The Planning Lady

We have reached the end of this multisolving journey, chronicling answers to each of Elizabeth Sawin’s reflections at the chapter ends of her book Multisolving. The last chapter, aptly titled Going Forth, wraps up the content and ends with a much needed prompt when working towards positive change–“Most of All, Keep Going”. This prompt is going to be ever more important in the coming years as the turbulence and uncertainty increases.

Knowing more about complex systems has helped open up possibilities for a just and sustainable future in my field of affordable housing. By better observing the systems at play it opens up opportunities to connect across silos to better address the housing crisis. An example of this already underway is the American Planning Association and the National League of Cities working working together with a wide range of partners to author the Housing Supply Accelerator. This work has helped identify many complex systems contributing to the housing problem along with highlighting the fragile and tenuous nature of them.

What I would pass along to readers about multisolving is:

• It creates the opportunity to steer systems with intentional actions rather than sitting on the sidelines waiting for improvement or making small dents in problem solving with little lasting change.
• Set vision, values, and rules to help make decisions. This is one outcome of the book that has lead me to think differently about my work and personal goals. Without a good set of these, it’s easy to get distracted and make little progress.
• Once you establish a web of relationship in your multisolving work, it makes it easy to keep going as you have partners to lean on.

I am already looking at ways to multisolve in my own work, especially with the Poverty Elimination Action Plan currently in development. There are so many opportunities to use an approach like this to stretch resources further and achieve more positive outcomes.