A few pieces to read:

What you are doing is not remote work. It is coping in a global emergency.

Here’s a piece from Christian on leadership in times of crisis.

On hope and collective endeavour

WIP Notes

Sam Hannah-Rankin works in the State Government in Victoria, Australia, under Public Sector Reform - looks at encouraging better ways of working, as well as using different methods, behavioural insights, outcomes and evidence etc.

This division also runs an innovation network for 15,000 civil servants to help them learn, share and connect with each other.

Central agency with lots of visibility of what is and isn’t working across government in this moment. But they don’t own the policy, they don’t do the work on the policy, they are one step removed. So during a pandemic - they’re actually quite peripheral. Even if we could be more useful, the people who are at the forefront are so busy, facing such overwhelming requirements, that they don’t have time or space or basic cognitive capacity to think about how to do things differently. No time/space at all.

“Leadership needs to be opportunistic and entrepreneurial”

How can we be useful without getting in the way?

Showing people what we could do, or asking how we can help is actually getting in the way of critical pathways of work. So eg - behavioural insights, communications during this pandemic is a critical component but we were designing beautiful proposals and suggestions for how we might help. But we didn’t understand how little time people had to see how this could fit.  We needed to know their context better.

So we ended up “Wiggling our way in as pure observers to find out how we can be of assistance.”

What we ended up being able to contribute, was relatively basic but it created a epository of FAQs that could be addressed informed by behavioural insights^[a][b][c]. So able to be useful, but didn’t detract from what they needed to do.

People have no time for more. Had to get in the room to understand the challenge.

“Leadership needs to be humble and compassionate”

We can’t afford to have ego, or think we know better, or even to get frustrated because we want to get involved but no-one is letting us play on the swings at the moment.

It’s more about understanding how humans are working in unfamiliar terrain, from a behavioural perspective people are in flight or fight, we go back to defaults, we go to the people you know, the ways we know. And that’s natural as we navigate through.

So leadership in this context is understanding how to be of service, recognising that’s where people are.

This is coming up in how we remote work - our team has always had this capacity, so we were helping other departments do this and found out they needed a space to see what others were doing. Not about what policies were in place but, how as people, can we make this work.

Set up a hub of resources on the innovation platform which has been really useful for people.

“Leadership needs to be strategic and tactical”

This is always important.

But this situation is really making us think about our comparative advantage - we’re not in the main game of the pandemic response, it means we have capacity and perspective that others don’t have right now. Which means we can think about our work relatively clearly.

So we’re thinking about a focused approach on two different time horizons that need to run in parallel.

Tactically, we need to be able to respond to crisis moments as needed, still be responsive to this, that helps build relationships and trust.

Strategically, how are we going to inform the future State. Asking “where the value lies in the response work that is happening now”.

What’s genuinely working from what they are doing now - what evidence do we need to capture to know etc. so we can feed all this into the future state.  What’s working, what’s not. What do we need to capture for the future. Build those relationships now and not later. Investing in trust.

“Government can focus and split”

Segue to question about what governments should be doing, or what they can be learning now, how should they be dealing with uncertainty.

In Victoria at the moment, and everywhere, we’re trying to multitask. Managing response and keep BAU. And no human is good at that.

In Victoria, we’ve learnt from the bushfire response, when you have these emergencies, responses sucks ALL attention. This can have longer term challenges,

Last week it was announced here that we’re not going to do multitasking. Government is going to split, and reorganise ministerial and department resources - this isn’t a taskforce - this is creating two separate, complementary, forms of government.  

One will focus solely on covid19 short and long term responses and the other part of gov on business as usual. Genuinely innovative response.

“We can all remember: we’re human”

This crisis is a perfect storm of ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s immensely personal. Everyone is trying to juggle this. How do we create space to listen and learn? More important now (and harder than ever).

Especially for us, the people who are working to support the people who are supporting the frontline, we need to be really kind, creating empathy for the system, create “the oxygen of generosity in the system”. If we embed that in the bureaucracy we’ll have something of value that will come out of this crisis.

Andrea Siodmok

I work in the cabinet office in the UK, and our policy lab team is very covid focused right now. But let's step back and look at big picture of leadership. How is leadership important, before, during and after this crisis.

