The Field Guide
A resource intended to share practical insights and guidance based on our real experiences of building learning communities in nine locations across Europe
This serves to connect, inspire and equip multiple audiences, including direct project partners, their wider local networks and wider interested parties
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.
Introduction
Climate action projects address complex challenges in which typical problem solving approaches don’t apply. Their nature demands systemic understanding and collaborative working. Starting a climate action project comes with urgency and ambition, but is inevitably accompanied by challenges, primarily uncertainty. Where does the problem start and end? Who is affected? Who has control? If we do this thing can we be certain of the result?
Practical considerations of budget and timescale, the need to build new relationships and potentially adopt new ways of working add further complexity. Spending time articulating an initial ambition for the action will establish a starting point for further elaboration.
“Usually we follow an approach where it is clear from the outset what we will do and how we will do it. LEVERS follows a different approach where understanding is more of a process.” – Center for Social Innovation (Cyprus)
What tools are useful at this stage?
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 and the time and resource available. With many of the teams new to systems practice, the LVs undertook a relatively simple process at this stage:
- We used our near star (from Stage 01) 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
We used ‘framing questions’ in order to establish the boundary of our explorations and reveal the forces and factors which make it as it is today. 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.
What are the Learning Ventures feeling / thinking / doing at this stage?
The tag cloud shows this second stage of development as less confused than the previous. Instead of the flood of different emotions of the previous month, it now splits into 2 dominant emotions: anxious and optimistic – indicating not that some LVs are anxious and some optimistic, but rather that most are both.
Vision: Diary entries
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
Introduction
A systems mindset involves 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?”. But we cannot answer the question how we want the system to be different, let alone define our role in changing or influencing it, unless we understand the forces that shape it.
This takes time and skill – and can challenge traditional ways of working where mechanisms can be determined before outcomes (i.e. where the advertising campaign, exhibition or competition is the limit of the ambition).
“We’re getting a strong sense of a role that LEVERS can try to play – and which is very much needed. We can be easier to access than formal funding routes like the Arts Council, Creative Ireland or Climate Action Fund, and helpful to both build new projects and partnerships, and drive collective action around ongoing initiatives.” – Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
What tools are useful at this stage?
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 and the time and resource available. With many of the teams new to systems practice, the LVs undertook a relatively simple process at this stage:
We used our near star (from Stage 01) 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
We used ‘framing questions’ in order to establish the boundary of our explorations and reveal the forces and factors which make it as it is today. 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.
What are the Learning Ventures feeling / thinking / doing at this stage?
Each LV had previously identified a relevant local challenge as a starting point. Some chose an obvious community priority, for example On l’Fait in Geneva chose water in response to the dominant local challenge of melting glaciers. Others chose issues which combined local relevance with broader systemic problems, like Forth in London who identified urban food systems. Others still selected an important challenge where existing activity could be consolidated and accelerated, like Kersnicova in , which zeroed in on urban bee-keeping.
In developing our near and guiding stars the nine learning ventures had to consider the nature of the challenge and what might be within our reach within this project. The fact that we are acting in very different contexts with different resources, opportunities and constraints, a number of us being institutional in nature, some more SME-like, came into play. We had to set a course for the project which was ambitious and realisable.
The tag cloud at this point of the project communicates the experience of starting a climate action project: its exciting, difficult and confusing. Set our ambition too high and everything looks connected and therefore impossible, we get lost in the enormity of the challenge. Set it tightly on a solvable problem and we’re limiting our potential impact. This stage requires a tolerance of uncertainty, and an ability to convene around a realisable ambition.
Understand: Diary entries
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.
Introduction
‘Design’ ‘Create’ ‘Devise’ Whatever language used to describe it, this is the point to build on the ambition and knowledge established in the first two stages, and develop ideas – the mechanisms that might be used to shift the system. But before jumping in, we need to think about who this is for and who it might affect.
User-centred approaches, including design thinking, focus on addressing need and creating impact for users and direct stakeholders. It can neglect to register the consequences or negative impacts to society or on the environment. In a climate emergency the idea of ‘stakeholders’ becomes more expansive and critical to consider closely. When sustainability – both social and environmental – is centred, questions of climate justice and impact on the planet need to be considered equally.
“We had been working exclusively with the Brussels Region housing organisation – but it increasingly seemed too narrow. So we’ve widened our approach and decided to try and diversify our activities by working with other organisations working on summer/holiday camps for kids/adults that stay in the city during holidays. “ – Stickydot (Belgium)
What tools are useful at this stage?
Stakeholder maps are a common tool that is used in business development. Here it plays a slightly different role in helping you identify who are the key players in the system that you want to affect – that you may interact with in your Learning Venture. This process should create both insights and options – by thinking about stakeholders in terms of the role they play in the sysetem you might find your target user or audience shifting.
Hypothesis statements are used to articulate your assumptions about how your interactions with key stakeholders will help achieve the outcomes for your LV. Looking at your stakeholder map, your near star, the forces/factors you identified using the framing questions and the cause diagram, you can now formulate one or more hypothesis statements about your stakeholders.
- “Because we think A, we think that if we do X with stakeholder Y, we expect Z to happen.” Doing X is your mechanism. Z is the impact or influence you want to have.
Good hypotheses come from good observations and insights, so the role of ‘Because we think A’ and who Stakeholder Y is (and why they might be interested) are critical. Hypotheses build from the deep work we’ve already done, resisting the jump to mechanisms (exhibition, book, campaign) in favour of building a considered and strategic scenario.
We might create multiple hypothesis statements and evaluate between them. Once we have formulated our hypothesis statements, they then form the basis for our stakeholder research and testing during which they can be refined and improved.
What are the Learning Ventures feeling / thinking / doing at this stage?
As the nine LVs close in on ideas, questions of partnerships and collaborations are now in focus. Many are already working in conversation with potential partners, this stage of the project presents the opportunity and challenge of initiating further conversations, and firming up on how different partners might contribute in the longer term.
These questions dominate current diary entries: difficulty finding partners, the work going into onboarding partners, changing and opening up working styles to accommodate different partner interests and motivations. This creates an uncertainty which is characteristic of the early stages of partnership working before things are fixed, and the wordcloud for this period reflects this with excited, inspired and optimistic sitting equally alongside anxious, frustrated and impatient.
Design: Diary entries
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.
Introduction
Creating anything new requires imagination and skills; it also demands the ability to manage uncertainty and risk. Climate action takes this to the next level, needing to manage complexity and a fast changing context – whether thats about policy and regulation or public sentiment and willingness to engage or change.
Systemic practice acknowledges this by working in flexible and agile ways:
- Working at different levels concurrently
- Constantly questioning assumptions
- Embracing complexity by learning and adapting
“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)
What tools are useful at this stage?
Prototyping and iteration are structured practices which can help to inform, test and improve ideas before committing to scale. They can also be adopted as part of a culture of working – ‘permanent prototype’ is a way of thinking about an operation which is open and able to change in response to the world around: the definition of resilience.
- Identifying assumptions
- Writing a prototyping plan
What are the Learning Ventures feeling / thinking / doing at this stage?
As the Learning Ventures reach the conclusion of our systemic design process, everyone’s feeling more positive and optimistic. The challenges of adopting new practices and working culture sit alongside the challenges of the everyday – someone leaving an internal role, a new policy or regulation changing the context of work. Exploring our different initiatives, from food to biodiversity, glacial melting to heat islands, and considering how to address them can be overwhelming.
Case study: Stickydot’s experience might be a good example of how both internal and external changes can provide challenges in the project thus having the need to constantly
