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Opportunities & Challenges:
The Gwinnett County (GA) Public Library serves one of the fastest growing and most diverse countiesin the US with fifteen branch locations and more on the way. The Library is internationally recognized as an innovator in its field; and its leadership knows that when you’re at the top of your game is the time to up your game even further for success. The challenge was to create a strategic plan to guide the library for the next five to seven years: one that is flexible—allowing the organization to cultivate its position in and relationship to a changing community—and one that provides concrete guidance for action in the near-, middle-, and longer term.

What we did:
M&B engaged the Library in an eight-month planning process that included extensive stakeholder engagement, research and careful crafting and review of the plan. We invited staff, community leaders, strategic partners, and citizens to participate in the process, so that the whole community has its “fingerprints” on the final product. We then worked with a group of key stakeholders to examine findings and develop goals and strategies. A set of action items was developed, along with extensive project plans, to create the first round of implementation for the plan.

Deliverables:
Deliverables include the strategic plan document, detailed documentation and processes for managing implementation and documents to guide further planning efforts.

Opportunities & Challenges:

Revitalize 19 cities and towns in North Central New Jersey, on the verge of re-urbanization, but saddled with home rule political processes, the buildings and the infrastructure are still in place from a time when America was first settled (the 1600s), when New Jersey factories were a powerhouse of the Industrial Era (the 1800s) and when families flocked to newly created suburbs on the borders of decaying urban centres (the mid-1900s).

What we did:

In collaboration with Camoin Associates, Maverick & Boutique facilitated a two year program to develop a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) for the North-Central Region of New Jersey via the John S. Watson Institute, a policy arm of the Thomas Edison State College that provides support for the New Jersey Urban Mayors Association.

The project was conducted in three overlapping phases – research, planning and implementation, so that teams recruited to help plan new initiates, were also being encouraged to begin the process of implementation – otherwise known as Strategic Doing.

The first stage of the project involved a study of the industry, employment, wages, and occupational base for the 19 municipalities that make up the region, a study of the business climate of the region and the municipalities including: infrastructure, labor, incentives, taxation, buildings/land and  a review of opportunities for private investment leading to job creation, especially in emerging industries, such as advanced manufacturing, “green” construction, environmental services and alternative energy.

During the second stage, M&B facilitated the work of a region-wide strategy 50-member planning committee of business, political and community leaders as well representatives from critical infrastructure and government services organizations. The committee met on a regular basis, both as a committee to develop the overall strategy, and as task forces to scope initiatives in six focus areas – training as an economic engine, infrastructure renewal, small business development, implementation assistance under a formal regional organization structure and a collective modular marketing program. As the programs develop, new people with the necessary skills, knowledge or access to resources were invited to join he effort.

In a third and overlapping stage, we helped Watson Institute staff recruit Community Implementation and Planning Teams in each of the municipalities; identify and design shovel- ready projects; and help each community develop local versions of the regional initiatives.

Deliverable:

Read the 2015 Urban-Focused Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) for the North-Central Region of NJ here!

 

 

Opportunities & Challenges:

Develop a winning plan for the I-86 Corridor to compete in New York State’s one-time competition for $500 million in economic development funding, including an ecosystem of well-developed project concepts to deal strategically with the critical issues facing the Corridor.

What we did:

M&B, in collaboration with Camoin Associates, an economic development firm, and Bergman, an engineering firm, designed and facilitated an accelerated strategic planning process for the I-86 Corridor to meet a tight eight-week deadline from start to finish to prepare for a one-off state-wide competition for large-scale investment funding. The project involved two counties, seven municipalities, and 70-80 stakeholders representing utilities, business, education, community and local government groups.

Our work resulted in the I-86 Corridor consortium and its partners in nearby Binghamton, which forms the Southern Tier, being awarded a $500 million investment from the State of New York to fund their projects.

M&B employed a combination of the Zing technology, systems maps, and project planning templates, to guide participants through the strategic planning process. The result is an ecosystem of 50 fully developed systematically interrelated projects/programs. Each project/program is described in considerable detail including action steps, strategic measures, governance, anticipated budget and funding and physical resources and talent required.

