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What is your approach to consulting? And… which one best works for co-designing solutions with the community?

06/07/2020 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

I’ve been consulting for 23 years, and I think I’ve settled on the consulting approach that works for me. When I say ‘approach’ what I mean is how we work with our clients. I’ve reduced it, somewhat simplistically, to three types of approaches.

The first I would term as ‘the contractor’ approach. It is where you do anything to try to please your client. You do as you are told. You jump through hoops in the hope of winning their approval.

I remember one of my first consulting jobs. I was in my mid-thirties, keen to win the approval of my client, and prove myself to the consulting firm who took a chance with me. It was understandable given my age and lack of experience.

One of the interesting things I learned from this approach is how unsettling it was for the client’s project manager. She was very anxious about this controversial infrastructure project. The more I tried to follow her ideas the more anxious she became. The less I trusted my instincts and the less I tried to negotiate an approach, the more in control she should have felt, but I was wrong. It was only in retrospect that her anxiety was due to me not taking a stronger stand, leading her to feel that I couldn’t give her the help she really needed. Having shared this story a few times I know this is not an uncommon experience.

Behaving as a contractor has some drawbacks; one being that is deprives my client what I have to offer. It can make for a harmonious arrangement if my client believes they have all the answers, and they just need someone to carry out their plans. For complex projects (in the Cynefin sense), no one really has the answer. It’s about trying things, exploring and adapting. Behaving as a contractor may not be the best way to help with complex and controversial projects, in my experience.

Now for the second approach. I’m Struggling for a name for it, but let’s call it the uber-expert approach. This is the approach where the consultant basically tells the client to get out of the way, and to let them ‘run the show’. There’s an underlying belief the client needs help, actually needs rescuing. It works well for consultants who have their favoured methods, and recipe for success. All projects are best fitted into their formula. It means there is less need to think things through; and it makes life easier if clients don’t try to make things messier then they need to be.

It’s not uncommon to hear stories of clients who have been frustrated by consultants who do not appreciate their experience, insights and resources. Moreover, organisations who feel ‘done to’, or ‘done for’ often undermine the process and outcomes. I recall my early days doing some effective community engagement, only to find later, I had not engaged the right people in the client organisation. The result – well the community liked me but still didn’t trust the client. The recommendations of the community were ignored, and all I had achieved was to drive a bigger wedge between the community and the organisation I was meant to assist. The Uber-expert approach certainly does not serve organisations or communities when it comes to complex issues.

The third approach, and the one I try to live up to, is the collaborative consultant. This involves bringing the best of what I have to offer, but not at the expense of what my client has to bring. It’s about making the most of our collective resources and wisdom. It is one where we are all curious about learning from each other, learning something new, and being open to new and better ways. In my experience this is the most constructive way of working with clients to tackle complex projects.

For really complex projects it is also important to work with communities and external stakeholders in this way. Co-designing solutions may be the goal, but it’s important to build a solid foundation for that to be possible. Establishing relationships and co-designing the process is both necessary and incredibly useful. The collaborative consulting approach is the one most conducive in my experience.

If you are a consultant which approach has worked best for you?

If you engage consultants what approaches have you encountered and which works best for you?

If co-designing solutions with communities is something you are interested in you may like to join our Authentic Co-design community of interest.

Getting the ball rolling on co-design

19/06/2020 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

Getting started is often one of the hardest challenges for organisations willing to co-design solutions to complex problems with the community, especially where trust is low.

Let’s consider some of the assumptions behind the reluctance of the community to become involved. For highly controversial projects, such as Murray-Darling Basin Plan, active members, or the hyper-engaged, of the community may assume there is not much to gain by ‘playing nicely’ with authorities, or even community engagement practitioners. For less active members they may assume there is nothing much they can change; feeling defeated already. Getting the ball rolling with the community is an obvious challenge if you are hoping to ultimately co-design a new solution.

So how do you begin building support for such a process? Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way. Firstly, it’s important to recognise it won’t be easy, and you will need to be respectfully persistent.

Secondly, it’s really important to show more interest in listening, than in trying to land your key messages. People will usually choose to start working with you on the basis of whether they believe you ‘give a damn’ about their fears, concerns or aspirations. It is really hard to get anywhere if the community does not believe you do.

