Planning Under Pressure

Book excerpt: Planning under Pressure offers managers, planners, consultants and students a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the Strategic Choice Approach, which has gradually been attracting worldwide recognition as a fresh, versatile and practical approach to collaborative decision-making under uncertainty. Starting from basic principles, the book uses helpful diagrams and clear explanations to demonstrate practical ways of approaching daunting decision problems; of devising possible ways forward; and of working effectively towards agreed courses of action. Along he way, decision makers are helped to cope with diverse sources of uncertainty – technical, political, managerial – in a strategic manner. In this extended third edition, the authors have added short contributions from 21 users from seven countries. These new contributors present lessons from their varied experiences in adapting the Strategic Choice Approach to guide decision-making and learning in settings ranging from the re-routing of a controversial city carnival procession to national policy for the management of nuclear waste.