therefore discourage people from buying conflict diamonds, then my theme might be “diamonds cost more than dollars.” Two very different approaches to the same topic (diamonds) for two very different reasons.

Message matters – very often, an interpretive site or agency’s marketing department will put forth a message that may be in direct conflict with the site’s actual objectives if the marketing department is not brought into the interpretive planning process. Because message matters so much in making your interpretive efforts successful, you would do well to be clear about your objectives before crafting that message. Then check it against the objectives to be sure that objectives and theme are consistent. As you continue through the process, you may find yourself tweaking either objectives or theme or both . . . that’s the fluid part of the process. But you have to start somewhere and in my view, asking what you’re trying to accomplish is the place to start almost every time.