I am based in Cornwall. Very peripheral to my usual weeks to being in Westminster. And that has something to say about the distribution of power, and how that has changed over the last few weeks and months in some countries.

I find myself living on the edge of the UK at the moment.

We are packed with advice about “good leadership”: there is a lot of data and research out there. I want to give more of a personal perspective.

3 Ts of leadership.

• Team
• Timing
• Trust

I find these endure in different contexts. Right now we’re looking at crisis management, but as we look to the future there’ll be a different form needed too.  

Team

Thinking back many years ago, I actually trained to join the army. I got to drive tanks and machine guns. It was very exciting. I learnt a lot about command and control.

And I also learnt so much about team. That sense of team. You were only successful when your last member of your team crossed the line.

In any command and control, any crisis situation, you cannot make yourself indispensable. The idea of the hero leader, the single leader, is not taught. The military would make sure there was collective leadership. You have to have your second command. How well can you team run without you?

“Pretend you are leaving your job in 6 months with no replacement”

That’s how you set a team up.

Another thing about leadership, the Army also taught me is about simplification. There’s lots of noise in the background, so how do you boil down ideas to what’s important and communicate with great clarity. It used to be said, there was nothing better than an upwards sales curve, and right now we’re getting used to a lot of curves, and we know innovation as a curve goes up and then down as you lose certainty in the dip so when we think about how we operate, we’re sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool - we trying to communicate through all these webinars, and a lot gets lost in calls.

I’m thinking about the importance of distillation, communication, the art of visual communication. Visual communication is key. Used Trello to organize info^[d][e] - for example the Policy Lab’s evidence for futures thinking workshop last week.

Timing

We often think about a linear process, yet often we walk backwards into the future. This idea that things are incremental have also been challenged during Covid.

Lenin once said, “there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen”.

We’re all feeling this. A lot of happening. In the lab we work in the space between the rules. In this context at lot of those rules have radically shifted. Innovation teams can hand hold, we’re more familiar with ambiguity. Comfortable with those uncertainties.

Those mental models are going to be really important. How we think about the world, is going to be really important. I don’t know about you, but for some reason when I do calls, I still think people are in their office, some deluded idea that I’m the only one at home.

The mental model I have of work is so powerful for me, I struggle to really connect with this new normal.

We’re shifted back to an agrarian state. People living in their homes and not centres of the workforce. It may shift back.

Our mental models are very powerful and are likely to cause a return to the status quo, unless we can see them for what they are.

What will stick and what won’t?

Trust

Now of course, is so important. Trust has a half life. It needs restoring through social connectivity and rebuilding. As the weeks and months go on, our reservoirs of trust may decrease but grow in other places.

Stephen Covey: “Change moves at the speed of trust.”

Andrea: “Trust is the currency of community”.

We might end up with a greater abundance of social capital. Trust at the whole societal level, the trust economy, one of the positives that might come out of this for instance a volunteering revolution, a renaissance of the kinds of trust we’ll need in the future.

I think it was 16% in the UK of people who knew their neighbours, whereas in Australia, Tasmania I think has a very high social neighbourliness.

These three are important when taken together.

Andrea has written a blog on this more about the covid context.

Dennis Whately - “Expect the best, plan for the worst and prepare to be surprised.”

Christian Bason

You can fill airport bookstores with book on leadership, but it’s still mysterious to me what good leadership is sometimes. This crisis has put leadership practice on its edge. This is an interesting chance to think again about how we need to lead.

Many of us run innovation organisations focused on the future - our motto at the Danish Design Centre is “empowering businesses and people and society to shape the next” - we certainly didn’t assume when we coined that term, the next would be shaped more by a pandemic than us.

The next becomes more important, than where we are now.

Reminds me of a concept by William Bridges - Transitions.

It’s a good framing of what we’re focusing on now, he wrote about

‘The neutral zone’. It’s what comes between endings and new beginnings. We’re in the neutral zone right now and we need to lead in that space, that vacuum.

Bridges talks about it when you’re alone, when you’re out in the forest, away from the community. And in a way, we are all alone right now. There’s something to be said about this neutral zone.

The other useful question is - How can we look at leadership as a design challenge?

