ThinkPlace - Sustainable Environments

Dream of a better New Zealand society? Let's make it happen

Sashi Surendran — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 01:42:47 +0000

New Zealand

Dream of a better New Zealand society? Let's make it happen

Topics

Our world is complex, and change is hard… but not impossible.

The age of IoT, Big Data, Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Sharing Economy, etc otherwise known as Industry 4.0 is real and happening across our country in industries and our private lives.

Do you want to be part of making the change you want to see in our society? Do you want to work with us to envision Aotearoa New Zealand Society 5.0 - more equitable, sustainable and productive? Together, we can continue to evolve and build our collective wellbeing.

Japan and several other countries are already thinking about these very questions. As a society, we can ‘drift’ into this future and it will happen to us or we can be very intentional and navigate to it. In an increasingly more connected age of technology, we can become even more disconnected or we can do something about it.

To work on this challenge, ThinkPlace New Zealand is standing up a Society 5.0 design coalition. Together we will realise a vision of Society 5.0 where we resolve social challenges by incorporating the innovations of Industry 4.0 into the fabric of our social life.

Who could be in the coalition?

A group of 20 likeminded people with a mandate for leading change from 10 organisations who want more for this country and all of its people. A group who are willing to invest a small budget and some time to join us to seek an answer to the question we have posed.

Are you someone who cares about our social support for vulnerable people?

Are you someone who cares about our environment and planet?

Are you someone who cares about the wellness and health of our people?

Are you hungry for greater momentum?

Are you building industry 4.0 and also want bigger outcomes for this country?

How we will do this?

The work is a collaborative system design dropping out organisation specific initiatives that you can take into your own organisation’s strategic planning.

At ThinkPlace, we are a passionate group of subject matter experts in the areas of complex systems, human lived experiences and behaviour, organisation strategy and convening collaborative conversations.

The work will be informed by

A clear view of the current system and its flaws
A large-scale deep dive research project with New Zealanders
Merging qualitative and quantitative insights along the views of a number of subject matter experts across complex systems, human insight and behaviour change, organisation strategy and Industry 4.0.

What are the outcomes?

You will get a grasp of our society as a complex system and the possible initiatives you could explore to achieve your organisation’s outcomes and better equity, productivity and sustainability in Aotearoa Society 5.0.

Collectively, you along with other partners in the coalition will be able to see each other’s initiatives, minimising duplication and maximising collaboration so that we can use this country’s scarce resources more effectively and efficiently.

As current (and future) leaders of this country, you will get a holistic view of bi-partisan pathways to a better future.

Why work with us?

We don’t just bring complexity to the table but embrace it to have breakthrough conversations, surfacing what is and what could be. Our expertise lies in understanding people’s behaviour and needs, navigating areas of uncertainty.

Whether it’s world leading behaviour change to save lives, turning around a historically disadvantaged community or a new paradigm for environmental stewardship in NZ, we build partnership, confidence and hope by creating action pathways.

If you need to make your case with your organisation leaders, start the conversation today with a downloadable pdf below.

aotearoa_society_5.0_design_coalition.pdf

The investment is $40,000 per organisation and eight days in coalition working sessions spread across six months.

I’m leading this work and will be joined by three of my senior colleagues.

Get in touch with me if you want more info or to reserve two seats at the table.

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Why I'm optimistic about our future

Daniel Silkstone — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 02:49:04 +0000

Why I'm optimistic about our future

New Zealand

If you read the daily headlines or cast an eye over the political gridlock that surrounds many of the world’s most pressing challenges it can be tempting to feel dispirited. To believe that things will not change for the better.

I’ve got the perfect antidote to that feeling.

Imagine a week-long design sprint with people from 162 countries united by their passion to make a real impact on the Sustainable Development Goals.

I have just been to UNLEASH, in Shenzhen where I helped as a facilitator for a second time. UNLEASH is an incredible innovation lab, bringing together a thousand talented 18-35 year olds from around the world with 150 facilitators. Imagine a week-long design sprint featuring this collection of brilliant young minds, all united by their passion to make a real impact on the 17 SDGs!

UNLEASH is an event that helps restore your faith in the possibility of better futures and generates incredible excitement when you see the possibilities opened up by genuine global collaboration. For us, as ThinkPlacers, it also underlines the global connectedness of what we do. ThinkPlace provided five facilitators to the event, including design leaders from our NZ, Aust, Singapore and Kenyan studios.

I was fortunate to be working with a passionate and brilliant group of young people on SDG 13: Climate Action. There could scarcely be a more important challenge to assemble our combined creativity around. This year all our travel was offset to be carbon neutral.

