Strategic planning: A design approach for public diplomacy

F. A design approach to public diplomacy strategic planning

Figure 3. A design approach to public diplomacy

A design approach overview:

• Situation analysis (steps 1-3): In the design approach to public diplomacy, steps one through three (policy guidance, current environment, future environment) are often considered the situation analysis.
• Problem statement (step 4): The result of the situation analysis helps practitioners craft the problem statement to outline the main problem(s) to be addressed and why.
• The approach (step 5): The approach lays out solutions, including brainstorming initiatives and activities to address the defined problem.

1. Step one: Policy – What are we trying to accomplish in terms of foreign policy?

This step centers on thoroughly understanding the existing policy and any related formal and informal direction from leadership at post or in Washington. It requires you to analyze the sub-objectives of your ICS or FBS. This step has three components: (Note: This isn’t where you need to decide what you are trying to accomplish with your PD initiative yet. Instead, ask what is the outcome that the United States as a whole would like to see in terms of U.S. foreign policy?)

1. Prioritizing policy objectives for the PD section’s energy, time, and resources. Which policy priorities are most important for your post and why? Out of all the things you could do, why should you be doing this one?
2. Researching, understanding, and interpreting the specific U.S. foreign policy goal related to a broad issue or theme (e.g., anti-corruption, climate change, economic prosperity, global health, security) in your local context.
3. Articulating the potential PD contribution to achieving the broad policy objective.

Some questions you might ask in this initial step are listed below.

• What is the broad U.S. foreign policy goal or interest that we seek to advance?
• What is the specific policy outcome we are trying to achieve or advance?
• Have some conditions related to the goal or objective already been met?
• Is this a high priority for mission leaders, or for Washington?
• What are the relevant laws or regulations in place that guide work in this area?
• Does the articulation of the goal or objective require clarification or modification?
• Have we received any formal or informal guidance about this objective?
• How relevant is PD work to making progress on this objective?
• What are the relevant authorities for PD work in this area?
• What is the state of the team’s resources (human and financial) and workload?
• What other mission/bureau teams are stakeholders for this goal or objective?

(a) Determining priorities

The design approach graphic, figure 3, provides a model for helping your team (be it in a mission-wide effort, within a functional bureau, or within a PD section) to think rigorously and carefully about how to link PD to strategic objectives. PD work should contribute to a range of ICS goals, rather than be concentrated within a single “PD goal” without trying to do everything everywhere in the ICS, striving beyond its capabilities and resources. That is, PD resources should address mission-wide priorities. But because there are many goals and objectives that an embassy is working toward, spreading PD resources uniformly or thinly across a large number of objectives is also problematic.

Initiatives generated by leadership that are not captured in the ICS or PDIP may also be problematic if they are not clearly aligned with PD authorizations and strategic priorities. At the very least, such initiatives require frank conversations about trade-offs. Thus, PD sections, in consultation with other sections and their front offices, will need to prioritize areas for PD work. Not every mission objective or sub-objective may be particularly conducive or responsive to PD initiatives. You will never have all the time, resources, or human capacity to do all the things you might like to do. You must make choices and then find effective ways to defend and implement those choices.

You can make informed choices by systematically and carefully analyzing your ICS in relation to your PD section’s ambitions and resources and in relation to the overall goals and resources of the mission. You can ask:

• Is the mission still working toward this sub-objective?
• Does PD have a meaningful contribution to make toward achieving this sub-objective?
• Is this sub-objective a high priority for mission leadership?
• Is anyone else in the mission working to address this sub-objective?

It makes sense to explicitly prioritize which goals, objectives, and sub-objectives the PD section is best positioned to support. Based on these strategic priorities, planners should consider what, if any, contribution PD can make toward accomplishing specific sub-objectives. Finally, even at this early stage, the PD section should begin to think about how resources (especially money and staff time) align with priorities. Priorities can be very abstract until resources are attached; for example, if you have limited resources to devote to a stated priority, this disconnect might prompt you to reconsider whether the stated priority is really a priority or whether more resources need to be funneled to it. Here, your understanding of policy guidance and strategic priorities, your technical expertise as a PD professional, and your local expertise about the context in which you are operating all come into play. See Appendix A: Prioritization tools.