We’ve always said Design Leadership is about complexity, uncertainty, this is the kind of situation we have always talked about. It’s very relevant.

First - let’s start with ‘attitude’.

The notion of us taking a design attitude to this crisis is important.

Richard Bolan “a design attitude is to view each project as an opportunity for invention that leaves the world in a better state than we found it.”

As leaders, our decisions need to seize this crisis, not to waste it, and to leave the world in a better place.

I do think we’re seeing opportunities in this. In terms of leading people, I’m finding in order to motivate my team it’s about seeing this as an opportunity to do something good and different.

As example, after the financial crisis there was an opportunity to open a new bureau in the United States, for consumer affairs, a financial protection bureau, which became an icon for digital design and one of the first new agencies in a very long time in the US. An example of what can be built from a blank slate.  

Another example, after 9/11 the Scandivian airline, SAS saw an opportunity to make their company digital, back in 2001 you couldn't even make a digital booking. If they hadn’t changed that they would have been out of business.

The second point is about challenging your assumptions.

Lots of assumptions are needing to be challenged. For people and consumers and businesses. How can businesses be relevant to customers who have entirely new behaviours. We’re seeing people struggling with how to adapt to new behaviours.

Question about - how digital can we be?

A few weeks ago, I was worried that we’d lose a lot of our projects. We didn’t lose a single one because we were able to adapt quickly to digital. Goes to Andreas point about team - we were able to shift mode quickly. I’m hearing the public service talk about getting stuff done in three weeks what wouldn have taken 3 years. Not just in the health space.

It’s about asking what-if. Abductive thinking to imagine possible futures. We’re setting ourselves the target of being 100% digital.  

Next third point - about navigation ambiguity.

Leading design is like a weaving path through a dense forest. You can’t really see where you’re heading, you can’t see the end of the path, you don’t know the means to get to where you are going. Nor where you are actually going. Need to allow for that loss of control.

What we are seeing in this neutral zone is coming to terms with this loss of control. And how can we allow for discovery in this moment?

Bridges: “this is an opportunity to find out what you really want”

I’m seeing that in organisations, my own included. We are really thinking about our purpose, and what you want for behind the crisis.

Fourth point - Lead the learning process.

In this transition we need to learn rapidly. We need to come to terms with failure. But it’s not about failure, it’s about we need to lead the learning. How the Danish PM was open about the crisis (and we really are seeing how female leaders are showing great leadership in crisis) one of her first press conferences:  ”we are going to fail, I am going to fail”.

Embracing this, creates trust, we have to act but we’re not sure if it will work. Comparison to FDR, whose platform for president was to experiment - “we’ll try some things if they don’t work, we’ll try others”

He not only got elected but he was the longest running President.

Be ready to experiment. We’re running ten experiments to find out what works for business support. We’ve put our anthropologists on that to find out what works and what doesn’t. We might fail on that but we can then target our next program.

I’ll end with - fortunately the book, Transitions has a chapter on New Beginnings. It says at one point we have to stop getting ready, and act and right now, I’m seeing organisations that are talking a lot, and preparing for something but are not acting, very soon, we’ll all have to start acting soon.

The acting we are doing - we are working very hard to make visible that societies design resources is an investment in transformation capability. We are taking a strategy approach - we are taking a long term approach to invest in capability and change and one way of doing that is to invest in the creative skills of our designers.  

(good segue to next weeks’ conversation - all about experimentation)

Questions:

Brenton

Just to share some more context from the Australian perspective. We’ve seen a massive wage subsidy pass through federal legislation. The previous Prime Minister John Howard said to the current, “right now, there are no ideological constraints to action”

At this moment, don’t be constrained by party manifesto or what we’ve said in the past.

Having worked with designers, who love to work with constraints, what can we learn about our ability to test going forward, what are genuine constraints vs mental prisons we’ve created for ourselves?

Christian

I think in some ways we are seeing extreme versions of political stances . Our leadership is going heavy on the social welfare and vulnerable citizens and not so much around the business and innovation, or creativity, start-ups.

We’re seeing an extreme version of political ideology. Compared with Sweden bureaucracy is very much leading the charge, taking a more evidence based and rational approach which has lead to different results. There’s a tension between ideology and evidence. And we’ll see the results of this as it plays out.