CLIMATE ACTION IS DEEPLY PERSONAL

We all live on this precious planet so all of us there were impacted by climate change. But one thing that immediately jumped out at me: quite a number of the people in our group were living with significant and immediate impacts now.

Everyone there was awake to the need for climate action now but many had personal and urgent experience of that need.

Among them, Diwigdi from Guna. Due to rising seas his islands are disappearing and likely to be gone within the next 20 years “I’m going to have grand kids and I’m going to have to tell them ‘we used to live on Islands’,” he said.

There was Joseph from Zambia a performer/composer who was inspired to compose an awesome song “We have the power” during the week and Will, a facilitator from YellowKnife Canada, where a local doctor prescribes climate action for eco-anxiety as locals experience all sorts of effects up north such the permafrost collapsing under buidlings and methane bubbles rising under the ice.

Together, we came up with a couple of hundred ideas during the event (some of which will be realized, other which won’t). You can read more about some of the most promising ideas here.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about in this blog post. The real gold, I believe, will be from the powerful, committed and talented network that was created. This is what will really generate positive ripples of difference across our planet.

INSPIRATION IS A MULTIPLIER

A large part of the value of an event like this is bringing people together and creating new collaborations and relationships. But another huge benefit is giving changemakers from around the world, who are early in their journeys, access to inspirational figures who would normally be out of reach.

We were fortunate to have two Nobel Peace Prize laureates speak to us all (imagine such a thing!). Both inspired us with their experience, their ability to make a a real difference, their belief and their courage. But even more importantly, they challenged each of us to follow their example and follow through with our ideas.

One of these was Leymah Gbowee, Liberian peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. She is Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, based in Monrovia.

Leymah shared a number of her experiences, including how with a number of other mothers she started a peace movement to stop the war in Liberia by borrowing $10 to place an advert in the newspaper, appealing to women and mothers to join them in stopping the war.

“Never, ever despise humble beginnings,” she told the participants. “If you are a dream bearer, you are also a dream carer.”

Leave a signature on this planet and define your own life. And never walk on tiptoes. – Leymah Gbowee

Leymah not only inspired us but challenged us to stand for what we believe and also speak the truth (especially to power).

Then there was Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and creator of micro-finance. He started by just giving small amounts of money to local people in extreme poverty as he walked past them on the way to his teaching. It was all they needed to lift themselves a bit out of poverty. He kept doing this and then people started paying back the loans. Grameen Bank now lends billions of dollars to those in dire need and have 99.5% pay-back rates.

Muhammad Yunus stressed he knew nothing about banking at the start of his journey and this helped him immensely as he flipped everything about the conventional banking system, such as lending money to women as well as men (most loans are now to women), lending to people with no identity papers and not situating outlets in the cities – they are all in rural villages.

Don’t follow the old voice. See things with your own eyes. – Muhammad Yunus

These were powerful words and they really captured the spirit of what UNLEASH is all about, harnessing the energy and creativity of young, motivated people and multiplying the power it can have via collaboration, mentoring and inspiration.

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Got a complex challenge? Welcome to ThinkCamp...

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 02:36:48 +0000

Got a complex challenge? Welcome to ThinkCamp...

United States

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them - Albert Einstein

If you are reading this -- even if your organisation is performing well -- chances are that you’re interested in how your organisation or sector could be doing better.

There could be something that you need to change. It could be a new program, a new service, changes to your organisation or to the strategy that drives the impact you want to make in the world.

If you knew how to do it… if doing it was easy… if your everyday team was sufficient to get it done… you likely would have done it by now.

It’s almost certain that you won’t get more impactful results by employing the same old methods. However, you might not be sure what to do next or where to start in exploring a new approach.

That’s when you need a ThinkCamp.

At ThinkPlace we work with clients to tackle the world’s most complex problems, using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide the projects we take on, the partners we seek and the impact we strive to deliver.

Across hundreds of projects, all over the world, we have assembled a vast toolbox of techniques, methods and mindsets that help people and organisations arrive at a shared vision for change and then set about successfully implementing it. ThinkCamps are one of the most effective tools for doing this.

Video of Hábitat en Perú: 1er ThinkCamp de innovación en vivienda

WHAT IS A THINKCAMP?

To break through the gridlock of business as usual you need a powerful catalyst. More focused and more collaborative than a conventional workshop, ThinkCamps provide an ideal environment to uncover and explore the diversity of thought that exists within a system and empower participants to create something new through innovative application of co-design methodologies.

It starts with what we call ‘convening power’—identifying and bringing together the right mix of people and perspectives to co-create a change where authorship and ownership can be shared by all.

