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Results through collaboration

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What makes the status quo so challenging to change?

17/07/2017 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

collective impactPerspectives from the field: A conversation about collective impact and collaboration from Australia and Canada

Over the last month, Liz Weaver, Vice President, Tamarack Institute and I have been engaged in an email exchange puzzling out the answers to many wicked questions about collective impact and community change. Below is part IV of V, where we discuss how to ensure a community agenda not just a shared agenda. If you would like to view previous posts, please click on the part you would like to view: Part I, Part II, Part III.

What makes the status quo so challenging to change?

LIZ WEAVER:

The status quo is deceptive. We are entranced by the busyness of our work. Our days are filled with meetings, applications for funding, telephone calls and endless emails. This frenetic pace feeds our ego and makes us feel important and at times, invincible. And yet, the problems that our communities are facing are not going away and many are getting worse.

This frenetic pace feeds our ego and makes us feel important and at times, invincible.

We know that complex problems need the engagement of diverse stakeholders to get a deep understanding of the problem. We also need to move beyond the status quo, the partners we usually work with, to bring new partners to the table.

The status quo does not allow us to go deeper, to ask the difficult questions. A number of years ago my colleague and friend, Jay Connor asked me these provocative questions: Just who are you doing this work for? Are you here to maintain your job or impact the community?

The status quo does not invite provocative questions.

If we are dissatisfied with the growing inequity in our communities. If we are dissatisfied with going to work every day and seeing increases in the demand for services that meet crisis but are not preventative. If we want a change, we need to rail against the status quo. We need to do something different. We need to ask tough questions, engage in systems and work to impact policies. This means railing against the status quo.

MAX HARDY:

I reckon you’ve nailed it Liz. What I would add is that systems exist for a reason. Being explicit about the pay-offs for the status quo somehow makes it easier to change it. The status quo is working for some. It may be a CEO whose primary concern is to their own career and reputation, or to please their board (to keep their job or receive a pay increase). The status quo may serve organisations who are primarily focused on meeting KPIs set by their funding bodies. More provocatively, the status quo can also serve socially disadvantaged groups in a curious way. It may be easier to remain in a dependent, oppressed state and give up, or complain, than to accept the opportunity to be part of a solution.

I recall my work as a social worker reading extensively about family dynamics, especially Salvador Minuchin. He talked about homeostasis being the ‘tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes’. Applying this concept to a family system Minuchin posed that while most people in a family will collude with the family dynamics, it will only take one player in the system to behave differently for the whole system to change. It may go into chaos, or a state of flux until a new, hopefully healthier homeostasis is achieved. I think the same applies to collective impact initiatives. There is a kind of collusion that occurs in the current system, otherwise it wouldn’t be there. Once understood, people and organisations can make choices because there is a higher purpose involved, or different pay offs, by daring not to collude.

 

Do you agree with their perspectives? Do you have other questions they should consider? What are the challenges you are facing as you engage in collective impact? We invite you to add your comments and join the conversation here.

Click here to view the publication.

Filed Under: Collective Impact Tagged With: Collaboration, Collaborative Governance, Collective Impact

The verdict is in: citizens’ juries just keep on giving…

05/02/2017 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

citizens juriesA blog by written by Jacinta Cubis from Qbis, with Max Hardy

Carol* weighed up the pros and cons carefully before signing up for the citizens’ jury in her regional town.
The appeal was dubious. Five Saturdays with 30 people she didn’t know. Giving up her gardening to learn about, discuss and debate unfamiliar issues. And write a report at the end. But it felt like it was important and she likes contributing.

It was an extraordinary experience. Carol enjoyed grappling with technical information and new ideas, and getting to know everyone.

“I found it so stimulating! I talked about it all the time at home. I think my friends got really sick of me!” Carol said with a chuckle.

Carol expected to be challenged, confused – bored even. She certainly didn’t expect to find an AFL umpire to volunteer for the football team she manages for kids with disabilities. Mark* offered to help out after Carol mentioned the team over lunch. Despite the two-hour drive from his place to Carol’s town, Mark was keen to share his skills and lend a hand.

Carol and Mark’s story is just one of the many unintended benefits that, in our observation, can spring from a deliberative process. Above and beyond the proven value, which include meaningful recommendations, actionable reports, greater transparency, enhanced reputation, long-term relationships and the increased capacity of community members.

