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Designing 'Attractors' for Action
in Complex Multi-Stakeholder Situations
Design, as a culture of inquiry and action, is
increasingly being adopted for making
purposeful change in highly complex social
systems. There is growing appreciation that
all people are designers and that design per
se is not the privilege of a small group of
exceptionally creative individuals called
designers.
The challenge in community planning is in
formulating a process that determines
optimal strategic direction and getting
stakeholders to put this strategy into
successful operation. The participation of
multiple stakeholders in the process is
encouraged through democratization of design
activities. This fosters a desired future
for the social system which acts as an
'Attractor' for action based on broad
stakeholder consensus and
their enthusiastic buy-in. Such an Attractor offers a practical but idealized
organizational
vision that sets out organizational meaning
in a way that encourage alll stakeholders to continually
shape it through communal sense-making and
to co-evolve with it through their actions.
Interactive Planning (IP) is a powerful systemic
design approach that uniquely achieves the
design objectives highlighted above. IP is a
methodology derived from a holistic
viewpoint where it is assumed that the
community is a multi-purpose system and that
the planning process should take into
account the objectives of all stakeholders.
The IP process accommodates these diverse
objectives whilst providing an approach to
resolving the differences that are
inevitable in a multi-purpose system.
IP begins by gaining an understanding of the
community as a whole and how it, as a
system, interacts with the relevant social
environment. This then leads to describing
the interaction of the parts of the system,
and finally, to understanding the parts
themselves. The positive community impact
provided by IP depends on the purposeful
interaction of people, place(s) and
service(s). Without a systems approach, the
synergistic potential of these individual
parts cannot be achieved.
In regard to creating a desired future for a
social system based on consensus and buy-in
of the stakeholders, Syntegration (S) is an
ideal font-end companion for IP. In complex
multi-faceted situations, Syntegration
addresses the need for improved integration
of information, opportunities for tapping
and building upon distributed knowledge, and
the nurturing of collective vision and
commitment. The combined IP/S methodology
provides the stakeholder design-team with a
solid base for moving ahead with their IP
effort.
Unlike the typical consulting model based on
“expert” assumptions and arbitrary goals,
IP/S is a bottom-up approach that is as
efficient as it is effective in
accommodating diverse objectives, and offers
an approach to resolving the differences
that are inevitable in a complex
multi-purpose system.
For all communities, the current environment is
becoming increasingly complex and
uncertain. Community needs and stakeholder
profiles are rapidly changing, creating a
need for social systems to adapt to this
increasing rate of change. Predicting the
future is difficult if not impossible in
this environment, leading to serious
failures and trust “black holes”. IP/S is a
methodology that eliminates the need for
forecasting. It seeks to identify
assumptions in the strategy and to frame
them as possibilities and areas for
contingency planning. Identification of
assumptions allows for experimentation and
monitoring of their validity as the complex
environment changes.
The results of the IP/S approach are
transferrable and adaptable, not only
leading to a written strategic or policy
plan, but also to new ways of thinking about
the nature of the community which will be
disseminated throughout the community by
stakeholders. This shared vision is not
only the direction forward, but also the
road map and driver’s education needed to
reach the desired destination.
Interactive Planning and Syntegration have been
successfully implemented in very many
communities, including Not for Profit, and
are particularly well suited to the
development of policy and strategic planning
initiatives addressing tbl sustainability
and other complex social, environmental and
economic challenges.
For further information please contact:
The Leadership Alliance
Inc.
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