This co-design approach, empowering people at the heart of systems by inviting them into the discussion, is essential in informing genuine insights and generating innovative solutions.

Beyond assembling the necessary voices, a ThinkCamp provides an ultra-focused, rapid-fire environment where the case for change and the change itself can be ideated, developed and tested in a way that creates momentum, breaks gridlock and engenders collective enthusiasm.

It often starts with generating a better understanding of the challenge and the context it sits within. ThinkCamps help to uncover relationships, dependencies and unintended consequences of change by using a series of frameworks, including:

Collaboration–recognising that no individual has all the answers. The focus is on achieving the best result for all stakeholders rather than avoiding failure or scoring points.
Systems thinking – the process is integrative and considers how the whole system will work. In large community-based systems it seeks to optimise for society, the economy and the environment.
Seeking exploration and innovation – fostering divergent thinking as an engine for experimentation and innovation by giving people the autonomy and freedom to think big, entertain novel ideas, and engage with those inside the problem whose voices are rarely sought directly. It is important to provide people with a platform and the opportunity to disrupt the status quo and deliver new value.

We have seen ThinkCamps deliver outstanding results for clients all over the world, regardless of culture, language and degree of design literacy.

We’d love to talk to you about how a ThinkCamp, facilitated by our expert team of design leaders, can help you tackle the complex challenges your sector is facing.

CASE STUDY: Habitat for Humanity ThinkCamp (Peru)

THE PROBLEM

Peru lies on an arc of fault lines, making it prone to frequent earthquakes. In the event of a large-scale earthquake, many homes in Peru are at risk of total collapse. In Lima alone, 70% of dwellings (approximately 500,000) are deemed to be at high-risk, due to precarious construction practices, lack of professional masons, and limited access to high-quality materials and technologies that cater to low-income families.

THE CLIENT

A leading global NGO operating in more than 70 countries, Habitat for Humanity has been active in developing actions and programs aimed at improving the owner-driven construction process in Peru. As part of its Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystems program, Habitat works to connect affordable housing entrepreneurs to funding and expertise, while also encouraging more entrepreneurs and investors to focus on affordable housing.

THE THINKCAMP

In September 2019, Habitat partnered with ThinkPlace to deliver Peru’s first ThinkCamp for innovation in housing. The project aimed to gauge stakeholder buy-in and scope feasibility for a new program to support affordable housing entrepreneurs and investors in the Latin American region.

The two-day ThinkCamp gathered a broad range of stakeholders from diverse disciplines to participate in activities curated by ThinkPlace design experts. The 42 participants and facilitators collaborated to map the complexity of the affordable housing system in Peru and the vast range of actors involved.

THE RESULTS

Through the ThinkCamp, Habitat was able to further define their role in helping entrepreneurs and investors to overcome challenges and roadblocks towards impact, and identify the strategic partners needed for success. The insights, personal reflections, and concepts shared at the ThinkCamp helped to frame an understanding of how different actors can collaboratively add value to the future of the sector through innovative approaches.

Today I have learned that even the mafia can be involved in a solution. - ThinkCamp Participant

In one example from the ThinkCamp, a group identified an opportunity to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to safely rescue low-income families from the grasps of mafia guilds. These guilds are involved in many stages of the owner-driven construction process and have increased their influence in the informal economic sector, which is worth $1 billion annually. The idea generated by participants conceived for the first time how the sector could gather data about how the guilds operate with a view to legitimising mafia business through an incentive-based model.

CROSSING THE CHASM

Tackling complex problems is a daunting process. It takes creativity, trust, courage, and time. However, this is cannot be a solitary journey; solutions necessarily require the collective contributions of a community of actors to allow for the diversity of thought needed to achieve breakthrough innovation.

ThinkCamps afford organisations the physical, intellectual and emotional space to start connecting people. To elicit passionate ideas and enable disruptive thinking. To nurture an ecosystem of collaborators to generate a roadmap for success. And to encourage resilience in the face of adversity. We believe in the power of co-design and ThinkCamps deliver this transformative approach to collaboration.

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Designing for people in a rapidly transforming Singapore

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 22:39:03 +0000

Designing for people in a rapidly transforming Singapore

Singapore

Singapore is not like other places. A city but also a nation. A culture but also a community.

And that means designing for positive change in Singapore is a unique experience.

It needs a unique set of skills to identify the challenges and opportunities that can lead to better lives and experiences for all Singaporeans.

That’s where Joshua Teo comes in.

Newly appointed as Principal at ThinkPlace’s Singapore design studio, Teo is well placed to meet the future needs of a city-state that is undergoing rapid transformation.