Thirdly, there needs to be enough ‘on the table’ to make involvement worthwhile. Being clear on the ‘givens’ or ‘non-negotiables’ is important, but if the things that really matter to people are way out of scope they may rightly believe they have little to gain by playing in the space you are providing.

Lastly, provide opportunities to modify your process and plans based on community feedback, suggestions and ideas. If communities can influence the process they may begin to believe they can shape an outcome, and move to the next stage in the process. What has worked for you in getting the ball rolling when trust in your organisation, or process, is extremely low?

Click here and we’ll send a copy of all common external challenges straight to your inbox.

This is just one of the challenges you may face when considering a co-design process for a complex challenge. I will talk about others in coming blogs. There are also internal challenges, which I believe are even more challenging. Read Anthony Boxshall’s recent blog in this regard.

To learn more about co-design follow this link! We, Susan Carter of the Community Studio, Anthony Boxshall, Science into Action and I) have recently developed a brand new course on Authentic Co-Design which may interest you!

Turning around an inauthentic co-design process

27/05/2020 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

What is Co-design?
A colleague/friend of mine, Anthony Boxshall, and I had the pleasure of working together on a very challenging project a few years ago. At the time Anthony was working with the EPA, Victoria. It was a co-design project. When I was first approached by the EPA I was asked what I thought co-design actually meant. Apparently, there was no shared view internally about this; and ever since I could confidently say there are many and varied definitions.

I recall a presentation by Ingrid Burkett, Director of Learning and Systems Innovation at the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, where she distinguished between human centred design, design thinking, and participatory design. That was helpful, and when it comes to co-designing solutions to complex issues with communities, we are closest to participatory design.

Recently Anthony Boxshall and I have finished writing a step-by-step manual to Authentic Co-design, specifically relating to complex issues/problems/challenges. Drawing on numerous sources we put forward this fairly straightforward definition:

“Co-design … is a collaborative approach that actively involves all stakeholders (e.g. staff, partners, citizens, customers and end users) in the actual design process, with the aim of ensuring the result meets their needs. In a government or corporation context, co-design can be most simply defined as the act of creating a fit-for-purpose solution or product with stakeholders.”

How do you ensure your co-design process is authentic?
Having a definition is one thing; doing it well, or authentically, is something else again. We outlined five key principles, that for us, help to explain the elements of an authentic process.

But perhaps a better way to highlight what we mean by this is to put forward what an inauthentic process would look like. Sadly, I have seen all of these in practice, and the process has still been loosely referred to as co-design.

Here goes! My tips to guarantee an inauthentic process (and my comments as to how this undermines genuine co-design).

1. Make sure there are so many parameters and constraints that nothing much can be changed or influenced by the process.
What I really think? Although those who do this believe this reduces risk, it will actually increase risk, and will discourage people to participating in the process at all. To turn it around, and make it an Authentic Co-design process:

Principle 1 – Make it substantial

2. Only focus attention on those who are the most powerful AND most interested; don’t waste your time with those who are harder to reach, or those you might need to make more effort to engage.
What I really think? This guarantees that you continue to only here from the people you always hear from, and deprives co-design the diversity you need for innovative solutions. To turn it around to make it an Authentic Co-design process.

Principle 2 – Be inclusive

3. Only provide time and space for debating ideas, not for dialogue and deliberation; minimise opportunities for critical thinking and reflection.
What I really think? Reflection, curiosity and mutual learning are needed to appreciate complexity; and are a cornerstone for authentic co-design. To turn it around to make it an Authentic Co-design process:

Principle 3 – Foster mutual learning

4. Share as little information as possible. Hold your cards very close to your chest, thereby making sure you have more information than anyone else. It gives you the edge!
What I really think? Withholding information is often a control game and fuels mistrust. It is seen as a power trip, and often is. Sharing information which is usually withheld is one way of demonstrating an investment in the process, and respect for those invited to participate. To turn it around to make it an Authentic Co-design process:

Principle 4 – Be transparent

5. Ignore legislation, other policies and guidelines up front – so if you can’t implement what has been co-designed you can blame someone else’s red tape.
What I really think? There are always other factors to take into account. Recognise them. Work with them. Try to stretch them if they are too constraining, but sort that out before you invite people into co-designing anything. To turn it around to make it an Authentic Co-design process:

Principle 5 – Be jurisdictionally aware

So, there we have it. My five top tips for guaranteeing a really inauthentic co-design process and five principles to create an authentic process. Applying the principles of co-design can be a challenge, but not applying them will guarantee a predictably poor, if not disastrous, outcome. Trust in the process, and in all participants, will grow as you work together. Importantly, co-designing the process is a great way to lay the foundation for co-designing a solution.

