I recently watched a YouTube video called Why American Cities Can’t Build Anything, and I noticed how it mirrors what I’ve experienced over the past decade as a consultant working with nonprofits and foundations.
One quote from the video especially stood out to me:
“Around the United States, cities have become trapped in an endless cycle of visioning, planning, designing, consulting, studying, and redesigning, all while struggling to build meaningful change that they set out to achieve… planning has become a substitute for action.”
Organizations often hire consultants to facilitate strategic planning, conduct evaluations, lead community engagement, facilitate listening sessions, and make sense of complex issues. These services are valuable. Organizations should take time to understand the problems they’re trying to solve before investing resources into solutions.
At what point does planning actually delay action?
To be fair, there are important historical reasons why planning often takes longer today than it did decades ago.
Communities have learned, often through painful experiences, what can happen when governments, planners, and developers move projects forward without community input. Those decisions have displaced entire neighborhoods. Public investments have overlooked the people most affected by them. Large institutions and corporations no longer receive the same level of unquestioned trust they once did. As a result, community engagement, public participation, and transparency have become essential parts of planning processes. That’s a good thing.
The challenge is ensuring that planning still serves its original purpose: Helping us make better decisions and move toward implementation.
Planning Begins with Good Intentions
Most planning efforts begin because someone recognizes an opportunity to improve something.
A community identifies a need. An organization wants to strengthen its programs. A foundation wants to invest in solving an important issue. A city wants to improve transportation or housing. These are all worthwhile catalysts for change.
Because today’s organizations rightly value community voice and evidence-informed decision-making, planning often includes stakeholder interviews, surveys, focus groups, environmental scans, strategic planning sessions, evaluations, and feasibility studies. Each step can strengthen the final decision.
But each additional step also requires more time, more resources, and more coordination.
Eventually, an important question emerges:
Is this next planning activity helping us make a decision, or helping us avoid making one?
Three Groups May Approach Planning Differently
One reason planning can feel endless is because different stakeholders often define success differently.
Communities typically want meaningful improvements in their lives. They want safer neighborhoods, healthier families, stronger schools, better services, and more equitable opportunities. Community engagement helps ensure that solutions reflect lived experiences rather than assumptions.
However, community members can also become frustrated when they’re repeatedly asked to participate in listening sessions, surveys, or focus groups without seeing meaningful change afterward.
Funders have a different responsibility. They want confidence that their investments will produce meaningful outcomes. Research, evaluations, and planning help reduce uncertainty and strengthen decision-making. That responsibility makes sense.
But funders sometimes support questions that researchers have already explored extensively.
I remember seeing a foundation release a request for proposals focused on maternal health research. My first instinct as a consultant was exactly what many consultants might think: “Could I assemble a team for this project?”
Then I read the responses from maternal health professionals working in the field.
From their perspective, many evidence-informed interventions already existed, and called for an expansion of investments in the solutions that practitioners had been discussing for years.
Neither perspective was wrong.
The funder was seeking stronger evidence. The practitioners were seeking stronger implementation.
Both wanted healthier outcomes. They just disagreed on what needed to happen next.
Then there are consultants, who play an important role in helping organizations gather information, facilitate difficult conversations, analyze findings, and develop thoughtful strategies. Many organizations genuinely benefit from that expertise.
But consultants are also part of the planning ecosystem.
When organizations begin planning, someone often facilitates the process. When they need research, someone conducts it. When they need an evaluation, someone designs it. These activities are essential.
The question I think consultants should continually ask ourselves is:
What happens after the client receives the final report?
Planning Is Not the Same as Progress
One of the video’s most compelling observations was that everyone wants the finished product.
People want affordable housing, not necessarily want years of construction outside their window.
Organizations want transformational change, not necessarily witnessing implementation challenges, staffing constraints, political disagreements, or difficult decisions about priorities.
The messy middle is where change actually happens.
Planning can prepare us for that work, improve that work, and even prevent costly mistakes. But planning can’t replace that work.
Communities don’t experience change because another report was published.
They experience change when programs improve, policies change, investments reach neighborhoods, services become more accessible, and organizations begin doing something differently.
That’s implementation.
So…Are We Planning Too Much?
Maybe a better question is:
Are our planning processes designed to lead us toward implementation?
Planning matters. Community engagement matters. Research and evaluation matter.
I’ve built my career around helping organizations plan thoughtfully, and I believe these activities create tremendous value.
But I also believe planning should move us somewhere.
Before launching another strategic planning process, commissioning another study, or conducting another round of stakeholder engagement, perhaps we should pause and ask:
What decision will this help us make?
If we can answer that clearly, the planning process is likely serving its purpose. If not, it may be time to ask whether our greatest need isn’t another planning activity.
Raise Your Voice: At what point did you decide to move from planning to implementation? Share your thoughts below in the comments section.
Was this useful? Subscribe to the Raise Your Voice newsletter, and explore my consulting services.