Whether it’s his passion for street photography or his commitment to designing in human-centred ways, Joshua's life-long fascination is with understanding people, what motivates them and how they live their lives.

Video of Joshua Teo - My Moment of Design Impact

TP: Tell us a bit about yourself.

JT: I come from an architecture background. I’ve spent the last eight years at one of Singapore’s leading architecture firms doing design that included architectural design but also experience design.

Where I am now, I stand at the intersection of design, business, digital technology and community. For me, the role of a designer is facilitating change, and bringing the right people together to make it happen.

And the kind of changes we are looking to make now, many of them either relate to digital transfromation in Singapore. Either that's the subject of the change or it is a big part of making it happen. In this world it's important to keep hold of the human side of design, to approach change as an holistic experience.

And to make sure that when we are driving towards digtial transforation that we bring all Singaporeans along with us. We need to make sure we are being inclusive and not creating a digital divide.

TP: That means human-centred design, as it touches upon places but also on technology, is a crucial part of changemaking in Singapore, would you agree?

JT: It really is. One of our most senior government ministers gave a speech recently, laying out three big priorities for Singapore.

Energy
Public housing
An ageing population

When you think about it, all of these priorities touch upon placemaking, public spaces and how we can use design to meet these challenges.

TP: Tell us more.

JT: As a nation our energy use and carbon footprint is critical for our future. Changing the way we do a few things can have a massive impact for Singapore. For example, we spend so much energy cooling our buildings with air conditioning. How might we design spaces or ways of living that are less carbon intensive?

On public housing, we have land scarcity in Singapore – it’s a small country – and we have a growing population. We need to create quality housing and quality opportunities for our people in the future. It’s an area where we can look at the entirety of how people live, what they need and value in a community and in their living environment.

Then there’s the ageing population. Singapore’s demographics are going to hit us hard in the next 15 years and we are not currently well enough prepared. How can we allow these people to age with dignity but also allow them to continue making a contribution to society? How can we use the design tools at our disposal to ensure they lead rich lives?

TP: It does seem that human-centred design and the possibilities it offers are having a bit of a moment in Singapore?

JT: They really are. What I am seeing is a Government that is making a real effort to become more relatable to its citizens. This is a country that is working to get better at co-creation and collaboration. I think that was a necessary change. There is still plenty of work to do and we think at ThinkPlace that we are really well-placed to help with that.

TP: That speaks to the Government’s growing investment in human-centred change but there’s something else special about Singapore and design isn’t there?

JT: Definitely. Because it is a nation state that is the size of a city and because there are fewer layers of government, Singapore can be a brilliant environment to innovate and test things. We are so self-contained, we can rapidly iterate and then test programs and interventions that could eventually be applied much more broadly across Asia and beyond.

TP: What's something interesting about you, outside of work?

I love to take photos. And the kind of photography I am most interested in is street photography. I love just to meet interesting people, get an insight into what thye are doing and try to record it with my camera. Every person has something special and something interesting about their story. As humans we are all natural storytellers and I think this is a thread that comes across from my wider life to my life as a designer in complex human systems.

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An award-winning approach to Aboriginal place naming

Daniel Silkstone — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 21:55:16 +0000

Work

An award-winning approach to Aboriginal place naming

Service

Experience & Behavioural DesignInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Sector

Vibrant Communities

What’s in a name? If you are an Aboriginal person in Bendigo, Victoria and have to regularly walk past a local creek that carries an offensive racial term as its name you might think quite a lot.

All around Australia the names of things -- roads, waterways and geographic features -- serve as reminders of our past. In many instances place names reference acts of violence or displacement against Aboriginal people.

Changing this situation can address past and present wrongs but also carries exciting potential for the future. A greater integration between place-naming and Aboriginal culture and languages can help all Australians be better connected to the land they are living in.

THE CHALLENGE

“Some of the names in our landscape are racist and offensive. Some are just plain wrong in terms of how they are said or spelled,” says Susanna Collis, who worked on the project as a representative of the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council.

“This actually does matter to Traditional Owners. They feel it.”

In some cases, geographic features are named after colonial settlers who participated in atrocities against Aboriginal people. In others, names may appear harmless enough but by their simple existence may be effectively obscuring or erasing Aboriginal culture.

Beyond righting historical naming wrongs there is another -- equally pressing – need. Across Australia, we name a lot of things. New streets in new residential communities. New bridges and parks and water courses and hills.

It turns out, we are not very imaginative about how we do it.

“We keep giving the same types of names to new places, new roads,” says Susanna. “Often we know that these places already have names. They’ve had names for thousands of years. Not using those names is denying a truth. Using them highlights the continuity, presence and importance of Aboriginal culture.”

