I know of a CEO at a Fortune 400 Company who became weary of planning exercises and so decided to re-name his company’s Strategic Planning Committee to the Strategic Doing Committee. On one hand, you have to wonder exactly what they would be doing, having no plan. But, at the same time, you have to sympathize with the attitude that planning isn’t worth much if it doesn’t lead to some doing.

Doing isn’t easy, which is why so many plans end up on shelves collecting dust. I myself have a perfectly lovely plan for a new deck behind my house. It’s carefully measured and detailed, and the required quantities of wood to be purchased are listed off to the side. Alas, the next step will require joint investments of time and money.

Civic planning exercises often suffer a similar fate. People come together to craft a shared vision for the future, then hand that plan off to civic officials to make it happen. They run the numbers and get cold feet, and the plan goes on the shelf.

That’s where leadership comes in. Whether from the private sector or the public sector, someone steps up and takes ownership of the plan, cheerleads for it, builds enthusiasm behind it, gets it funded and built.

In East Ridge Tennessee, Mayor Mike Steele is tackling his city’s persistent challenge of flat revenues and rising costs. East Ridge hasn’t had a property tax increase in ten years, and it’s starting to show. Mayor Steele invited the citizens to participate in the future planning. He listened to what they said they wanted their city to be, and now he intends to do something about it.

Plans don’t get implemented because they’re too ambitious or too costly; they fail to get put in place because the leadership isn’t there. If it happens to often, the citizens who participate in the vision and planning begin to get the idea that their participation is fruitless, and they become discouraged. Worse, they can become cynical. When that happens, it takes a lot of work to get the excited about and supportive of civic visioning exercises. It’s a viciously downward cycle that can take years to reverse.

Look around at the cities being hailed for renaissance, resurgence and revitalization and you’ll find strong leadership – public, private or both. That’s the difference between planning and doing.

Now, if I could only get someone to take the lead on that deck.