What Should Think Tanks Do?: A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact - Softcover

Selee, Andrew Dan

 
9780804787987: What Should Think Tanks Do?: A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0804787980 ISBN 13: 9780804787987
Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Think tanks and research organizations set out to influence policy ideas and decisions-a goal that is key to the very fabric of these organizations. And yet, the ways that they actually achieve impact or measure progress along these lines remains fuzzy and underexplored. What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide for Policy Impact is the first practical guide that is specifically tailored to think tanks, policy research, and advocacy organizations. Author Andrew Selee draws on extensive interviews with members of leading think tanks, as well as cutting-edge thinking in business and non-profit management, to provide concrete strategies for setting policy-oriented goals and shaping public opinion. Concise and practically-minded, What Should Think Tanks Do? helps those with an interest in think tanks to envision a well-oiled machine, while giving leaders in these organizations tools and tangible metrics to drive and evaluate success.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew Selee is Vice President of Programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former Director of its Mexico Institute. He has been a congressional staffer and served as staff and on the board of several non-profit organizations. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University and writes extensively on international affairs.

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WHAT SHOULD THINK TANKS DO?

A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact

By ANDREW SELEE

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8798-7

Contents

Preface....................................................................vii
Introduction: Ideas That Matter............................................1
1 What Do You Want to Achieve?.............................................17
2 What Do You Do That Makes a Unique Contributiont?........................30
3 Who Are Your Key Audiences and How Do You Reach Them?....................48
4 What Resources Do You Need and How Can You Develop Them?.................65
5 How Do You Evaluate Impact and Learn from Your Experience?...............83
Notes......................................................................97
Interviews.................................................................111
Selected Readings..........................................................115


CHAPTER 1

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?


When Marshall Bouton took over as president of the ChicagoCouncil on Global Affairs in 2001, he knew he had a major challengein front of him. The Chicago Council remained one of thepremiere foreign policy think tanks outside Washington, D.C.,but it had become increasingly inward looking and regionallyfocused, despite the success of its popular biennial survey of U.S.public opinion on global issues. He soon launched a strategicplanning process that involved the Chicago Council's board, staff,and key stakeholders, and included a consulting role by the privatefirm McKinsey.

The most important question on the table was how to transformthe Chicago Council's identity from an elite local forum forthe discussion of ideas to a generator of new thinking for nationaldebates on global affairs that could take advantage of its strategicposition in the Midwest. Bouton notes that "in this day and age,you can't be effective as an organization unless you produce intellectualcapital.... [you need] both presentation and production."The strategic plan, which ultimately was approved by the board in2005, revisited the organization's very essence—what its missionwas—and set a series of ambitious, achievement-oriented goals forthe following five years.

Central to the new strategy was the idea of positioning the ChicagoCouncil as both a locally grounded and a nationally relevantpolicy organization. As a result of the planning process, the ChicagoCouncil began to designate half of its funding to global andnational projects, although many of these remained firmly rootedin its geographical concerns, issues for which the Chicago Councilhad a comparative advantage. Two of its major task forces, forexample, focused on food policy, a significant concern in thecountry's heartland, and on Muslims in the United States, giventhe high proportion of U.S. Muslims living in the upper Midwest.Both received extensive national and international attention sincethey also dealt with issues of national and global importance,although they built on issues of concern to the organization's localmembership. The Chicago Council has consciously used its identityin the heartland to position its research agenda. According toBouton, "We're not located in the political capital, Washington,or the international capital, New York, but we are still the premierecommercial city, located in the heartland, and it makessense to leverage that location."

Indeed, the Chicago Council found that this planning processthoroughly transformed the institution. Its revenues rose from$4.8 million to $7.3 million in five years; attendance at its "ChicagoForum" programs jumped by more than 50 percent; membershipincreased by 49 percent; and its task forces, studies, andpolicy briefs received national attention and positioned the ChicagoCouncil as a major force in international policy discussions.Indeed, the capstone event for its research on food policy was amajor conference on food security in Washington, D.C., in 2012that featured the president of the United States, the secretary ofstate, and three African heads of state, as well as other luminaries,and set the stage for concrete decisions on food security at themeeting of G-8 leaders later that week.

By gaining clarity on its mission as an institution, discoveringits comparative advantages, and setting ambitious but reachablegoals, the Chicago Council was able to position itself for a newrole in public debate and to have both a local and national impacton issues of concern to its members.


REVIEWING AND RENEWING THE MISSION

Every successful journey starts by asking why. Organizations thatknow what motivates them and what they hope to achieve overtime—their big-picture goals—are far more likely to make animpact than those that do not. Having a clear mission statementthat captures the aspirations of the organization is an essential startingpoint for any planning process, whether it is a structured strategicplanning exercise or a more ad hoc process. Indeed, the centralrole of having a clear mission to achieving success is true in thinktanks, in other nonprofit organizations, and even in business.

The first crucial step for the Chicago Council in setting off on anew course was to rethink its mission statement. The old missionstatement read,

The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonprofit,nonpartisan organization committed to building global awarenessin Chicago and the Midwest and contributing to the national andinternational discourse on the great issues of our time.


The revised statement approved in 2005 read,

The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations is a leading independentnonpartisan organization committed to influencing the discourse on globalissues through contributions to opinion and policy formation, leadershipdialogue and public learning [italics added].


The new mission highlighted two changes that the ChicagoCouncil board and staff wanted to make to their role. It would bea "leading" organization and it would be "committed to influencingthe discourse on global issues," not merely "committed tobuilding global awareness." The revised mission statement pointedin the direction in which the organization hoped to go and set aroadmap that it could follow into the future.

The Brookings Institution underwent a similar strategic planningprocess soon after Strobe Talbott took over the presidency ofthe institution in 2002. Brookings, however, decided not toaddress the decades-old mission statement directly as much as tryto understand the core values that make the institution tick and arethe basis of the mission statement. Through a series of discussionsfirst among the institution's senior leadership and then throughoutthe institution, staff settled on a set of three concepts thatencapsulated the core values: "quality, independence, and impact."

This became a useful motto for the organization's external relations,but more important, the leadership and research staff usedthis exercise to develop an understanding of their living mission intoday's context. Each word was the subject of extensive reflectionand consensus building, as managing director Bill Antholis, whohelped Talbott lead this planning...

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Verlag
Stanford University Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0804787980
ISBN 13 
9780804787987
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
128
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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