Stage 2: Understand
“We’re getting a strong sense of a role that LEVERS can try to play – which is to both build new projects and partnerships, and drive collective action around ongoing initiatives.”
– Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
Introduction
The LEVERS project centres systems thinking, systemic design and participatory practices; these ideas were new to many of us, and to our partners. We had to learn together.
A systems mindset is widely considered to be essential to working into complexity and uncertainty and so to climate action. It differs from ‘command and control’ approaches, asking the question “How do we want the system to be different?” rather than “What programme of activities will we deliver?” or even “What problem are we trying to solve?”. This approach can challenge traditional ways of working where mechanisms are determined before outcomes (i.e. the advertising campaign, exhibition or competition is locked in without wider consideration). LEVERS partners needed to start at the beginning and describe and understand our system(s) – and decide where to set our boundaries.
What did we do?
Each Learning Venture convened around questions: what makes the existing system the way it is? Why is it not better already? We widened our lens and saw the issues we had identified as interdependent parts of interconnected systems. This process improves when diverse and multiple perspectives are included, so we started to search out and involve these different actors.
What tools did we use?
With many of the teams new to these ideas, the Learning Ventures undertook a relatively simple process at this stage:
- We used our near star (from Stage 1/Intent) to identify framing questions
- We used a cause diagram to explore the framing questions and surface our knowledge (and gaps in knowledge)
- We could then revisit and improve our near stars, based on what the framing questions revealed
A framing question asks why the situation is the way it is? Why isn’t outcome X already happening? Why aren’t people already doing Y? A good framing question is open and at the right level of distance to the challenge. Too high level and everything seems so interconnected as to make action impossible. Too tight and the answer seems already obvious, limiting the potential for wider impact. Many might be generated and refined at this stage of a project. A cause diagram is a simple tool that helps to respond to a framing question. It encourages examination of symptoms and causes, revealing the contributing factors, and enabling speculation and evaluation of the potential for change. Many systems practice toolkits and workbooks focus on this discovery or mapping stage of a project and there are a variety of tools which can be used, according to the complexity of the challenge, the skills, time and resources available.
Understand takeaway
Challenge your perspective
The complexity of the climate crisis demands we think broadly and systemically, with care to understand issues in the round and centre inclusive practices. LEVERS partners went beyond their usual networks, engaging with individuals, communities and stakeholders whose perspectives might not typically be valued or visible. This enriched their usual ways of working with tangible results.
Example 1: Forth
Forth went in deep in researching urban food systems in the UK, and found ‘lots and lots of brilliant existing initiatives’. Though initially overwhelming and a bit daunting, the abundance of initiatives pushed them to be more critical in identifying underserved areas and audiences, and specific about where their project could bring value while avoiding duplication.
Example 2: Stickydot
Stickydot worked in one of Brussels most vulnerable city areas. Their efforts to understand climate related issues in the neighbourhood led them to conversations at regional, local and neighbourhood levels, finding interdependent issues. This understanding led them to diversify their efforts, with smaller demonstration projects, including educational camps and a collaborative maker education construction project with a local FabLab, creating opportunities to amplify and platform otherwise marginalised local voices.
Understand: Diary entries
Other Steps
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.
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