Strategic Policy Design

Modern organizations, whether public or private, are animated by a universal imperative: to achieve prominent goals that fulfill their mandates and uphold deeply held values and ideals. To realize this imperative, leaders entrusted to pursue organizational missions need to exercise a core set of strategic skills, discern opportunities, identify worthy goals, and implement pursuing actions. Strategic Policy Design introduces an integrated architecture for strategic thinking that enhances leadership skills in gauging conditions and crystallizing plans. This framework promotes a structured approach to strategic tasks by offering templates for decision making, from articulating a strategic mission, understanding the environment in which an organization operates, and rallying people and resources toward attaining strategic goals to a portable, versatile framework for the development and writing of strategy-oriented communications.

For practitioners of policy, this book offers clarity of strategic thinking and introduces a new framework with which to perceive policy environments, identify and define goals, and organize strategies. For students, this book explores the skill and art in exercising leadership, encompassing both pragmatism and idealism. By learning and applying the showcased techniques, students will be equipped with a heightened awareness of policy domains, goal construction, and operational planning. Students in public-sector studies will find this book of interest, as will those studying political science, public administration, law, foreign affairs, international development, history, military sciences, and similar majors. The organizational perspective in strategy will also appeal to students in both business and non-profit sectors.

Jack C. Chow served as U.S. Ambassador and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for global health and science issues during the presidency of George W. Bush, and he subsequently was Assistant Director-General at the World Health Organization. He held posts within the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government and was a consultant at RAND Corporation and McKinsey & Company. He is a Distinguished Service Professor (adjunct) in the Washington, D.C. program of Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz School of Public Policy and Management.