By Catherine Hobbs
How can we be inspired, rather than overwhelmed, by differing perspectives in the inter-organisational planning required to more effectively address cross-cutting issues, or interacting areas of policy? How can we learn from the achievements of public policy action research, in the light of the local and global uncertainties of the 2020s?
Strategic Choice Approach was developed by John Friend with Allen Hickling, originating during the 1960s and 1970s. It emerged through a series of collaborative action research projects applied to public policy challenges in a number of countries, so that its origins are empirical rather than theoretical.
Friend described Strategic Choice Approach as being helpful as a practical approach to planning under pressure where “people of different outlooks and allegiances are working together with a shared concern to move rapidly towards commitments to action or to changes of policy on difficult issues of shared concern” (Friend, no date).
Strategic Choice Approach as four modes of Strategic Process Planning
The Strategic Choice Approach consists broadly of four inter-linked modes (shown in the first figure below) – shaping, designing, comparing, and choosing. These should not be seen as sequential steps, but rather as co-existing continuously through time. The approach involves a facilitated process, where issues are shaped into a problem focus, which is used to design a range of possible strategies, which are then compared according to participant preferences and uncertainties, leading to a choice based upon what can be done about key uncertainties, whether decisions can be made now, and the creation of a progress package.
A characteristic of Strategic Choice Approach is that it thus attends to tracking the assumptions and uncertainties that invariably underlie public policy planning, using this analysis to create a “progress package” of operational support. As the first figure shows, there are multiple interactions in what is usually an iterative process.
The Strategic Choice Approach addresses the following challenges:
- SHAPING problems can present challenges where people view the choices ahead from different perspectives, and find it hard to agree on a shared focus.
- DESIGNING strategies can present challenges where people may find it hard not only to agree on options, but also to explore ways of combining them in broader schemes.
- COMPARING alternatives can present challenges where people may be uncertain about their impacts, and may differ over their relative importance.
- CHOOSING a course of action can present challenges where people must grapple with diverse sources of uncertainty, balancing pressures for early commitment against concerns to retain flexibility of future choice.
This dynamic process of choosing strategically through time is underpinned by a set of questions:
SHAPING:
- What areas of choice do we currently face?
- Where should we focus our attention?
DESIGNING:
- What options are available to us?
- In what ways can these options be combined?
COMPARING:
- What can we say about our preferences?
- What can we say about the impact of our choices?
CHOOSING:
- What should we do about our key uncertainties?
- In what way should we now move forward? (Friend and Hickling, 2005).
The value of Strategic Choice Approach lies in the way in which it focuses attention on:
- the important and urgent decisions to be made in real time;
- the significant sources of uncertainty that can make it hard for people to agree how to move forward;
- the choice of a strategy for progress at the current stage of a dynamic planning process.
The five key emphases of Strategic Choice Approach are that they put more emphasis on:
- facilitating decisions than on investigating systems (agenda focus)
- managing uncertainty than on acquiring information (knowledge focus)
- sustaining progress than on projecting futures (time focus)
- structuring communication than on reinforcing ‘backroom’ expertise (skill focus)
- supporting forming connections and negotiation than on exercising control (influence focus).
Three kinds of uncertainty in decision-making
Strategic Choice Approach attends to three kinds of uncertainty as shown in the figure below:
- If there are uncertainties about guiding values (UV), clearer objectives or policies are needed. This kind of uncertainty requires a political response.
- If there are uncertainties about sources of evidence (UE), deeper investigation is needed. This kind of uncertainty requires a response of a relatively technical nature. (Earlier variations of the diagram described UE as Uncertainties about our working Environment or Uncertainties about Environmental factors).
- If there are uncertainties about choices on related agendas (UR), wider collaboration is needed. This kind of uncertainty requires a further exploration of structural links between decision areas, a broader planning perspective, negotiation or collaboration.
Conclusion
As a developmental decision-centred approach to planning (Friend, 1997), Friend envisaged Strategic Choice Approach as providing operational support for management tasks in situations of complexity, fitting somewhere between a broader viewpoint of systems science, and a narrower viewpoint of classical decision science.
Through the experience of empirical projects, Strategic Choice Approach incorporates a range of participatory planning tools for negotiating the strategic process, for exploring sources of uncertainty, for mapping public policy landscapes and frameworks for inclusion.
Does any aspect of Strategic Choice Approach described here resonate with you? Could Strategic Choice Approach be part of a set of creatively combined complementary approaches to refresh an engagement with assumptions, uncertainties and inclusion in public policy planning? Is there room for an investigative research agenda centred around Strategic Choice Approach as a dynamic, socio-technical approach to public policy planning?