Other unexpected benefits include a retired carpenter who drove to a fellow juror’s house on a Sunday and chopped back a dangerous tree. A shy newcomer to the area who can’t wait to start volunteering a community education program she heard about. The joy one juror’s home-made cakes brought to her peers, and the fresh flowers another brought from her garden to share. The delight another’s hand-carved wooden toys brought to some of his fellow jurors, who snapped them up at a bargain price. In the longer-term, young and old members have signed up for our client’s community advisory groups. Countless connections have been made and immeasurable community strength built as people from widely divergent backgrounds, cultures and political positions got to know each other.

These and other additional benefits we’ve seen arising from a number of processes seem to point to deeper connections being made between some jurors, unrelated to the topic they’re debating or their work together. Carol and Mark hadn’t spent much time together in small groups. In fact, they had opposing positions on one key issue during the process.

We continue to notice these surprising benefits derived from deliberative processes; where everyday citizens are invited to grapple with complex issues. It is not only democracy that is being revitalised; people’s lives are being enriched; communities are being strengthened.

We take our hats off to people who not only commit to a challenging process, but extend this commitment to benefit their fellow jurors in a myriad of ways. In stark contrast to the ‘no strings attached’ of ‘friends with benefits’ juries seem to create benefits that keep on giving.

*names have been changed

Filed Under: Citizens Jury Tagged With: Citizens Jury, Collaboration, Collaborative Governance, Collective Impact

Reflections on the growing trend of using Citizens’ Juries in Australia (and how we might make them even more effective)

03/03/2015 By Max Hardy 7 Comments

It seems that is becoming more common for governments at all levels to entertain random selection of citizens to enable an informed judgment on controversial or complex planning matters (one form being the Citizens’ Jury). As an advocate for, and facilitator of, such processes this is exciting and most welcome. There is a growing weariness with more conventional processes that are dominated by well organised stakeholder groups and ‘hyper-engaged’ individuals; processes which largely fail to engage the so-called silent majority. The NewDemocracy Foundation has been pivotal in promoting and arguing for alternatives and is getting serious traction.

Closing stages of the NDIS Citizens' Jury held recently in Sydney.
Closing stages of the NDIS Citizens’ Jury held recently in Sydney.

Several years ago I met an academic David Kahane, from University of Alberta, Canada at a conference in Sydney, where we discussed the merits of these emerging deliberative processes and we thought that a paper could be written describing the rationale for the differing approaches, and their advantages and disadvantages. We were soon joined by Jade Herriman, Institute of Sustainable Futures, Sydney Australia and Kristjana Loptson, also from the University of Alberta, and after several months of research, and another few months of writing, we published our paper, titled Stakeholder and Citizen Roles in Public Deliberation, in the Journal of Public Deliberation.

Since co-authoring this paper I have been involved in several more deliberative processes (for ease I will just refer to them from here on as Citizens’ Juries, though other forms exist such as the Citizens’ Assembly and Citizens’ Initiative Review) and I have been reflecting on the paper we published once again, and felt the need to document some ideas to address some of their perceived or actual limitations. So here goes.

Limitation 1 – Breadth of participation
Citizens’ Juries are recruited through random selection are really effective for allowing a group to deeply dive into a complex issue/topic. Sadly the rest of the community is, at best, observers of the process. The journey the jury experiences is difficult to replicate, so the findings they ultimately reach may not be seen as legitimate by the broader community.

Ideas to improve
A longer engagement process can be used to help inform the deliberative process – for instance through the use of online engagement. This process could also help to identify other experts who could provide a balanced range of evidence to the jury.

Another idea is to provide the same questions being put to the jury for citizens to arrange their own meetings (BBQs and dinner parties), or to discuss in other established forums or community group meetings (this was an approach used with great success for The Queensland Plan). Responses can be logged online and fed into the citizens’ jury deliberative process.

Live streaming could also be used to invite viewers to frame questions or provide comments in real time. A theme team could cluster the questions and comments and provide them at a particular time to the jury to consider.

Limitation 2 – Stakeholders/experts feeling marginalised
Whilst the jury has an amazing learning experience, stakeholders and experts who give evidence generally provide their evidence, and then leave. Jurors and facilitators often feel that it would have been helpful for stakeholders to hear each other’s evidence, and have the opportunity to learn from each other.

Ideas to improve
Arrange panel sessions where witnesses with different perspectives can share information, and have a conversation each other, with the jury present to observe. In addition, the jury could access expert witnesses via video conference as they approach their final deliberations with remaining questions. Although by itself this would not assist witnesses/stakeholders to go on the learning journey, it would at least give some clues as to the journey the jury has been on.

A second idea is to include stakeholders/experts/witnesses as a resource group for jurors during their final deliberations.