Brenton:

People want to hear more about Victoria Sam! How is it going to work? How is an ambidextrous government going to work?

Sam Hannah-Rankin

We’re kind of living in dog years, every day is like a week packed into a day. The announcement on Victoria was only announced last week. It’s quite a fundamental split and it’s very emergent. And as an innovation team we should be comfortable with emergence and WE want all the details! Where are the details!

Secretaries (DG/ civil servant heads) of the departments will be leading the missions of the response work.

• People and community
• health
• economy

There's also a focus on the response and also the recovery and restoration after Covid. Also being centrally led, there’s a question around the overall risks and opportunities involved in this change work.  

All the secretaries are pulled into the response work. And associate secretaries are being pulled into backfill the roles. Those are being negotiated to see how that’s working, it’s being built as we go.

From Benedicte Wildhagen to Everyone: (02:53 pm)

 It seems project and leadership orientation now are exposed as lacking when coordinated efforts are needed, across sector but also countries. This is uncharted territories for ‘leadership’, apart from the military...?

Brenton

Reminds me of thinking fast and slow. A part of gov that is thinking fast (system 1), and another that is thinking slow (system 2). There’s a switching cost between doing the two of them, and what you’ve seen here is them removing that switching cost.

Also, I think there is a huge appetite for seeing who’s capturing the learning in what you’re doing here - many governments would like to see the split system.

Sam

Yes, we’re doing that right now. In a way that isn’t impeding or intimidating. Setting up some stream of evaluation and learning around the learning. Both in the mission responses but also around the core governance structures and decision making. How is that working? That’s where the future state opportunities are, shifting the way we work -  it’s renegotiating the MInister and Departmental relationships as well.

From Moira Were to Everyone: (02:54 pm)

 Also interested in how gender lens in leadership, design and learning in these times and how these variables are showing up in new models of governance and decision-making

From Michela Ventin to Everyone: (02:54 pm)

 We all struggle with change and uncertainty.Are we resilient enough as a species to be able to deal with the changes that are on the horizon? How can we develop this resilience?

From Trish Hansen to Everyone: (02:55 pm)

 How do we have a radically diverse conversations about 'how to be' - to use/ fill this precious space between the COVID happening and our response.

Brenton

How are we doing redistributed leadership?

In Australia for context - we have a body that works between federal and state governments which traditionally meets twice a year, has been meeting twice a week and they’re saying that want that to continue. We’re seeing roles and relationships between tiers of government - actually built on collaboration because it has to be.

Curious about whether this is being seen elsewhere.

Andrea

In the UK content - Brexit forced government to work in a more joined up way. For similar reasons, the shift in the rules opens up new spaces and demands new configurations once you take away rules.

Over the last few years, the UK government has been doing joined up work and has set up a systems unit to do that, and they’ve now been deployed to look at what renewal after covid looks like.

In the Lab we created a ‘government as a system’ tool, and version 2 is going to be able citizens engage in this process.

For me, distributed leadership has to be across the actors in a government sense, and the future of that will be enabling citizens and distributing this beyond walls of traditional institutions.

From Luis E. Loria to Everyone: (02:55 pm)

 Any advice on how to design and implement an open innovation/collective intelligence process to co-create the “new rules of the game” for the post-COVID-19 era?

From Anke Gruendel to Everyone: (02:52 pm)

 To Christian: in crisis moments when more expert based or even technocratic approaches might arguably be more important, what is the benefit of more federalized design methods? What should the role of design-led innovation be in these times?

From Christian Bason to Everyone: (02:56 pm)

 Thanks Anke — we see a huge interest at central level in what we term scenario design, which is to use co-design methods combined with foresight — and are right now working with the government on the future of work and the future of manufacturing using scenarios. We’re actually running a summer school on this (which will be delivered digitally). More here: Summer School: Learn the basics of scenario design

From Michela Ventin to Everyone: (02:56 pm)

 Do we sometimes ‘romanticise’ the ability of human beings to find and implement community-based solutions? What’s a real approach in your view?