References and more information:
Friend, J. K. (no date). Introducing the Strategic Choice Approach. Powerpoint presentation, Operational Research Society document repository. (Online): https://www.theorsociety.com/common/Uploaded%20files/Membership/JohnFriend/Strategic-Choice-Approach.ppt (MS Powerpoint file 1MB).
Friend, J. K. (1997). Connective Planning: From Practice to Theory and Back. In: E. Trist, F. Emery and H. Murray (Eds.), The Social Engagement of Social Science, Volume III: The Socio-Ecological Perspective. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, United States of America.
Friend, J. K. (2001). The Strategic Choice Approach. In: J. Rosenhead, and J. Mingers. (Eds.), Rational Analysis for a Problematic World Revisited: Problem Structuring Methods for Complexity, Uncertainty and Conflict. Wiley: Chichester, United Kingdom.
Friend, J. K. (2004). Perspectives of Engagement in Community Operational Research. In: G. Midgley and A. E. Ochoa-Arias (Eds.), Community Operational Research: OR and Systems Thinking for Community Development. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: New York, United States of America.
Friend, J. K. (2019). Six Important Directions for Research in Public Policy Choice. Document, Unpublished, Operational Research Society Document Repository. (Online): https://www.theorsociety.com/common/Uploaded%20files/Membership/JohnFriend/ior2019policyresearch.docx (MS Word Docx file 99KB).
Friend, J. K. and Hickling, A. (2005). Planning Under Pressure, 3rd edition. Elsevier/Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford, United Kingdom.
Lami, I. M. and Todella, E. (2023). A Multi-methodological Combination of the Strategic Choice Approach and the Analytic Network Process: From Facts to Values and Vice Versa. European Journal of Operational Research, 307, 2: 802-812.
The Operational Research Society’s document repository has a comprehensive archive of Friend’s documents: https://www.theorsociety.com/ORS/Membership/John-Friend-Archive.aspx
The Operational Research Society Public Policy Design Special Interest Group provides a full recording of the kickstarting of an outreach programme and the celebration of Friend’s 90th birthday (December, 2020): “Celebrating John Friend’s 90th birthday: Kick starting an important outreach programme for 2021″. (Online): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6xp2UVkBQQ (YouTube video – 2hrs and 15min); on The OR Society YouTube channel, 9 December 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/@Theorsocietypage). [Moderator note – In January 2025, the original link for this video on The OR Society website was no longer available and so the YouTube link above replaced it and the original link structure here has been left in place but the active link deleted: theorsociety.com /get-involved/society-groups/special-interest-groups-and-networks/public-policy-design/].
Tribute:
This i2Insights contribution has been created as a humble tribute to the lifelong achievements of John K Friend (1930 – 2022), and his quiet yet determined aspirations to ensure that the knowledge and experience gained by Strategic Choice Approach is recorded and disseminated, so that it may continue into the future. The author had the privilege of working with John from 2012 during the Operational Research (OR) Society’s Future Influence of OR in Public Policy initiative, in establishing the OR Society’s Special Interest Group in Public Policy Design, and helping to arrange the associated event at the Royal Society (2014), remaining in touch over the years that followed. There is much to learn from Friend’s quiet modesty and thoughtfulness, depth and breadth of knowledge and experience, ability to listen and adapt, and to forge his own clear brand of (at the time) radical thinking in his innate desire to make the world a better place: the spirit of an approach which, moving in to its seventh decade, has stood the test of time.
Friend was awarded the OR Society’s Beale Medal in 2015 for his invention, development, elaboration, practice and promotion of the Strategic Choice Approach. He was a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bradford, Hull, Lincoln and Sheffield.
Biography: Catherine Hobbs PhD is an independent researcher located in Cumberland, UK. She is a social scientist with experience of working in academia and local government, with a focus on developing multi-agency strategies in transport and health. She is interested in developing better links between the practice of local governance and scholarly expertise in order to increase capacity to address issues of complexity through knowledge synthesis. She is also interested in the potential of applying and developing a variety of systems thinking approaches (in the tradition of critical systems thinking), with the innovation and design movements in public policy reform.