Find out more about our Authentic Co-design Manual, click here. The manual and online course is coming soon to equip you in tackling your next complex project.

Learning from Covid-19. How what we are learning now can transform how we engage into the future!

30/04/2020 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

Engaging communities at a time of physical distancing presents some real challenges for local government. In an earlier article, I asserted that doing sophisticated engagement online, even deliberative community engagement, is possible. I really believe it, but I am not pretending it is straightforward, nor that it is adequate on its own. It does mean doing things differently though and seizing the opportunities that exist.

Let’s face it, community engagement is never perfect. It is never perfectly representative; the processes are not perfectly supported by organisations, nor is the output perfectly considered. It is always a matter of making trade-offs with our processes, limited by budget, time-frames, and the capacity of communities to be involved. But we have come a long way in the last 20 years. Here are some things that I’ve noticed are much better.

Organisations no longer consider a once-off public meeting as being an adequate community engagement process.
There is more effort made to connect with the ‘harder-to-reach’.
Organisations no longer focus their efforts on just trying to placate those who are well organised and most vocal.
Organisations provide a broader range of opportunities for communities to be involved; we don’t usually just provide one way to contribute.
Organisations are generally clearer about genuine parameters and constraints; and open to putting more ‘on the table’ that can be influenced by the process.
Organisations ask better questions, and scope engagement more thoughtfully.
We make more space for deliberation to occur, where complexities can be appreciated, and well-informed, considered judgments can be made by a diverse range of participants.
Organisations are more confident of citizens rising to the occasion, generating great ideas, exercising sound judgment, and being central to building solutions – they view communities as an asset rather than a problem to be solved.
Organisations make more of an effort to explain how engagement has influenced decision-making, strategies and plans. They close the loop better than before.

We do not want to lose these gains at this time. In fact, I would suggest it is even more important we engage authentically right now. But what are some of the challenges? Here are a few.

Not all councils have IT systems that allow staff to collaborate in online platforms (such as Google docs, Basecamp and Trello).
Councils have often invested in one online platform (such as Engagement HG or the Hive) and are reluctant to spend money on different ones. As a result council officers may not be able to offer the range of digital opportunities they’d like.
Not everyone in the community has access to reliable internet services, or the skills to use digital platforms. Whereas previously support could be provided by library staff, that service is not available right now due to physical distancing restrictions.
Transitioning existing community engagement processes to digital only engagement is proving to be more time consuming than expected. Practice sessions, revisions to presentation material, negotiating authorisations from IT, and requiring multiple people to be available during video meetings (in case someone has a bandwidth problem), all take time.

My recent experience has shown that worthwhile engagement can still be undertaken. It is important to remind ourselves that people can adapt; we can be creative, we can experiment and we can rise to a challenge. One of the ways to proceed has been to invite stakeholders, community members and project teams to work out the process together. Staying humble and asking; “How can we continue to work on projects that are important to keep progressing? Let’s learn to do something different together. Let’s not aim for a perfect process, just one that we can help us to keep moving in the right direction.”

This asks for a special kind of leadership too, and leaders can be found all over the place. It involves holding the space within which we can work things out together. It certainly means being gracious when things don’t work out as planned – avoiding the blame game, and seeing what we can learn from every experience.

What is evident with this kind of approach and leadership is it is the same kind of approach that works best in a pre and post Covid-19 world too. Let’s make sure we take these kinds of attitudes and mindsets when we have more options available to use for future engagements.

A dialogue about dialogue

17/12/2019 By Max Hardy Leave a Comment

Written by Max Hardy and Paul Waite

It’s my pleasure to interview a new friend and colleague Paul Waite who is a ‘dialogue practitioner’ amongst other things. Paul, I know you sometimes refer to this as ‘dialogue for understanding’. Can you tell us what that means?

