The SDGs are radical. They emerged as a sort of ‘to-do-list’ full of priorities for taking on the world’s problems. In response to the motherhood statements and unfulfilled promises of the Millennium Development Goals, they were ushered in through a human rights-based approach to relaying the power that a commitment a State could make to a collective goal and their citizens. It’s a complex thing to disentangle, but the goals are built on ending poverty, promoting equity and equality, tackling the climate crisis, and generally looking after our global public goods.
We find ourselves working with a variety of multistakeholder…
Gaining consensus from a group of stakeholders is an important part of working collaboratively across projects, programs and organisations. Facilitating productive conversations that arrive at consensus is anything but easy.
Typically, we find that facilitating consensus building activities occurs at three junctures:
— in workshops
— in meetings for decision
— during feedback
1. In workshops
- Often there will be divergent viewpoints, or ideas that don’t seem to gel. As a facilitator bringing together a group of stakeholders from diverse backgrounds, part of the role is about generating consensus within the group for work contributing towards stated goals.
- For example…
We’ve all been to great meetings and inspiring workshops. No matter your fondness for trust exercises, in work, sense making through conversation and collaboration is part of how we do good business.
Seeking agreement, consensus building, tackling complex problems, designing strategy — these tasks are commonplace in our working lives. In our experience, everyone has become a facilitator because our roles expect it, but not everyone is a good facilitator.
The art of facilitation is ultimately about creating a process to achieve shared goals for a group. …
In this unusual time where we are giving most of our waking life to screens, the prospect of spending any more time with people in a virtual space, staring at ourselves (because, let’s admit it — it’s very distracting) and talking about what we’ve been up to/excited about/are most grateful for, is pretty unappealing.
We’ve been working with a range of clients over the past few months thinking about online engagement, and in this second piece on the topic, we will be exploring how to get people to an online event, and how to make sure they keep coming back…
It’s been a year of screens, that’s for sure. Like most people I find myself moving from days of looking at the middle-sized screen to the sofa with the big screen, while I scroll through my pocket-sized screen. We’re certainly interacting a lot more with each other in virtual spaces, but I’m confident our closeness is evaporating despite our best intentions.
I have been one of the early adopters of online engagement, having spent the last few years working in a hybrid fashion. It’s meant that I can provide services, do work, and get involved in projects that are physically…
In October 2020, the Australian Government released an early draft of an Outcomes Framework for the National Disability Strategy (NDS) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The draft Framework is a joint effort between the NDS and the NDIS, and intends to provide a better way to measure and report on outcomes for people with disability.
This is timely, relevant and important work. In an area as complex as disability, outcomes frameworks are one way to focus attention, identify mutually reinforcing activities and strengths, and stay the course as progress is made (and sometimes un-made). …
Outcomes based management, budgeting and funding aim to focus our attention, efforts and decisions on the things that matter — outcomes. We spend more time than many reading about, talking about, and sometimes dreaming about outcomes, particularly how they can be measured and paid for. In a world where what we do has stolen the lime-light, it can be difficult to shift or reorient ourselves to what results from what we do — the effects, benefits or outcomes of our work.
Yet today, outcomes-based approaches are becoming increasingly sought after, by governments, NGOs, businesses, international organizations and multi-stakeholder partnerships and…
It was RUOK day yesterday. I had a call from my mother, funny memes sharing with my friends, and a completely unnecessary highfalutin examination of the role of public health messaging in the time of a global pandemic with my business partner. All were necessary, and all ensured that I felt checked-in with, followed up with, and cared for.
It’s hard to be ok at the moment, because it’s a truly unsettling time and there are many factors contributing to plenty of different kinds of stress and discomfort for all of us. …
Starting a new partnership is not without its challenges — thankfully there’s some great reality TV that might help make the task a little easier.
Pop quiz: about which recent Australian reality TV offering is the following excerpt -
“…romances will blossom, tensions will rise, love triangles will form, and friendships and relationships will be tested. Drama will build until the last remaining couples head off on secluded fantasy dates that will test the strength of their relationships.”
If you guessed Bachelor in Paradise, you’re correct. Of course, I haven’t (yet) watched a single episode — not one, none at…
Stay home — stay safe.
Get tested.
Staying apart — keeps us together.
These are just some of the messages many of us have been receiving in various forms over the past few months. Some are crisp and simple, some are emotive, some are instructive. Common to all is that they are visible. They can be found on highways, on the sides of buildings, on our televisions, in our newspapers, in our inboxes, on our news feeds. For many of us they are impossible to miss, hard to misinterpret, and difficult to ignore. And because they reach us, wherever we…
Day Four Projects
Knowledge and empowerment for good.