Dear Cathy, I possessed and read a copy of the 1st edition of Planning under pressure, attended a training session with John Friend, but did not thereafter have much opportunity to practise it. The Public Accounts Committee have reported on the difficulties in addressing Cross Cutting issues in government, see https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/199850/. It is unfortunate that both Friend and Hickling have now died. Do you know who, if anyone, is in any way competent to promote SCA. I could buy the 3rd edition but I suspect that SCA is too threatening for British politicians to welcome it. I am 83 and in poorish health. Regards David
Dear David, Thank you for your comment. It is good to hear from someone who attended a training session with John Friend and who has read Planning under Pressure. Thank you also for the link to the PAC report, which I have read with interest. Interestingly also, HM Treasury has recently produced its Areas of Research Interest (November 2024), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-treasury-areas-of-research-interest, which includes:
Public Spending and Public Services
7.17 How can organisations, with a particular focus on public bodies, most effectively learn lessons from (i) crisis response; and (ii) systemic policy problems; and address them?
You are right to flag up that an approach such as SCA may be too threatening for British politicians to be welcomed. John Friend himself enacted many of his projects abroad over the course of his life. In recent years in UK government, however, I sense there is much more awareness of the need to think, plan, work and evaluate in more cross-cutting ways and also, perhaps more importantly, much more of a willingness to say so. This stated willingness is only a start: learning to think and work in more cross-cutting ways will be a slow process of experimentation, learning and adaptation. For example, a short project I was involved with in 2020 with the UK Cabinet Office helped to explore their development of a strategy to embed systems thinking into the culture of the civil service and enhance systems leadership, in order to find better ways to explore and address complex priorities/wicked problems that cut across departmental and organisational boundaries. SCA is one of a number of approaches that could be of value in this context.
With today’s interconnected mix of environmental, social, and economic priorities, the pressing need for collaborative thinking and planning in matters of complexity is not going to go away, despite the fact that there may be initial discomfort or even resistance to such collaborative learning. I have come across many people who are acknowledging a need for and wishing to take a more proactive role in addressing cross-cutting issues. With approaches to enhance systemic capability through learning from well-documented approaches such as SCA, someone has in effect already done the ground work in thinking and doing. No-one needs to start from scratch with this highly challenging task. It is important that these approaches are seen as fundamentally inspirational/heuristic in order to furnish a direction of travel towards sustainability, rather than as formulaic and followed by rote in order only to achieve ‘quick wins.’ The path will not be smooth, but at least a path is now being made!
In answer to your question, the Royal Society event that I helped to organise (with John Friend and others) about Shaping Choices in Public Policy in 2014 was attended by over 120 policy makers and analysts. Allen Hickling’s son Brendan was also involved in this event (Hickling and Associates). Various case studies of different approaches were presented at this event, including SCA. I would suggest that the best way of getting in touch with current SCA expertise would be through an inquiry with the Operational Research Society. There is a Public Policy Design Special Interest Group.
I am sorry to hear about your health. I hope you can take comfort that the actual practice of problem structuring approaches such as SCA may gradually become more politically acceptable. It is frustrating for those of us who have witnessed their promise, but not been able to practice them (overtly). I see our generation as one that can span the gap and ensure that these approaches are at least known about and considered as part of a skill set which could be explored by the current generation of researchers.
Hi Cathy, My email address is davidsmith658howard@gmail.com in case you wish to contact me that way. It would be good to have yours in case I wish to publicise a blog post. Very interested that you have been engaged with the Cabinet office. I have contacted them to suggest that there should be a permanent operations room for the UK. Will copy any reply to you. All the best David
Thank you, this is a very interesting and useful approach. I may consider to use it at my current organisation, as there is a tendency to be straightforward and focused in the field that I am currently working at. I was wondering about the participation element of this approach. Is there any recommendation on who should be part of the process? Also, do you have publications on or examples to implementation of this approach?
I’m pleased that you find this approach of interest and that you may consider using it.
To answer your first question about participation, I would point you towards the Friend (2004) reference in my reference list above. This chapter covers important perspectives about engagement in which action research projects bring together people in sponsor roles (such as governments, charities and businesses), agent roles (such as consultants, researchers, experts and project managers) and host roles (such as community representatives, local politicians, officials, business people, advocates for marginalised interests etc) in a process which Friend coined as ‘negotiated project engagement’. I see this as an important core element of Strategic Choice Approach (SCA).
To answer your second question, a good example is one of the first applications in Teesside, UK which was undertaken as a two-way learning process between the researchers and a range of partners. The local authority planner involved in this project found that, as SCA is a decision-orientated approach, it accepts that the future is uncertain and it is thus of benefit if decisions are flexible. This document can be found on the OR Society’s document repository (link in reference list above), if you search for “The LOGIMP Experiment: A Collaborative Exercise in the Application of a New Approach to Local Planning Problems (pp 1-61).
For other examples of use, I would point you towards the classic Friend & Hickling ‘Planning under Pressure’ book, 3rd edition, also referenced above.
I hope this is helpful, and I wish you all the best in your work. Regards, Cathy