Thanks Max. As you know, dialogue means different things to different people. Some people think a simple chat to be dialogue, whereas others think dialogue is more formal and focused. By dialogue for understanding, I’m talking about a process which supports a group of people to safely explore their differing perspectives regarding a tricky or contentious issue. It’s not intended to change participant views on the issue, but rather to enable participants to understand how the views of others have been informed by their personal experiences and values. The process can help to build empathy and understanding and, in this age of othering, can help us to reconnect with our shared humanity.

Yes, with so many polarised debates in evidence ‘dialogue for understanding’ is something quite novel, even counter-cultural. I do hear project managers/public servants saying they are pressed for time and need to find solutions fast for a range of issues. How do you respond to people who say that we just don’t have the time for dialogue?’

Yeh, there’s often a sense of urgency and a need to demonstrate action. And that’s fine when you’re dealing with a simple issue or even a complicated issue. However, it is unlikely to bear fruit when dealing with complex or contentious issues. In such cases, dialogue can help to build the relationships and the trust necessary for the participants to work well together. Often, tackling complex or contentious issues requires a diversity of people to work together: community members, service providers, businesses, academics, policy makers and others. Each person brings their own values, experiences, assumptions, priorities and perspectives along – their own ‘truth’. Dialogue can help to create an environment where people are more willing to share their own ‘piece of the truth’ and, more importantly, where they are more willing to listen and synthesise the truth of others. It’s only then that the group has a real chance to break through ‘same old same old’ thinking. So, time invested in dialogue is time well spent.

Speaking of ‘success’ what kinds of benefits or impacts can dialogue make possible? How can it be helpful to an organisation or community? Do you have an example you could share?

The relationships, mutual understanding and trust which can be created through dialogue are valuable in and of themselves. However, dialogue can also provide a foundation for cooperation and collaboration, particularly when it occurs across multiple sessions over a period of time. For a polarised community, the new conversations which emerge can provide renewed hope and the opportunity to work together towards a different future. For an organisation, dialogue invites staff to bring their full self into the room. This can be especially helpful when exploring issues such as diversity and inclusion in the workplace, or how an organisation’s values translate into culture.

One example of where dialogue can be helpful is urban growth, which often leads of the construction of new housing estates on the urban fringe. Visual changes to the landscape, large numbers of new residents and competition for limited resources like schools and doctors can create growing pains, particularly when the established community liked things the way they were. In addition, increasing cultural and religious diversity may be unfamiliar and some may feel threatened. Dialogue for understanding can create an environment where newer and older residents are able to meet, share their stories, and to learn more about one another. Relationships are formed and common interests identified which can help to address some of the challenges, and to provide a platform for future collaboration.

It seems now there is a lot of interest in deliberative processes, but precious little interest, at the present time, in dialogue. Deliberative processes are fabulous for providing a space for randomly selected participants to arrive at recommendations on complex issues, but where communities are highly polarised something different is required as a response. What in your own journey brought you to dialogue?

I worked closely with Melbourne’s Muslim community over a number of years which was an immense privilege. However, the media narratives and political discourse at the time created an environment of fear and distrust of Muslims among the wider community and I know many people who experienced verbal abuse and worse. I remember thinking that if I could just get people together in a room to share food and talk then, perhaps, things might change.

Outside of work, a few like-minded folk and I were facilitating community conversations – but the tools we were using didn’t seem to be appropriate for situations where there was fear, tension or distrust. I started looking for alternatives, and came across the work of the Public Conversations Project in Boston. We began a conversation and in 2017 I was able to spend time in Boston learning more about their approach, shortly after they rebranded as Essential Partners (www.whatisessential.org ).

Is your organisation or community grappling with a situation or issue where dialogue may be helpful to build mutual understanding? Feel free to reach out to Paul or Max to explore further.

What is your approach to consulting? And… which one best works for co-designing solutions with the community?

Getting the ball rolling on co-design

Turning around an inauthentic co-design process

Learning from Covid-19. How what we are learning now can transform how we engage into the future!

A dialogue about dialogue

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