(b) Researching and understanding the policy guidance

Before thinking about audiences, initiatives, activities, or messages, the PD section (and, ideally, the mission) should think carefully about this question: “What is the specific U.S. foreign policy goal or interest related to this topic?” It’s important at this stage to research and make connections about the topic to the wider U.S. policy interests and guidance, and determine how PD work on this topic can contribute. A challenging aspect for PD sections is to interpret the U.S. policy goals related to this topic and assess and apply how this guidance relates to their local context.

This challenge presents the first research opportunity for the section to collect and analyze relevant data and evidence. Understanding the U.S. policy guidance to support mission priorities means reviewing:

• Reports published by the Department.
• Cable traffic related to the topic.
• Materials published by the relevant functional bureau.
• Discussions with relevant section or agency representatives in the mission.
• Press guidance from the White House and the Department.
• Relevant meeting notes on the substantive issue.
• Studies from reputable think tanks or academic subject matter experts.
• Bibliographies or references from relevant international governmental organizations (IGOs) or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

(c) Articulating the potential PD contribution

As part of this step, the team will also want to consider the PD contribution, or PD angle, to approaching the relevant topics or issues. There may be important U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives where the PD section is central to the work of the mission, others where public diplomacy plays a supporting role for other sections, and still others where the PD contribution is minimal. Some key questions to ask as you determine the potential PD contribution to a mission priority are:

• To what extent are decision makers in country X responsive to public opinion on this issue?
• To what extent are publics influential in changing conditions on the ground related to this issue?
• To what extent do foreign public attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors affect traditional U.S. diplomatic relations in country X?
• How do foreign public audience attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors in country X directly support or affect the attainment of U.S. foreign policy objectives?
• How can public diplomacy, that is, government or government-sponsored engagement with a foreign public audience, shape the policymaking space in country X?

2. Step two: Current environment – What is going on right now?

This question leads the team into an exercise intended to help you understand the current environment. All PD initiatives occur within a context, and that context influences the methods and outcomes of a PD initiative.

In conducting a thorough analysis of the environment, you also will be laying critical groundwork for a deep dive into analyzing and understanding audiences. People will necessarily be at the center of a depiction of the PD environment because the intent of public diplomacy is to achieve policy results by engaging with foreign publics as audiences. By centering people in your assessment and understanding the contexts in which they are living and working, you will be well-positioned to segment audiences appropriately in your planning and to identify the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors you wish to influence. Audience analysis is the process of using evidence to determine which priority audiences’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to get to the desired PD environment. For more information on that process and how to use evidence to inform your decision making, you can check out Section G. Audience analysis: Using data to inform decision making.

(a) Identify potential audience groups

Based on the current environment, you can consider all of the potential groups you could target within this environment. In this step, don’t worry about precisions. Rather, the goal is to map out and consider the realm of possibilities. The following questions will help guide you as you brainstorm these potential audiences. To answer these questions, you will need to make some assumptions, or best guesses, about potential audiences. See the next section for more information on how to use evidence to test these assumptions.

• Who are the individuals or groups most affected by this issue? What do we know about them? What do affected individuals know about the issue? What opinions and beliefs do they hold? What behaviors related to the issue do they engage in?
• Who are the people who are influential on this issue? What do we know about them? What do influential individuals know about the issue? What opinions and beliefs do they hold? What behaviors related to the issue do they engage in?
• For issues on which PD aims to influence leaders’ decision-making, pinpoint the outcomes that you want to see: changes in voting behavior within the legislative branch, changes in government bureaucratic processes, a new law passed, or a new regulation put in place, etc., and map out how these processes work.
  • Work to understand how PD can amplify and empower publics to shape the decision-making environment and the information environment of their governments.
• What institutions and organizations are involved in this issue? How are they involved?
• What attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors do we want to change (or reinforce) on this issue? Who exhibits these attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors?
• Are there demographic or psychographic factors that affect people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors on this issue?
• Where is there conflict between stakeholders, those affected, influential voices, and actors in the space?