Naming authorities have too often been confused by how to engage with Aboriginal communities. At the same time, communities have felt unvalued, ignored and degraded by a lack of engagement and unaware of how decisions about naming are being made.

The challenge for ThinkPlace was to create a space and a process that would allow diverse people and interests to come together, using innovative methods and resources to drive shared understanding and purpose.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace was engaged by the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council and the Department of Environment, Water, Land and Planning to create and run a process that would encourage and facilitate more inclusion of Aboriginal people, language and custom in place-naming throughout Victoria.

We designed a process – Our Languages Matter -- that has brought together Traditional Owners, naming authorities and other stakeholders in a way that is both pragmatic and symbolic, to reshape how things are named and why.

This is the first time anyone in any jurisdiction has attempted to do this anywhere in Australia. (Susanna Collis)

ThinkPlace’s design work offers a breakthrough in creating a new naming practice that is collaborative, inclusive and truthfully reflects Australia’s complex history.

HOW WE DID IT

We were initially asked to design an opportunity for people to know more about guidelines for naming and to promote opportunities for Aboriginal place naming in the future. This brief was initially limited in scope but -- with collaborative effort and extensive consultation – we were able to push beyond it.

ThinkPlace worked with Traditional Owners and other stakeholders to co-design new frameworks for Aboriginal people to connect with government, and a new kind of conversation -- running sessions across Victoria where Traditional Owners engaged with local councils, surveyors, developers, planners and more.

“This was about getting the right people in the room for the first time but also about inventing a process for them to understand each other and collaborate together,” Susanna says.

Sessions began with Welcome to Country and, where possible, smoking ceremonies. Traditional Owners then hosted the opening session of the workshop and shared language and other cultural heritage knowledge. It was important to commence the workshop with Traditional Owners framing the context and scope of discussions, as it set the agenda for participant collaboration throughout the remainder of the day. This approach meant that each workshop was unique, with discussions localised to the place in which we were convening.

The Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages also participated by supporting discussions about revival and maintenance of Aboriginal languages and the importance of local cultural heritages.

Recognising the different languages (including technical languages) and cultures in the room we worked together to create shared understanding, shared intent and shared direction by depicting sessions visually, rapidly scribing with a mix of pictures, diagrams and words.

It is a design process and an end product that has now won recognition from the Good Design Awards jury, awarded a prestigious ‘Tick’ trophy.

“This is a project that applies co-design approaches to a sensitive and complex topic, and the adoption of visual techniques to work around language challenges,” the awards judges said.

“The Jury appreciated the connection between participation and positive impact for the communities involved - creating value through both process and outcome. It's heartening to see both social impact and the potential for economic advancement. Well done.”

THE IMPACT

DEWLP reports that the sessions have produced value beyond their original hopes.

We fully expect as a result of this project there will be an increase in the use of Aboriginal languages to name roads, features and localities across the state. (Rafe Benli)

Reinstating Aboriginal names for places has led to new signage and interpretation which the department says is already opening up new business opportunities for Traditional Owners around tourism and interpretation.

The process has:

- Created meaningful, ongoing engagement between Aboriginal communities and naming authorities.

- Increased the ability of stakeholders to understand, pronounce and value Aboriginal place names.

- Given a platform for Traditional Owners across Victoria to register their objections to offensive local place names

- Initiated a process of replacing offensive names with appropriate ones.

The project has provided placename authorities, such as local and state governments, national parks agencies and water authorities with the tools and motivation to productively engage with, and build enduring relationships with, Aboriginal communities in all naming processes.

“This has been an incredibly cohesive process for participants,” says Rafe. “They came expecting to be bored and left invigorated”.

“From the live scribing to the talks about language and culture it created delight. And that shared delight got everyone connected to what we were doing and why.”

These sessions have achieved what years of effort had failed to do: creating shared purpose, developing understanding and designing a shared approach that enables all interested people to create change together.

“Our cultural heritage is best understood through demonstrating respect for Traditional Owners – our knowledge, our skills, our appreciation of our heritage,” says VAHC Chairperson Rodney Carter.

“The practicing of our culture and traditions makes us stronger and this strength offers all Victorians opportunities to value, understand and celebrate the unique cultural heritage we care for on behalf of all of us.”

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A new paradigm for environmental stewardship in NZ

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 03:23:16 +0000

Work

A new paradigm for environmental stewardship in NZ

Service

Strategy & policy designInclusive Co-design & Engagement

People

Sector

Sustainable Environments

In a nation that has the natural beauty, pristine environments and deep cultural connection to land and place of New Zealand environmental stewardship is a vital role of government.