Yet another idea, and this will be somewhat controversial, stakeholders could be included on the jury, but make up no more than one third of the total jurors. (I have been involved in arrangements such as these – whereby one third are randomly selected, one third are self selected from those who typically get involved, and one third are invited in to strengthen diversity (eg, you may not recruit anyone from an indigenous group, or a young person, from the first two cohorts). The principle here is about gaining a reasonable diversity, not about perfection, and the benefit this may have is that groups with very different views may become more understanding of each other’s interests and aspirations.

Limitation 3. Limited role in framing the ‘charge ‘, or questions to be answered
In most cases the commissioning body, process experts or a steering committee, (or any combination of the above) design the key aspects of the deliberative process. Decisions are made concerning the ‘charge’ or questions being put the jury, the duration of the process, the desired composition of the jury and the witnesses to be called. For some individuals and groups this is a reason to be skeptical about the deliberative process and any outcomes from such processes. In particular, if stakeholders do not believe the right question is being put, then the outcome of the process, the jury’s verdict’ can be irrelevant. When the ‘deliberative design formula’ is seen to be managed tightly by ‘others’ it can give fuel for mistrust.

When stakeholders have some influence over the process, in my experience, they are generally more accepting or even actively supportive of the outcomes.

Ideas to improve
Consistent with the Twyfords Collaborative Pathway, engaging a cross section of stakeholders in framing the dilemma or charge to be put to the jury can be very useful. It helps to generate questions that are seen as being the important ones to address, and invariably it helps to lay out the extent of the dilemma being faced.

Conclusion and suggested principles
So that is just a few ways that deliberative processes might be strengthened. From my perspective it is important that we continue to conduct experiments in democracy, and to learn from those experiments. The important thing from my perspective is not that we apply a proven design, but that we continue to invest in the co-design of the process so that there is a confidence in that process and the outcomes. It is also an opportunity for groups with different values and interests understand and respect each other more, so that the process itself contributes to be a more cohesive community.

It is also important that whatever design we use follows a set of core principles. This would be my list.

  1. The ultimate decision-makers are genuine in wanting the help of citizens and stakeholders/experts to resolve an important issue/ dilemma/ question/ puzzle.
  2. The decision-makers enter the process with the intent of using that advice, to take it very seriously, and to respond publicly if they do not follow the advice given (ie, the verdict)
  3. Reasonable efforts are made to advise the broader community about the rational of the process, and there is an attempt to gauge their views, concerns and aspirations prior to the deliberative process.
  4. The participants of the deliberative process (let’s say, the jurors) have access to a balanced range of information, and are not steered toward a particular desired outcome of the commissioning body or the facilitators.
  5. Jurors should be recruited through an independent social research company, and independently facilitated.
  6. The jurors have the ability to scrutinize those giving evidence.
  7. The jurors are given reasonable periods of time to process information, and then to deliberative over that information.
  8. Jurors must feel confident that they are all actively participating, and are not being overwhelmed by powerful personalities.
  9. The commissioning body and stakeholders must be confident that the questions to be posed to the jury are appropriate.
  10. The deliberative process itself should be transparent and recorded.
  11. The deliberative process is designed in such a way that it strengthens a ‘community of interest’ rather than fragmenting it further.

There are probably others, and I’m sure these could be developed further. If you have had experience in deliberative processes that rely on random selection I’d be very keen to hear your thoughts, and your feedback on mine.

 

Max Hardy
3rd March, 2105

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Citizens Jury, Collaborative Governance

Collaboration and what we can learn from slime mould

01/01/2015 By Max Hardy 2 Comments

Collaboration and what we can learn from slime mould.

I’ve been reading a terrific book titled ‘Collaborative Leadership: Building relationships, handling conflict and sharing control’ by David Archer and Alex Cameron.

Drawing on the earlier work of Steven Johnson in his book ‘Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software’ they refer to the behaviour of an organism known as slime mould. Slime mould isn’t actually a mould at all; it’s a single celled amoeba-like organism which usually spends most of its time minding its own business, doing its own thing. However, when resources are scarce it has an amazing ability to join forces with others to become a more complex organism to move toward other sources of food. Then, when life becomes a bit easier, it reverts to being a separate single celled organism, happily doing its own thing.

Pretzel slime mould

It’s a brilliant metaphor! 

For a start, it shows how important the environment is in compelling organisations to behave differently. The operating environment demands innovation, and collaboration is the vehicle to enable this innovation.

It also reminds us that we do not need to collaborate all of the time, and on everything. We do it because it makes sense and we only need to collaborate when circumstances require it. We have much to learn about reading the signals and appreciating when the environment is complex.