(b) Visualize the current environment

With a brainstormed list of influential and affected audience groups, the next goal is to make a visual representation of the current operating environment. With your team (and, ideally, with others in your mission), you will work on mapping the environment, including the people you identified as influential or affected, placing them in the relevant social, political, economic, or cultural context and in relation to one another. The level of effort you spend on the visualization can and should vary depending on: the complexity of the topic; how new the efforts/program/intervention is (that is, how much of a standing basis of evidence you have); how much money you're going to spend on the project itself; and how strategically relevant it is. Consider each of those items and determine how much time and how many resources you need to spend on preliminary research and visual mapping. Broadly speaking, “desk research” is an exercise in deep description and analysis aimed at gathering the following information:

• The issue (challenge/opportunity), its severity, and its causes.
• The people affected by the issue and people who are influential in affecting a solution, and the networks that connect them.
• The broader context (e.g., political, economic, sociocultural, technological, and geographic) in which the problem exists.
• Factors inhibiting or facilitating priority audience behavior change.

Some other questions will help you fill out the context in which potential PD audiences operate. Also ask (and answer, through research) questions such as the following:

• Why has this situation developed?
• What are the relevant legal, legislative, or regulatory processes related to this issue?
• What are the relevant political aspects of this issue?
• What are the relevant economic aspects of this issue?
• What are the relevant social and cultural aspects of this issue?
• What are the relevant technological aspects of this issue?
• What are the relevant geographical or spatial aspects of this issue?
• What are the relevant sources of information about this issue?
• What capabilities and resources do we have at our disposal to use?
• Are other U.S. government agencies, Department of State offices, or other NGO/IGO actors working on this issue?

Be as specific as possible, and link elements together. This understanding of the environment requires more than simply brainstorming a list of stakeholders. Your goal here is to draw a (literal, if abstract or representational) picture or map of the way things work. The key is to identify relevant aspects of the environment as it relates to public diplomacy. In conducting this mapping exercise, consider the following: How are people, organizations, and institutions related? Who influences whom? What are the sources of information (and disinformation) that exist on the issue and who pays attention to which ones?

Importantly, all these questions are empirical. That is, they are not purely theoretical or abstract; they are subject to observation and to being confirmed using research and data.¹ Answering these questions requires conducting research that goes beyond hunches, intuition, and folklore. LE staff are a critical source of information because their knowledge may be highly specific and localized to their experience and perspectives. In addition to consulting LE staff and other American colleagues in the mission, be sure to consult reliable external sources of information to answer these questions as specifically as possible. In some cases, sections will need to commission studies, conduct interviews, or commission a survey or poll (and set aside the resources required to do so). PD sections should think proactively about how to allocate resources toward such research, including by discerning which Washington-based resources can be used or applied. It is insufficient to conclude that these things are ephemeral or intangible. Your goal in this phase is to make what seems abstract concrete.

3. Step three: Future environment – What do we want things to look like when we are done?

This step is another exercise to help you understand the environment; but this time, the goal is to visualize the environment as you want it to be in the future. What will this same issue set look like if we achieve our objective? Whereas the second phase of this process was empirically driven, this third phase is more open to creativity and interpretation. It asks you to imagine a future world, and then, as before, to make your descriptions of that world as concrete as possible by visualizing it in graphical and narrative form. In this step, you establish outcomes and conditions that, if achieved, will indicate that you have achieved your objective. In other words, this phase asks the questions: “How will you know whether you’re making progress toward your goal?” and “How will you know you have succeeded?”

(a) Visualize the future environment

One exercise for this step is to take your visualization or narrative from Step 2: Current environment and to identify explicitly what changes are required to reach Step 3: Future environment. In your visual map, what new nodes need to be added and which should be removed? What associations need to be disrupted, strengthened, or created? What processes need to be changed? What specific attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, if changed, would most help to move the situation from the current state to the future desired state?

