ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how mythical Cascadia County responded to the adverse consequences created by New Public Management’s success in getting public-sector organizations to “run like a business.” Administrative leaders used a value-driven community planning process to create a shared vision of the future. Spurred by calls to “reinvent government” and “run government like a business,” many agencies over the past few decades have embraced the notion of a business plan as a vehicle to articulate their specific and unique values, mission, and strategies. Faced with increasingly constrained resources and a growing gap between the rich and the poor, county administrators with strong support from elected officials initiated a community capacity-building process, called VisionWest. In 2002, the Vision Action Network (VAN) was created in response to this need. VAN was formed as a private non-profit agency to be a catalyst, incubator, and facilitator for resulting collaborative efforts to improve life for people throughout Cascadia County.