From Robert Pollock to Everyone: (02:58 pm)

 Trust and empathy appear key to getting public behaviours on side. NZ seem to be doing well there. In UK it is getting more strained at the political level. Govt. modelling guidance from 2019 for impacts a novel infectious pandemic suggests mortality rates of 215,000 - 310,000. To any of the panellists: to what extend should governments be honest with the public about future scenarios in terms of mortality and economic impacts of Covid?

From Nikola Djuric to Everyone: (03:01 pm)

 On experimentation (perhaps for next week): Usually we want to experiment while the tolerance for error is high. This is definitely not that kind of situation. Can we still sell experimentation when the cost (at least reputational) of 'mistakes' can be high?

From Christian Bason to Everyone: (03:02 pm)

 I think we can. Right now experiments are going on at full-scale national levels.

From Kadri Kangro to Everyone: (03:01 pm)

 Do you  think that the Government's ability to react so quickly on policy and introduce systems and processes at lightning speed since COVID-19 is an indication of Government being previously unnecessarily slow and bureaucratic?

**session pause - for those who can stay have a longer chat***

Jesper

Marco - raised earlier, this will be challenging how we define and measure good performance.  This will challenging our operating models, as well as the cultures and shift the focus of what good looks

Sam

Yes, agree, good question. I think this was raised in the comments too about how quickly government can actually make very fundamental shifts.

So that’s the opportunity - how’s that working, why that’s working, what evidence and data we have to perpetuate that into the new normal.  

Chistian.

Martin Stewart Weeks wrote the piece on the innovation dividend, we are seeing so much speed and agility and you wonder whether when the dust settles, we can see people say ‘we can do that, there’s no reason not too’.

Also we’re seeing government much better disciplined with time. Something I’ve struggled with working in central government is how people never value your time. Have meetings with 12 people only 3 needed to be there. We’re putting a premium on time and I don’t think that will go away.

Some of what is happening right now, the people at the heart of the storm, they’ve been working 24/7 - there hasn’t been any bringing in of new methodologies from the periphery or checking in - what will be interesting will be to study what they were doing for those 2-3 weeks to see what they were doing 24/7. Were they working smart? Or were they just working all the time?

Sam

And it’s interesting for us, we’re so versed in bushfires we have a lot of protocols for dealing with emergencies and emergency management, but they’re not always seen at a policy level, these policies aren’t necessarily being used because people are being drawn in who aren’t familiar with emergencies.

Christian

Yes, and for us, our permanent sec he has seen through crisis. He was there for 9/11 and the GFC. His experience of working with parliament on these things, has worked extremely fast to sort things out.

Those governments, look at Finland, and perhaps Victoria with the bushfires, who have experience they seem to be better at coping. Let’s imagine we don’t have the experience of the past - how do we get leaders and organisations to respond to the future as if they had the experience. How can we have leaders rehearse a crisis without having to live through one for real.

That’s where immersive design methodologies can come in - design foresight eg - immersive experiences for empathy which situations that haven’t happened yet, you’ve rehearsed them. When and if, you’ve tried it before in simulation.

From Trish Hansen to Everyone: (03:07 pm)

 We need a good 'evil' plan.

To quote Author Terry Pratchett “You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. But every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack.”

Marco

Comment on the stockpiles from after WWII- we had protective equipment but most of it expired before we even opened it.

What we’re beginning to recognise, we need to begin those capabilities closer to home. We need to be self reliant with strategic assets - so it’s less about hoarding equipment and more about having the manufacturing equipment to produce different kinds of PPE (for eg)

People talk about Finland, and our experience from WWII or in 90s when economy collapsed by 14%, we had 20% unemployment, we had the banking crisis, so when that came in 2008 we were better prepared for that. And I think we’re seeing parts of that now too.

I would draw a distinction between countries that have a history, or narrative or set of experiences that allow them to come together very quickly  vs  how are we going to respond to the second wave of covid? We have 3-5 months time, nordic countries have been doing well at this but what are the kind of things countries are going to improve.

It’s like asking in class, who are the students are going to improve the most?

All well and good to say Finland is having a good response with a relatively small homogenous population, and compare that to Italy - but will Italy be the most innovative country in preparing again, and perhaps Finland’s improvement will be much smaller, we might be quite rigid in our ability to adapt quickly.