The workshops were conducted in two blocks of three days during which the participants prepared detailed project plans for infrastructure, innovation, industry development, governance, creating vibrant communities, workforce development and education, and tourism/marketing/branding.

M&B also facilitated a series of robust conversation with the steering committee to develop a corporate structure and implementation process to ensure the many participating stakeholder could work together flexibly under the auspices of an overarching governing body charged with project management oversight.

Deliverable:

View the I-86 Innovation Corridor- Strategic Action Plan, July 2015, here!

 

 

 

Meet Interaction & Intervention Innovation (i2), a new type of process improvement, which has joined the ranks of proven innovation methods like product, service, business process and business model innovation. This one helps people experience new ways of interacting in order to create new knowledge and innovate successfully in the midst of emergence, complexity and uncertainty, the “new normal” for business today.

The closing session at the 2013 Hargraves Institute conference was an excellent example of this fast-paced, dynamic process. In just 90 minutes of intense conversation, sixty people working in teams created eight clever prototype concepts for healthy living products and services. The high-energy finale was designed just-in-time. The presenters, having met for the first time over lunch, quickly combined their talents to design and jointly facilitate the session without any rehearsal.

John Findlay & Abby Straus of Maverick & Boutique  contributed the Zing collaborative meeting system (which uses the i2 process), their Complexity Model of Change and improv games to warm up the crowd. Michelle Williams, of Ideaction  contributed the guest speaker to brief the audience, a 5-step design process and five customer profiles representing key markets segments, for which participants would design.

Here’s how it went:

The session began in a conventional way, with a five-minute talk by healthy living expert, Peter McCue, head of Healthy Planning, a state-wide New South Wales program designed to deal with the challenge of obesity in modern life.

Next, John Findlay and Abby Straus introduced their Complexity Model of Change to explain the “the obesity epidemic”, which has occurred, in part, as consequence of widespread adoption of brain work and the replacement much physical work in the Knowledge Age. Another key factor is the invention of labor saving tools and transportation methods that enable people to get only a fraction of the daily exercise our ancestors got just a century ago.

The Zing wireless keyboard collaboration system and i2 methodology were used to help participants create a rich picture of health trends and issues. Then, Michelle Williams stepped the teams through five rapid-fire, five-minute long mini-activities, with each team designing a product or service that would appeal to one of five customer profiles representing the different market segments.

The teams were encouraged to use any medium at hand to present their prototypes: poetry, improvisation, movement, graphics, etc. The new concepts included:

  • An exercise cycle to generate electricity in order to watch TV,
  • Trekking adventures for life fulfillment and purpose,
  • A spiced-up date night event app with options for romance, active and casual interactions,
  • A smart phone pedometer app that delivers a daily report on diet and exercise,
  •  A life coaching service for a healthier lifestyle taking in the outdoors, dog walking, food education and prioritizing relationships, and
  • A Lifestyle Innovation program for women to achieve a better life-work balance with child care support provided by the employer.

Participants used Zing and i2 to capture ideas and report back on their new products and services. They also gave lively and entertaining demonstrations of what they had in mind.

i2 is increasingly being used by conference organizers to switch the focus from sessions dominated by experts to interactive events, such as this one at the Hargraves Institute conference, where the audience is facilitated in creating new knowledge on the spot.

The i2 method is built on two key concepts:

1. “Simple rules of interaction” (SRI): a concept, borrowed from the science of complexity, which we commonly observed in nature when birds flock and fish shoal. Following just three simple rules—stay a fixed distance from others, fly/swim at a specific angle and turn when others do—huge groups of animals are able to execute breathtakingly beautiful and complex feats of coordinated movement.

Examples of SRI in human interaction are the “Yes-and” rule from Improv that encourages people to add value to each other’s ideas and the Talk-Type-Read-Review etiquette, designed for the Zing team meeting process, which helps dozens to hundreds of people work efficiently and productively on the same issue at the same time.

2. The conversion of models, methods and thinking processes into a series of rich, open-ended questions, which encourages each person’s brain to become his/her own “personal Google”. Participants make creative connections and develop new ideas, which they share with others in conversation in small groups, and then with the larger group in a process of synthesis and integration. When everyone works in parallel this way, they are able to perform complex thinking and creative tasks with surprising ease.