Some additional questions to ask in this phase of defining the future state include:

• What will be typical behaviors, statements, and attitudes of the people involved in this issue? What will the individuals and groups depicted in the desired state think, say, and do?
• What elements of the current environment do we want to preserve? That is, what do we want to make sure does not change?
• How will networks and relationships between people and institutions have changed?
• What legal or regulatory aspects might be changed in the desired state?
• How has the political, social, or cultural landscape changed in the desired state, and what are the indicators you will use to know these things have changed?
• Are there new groups, stakeholders, or actors that have emerged as being more important (or who have diminished in importance) in the desired state?

These questions should point you and your team back to the relevant ICS sub-objective. The level of specificity here is important because, quite often, U.S. policy goals, especially at the strategic level, are abstract and lofty. For example, in the Joint Strategic Plan FY 2018–2022, the first goal was to “Protect America’s Security at Home and Abroad,” and even mission objectives in an ICS might include things like “counter transnational crime.” The loftiness of these goals is one reason that the PDIP requires that initiatives be designed and attached to ICS sub-objectives. Even at the sub-objective level, the PD section may need to narrow the scope of its work to a particular contributing factor or component part of the sub-objective.

In this phase, you want to begin thinking about identifying conditions that will signal successful attainment of (or progress toward) an objective. To determine conditions for the desired future environment, think about the following question: what are the qualitative characteristics that define the desired end state? For example, if the desired end state is more accessible education, some conditions may be the level of technology used in the classroom, or more one-on-one time between students and teachers.

As you identify conditions that would signal progress or success you will also want to think about time. It is unlikely that PD objectives will be achieved all at once, or completely. It is more likely that you will see incremental progress on some fronts and experience steps backwards on others, and that these things will happen in recursive, nonlinear ways. Think about the future state and conditions in terms of short-, medium-, and long-term results and in terms of prioritizing action: what desired changes in awareness, attitude, or action do you see as most acute or as affecting your future work? For example, you might design programs to mitigate specific instances of gender-based violence in schools by increasing awareness of existing protections for students before running a campaign that encourages civic engagement around increasing legal protections for minor survivors of gender-based violence.

(b) Identifying priority audiences

As part of this step, you will want to narrow the universe of potential audiences to identifying a priority audience who will be instrumental in advancing the situation from the way it is now to the way you want it to be. This is the group of people whose attitudes or behaviors will need to change in order to achieve your desired future state.

Lower alignment with U.S. policy objective

Higher alignment with U.S. policy objective

Higher influence

Critics High influence · Low alignment Move, mitigate, engage

Advocates High influence · High alignment Partner, activate

Lower influence

Skeptics Low influence · Low alignment Monitor, interact

Supporters Low influence · High alignment Develop, amplify

Figure 4. Alignment / Influence Matrix

Because PD resources are limited, this exercise can help your team focus on the priority audience who will be most instrumental in achieving your goals, and design your activity around that group. The number of priority audiences you identify depends on the number of distinct groups whose attitude or behavior will need to change in order to achieve the policy goal. As you explore your potential audiences in order to identify your priority audience, consider the following questions:

• What (and whose) behavior must change?
• How likely is the potential audience to enact the required awareness, attitude, or behavior change?
• Whose attitudes and behaviors could reasonably change because of PD initiatives and activities?
  • What audiences provide PD practitioners with the best return for the investment of PD resources, that is, which potential audience groups are reachable and persuadable?
• Which of these audiences is most influential to the post making progress on moving to the desired future environment?
  • You can answer this question by thinking about which local audiences have access, influence, and motivation to support the change.
• Consider the benefits for this audience if they enact the change. What do they get out of making the change? Is it something that they should want?
• How are potential audiences aligned (or not) with U.S. policy objectives?

Your initial answers to these questions will help guide your investigation and selection of a priority audience. Whenever possible, corroborate your answers using evidence. This evidence can come from journals, articles, surveys, and more.

Because of limitations regarding resources, access, or political considerations, there may be priority audiences that you identify as important but do not select. One tool that can be useful in selecting priority audiences is the Audience “Alignment/Influence Matrix.” This matrix helps your team chart each potential audience group identified, considering their ability to influence achieving a particular foreign policy goal and their alignment with U.S. goals and values around that goal.

For more information on audience analysis, reference Section G. Audience analysis: using data to inform decision making.