So that really does bring up what does ‘good’ leadership look like.

Robert

To any of the panellists: to what extent should governments be honest with the public about future scenarios in terms of mortality and economic impacts of Covid?

There used to be a time when we would blindly trust institutions, but now the data access has changed - so how has trust and candor play out now?

Andrea

4Ts… Transparency.

We look at measures around the world, and through that the ability for citizens to those in power to account. Govs across world have made huge steps forward in transparency, and technology has enabled that.

Blockchain - the next level of the internet goes beyond IoT, the internet of data - it’s about the internet of transactions and trust.

If you take blockchain to its extremes you don’t need institutions at all, it’s all managed between citizens.

It’s bringing more pressure on those in power to uphold transparency to maintain the trust.

Christian

We get the citizens we deserve. Showing transparency and vulnerability, generates trust. And we’re seeing two strategies play out right now - one hard core control strategies and then others that do have some rules in place but really trying to trust people to do the right thing. And both of them give significant behaviour outcomes, it’s just that I’d rather live in a country that sees behaviour change through trust than coercion.

Sam

Transparency creating trust vs transparency in an extraordinarily balancing act. And here the context of course is complicated by the federal government having a very different approach to thinking about things. So many negotiations.

People want clarity, they want direction, they want simplicity.

We need to acknowledge that human factor - if you bring people into the response process, particularly when at this stage things are so unknown and fluctuate on an almost daily basis - the confidence that you can achieve through transparency, not sure that it would deliver what we are looking for.

From Chikako Masuda to Everyone: (03:15 pm)

 I talked with Audrey Tang (Taiwan) few days ago,  she said "Radical transparency" is important in this situation.

From Sam Hannah-Rankin to Everyone: (03:17 pm)

 I like the idea of radical transparency - I wonder if part of the balancing act is keeping the transparency at the right level of detail?

From Chikako Masuda to Everyone: (03:20 pm)

 I will share our transcript (Audrey's interview) next monday on our website. https://www.iais.or.jp/en/contents/

From Luis E. Loria to Everyone: (03:12 pm)

 Any advice on how to design and implement an open innovation/collective intelligence process to co-create the “new rules of the game” for the post-COVID-19 era?

From Christian Bason to Everyone: (03:15 pm)

 Hi Louis we are surveying the public on which scenarios they see for 2021 — it’s currently in Danis but link is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SIccdkcK95F9hNVBEv4ozrAG-4VU4LeADuK8Ja0poF0/edit

From Ashley Worobec to Everyone: (03:18 pm)

 In case this works, form translated to English: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fforms%2Fd%2F1SIccdkcK95F9hNVBEv4ozrAG-4VU4LeADuK8Ja0poF0%2Fviewform%3Fedit_requested%3Dtrue

Luis

 Any advice on how to design and implement an open innovation/collective intelligence process to co-create the “new rules of the game” for the post-COVID-19 era?

We aren’t going back to normal, how can we design the new rules.

Christian

I’ve put a link up - it’s in Danish, it’s for citizens and their scenarios for 2021, across two different axis of the future and capturing collective intelligence on how the public sees our future.

One axis is between highly market society and society driven by public outcomes

One axis between centralised and one between decentralised

And right now of course, it’s highly centralised and highly driven by public outcomes. But where will we be in 2021. What do they think will happen, and what do they want to happen.

One example of Collective Intelligence.

Andrea

There’s this natural tendency to think of the future as something different from the present - we are simultaneous spinning three plates - past, present and future.

William Gibson, “the future is here, it’s just not widely distributed.”

In many respects we are looking to other countries in different time frames as the counterfactual - what might happen if. Eg the UK has spoken about being 2 weeks behind Italy - but how each country then responds in up what they want to create.

In the Policy Lab we’ve been working with speculative design - creating something that can be realised about different scenarios. The important role that design and visualization. Think beyond their own mental models about what the future might be. They’re there to create debate. You can tease out some of the nuance within those debates.

        From Luis E. Loria to Everyone: (03:21 pm)

 I would also be interested in learning more about the speculative design approach that you are using at the Policy Lab, @Andrea.