When events are conducted using this method, everyone in the room interacts in a synchronized way, no one talks at cross-purposes and all interests are valued and recognized. People from diverse disciplines and community groups can reliably deal with any kind of complex problem, even “wicked” ones, and reach broad agreement about what to do.

Shifting between the collective wisdom of the group, provided by the Zing collaboration method and localized team work, provided by the 5 step rapid fire sessions, allowed a shift from macro/big thinking to micro perspectives of problem solving and innovation.

With Zing, the participants can see the entire community’s collective wisdom and build on those ideas for this process. The report is easily generated after the session allowing for extra analysis together with a plan for immediate action. The 5-step process allowed everyone to work on a wicked problem that affects everyone in a way that removed people from their current mode of thinking outside the restrictions of KPI’s set by their organizations. It also helped the participants innovate more deeply and in more detail and develop their personal capacity for creativity and innovation.

The fields of mathematics, biology, neuroscience, psychology and systems thinking are fertile ground for the new conversation and decision methods developed using i2. Sources of inspiration include academics and thought leaders, especially those who present at Aspen Institute, PopTech or TED.com conferences. You can see examples at www.colorfulconversations.blogspot.com.

Common examples of these methods are SWOT Analysis, Six Thinking Hats from Dr. Edward De Bono, Polarity Thinking from Dr. Barry Johnson and The Choice Trilogy of Keep-Abandon -Reinvent from Maverick & Boutique.

Workshop

If you would like more information about Interaction Innovation or to engage Maverick & Boutique or Ideaction to design and facilitate a workshop, seminar or other or interactive event. Here how it works:

1. Create customer profiles, for example:

  • Mary: 65 years retiree. A bit overweight. Enjoys gardening. Likes swimming and dancing. Wants to lose weight so she can live a long and productive live. Takes walks in the park.
  • Tom: 55 year-old, former construction worker, with bad back, now on light duties in the warehouse. Weights 120 Kg. Drinks lots of beer. Watches the football on TV.
  • Samantha: 22 year old girl about town. Works in public relations. Time poor. Always eating out. Exercises seven times a week.
  • Jane: 35 years old, fitness instructor. Eats a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, meat, grains and nuts. Has not yet met the man of her dreams, who also has to be fit and eat well, but not a narcissist or macho man.
  • John: 30 years old manager on the way up. Works 70-80 hours a week. Numerous meetings, often early and late. Eats out, or buys take-away on way home. Kids are in bed when he arrived home. Wife also works. No time for play. No time for exercise.

2. Ask each group to choose a role.

3. Ask a series of questions, one question per five minutes.

  • Context: What are major trends (e.g. time pressures, new and growing lifestyle diseases) occurring in the world around health, lifestyles, quality of life etc.?
  • Challenges: What lifestyle or health challenges might your customer demographic face? What personal challenges might they face?\
  • Needs/interests: What are the likely unmet work/home/life needs or interests of your customer demographic?
  • Product/Service: What kind of product or service would appeal to your customer segment that helps them deal successfully with their life/work situation? Think outside the box.
  • Prepare for Report back: What novel, unusual way could you report back. Song, Dance, Improv, Movie, Skit, Poem, Report, Haiku. You have sixty seconds.

4. Report back: Report back in any way you like – Song, Dance, Improv, Movie, Skit, Poem, Report, Haiku. You have sixty seconds.

5. Ask the question: What did we learn from this experience?

 

As the facilitators of community meetings that require the use of technology many of the rooms are too big, too small, too constrained or just plain weird.

The venues are often a challenge. Maverick & Boutique use the Zing collaborative meeting environment in our work. It requires a video projector, a giant shared screen (for example, a big white wall), wireless keyboards, a computer and tables and chairs for conversations.

After Hurricane Sandy the debrief of the Jersey shore communities (in Monmouth County) were held in a two different courtrooms and an IHOP (the International House of Pancakes) restaurant. The Essex County community response to the Emergency Preparedness Plan was held in the party room at a skating rink. The Vermont economic development strategy was created in a fire brigade meeting room, a night club, a school classroom, an adult learning center, a ski resort and not one, but two old theaters.