Increasingly the New Zealand government is realising that sustainability and preservation are not solely about managing the environment, but rather managing people within the environment.

Paradigms are the sources of systems and represent the shared beliefs of society based on a dominant world view. They are extremely difficult to change on a societal level.

We are at a breaking point of our current paradigm in the face of climate change, a point that New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment (MfE) understood and embraced. New ways of thinking would be needed to drive future government responses in this area.

THE CHALLENGE

The ministry recognised that environmental policy approaches required updating in New Zealand in order to build the future that most New Zealanders hope for.

There was a need to transition from knowledge in pockets to a collective understanding; to step back and see the shift needed in how MfE and governments operate; to start the process of garnering support as a step towards changing behaviour.

This is an essential piece of a systems-level strategy to preserve the natural bounty of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.

OUR RESPONSE

There is no shortage of global information that exists for policymakers to shift the way they work to support more environmentally friendly practices. The challenge is looking at all of that information and distilling what is relevant and necessary for our unique context from a holistic point of view.

Without a unified perspective from within the Ministry, it was not possible to get the ball rolling on shifting the current paradigm and there was a significant risk of the wheels just spinning.

ThinkPlace was able to facilitate this conversation around emergent and traditional policy approaches from a global, indigenous and systems thinking lens to explore what is possible and how we get there.

HOW WE DID IT

Two workshops were held that consisted of a diverse group within MfE. With reference to more than 30 models, frameworks and approaches to act as the foundation for the workshops, the group diverged and then converged on what these inputs could contribute for new environmental policy thinking in New Zealand.

ThinkPlace created the space to explore ideas and actions to move towards a preferred future. An innovation continuum was used to frame what could be done now, but more importantly what could be done to design the future in a radically new paradigm, understanding the implications and how incorporate key concepts in to the policy.

THE IMPACT

ThinkPlace worked with the ministry to create resulting a draft “belief system” that can be tested within the working group and more broadly within the organisation.

This belief system will act as the base which MfE can anchor decisions in.

The core of this belief system is that people and the environment are inextricably interlinked, a belief that has always been held in Te Ao Maori, and that through our guardianship of nature, we can contribute to all forms of capital; human, economic, social, cultural and a net positive environmental capital.

This process will require significant transition of people, their mindsets and their values. But creating the model for progressive, systems-thinking policy approaches will pave the way for both people and planet to thrive.

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Wednesday, 25 September 2019

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How the power of empathy is turning around an entire community

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 11:34:44 +0000

Work

How the power of empathy is turning around an entire community

Service

Scaled systemic changeExperience & Behavioural DesignInclusive Co-design & Engagement

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

This 3-part series offers a deep-dive into a community being transformed and the unique methods that are helping make it happen.

To the leaders and members of the Del Norte County community the request was almost unthinkable.

Tell us how you are changing the unchangeable. Show us how you’ve done it.

The request came from The Ford Family Foundation in nearby Oregon. In the audience were more than 60 community development foundations, funders and NGOs.

And all were hungry for the secret sauce.

Four years after setting out on an ambitious program to improve health outcomes for members of this traditionally-disadvantaged community in Northern California something extraordinary has happened.

It’s working.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation each year ranks the 58 counties across California according to how they are tracking across a range of health outcomes. These include quality of life, mental health, smoking, obesity, alcohol abuse but also associated indicators like high-school graduation rates and poverty.

In 2009, Del Norte ranked 55 of 58. It had long been so.

But by the time Del Norte leaders were recently asked by neighbouring Oregon to come and present their formula for success those rankings had flipped. In the most recent assessment Del Norte ranked 39th of the 58 counties, having leapfrogged more affluent neighbours and shown stunning gains across a host of areas.

Video of Something's Happening Here Del Norte & Tribal Lands Building a Healthy Community

For those everywhere who strive for healthier, happier and more resilient communities this kind of change demands further study. For ThinkPlace Senior Executive Designer and Partner Leslie Tergas, who has been part of the transformation, it was a significant moment.

“These are complex, multigenerational problems and addressing them requires that an entire community pull together in the same direction,” she says.

“People feel that things can never change, that they will never change. Well in Del Norte they have changed. And they are continuing to change. It’s just so exciting.”

Del Norte County sits at the top of California, bordering Oregon.

ABOUT DEL NORTE

Del Norte County occupies the Northwest tip of California. Its 1200 square miles run along the border of neighbouring Oregon, all the way to the Pacific Ocean and are home to many of California’s famous redwood forests.

Those majestic trees are imposingly large, famously old and very-much entrenched. The socio-economic challenges faced by Del Norte and its people have long shared similar characteristics.