Brenton

We’re seeing a crisis of Social Imagination - which Geoff Mulgan and Cassie Robinson have written well about this recently - about how you can use imagination to design the future - and getting that done from a hopeful place.

Andrea

Economist wrote about what the 2020s might look like. How wrong it looks now! How things change so fast.

Brenton

And linking that to leadership - how do you help the leadership of ideas, how do you help people to step into that space. Encouragement, visualization, etc what else is needed

Christian

Yes, there is lots in this.

Working on health project. Calling it the Big Bang. After the covid we’ll have to redesign a lot of the healthcare system.  

Speculative design tells us a lot the what we want for the future. But also what we have right now. It tells you about the present, it’s about reflecting on current practices.  

From bill McAllister-lovatt to Everyone: (03:25 pm)

 There is some new & interesting work on using Ecosystems as a new and radical design model for healthcare

        From Suhit A to Everyone: (03:22 pm)

 @christian I will be interested to explore the health angle and see what we can do here in South Australia.

Andrea

Will share out notes on the use of speculative design, on government - court processes and future of ageing. There’s some blogs about that.

Brenton reads question from someone:

How do we look through lens of gender/sex for what good leadership look like? And what is that telling us about this situation?

Christian

Yes, there was a good article shared in the pre-reading for this call too. Female leaders have had to fight so much harder for their positions often, so arguably they’re just extremely more qualified than men because they’ve had to do so much to break through the glass ceiling.  

There’s other arguments too - it’s hard to ascribe general traits to gender. There’s this motherly caring approach from the PM. Some think is irrelevant, some are finding it problematic. There was a press conference the other day where people were saying, we’re being spoken to like children so we need to find balance.

I do think there’s strength in the more holistic approach that the female leaders have been taking, and right now- what we don’t need is brutal testosterone driven action - we need holistic approach. I do think male leaders can do the same.

In our leadership team we’re 2 men, 2 women and I find that really good as a balance, same for the board. As a priority we need to balance the genders but we also need to be careful about ascribing traits to gender (but I probably just did!).  

Sam

It’s an interesting question - and is it a gender lens, I don’t know - this caring role has been so much ascribed to the female responsibility. I think the fact that everyone is in the home, and everyone is needing to negotiate and take the caring side of things seriously, and it’s becoming very visible you do a check-in now and everyone’s got kids and the home schooling and the caring responsibilities. The more holistic, the private sphere that is so often held with the female side is coming more into the professional sphere in a more public way that I think is fundamentally shifting these things.

From Trish Hansen to Me: (Privately) (03:26 pm)

 We need to hang in curiosity. Adelaide, has hosted a Festival of Ideas for a decade - interesting but  lots of talking. I wonder if we can democratise process.

From Karen Prokopec to Everyone: (03:26 pm)

 I am really interested in Christian's mapping/graphing of approaches for government action -I think we have a tendency as governments to move between these approaches (sometimes because of political mandate).  Seems that the middle road on both axis is the best approach for governments to not find ourselves unable to quickly react to these crisis.  Would be nice to see it visualized.  How is time considered in this graphing?

From Ashley Worobec to Everyone: (03:26 pm)

 Designs for the Pluriverse by Escobar gets into patriarchy vs. matriarchy, and it is really fascinating to look at societies through that lens. Something I hadn’t had my eyes truly opened to.

More on experimentation and foresight

From the chat:

Opening it up to questions

From giulio quaggiotto to Everyone: (02:46 pm)

 For Sam - can you tell us more about the split in the Victoria government. how is that going to work?

From Sarah Hurcombe to Everyone: (02:46 pm)

 what’s been most challenging to your design or innovation methods during this period?

From bill McAllister-lovatt to Everyone: (02:46 pm)

 What are your thoughts on Place based leadership and reflecting the values & behaviours of the teams

From Jo Carter to Everyone: (02:47 pm)

 There is a lot of learning to be captured right now. How might we do that really effectively in the moment, so that when we come to reflect later, we don’t view things through rose tinted glasses.

From Ashley Worobec to Everyone: (02:47 pm)

 How do we move forward in a more open approach, in a way that allows for more collaboration across sectors, across the world, etc, in order to also reduce excess or double-work?