We have also heard of other unusual settings for our kind of meetings:

  • In the Papua New Guinea highlands, a large white sheet for a screen, a portable generator for power.
  • In an Italian restaurant, one DeBono Thinking Hat per course
  • In a lecture theater of computerists in Melbourne, clumped together in groups
  • At an embassy in Washington DC
  • A church in Phoenix
  • A boathouse in Canberra
  • On a kitchen table

What we have discovered is that it really does not matter where we meet. It is more important how you set up the room, how people interact and the kinds of questions you ask.

In the world of complex systems that we inhabit, we know that structure influences behavior. The structure of a meeting not only includes the shape and size of the meeting space, whether we have rows of seats or chairs and tables, the rules of interaction, and the way you generate, record and make sense of your collective knowledge.

Here’s some examples:

  • Rows of chairs facing a stage, people on the stage facing the audience: Some Japanese call this the American speaking hall, because the people on the stage speak, and the audience listens.
  • People seated in a U: You can really only talk to one person next to you. Hopefully, no one misses out on a partner in the discussion.
  • People seated in a circle facing each other: No power positions, but very uncomfortable for the introverts among us.
  • Town halls: where the audience members take turns to ask questions, make statements, or issue challenges.
  • Voting: a show of hands or a vote results in winners and losers.
  • Idea Integration: If two people are asked to combine their ideas, then those two people combine their joint idea with two other people, and those four people…..

Here are a few rules of thumb that can ensure meetings are a success:

  • A very large shared screen so we can see and read everyone’s ideas as they are being generated, which sparks more of our own ideas that are connected to their ideas
  • People work in small groups of 6-8 with people from other organizations/fields, so we expose people to points of view outside their community, discipline, part of the organization
  • People discuss the issues in pairs, so there are many parallel conversations
  • One keyboard for every 4-8 people, so everyone gets heard, and there is plenty of variety
  • We employ rich questions that guide people to similar conclusions, also despite our differences.
  • We read all the ideas aloud, so all ideas are valued
  • We introduce a sense-making step, so everyone in the room is asked to look for and we record the patterns in the ideas so we can develop a new shared model, despite our differences.

Workshop

So here’s a few questions to help rethink your meeting:

1. Where’s the most unusual place you have ever held a community meeting? Describe what happened as a result of the unusual location?

2. How are your meetings organized and what is the result?

3. What outcome would you prefer to achieve from your meetings?

4. Thinking about the structure of your meetings (room size and shape, seating, rules of interaction, agenda/questions, type of questions (closed/open), technology to support record keeping/idea sharing) what aspects of your meetings perpetuate or reward conflict?

5. Thinking about the structure of your meetings, what aspects result in reaching agreement despite your differences?

6. What could you differently about the structure of your meetings that would reward success?

Opportunities & Challenges:

To develop a vision for American International School of Rotterdam (AISR), as well as action steps to realize the vision and guiding principles that will inform the thought and action of the school community. Accreditation guidelines require that the entire school population must be represented in the process, including board, faculty, staff, students and parents.

What we did:

M&B partnered with the Cleveland Consulting Group to facilitate the event. On each of the first two days, groups of about 70 persons, representing a diverse mix from our community—students from grades 5-12 (including learning support and EAL students), faculty, staff, parents and board members—were lead through an interactive process to explore our collective values and aspirations, how we might make our school an even better place to learn and teach, how we might express the essence of AISR and how we will put our values into action.

The knowledge we created in the first two sessions was correlated by our facilitators and presented on the third day to a plenary group consisting of participants from the first two days. This group then collaborated to craft working vision and mission statements for the school, and language for our guiding principles.

The beauty of this process is that the new knowledge produced is made—and owned— by the whole community, rather than by a few individuals. Everyone is represented and acknowledged and has an equal part to play in the outcome. The process itself has helped to build capacity in our community for cross-boundary/group collaboration, helping us to hear and understand each other and to work together to achieve our goals.