Demographically, the county and adjacent tribal lands are home to a diverse population with around 14 per cent of people sharing Hispanic background and almost 9 per cent Native American (2000 census).

Native American Tribes the Yurok and Tolowa Dee-ni form an important part of the community and culture but have long been overrepresented when it comes to economic and social disadvantage.

Prior to the start of the Building Healthy Communities project, Del Norte was tangled up in what authorities called a “health crisis”. But that language masks a broader truth: the crisis wasn’t just about health.

Instead, a web of interconnected complex challenges spanning areas like poverty, education, transport and land-use were contributing to poor health outcomes and acting as a handbrake on local communities.

Indicators everywhere were demoralising. Nationally, across the United States, Kindergarten absenteeism runs at 10 per cent. In Del Norte it was three times higher at 30 per cent.

As the school journey continued things did not improve. A 2013 study found that 50 per cent of third grade students across the county were not reading at grade level – a rate much higher than the national average and a key indicator for continuing disadvantage in the education system and in life.

ABOUT BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

Building Healthy Communities is a ten-year, $1 billion project funded by The California Endowment to boost health outcomes at 14 sites across California. Del Norte is one of those sites. Building Healthy Communities was created to address the social determinants of health outcomes, such as poverty, education, justice, food security and more.

This meant that money was suddenly available for programs and projects in Del Norte. But in the early days of the project, progress proved painstaking. Service providers and community leaders had access to funding and shared a desire to change their community but had not explored in an integrated way how the individual initiatives they were pursuing might connect with each other.

They had a shared view about where they wanted to get to but it wasn’t specific enough to be implementable. And even if it had been, the skills to implement this ambitious agenda of radically changing systems and policy change to improve health equitymostly did not exist within the community.

And then things changed. A renewed sense of purpose from the community saw ThinkPlace get involved in 2015. Together with community leaders, and service provider partners we began work on co-designing a completely different approach.

Underpinning this work are some simple but powerful ideas. The first – and one that is at the heart of the California Endowment – is health is not an island. Health outcomes are inextricably linked to employment, education, economic opportunity, housing, the environment and more.

As the Wild Rivers Community Foundation website notes: “These interrelated problems require interrelated solutions. So we’re working across all systems that impact community health – schools, human services, economic development, transportation, and land use.”

What we set out to do was to transform the way this community was working and to give them the tools to re-ignite the spark of hope and change. This has the potential to transform how we do community development and the pace at which we do it - Leslie Tergas

WORKING TOGETHER AND BUILDING CAPABILITY

At the heart of the success being witnessed around Building Healthy Communities in DNATL is the collaborative nature of the interventions it has spawned and the capacity-building that accompanies them, spreading across the community.

Many consultants fly in, fly out and then wait eagerly for the next billable opportunity. The ThinkPlace methodology, however, is about building internal capacity. It focuses upon developing the skills, mindsets and conditions within communities that will enable a broad range of change initiatives to take root and grow.

From the outset of our involvement, a large number of community leaders have been trained in design thinking methods that begin with empathy and track through gathering insights and working together to iterate, test and refine interventions. These methods and mindsets are now deeply embedded in how the community approaches challenges.

“From our point of view we are planning for our own future disappearance,” Partner Leslie Tergas says.

“We want our partners and collaborators in the community to no longer need us there. That’s not something you hear from consultants every day.”

Geneva Wiki from The California Endowment says she keeps hearing from partner organisations who went through the training that these skills have transformed those who received it far beyond the project itself, as organisation leaders, as parents and more.

“We hear stories of ripple effects often,” she says.

Coming soon: PART 2

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Wednesday, 18 September 2019

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Digital strategy for a scientific leader

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 05:43:40 +0000

Work

Digital strategy for a scientific leader

Service

Digital

People

Sector

Sustainable Environments

Whether it is predicting earthquake risk for heavily populated areas, identifying water resources far under the ground or searching for mineral deposits that can lead to valuable export opportunities Geoscience Australia has a critical role to play, providing geological and geographical advice.

So it’s no surprise that the agency’s slogan reads: Applying geoscience to Australia’s most important challenges.

A well-managed, sustainable and efficient digital investment that enables leading-edge science and its leverage will enable GA’s to meet the high bar set by its policy intent. It’s a strategic imperative that means the organisation must position itself well to navigate the digital transformation that is taking place across the globe.