Another lesson from the slime mould metaphor is that we don’t have to lose our identity when we collaborate. While slime mould has to share control to reap the benefits of collaboration it has its own identity, and can easily revert to being as it was before once conditions allow.

In the last few weeks we have been working in a range of industries looking at challenges that demand new, innovative responses. The challenge of addressing alarming health statistics in remote Australian communities is one. The challenge for emergency agencies to respond more quickly and be more agile during catastrophic bushfires is another. The challenge of creating an environment for start-up businesses to flourish in areas not known for having an entrepreneurial spirit is a third. And the challenge of redesigning the delivery of services to be more appropriate, more efficient and more effective is a fourth.

Leaders in health, emergency, business and service delivery could do worse than consider the metaphor of the slime mould. If their survival requires them to share control with others without losing their identity, then joining up in a collaboration to access the intelligence and resources of all their stakeholders would be a good start to any journey to co-create solutions to these complex problems.

We have been inspired by the way people join together in a collective response to challenges when given the opportunity, in a way that reflects the metaphor of the survival of the slime mould. As Archer and Cameron say,“Collaboration isn’t a moral choice – it’s a business necessity!”

Originally posted on Twyfords website 16th December 2013.

www.twyfords.com.au

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Collaborative Governance, Health, Leadership

What I do

26/12/2014 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

What do I offer?

Essentially I help to build the capacity of organisations and leaders to collaborate effectively with others, especially to address their most complex challenges. This includes:

  • Different parts of an organisation working in a more ‘joined-up’ way
  • Organisations collaborating with other organisations/stakeholders
  • Organisations engaging their communities
  • Leaders helping directors of different parts of an organisation working more as a team.
  • A whole system to align its efforts to address a highly complex social or environmental issue.

 

How do I offer this support?

By:

  • Listening very carefully to what organisations and leaders are facing.
  • Providing early advice around projects, and during periods of the most challenging moments of the like of a project.
  • Providing briefing sessions to leadership teams, elected representatives and boards.
  • Delivering sessions at conferences and symposiums
  • Facilitating training
  • Coaching collaboration champions in organisations.
  • Coaching/mentoring leaders who are learning to do it differently.
  • Co-designing processes to achieve enduring solutions with a diverse range of players around a particular issue.
  • Facilitating sessions where it makes sense to utilise an independent person.

 

What are some different terms used that explain what I do?

  • Collaborative governance
  • Systems change
  • Community engagement
  • Stakeholder engagement/relations/management
  • Risk communication
  • Public participation
  • Deliberative democratic processes
  • Collective Impact
  • Alternative dispute resolution.

 

Influences to my practice

  • Appreciative inquiry
  • Asset-based community development
  • Systems transformation
  • Dialogue
  • Complexity theory
  • Deliberative democracy
  • Collective Impact

 

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Advice, Appreciative inquiry, Coaching, Collaboration, Collaborative Governance, Collective Impact, Community Engagement, Complexity, Consumer Engagement, Leadership, Systems

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Recent Posts

  • It’s time to do stakeholder mapping differently! 28/10/2020
  • Common objections to committing to collaborative (co-design or deliberative) engagement processes 30/09/2020
  • Facilitating Public Deliberations 28/08/2020
  • How safe is it to participate? 27/07/2020
  • Debunking myths about ‘deliberation’ 14/07/2020
  • What is your approach to consulting? And… which one best works for co-designing solutions with the community? 06/07/2020
  • Getting the ball rolling on co-design 19/06/2020

Contact Details

Max Hardy Consulting
Email: max@maxhardy.com.au
Phone: 0418 217 261
Twitter: @maxchardy
Skype: maxhardy
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/max-hardy/11/339/a4b

Testimonials

Lara Damiani

'I had the wonderful opportunity to watch Max in action facilitating the Citizen's Jury for People With Disability Australia in Sydney last month which I was filming. Max's tagline "results through collaboration" is spot on. It was pure magic watching Max create collaboration and results from a randomly selected jury - 12 very unique personalities

Lindy Fentiman

'I have had the pleasure of working with Max when he ventures up to sunny Queensland!  He is a generous, insightful and highly skilled professional who absolutely practices what he believes in.  Nobody understands the importance of collaboration, engagement and the challenges this brings for organisations better than Max!  He is an excellent coach, facilitator

Jessie Keating

Working with Max is a delight. Max’s facilitation, collaboration and problem solving style is respectful and calm, along with being both accessible and professional. The most significant project we have worked on with Max was the planning and undertaking of a community symposium, focused on the drafting of our city’s 20 year strategy, MV2040. We