Thoughts from Participants:

At the end of the first two days, we asked for thoughts and feelings about the day from each participant. These are included in the report you may download. At the end of Day Three, we asked for comments from anyone in the group who would like to contribute their thoughts about the entire event. Here is what we received:

“I think it’s good we all got to share our opinions of the school and how we can improve.”

“We’ve grown together as a school. Not often do we get to sit down together to work on a common task and have everybody heard.”

“It was very interesting to go through the process and see what everyone’s perspective is. Provide everyone the opportunity to think about what the school is and should give more meaning every day when people walk through the gate.”

“AISR is a unique place to work and it was nice to meet students I didn’t know. We’re are a small school and have the chance to interact with others.”

“The teachers and parents should commend the students on their hard work.”

“Unique process that allowed all of us together to come up with something meaningful. I really enjoyed meeting the students and to see how creative you all are.”

“I am very excited to go this school and meet a lot of friendly students and friends. And let’s let the school be better to complete our dreams.”

“I think it’s great to see that even though there are some differences of what the school can improve upon, there are a lot of ideas that everyone agrees on.”

“I wanted to complement the school on the organization of getting this done and working with this method. We needed to stretch ourselves to come up with the results we came up with today. I’m thrilled and touched to see how committed everybody is.”

“It’s a big opportunity to be at this school because it’s a safe one. I really enjoy this school when many other children don’t have the opportunity. It’s perfect.”

Deliverable:

See the event report here!

View a short video feature on the event:

 

 

 

Opportunities & Challenges:

Faced with an aging population, declining income levels, critical skills shortages in new industries and the lasting impact of Tropical Storm Irene, the State of Vermont hired a team of consultants including Maverick & Boutique team to develop the 2020 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) in 2013-14. Although Vermont has developed an enviable reputation for its skiing, cycling, culinary tourism, green energy, craft beer, cheeses, ice cream and chocolates; the state faces a plethora of systemic problems that can only be fixed if everyone works well together.

For example, sprawl eats up farmlands while brownfield sites from closed industries from a bygone era and dying downtowns remained undeveloped. the permitting process designed to protect the beautiful environment is difficult for small to medium size entrepreneurs find to navigate. Unaffordable housing contributes to the difficulty of attracting talent for emerging industries. Residents desire their energy to be “clean and green” but don’t want windmills on hill tops.

What we did:

M&B facilitated stakeholder engagement meetings in nine regions, conducted workshops with cabinet level officials, developed some 70 initiatives in six key areas – with a strong emphasis on developing the capacity of the tourism and working landscape sector to capitalize on the trend towards consumer interest in high-value added experiences, the revitalization of villages as destinations, and developing skills in village scale government administration, green energy, agriculture, forestry, advanced manufacturing, health and IT.

Deliverable:

View the Vermont 2020 COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY (CEDS).

Opportunities & Challenges:

Over the past three decades, Australia has shifted its focus away from Europe to Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, with China and Japan being Australia’s two main trading partners, and India, South Korea and Indonesia becoming just as important.  The national government decided embark on a long-term project to engage more deeply with Asia, to ensure that Australia develops the skills, and cultural awareness to build stronger relationships.

What we did:

After the government’s Australia in the Asian Century Task Force completed their report, Maverick & Boutique was asked by the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet to help develop the internal team responsible for the implementation of the plan to develop strategies for involving 30 other departments, major corporations, small business, universities and trade Organization in the roll-out of the plan. For this one day workshop, the implementation team used the Zing meeting system to rapidly share ideas, and reach agreement about the way forward.

 

What does it take to be a leader or entrepreneur in the social innovation field? To find  the secret to such success, 200+ people came together at the bigBang! event in Cleveland, Ohio on October 28.

The event was hosted by Cleveland Social Venture Partners, and headlined by leadership and systems thinking guru, Peter Senge, with support from Mobile Innovation Lab, a Cleveland-based Design Thinking consultancy.

The event was live-streamed over the Internet into schools and businesses by the Uncomn.tv network.

You can see the founders of Mobile Innovation Lab Ken Chapin and Abby Straus (also a partner in M&B) facilitate the 90 minute brainstorming session that led into Peter Senge’s world cafe activity. Click here to watch the video.