From Lene Krogh Jeppesen (COI Denmark) to Everyone: (02:47 pm)

 Are your points on leadership equally relevant for civil servants/administrative leaders as well as for political leadership? Or what differences do you think there is for political vs. civil servant leadership through crisis?

From Trish Hansen to Everyone: (02:48 pm)

 establishing a 'design code' - our values, design principles and way of being will inform everything as we emerge. How might we provoke discussion about this?

From Christian Bason to Everyone: (02:51 pm)

 Thanks Trish for your point on design — we actually established some design principles for how we wish to work during and beyond the crisis, and yesterday had those principles endorsed by our Board. For instance to take a proactive investment approach to our role…

Questions you asked:

Please add in your question on leadership.

Benedicte Wildhagen:

• The pandemic is global, in disregard of borders and Brexit. How to lead and innovate within and across national borders?
• What can we learn from the rapid Corona crisis to improve governments’ approach to the ‘slow’ sustainability crisis (SDG 17)?

Marco Steinberg

• how we should define the standard by which we measure good performance? I think this will be especially important when it comes to learning from this first wave, in preparing for a possible second one.

What role does your team have to support public services in Victoria to plan for the ‘recovery’ phase including the secondary impacts of the crisis? (Robert, London)

For Sam - can you tell us more about the split in the Victoria government. how is that going to work? (From Sarah Hurcombe)

• Yes I’d like to hear about that too — ambidextrous government! (Christian)

What’s been most challenging to your design or innovation methods during this period? (From bill McAllister-lovatt)

What are your thoughts on Place based leadership and reflecting the values & behaviours of the teams (From Christian Bason)

Yes I’d like to hear about that too — ambidextrous government!

There is a lot of learning to be captured right now. How might we do that really effectively in the moment, so that when we come to reflect later, we don’t view things through rose tinted glasses. (From Jo Carter)

How do we move forward in a more open approach, in a way that allows for more collaboration across sectors, across the world, etc, in order to also reduce excess or double-work? (Ashley Worobec)

Are your points on leadership equally relevant for civil servants/administrative leaders as well as for political leadership? Or what differences do you think there is for political vs. civil servant leadership through crisis? (From Lene Krogh Jeppesen (COI Denmark))

Establishing a 'design code' - our values, design principles and way of being will inform everything as we emerge. How might we provoke discussion about this? (Trish Hansen)

I am interested in how the dominant culture dominates or not in these times. Would be interested to hear on how minority views and experiences are creating opportunities for innovation? (Moira Were)

To Christian: in crisis moments when more expert based or even technocratic approaches might arguably be more important, what is the benefit of more federalized design methods? What should the role of design-led innovation be in these times? (Anke Gruendel)

It seems project and leadership orientation now are exposed as lacking when coordinated efforts are needed, across sector but also countries. This is uncharted territories for ‘leadership’, apart from the military...? (Benedicte Wildhagen)

Also interested in how gender lens in leadership, design and learning in these times and how these variables are showing up in new models of governance and decision-making (Moira Were)

We all struggle with change and uncertainty.Are we resilient enough as a species to be able to deal with the changes that are on the horizon? How can we develop this resilience? (bill McAllister-lovatt)

The Leadership model and its orientation, should reflect the values & behaviour of the the I & the  We, that is the challenge

How do we have a radically diverse conversations about 'how to be' - to use/ fill this precious space between the COVID happening and our response (Trish Hansen)

Any advice on how to design and implement an open innovation/collective intelligence process to co-create the “new rules of the game” for the post-COVID-19 era? (Luis E. Loria)

Do we sometimes ‘romanticise’ the ability of human beings to find and implement community-based solutions? What’s a real approach in your view? ( Michela Ventin)

From Christian Bason to Everyone:  03:56 PM

Thanks Anke — we see a huge interest at central level in what we term scenario design, which is to use co-design methods combined with foresight — and are right now working with the government on the future of work and the future of manufacturing using scenarios. We’re actually running a summer school on this (which will be delivered digitally). More here: https://danskdesigncenter.dk/en/events/summer-school-learn-basics-scenario-design

What is the role of municipalities to lead locally? (Trish Hansen)