Anna Kelderman

'Max's extensive experience with deliberative engagement, as well as his uniquely calming facilitation style, has helped bring about a step-change in the type of public engagement expected in Western Australia. It has been an absolute pleasure to partner with and learn from the best in the business, and I continue to look for opportunities to

Moira Deslandes

'Max is a democracy enthusiast. He finds ways to enable, empower and encourage every voice to be heard and designs processes that foster the principle: every voice is worth hearing.' Moira Deslandes Director, Moira Deslandes  Consulting  

Lisa Rae

I first encountered Max in Auckland when he delivered IAP2 training I was attending. Many years later, I’ve had the opportunity to work with him on two significant local government projects in Melbourne using co-design and deliberative engagement approaches. Max’s great strength was helping council decision makers understand their role in the engagement process and

Craig Wallace

I have worked with Max Hardy on two complex projects which took deliberative democracy and applied it to new problems. In 2007 at a ceremony in Arizona, USA Max along with the ACT Disability Advisory Council was awarded the IAP2 (International) Award for "Project of the Year" for our Citizens Jury project which provided scorecard

Becky Hirst

'Max is one of the leading superstars of community engagement and collaborative governance in Australia. Since I first met him as my trainer in Adelaide back in 2007, I've admired his approach. He's passionate, dedicated, admired in the field and I look forward to seeing the next steps of his career unfold. Watch out world!'

Amanda Newbery, Articulous

'Max Hardy has a unique ability to build the confidence and capacity of teams working in engagement. He brings a wealth of experience and insight. We have worked together on a number of deliberative projects and he is a delight to work with!' Amanda Newbery Articulous

Beatrice Briggs

'Max Hardy brings to his work a delightful combination of common sense, integrity, experience, laced with a sly sense of humour.'   Beatrice Briggs Director International Institute for Facilitation and Change (IIFAC) Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico

Amber James

'I have known Max for more than ten years. I was a student of his doing the IAP2 Certificate, engaged him as a consultant for in-house work in local government, and then worked alongside him on a consumer engagement capacity building project at the Royal Brisbane Womens Hospital. He is great to be around and

Eugene McGarrell, FACS

'Max Hardy has worked with my senior executive team and local stakeholders to facilitate the co-creation of social wellbeing strategies. Max’s style is both collaborative and supportive and he gets the best from people involved. I highly recommend Max to anyone who is embarking on a process of co-creation.' Eugene McGarrell District Director, Northern Sydney

Vivien Twyford

'I worked with Max for 17 years and appreciate his honesty, integrity and ability to connect with people at all levels. I learned much from him, particularly around Appreciative Inquiry, the appreciative approach and the value of deliberation. While I miss him, I have confidence that he will continue to be a wise advisor and

Barbara Dart

Max recently facilitated a two day course for us at Council about tackling the internal and external challenges of community engagement. Max is an exceptional facilitator and his ability to draw on experiences across such a broad and diverse background in CE is invaluable to those before him. I would highly recommend Max to anyone

Kellie King

'I have had the pleasure of both being a participant in a fantastic training session run by Max, and also as a client. Max was of tremendous assistance navigating through a challenging engagement process with great support, advice and good humour. Thank you Max.' Kellie King General Manager – Community & Corporate Services, Wannon Water

Carol M Anderson

'If one were to ask me who was the best facilitator and facilitation trainer in the world, I would unequivocally answer “Max Hardy.” As the public involvement manager at one of the largest U.S.-based environmental engineering firms, I often took along my notes from Max’s facilitation class to meet with clients and, on their behalf, with the public.

Amy Hubbard, Capire

“Max is a trusted and respected colleague and friend of Capire. He is always able to provide us with a sound, strategic and independent perspective – even on the toughest projects in very complex communities” Amy Hubbard CEO, Capire.

Liz Mackevicius

'Max worked with us to design and execute a series of workshops based on the citizen jury principles, to enable a conversation between community members about the growth and change expected to occur in a challenging inner city municipality. Max understood the key issues at hand, gave expert advice and worked with us to tailor

Courtney Brown, Director, BDR Projects

'I have known and worked with Max for about two years, however I have been very aware of his career and engagement experience applied to major projects across industry sectors for a much longer period. Max has been at the forefront of pioneering new mechanisms and methodologies for genuine engagement and this resonates for his

The Honourable Andrew Powell MP

'I have always been impressed with Max’s ability to navigate and resolve the thorny issues through collaboration.  He involves all participants right from the beginning: asking “what’s the question that needs answering here”? His efforts alongside John Dengate in the journey that was The Queensland Plan were stellar and he was a significant contributor to

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