4. Step four: Problem statement – What is the problem we need to solve?

With a deep, visualized, and evidence-driven understanding of the situation, including policy direction, the current environment, and the desired environment, you are ready to analyze the gap between the current and future states, delve into the reasons for that gap, and write a problem statement. A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the gap between the current state and the desired state, and it should offer analysis of the problem’s significance and consequences. The problem statement should provide direction about PD’s role in defining the problem, that is, the problem statement should hint at the audience's attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors that represent the obstacle, opportunity, or challenge relevant to the larger situation. This step is important because your framing of the problem will influence how you plan the initiative to solve or mitigate the problem you identify.

[The State edition carries a graphic here, "undefined", that did not come through the public conversion.]

Figure 5. Problem statement

In the PD context, a problem statement should be written for an ICS sub-objective that articulates the underlying problem the relevant PD initiatives will address. The ICS sub-objective describes the desired state that your mission wishes to reach. The problem is the gap between the current state and the desired state. Developing a problem statement involves identifying the gap between the current state and the desired state, in addition to identifying the obstacles or challenges that must be overcome in moving from one state of affairs to the other. A strong problem statement succinctly explains both the policy problem in the context of the ICS goal and why addressing this challenge is a mission priority. Even though developing a problem statement should drive you to specificity, it is crucial that PD sections not lose sight of the big picture: PD’s strategic goals, objectives, and outcomes.

Depending on the scope of the problem, the broad problem statement may be broken down into a series of contributing factors. In some cases, these contributing factors may help you determine different lines of effort or initiatives you want to take. Breaking down the problem into its component parts can help you clarify which aspects of the broad problem will be responsive to PD tools and programming and will help you to allocate resources and prioritize your efforts.

For example, an ICS sub-objective may aim to improve opportunities for female entrepreneurs in a given country. The overarching problem is that female entrepreneurs lack opportunity to start and grow their businesses; however, there are component issues that contribute to this problem, these are the challenges or obstacles you want to identify. These obstacles might include some or all of the following (again, this is an opportunity for the PD team to conduct empirical research, don’t guess or rely on intuition): prevailing gender norms, lack of investment, low levels of education, an overbearing regulatory environment, etc. It is unlikely that a single PD initiative can effectively address the entire scope of issues that would-be female entrepreneurs face. Therefore, PD planners should consider the component parts of the issue and focus their problem statement on those issues that their sections/offices are best positioned to address.

Templates can be helpful in drafting problem statements because they provide structure and coherence to ensure you are not missing major aspects of problem definition. Different templates may work better for certain kinds of problems: there is not a one-size-fits-all way to write a problem statement. Templates and sample problem statements can be found in Appendix B: Problem statement templates. See Appendix C: Troubleshooting problematic problem statements for guidance on writing difficult problem statements.

Some questions you can ask for this phase of framing the problem include:

• What is the difference between the current environment and the desired future environment?
• Which elements of the current environment must undergo the most significant change to reach the desired future environment?
• What are the obstacles or challenges that will impede or prevent movement from the current state to the desired future environment?
• What are the component parts of the problem?
• What aspects of the problem is public diplomacy uniquely able or well-positioned to solve?
• What are the opportunities that we see to move things from the current state to the desired future state?
• What are the threats and risks that we might face in trying to implement this change?

To assess your problem statement’s strengths and weaknesses, use this assessment rubric.

5. Step five: The approach – How do we get from here to there?

Your team can now turn to developing an approach to solve the problem. Most complex problems (for which design approach is best suited) will not have just one solution; rather, there are different areas of work or effort that combine to enable you to respond to the problem and deliver you closer to the desired state. This phase of the design process is sometimes referred to as “developing an approach.” Although this phase is still conceptual, the initiatives or lines of effort you lay out here will continue to be implemented in the detailed planning phase. The goal of this step is to imagine a holistic, coordinated approach that will allow you to plan fully and articulate how you will get from one state of affairs to the other.