THE CHALLENGE

ThinkPlace was engaged by Geoscience Australia in June 2018 to:

Develop a Digital Strategy for the organisation that creates a whole-of-GA vision for ICT, how it can enable science and policy outcomes, and how it can be efficiently managed and sustained in the future
Use a co-design approach to ensure that stakeholders are meaningfully brought along the strategic journey and that there is convergence on the vision and roadmap
Design the strategy in a way that is simple, content-rich, visual and that enables clarity among stakeholders

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace used a rapid co-design approach, grounded in our world-leading complex systems design philosophy, which looks at an agency’s full ecosystem and higher-order outcome but also zooms in to understand the needs, preferences and experiences of individuals within and beyond the agency.

In this way, we ensured that we were creating the right impact and avoiding unintended outcomes.

HOW WE DID IT

Phase One - Intent and orientation

In the initial phase of work we rapidly orientated ourselves, consuming existing strategic, architectural, persona and Geoscience Australia program documentation to help us understand GA’s current position.

Following this we held an Intent Meeting with the Project Sponsor and Project Team to confirm the intent of the project to map out the context, scope, plan and priority stakeholders to to be involved in the process.

Phase Two - Explore

ThinkPlace conducted discovery research, including one on one interviews with internal and external stakeholders to understand their perspective on the strategic opportunities, barriers, priorities, current pain-points and inefficiencies, as well as anticipated initiatives, emerging demand or policy changes that needed consideration.

We also conducted a mini-workshop with the ICT and operations staff, to get their collective thinking on what could be different in the future.

Following the initial research we brought together GA's executive and other stakeholders for a Strategy Discovery Workshop.

This conversation helped establish important parameters for the work, and kick-started the strategy journey.

We explored questions such as:

What are the organisation’s (and its clients’ and partners’) strategic priorities and strategic risks, and how must ICT support them now and in the future?
How does ICT enablement work today, and what are the strengths, challenges, barriers and opportunities of the current model?
What is the future vision for ICT, and what shifts and initiatives would be required to achieve this at a high level?

Phase Three - Create

We worked with the project team to co-design the draft strategy, across 3 sprints:

Sprint 1: We confirmed what the strategy will contain, and developed the visual design and the content “spine” – the table of contents and key points for each section – and showcased it for the project team.
Sprint 2: We completed a first draft of the content, and showcased it to the project team and the project sponsor. This version was then refined based on the showcase feedback.
Sprint 3: We refined the strategy based on feedback and developed a final draft for review. We then showcased with the relevant senior executive, to undertake a final round of refinement.

Phase 4 - Close

We held a retrospective with the Project Sponsor and Project team to share what we had learned on our strategy design journey and deliver the final document.

THE IMPACT

ThinkPlace's expertise in co-design, and digital allowed us to create a strategy for Geoscience Australia that will enable them to sustain, grow and innovate their platforms, skills and approaches to realise the potential offered by the digital age.

Through the co-design approach ThinkPlace was able to create a strategy that was relevant and useful, with buy in and support from across the wider organisation.

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Tuesday, 17 September 2019

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The United Nations Global Compact

Sashi Surendran — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:34:49 +0000

Australia

The United Nations Global Compact

Topics

sustainable development goals

This is our second yearly Communication On Progress Report, issued as part of our responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact.

While we are required to communicate our progress as part of being a signatory to this important set of principles we do so with much gladness and enthusiasm.

Adopting the Sustainable Development Goals as our ‘North star’ has been a hugely-transformative decision for ThinkPlace. As we have gone about enacting this transformation, the Global Compact has been our way of codifying that commitment. It allows us to set out our intentions for all to see and calls on us to explain how we have acted upon them. It gives us the opportunity to outline how instrumental the adoption of the goals has been in driving and shaping our development as a company.

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Tuesday, 28 May 2019

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Humanity-centred design can help tackle climate change

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 10 May 2019 02:36:02 +0000

New Zealand

Humanity-centred design can help tackle climate change

Topics

human-centred design

Humanity-centred design has a big contribution to make to Climate Action—but will leaders and change-makers act to harness the benefit of this approach?

Climate change is a global challenge in need of global solutions but action must also be driven at a local and national level. In New Zealand recently, we have seen a flurry of activity as our national government seeks to focus attention on how we might transition to a low carbon economy and society.

New Zealand’s Parliament has introduced the Zero Carbon Bill – Aotearoa will be one of few countries in the world to legislate a commitment to limiting climate change to an increase of 1.5 degrees. And leaders from across the country, including from ThinkPlace, have come together for a Just Transition Summit.

At that summit, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a rallying cry.

We need to completely remake our economy in the next 30 years, Ardern told those present. And we need to build consensus—we can’t just legislate change because legislation and political initiatives can be unraveled, and this change must be sustained.

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Friday, 10 May 2019

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