Though Derthick's and Pressman and Wildavsky's studies reflected some important differences in context,they shared some key takeaway points.First and foremost was that not enough though and attention was devoted to implementation given its importance to policy success.While planners and academics lavished attention on how to decide what to do and how to assess what had been done, there were too many assumptions and not enough knowledge about what happened between these two points in the policy change.The overwhelming impression from reading Derthick and Pressman and Wildavsky was that the real surprise wasn't that public policies failed, it was that they ever worked at all.These studies threw a spotlight on implementation as a key reason for policy failure, and they also offered prescriptive advice on how to increase the odds of policy success: cut down on decision points, and push control and authority downward to allow those closest to the project to make important decisions quickly and effectively.