(a) Selecting and describing priority audiences

Perhaps the most critical element of this phase, for PD professionals, is the selection of clearly defined priority audiences whose attitudes or behaviors will need to change in order to achieve your policy goal. This step is critical to crafting initiatives that are embedded in a strategic framework and have a clear and articulated initiative hypothesis. Priority audiences (which were identified in Step 3, Visualize the Future Environment) are those people whose attitudes and behavior must change for post to achieve its PD objectives. In Step 5, you select which audience group(s) you will aim to reach with PD initiatives and activities. For more on this topic, see Appendix D: Identifying, selecting, and describing audiences. Refer to Section G. Audience Analysis: Using Data to inform decision making for a deeper dive into audience analysis.

(b) Brainstorming initiatives

An initiative is a campaign or group of activities intended to achieve an objective or sub-objective. They are the major building blocks of a mission or section’s PDIP, as they link sets of activities, programs, and messages to a foreign policy outcome. An initiative should house multiple types of activities that all work toward a similar set of outcomes. A single initiative may also target one or more priority audiences, as described above, that should be engaged to further the relevant sub-objective. Multiple initiatives may work toward the same ICS sub-objective and address different aspects of the problem statement. For instance, if one sub-objective is to reduce family violence, the PD section may design an initiative to change public attitudes that domestic violence is a public safety problem rather than an unavoidable family dynamic. Another initiative could be to amplify local leaders' voices who are already working to reduce family violence. A third initiative might be to encourage public support for legislative action to increase penalties for domestic violence convictions, with a focus on six key districts. Each of these initiatives would involve different section activities in support of the initiative. Rather than lumping all of the activities together into one big “domestic violence awareness” campaign, these specific, well-designed initiatives have limited, priority audiences and objectives and outcomes that can be measured and monitored.

One method for developing a PD approach to an ICS sub-objective-level problem statement is to engage your team in a brainstorming exercise. Importantly, brainstorming potential initiatives and activities or programs comes at the end of the design process, after the team has done extensive work to analyze the policy goals, environment, and audiences, and has developed a problem statement. There are typically two approaches for brainstorming initiatives and activities, and the approach may take one or the other, or a mixture of both:

• Brainstorm various activities, and group these activities by each potential initiative; or
• Brainstorm initiatives, and then add various appropriate activities to the initiatives.

It may be tempting to move this brainstorm up in the process, but PD section leaders should resist this urge in order to develop better habits for thinking and planning strategically.

(c) Matching the initiative to your audience

As you brainstorm your initiative, it is important to use what you know about your priority audience to design an initiative that will effectively reach them. Our goal is to design the initiative for the audience, rather than designing the audience for the initiative. When brainstorming, consider the following questions about your audience:

• Whom do they trust? Whom do they not trust?
• Are they comfortable with U.S. messengers? If not, to whom are they more likely to listen?
• Where do they get their information on your policy topic?
• What are their preferred methods of communication?

For more information on how to use research and data to answer these questions, see G. Audience analysis: using data to inform decision making.

(d) Assessing and selecting initiatives

After the brainstorming is complete, and with selected priority audience groups in mind, the team can work to group ideas to form initiatives, and then to narrow down the list by using a Suitability-Acceptability-Feasibility test, or SAF test. In the brainstorming phase, anything goes, as long as there’s an idea for an activity or initiative and a priority audience related to the sub-objective problem statement, the idea goes on the board. Once you have compiled a list of ideas, use the SAF test to analyze them and decide whether they should make their way into the PDIP. For each idea, use the following questions to eliminate potential initiatives (or activities within an initiative) that do not meet all of these criteria.

• Suitability. If successful, will the proposed initiative actually achieve, or make progress toward achieving, the ICS sub-objective?
  • Is the proposed initiative clearly related to the relevant problem statement?
  • Does the proposed initiative have a clearly defined foreign audience segment with an attitude/belief/behavior we need to maintain or change to achieve our policy goal?
  • How likely is the proposed initiative to be successful?
• Acceptability. Is the proposed initiative ethically, culturally, socially, and politically aligned with the values of the U.S. government, the local community, and other stakeholders?
  • Will this initiative compete with or complicate other efforts within the mission?
  • Will this initiative encounter resistance from important elements of the community? If so, is that resistance a deal-breaker?
  • Does this initiative conform to all legal and ethical requirements?
  • Will my chief of mission/deputy chief of mission support this initiative?
  • Will it be culturally, socially, and politically acceptable to carry out this initiative in my local context?
• Feasibility. Can we implement the initiative with available resources, and is this initiative an efficient and effective use of those resources?
  • Does the staff of the PD section have the skills and expertise required to implement and manage this initiative?
  • Does the staff have enough time to implement and manage this activity?
  • Are local partners available to implement this initiative effectively?
  • Will financial or other resource constraints make implementation difficult?
  • Does the PD section need to seek additional funding to implement this initiative?

