Stage 1: Intent
“We found it really challenging to figure out how we could motivate or incentivise different partners to work together. Prototyping with partners before committing to a plan helped us to gather some insights, validate (or retire) some assumptions and be more sensitive to the needs and interests of our stakeholder groups.”
– Forth (UK)
Introduction
The context of the unfolding climate crises add urgency to any project, and brings uncertainty: where does the problem start and end? What scale to work at? How to be effective within available resources? Even with the commitments to new and open ways of working detailed in Chapter 1, LEVERS partners still had practical considerations of budget and timescale to manage. What to do first?
We started by articulating the desired future system we aimed to build. This had to balance the need to have something concrete, that would catalyze momentum, against the flexibility to allow for further, participatory, development. There’s a wide range of established tools and practices for this task, whether it’s called Vision, Purpose or Mission. We used an approach called Guiding Star/Near Star, a tool tailored for systemic work.
What did we do?
In this stage of work the nine Learning Ventures worked into their different local challenges and contexts, in small internal or mixed external teams, to express an ambition and set out potential goals. Accepting that ideas will be informed, revised and refined through the following stages required a level of openness which didn’t come easily. All Learning Ventures found it challenging to resist a course of action which resembled their previous projects.
What tools did we use?
The tool the nine Learning Ventures used to establish a starting point is Guiding Star/Near Star.
This tool enables teams to articulate some broad, shared ambitions: 15
- A Guiding Star: the desired future system toward which our team is working, i.e., in 10-20 years. It will serve as a navigational tool for the long haul.
- A Near Star: the outcomes that could be attained by the end of the immediate project. This should be a significant step toward the guiding star.
The Learning Ventures worked towards these in 3 steps
- Firstly asking ‘what’s happening now?’ within the area of interest, mapping the system components and communities involved.
- Secondly, asking what this system looks like in a desired future, what people are doing differently, and what they understand or know that helps them do this. This changed situation is our guiding star.
- Lastly we asked what of this change could be within the scope of this initiative, considering (in very broad terms) ideas, ambitions, assets and resources are available. This ambition is articulated in the form of a ‘near star’. Many of our ventures had never thought in these ways before.
Intent takeaway
Creating processes tailored to the ambition
LEVERS targets large-scale and complex issues through tangible local action; this requires the ability to move between resolutions, ‘telescoping’ in and out between scales and understanding different influencing factors. LEVERS partners created structures and processes which helped them slow the tendency to jump on ideas, and allow other perspectives in.
Example 1: The Center for Social Innovation
The Center for Social Innovation moved away from their usual ideas-led approach, creating a slow structured process in which understanding emerged over time. They reflected that ‘trusting the process’ is a challenge when people expect and want certainty. But not ‘jumping on the first idea’ and responding iteratively to feedback made a material difference to their project in terms of quality and relevance.
Example 2: Kersnikova
As Kersnikova set themselves the task of understanding systemic design and how it might inform their approach to LEVERS they found an innovative way to share the burden. They ran inspiration and exchange sessions for teachers, meaning that they had to understand the theory well enough to table it with others and also that they had a broader community to explore its relevance and application with.
Intent : Diary entries
Other Steps
In this stage of work the Learning Ventures take a step back to ask: what makes the existing system the way it is? Why is it not better already?
Asking these questions helps identify where in the system we might work to maximise our impact
In this stage of work, building on the ambition and knowledge accrued in the first two stages, we move towards ideas – the mechanisms that might be used to shift the system.
This requires further study, of who this is for and who it might affect.
The nine Learning Ventures are now at varying stages of this firming up and commitment making process, reflecting how different scales of work and organisational contexts require different toolkits even within similar approaches.
In this stage of work the nine Learning Ventures are setting a course, by expressing their ambition and finding shared goals. It’s not about a preferred course of action, but describing – and interrogating – desired outcomes.
This starting point can be revisited as the process progresses.