You can also download a copy of what everyone had to say. Click here.

For those who are interested in undertaking a similar activity, here’s a workshop you might like to try with your own social entrepreneurship community:

1. What are the big societal and technological changes/trends that we’re responding to in Social Innovation?

2. What’s working really well in the world of Social Innovation? What do we want to KEEP? ABANDON? RE-INVENT?

3. What leadership qualities are essential for success in Social Innovation? Think about great leaders you admire and your own strengths and successes as a leader?

4. You have been asked to design a leadership development program. Thinking about the qualities/skills required (from question 3), what are some activities that might help develop/practice those skills.

5. Describe a social innovation project you might like to lead today. 5 word title, 25 word description and how will it benefit society/the world?

What if the explosion in the economic activity and knowledge work we regard as the Knowledge Age (1980-2010) was almost over and a new economic imperative was suddenly upon us? The Wisdom Age (2010-)? The weak signals from the future point this way.

How might such a trend affect the way we think about the world and the new kinds of products and services that people want? And the new kinds of jobs people will do?

There have always been wisdom workers. Community and business leaders, ethicists, judges, mediators and spiritual gurus. But the focus on wisdom work has reached a new intensity. There’s a whole bunch of new positions being advertised such as Corporate Ethics Officers, Certified Ethical Hacker, Business Continuity Managers as well as “green collar” work such as Environment Compliance Consultants, Energy Efficiency Engineers, Renewable Energy Coordinators and Ecological Footprint Accountants.
Although our scientists, academics and the R&D departments of big corporations are creating new knowledge at an exponential rate, we planetary citizens are increasingly frustrated by the slow speed at which we collectively deal with the world’s most wicked problems.
There is now an expectation we must learn to live more lightly on the planet, to reduce our impact on other species, to care more for our fellow citizens, to resolve the issues that divide us.To do this, more and more jobs will be created to wisely apply our knowledge. Paradoxically, we are also creating the tools that will help to automate/democratize this kind of work, so that ordinary people are able to make use of the same kinds of methods that were previously used only by experts.
A pioneer in this field is Linda Newman, Associate Professor of Education at Newcastle University in Australia (pictured). Linda is the joint creator of a process for resolving ethical dilemmas known as the Ethical Response Cycle.
A version of her method is included in her own electronic meeting title Working Wisely that can be used by anyone with less than a day’s facilitator training to explore and resolve complex ethical issues with greater certainty.
Linda uses her method to help early childhood teachers and carers develop professionally.
Participants learn about the ethics by observing and sharing their own reactions to a hypothetical dilemma and making sense of the patterns in the group’s responses. The dilemmas are presented as a series of “guided discovery questions” that take participants on a learning journey. Each step of a complex case study is followed by a more impossible dilemma or unexpected scenario that needs to be resolved.
Participants engage in a type of high level discussion which Linda calls Ethical Dialectical discourse, which must not only resolve the conflict’s between indvidual opinions, but must also satisfy a personal, professional ethical standard or legal requirement.
Here’s an example of a workshop from Working Wisely. It’s called the Automatic Teller Machine Fairy dilemma:
1. A friend comes to tell you that they have discovered that the automatic teller machine in your town is somehow making errors in calculation. Every withdrawal is receiving $20 too much without the client’s balance showing it. What do you do and why?
2. The “Automatic Teller Fairy” has been helping out many people in your town for a week now. Word has spread. The error has been discovered and rectified. The Daily Bugle reports the names of everyone who used the teller and how often. Your mother (or someone you respect) calls you to talk about it. How do you feel about what you decided to do and why?
3. How do you feel when your employer raises the issue the next day, and why?
4. What does this story have to do with ethics, and why?
5. Some people returned to the teller many times. Write 25 words about how they were thinking.
6. Some people reported the mistake and returned the money. Write 25 words about the type of thinking they used to inform their decision to return the money.
7. Some people who had very little money used the machine only on days where they really needed it. Write 25 words about the type of thinking they used to decide when to, and when not to, access the machine.
8. We have been talking about ethical perspectives which have theories to explain them. Sum up the ethical issues in this story.