1 · Suitable?

• If successful, will the proposed initiative achieve, or make progress toward achieving, the ICS sub-objective?
• Does the initiative have a clearly defined foreign audience segment with an attitude, belief, or behavior we need to maintain or change to achieve our policy goal?
• Is the proposed initiative likely to be successful?

If any of these are "no," you can stop. If these are all "yes," move to the next step.

2 · Acceptable?

• Is the proposed initiative ethically, culturally, socially, and politically aligned with the values of the U.S. government, the local community, and other stakeholders?
• Does this initiative conform to all legal and ethical requirements?
• Will my Chief of Mission or Deputy Chief of Mission support this initiative?

If any of these are "no," you can stop. If these are all "yes," move to the next step.

3 · Feasible?

• Can we implement the initiative with available resources and local partners, and is this initiative an efficient and effective use of those resources?
• Does the staff of the PD section have the skills, expertise, and time required to implement and manage this initiative?

If yes, this proposed initiative is a good fit.

Figure 6. SAF Test

The SAF test should help the PD section critically evaluate how each proposed initiative contributes to attaining the strategic objectives and to prioritizing initiatives to allocate resources effectively.

After selecting priority audience groups and critically reviewing proposed initiatives, a PD section should come away with a concrete list of initiatives that are tied to a specific ICS sub-objective and designed to address a clearly defined problem statement. The initiatives should, together, result in a reasonable chance at making progress toward achieving the desired policy objectives.

6. Iteration and reframing

Although a design approach is deliberative and structured, it is iterative: it starts with observations and uses inference to draw likely conclusions based on them. When new information or observations are added, you should adjust your conclusions.

The environment is constantly changing, partly because of natural reasons like the progression of time, but also because actors, including PD professionals, are actively working to change it. Commonly undertaken when there is a “shift in understanding that leads to a new perspective on the problems or their resolution,” reframing can involve “significantly refining or discarding the hypotheses or models that form the basis of the design concept.”²

When doing your design work, think proactively about reframing, what events or indicators might send you back to the drawing board to reassess or modify your approach? Some relevant nudges for reframing might include:

• A major political change (e.g., a national election) in the country
• An unexpected event (e.g., a natural disaster or epidemic) that is affecting the country
• Achieving substantial progress toward an objective (e.g., the host country changes a relevant regulation or policy)
• An unexpected outcome from an initiative or activity (e.g., a program shows higher-than-expected efficacy in moving opinion or behavior)
• A change in the resources available for PD work (e.g., an increase in funding from a new source or the absence of a staff member)
• A change in mission priorities (e.g., your COM asks for specific, sustained focus on an emerging issue)

Using a design approach that is centered in policy objectives and focused on audiences puts into practice the first two pillars of the PD Framework. But the steps and questions here are often useful for collaborative problem-solving at both higher and lower levels; you can use many of the same tools to work with other sections at your mission or bureau to tackle tough, complex problems together, and smaller teams or individuals can use a similar approach to analyzing and designing activities. Remember, the goal is to establish habits of mind that encourage research and evidence-gathering, rigorous analysis, creative problem-solving, deliberate implementation, and constant evaluation and iteration. The process should be people and solution oriented.

Footnotes

1. For more on the role of research, see Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center, and Glen M. Broom, “Role of Research in Strategic Planning,” 284, and “Listening as Systematic Research,” in Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations, 9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2006), 285-286. ↩

2. ADP 5-0 “The Operations Process” (2019), 2–17. ↩