The Brief
Two teams in Auckland Council approached us in late 2019 with questions about how to empower communities in Tāmaki Makaurau - Auckland.
The event banner we created for the first community collaboration hui
One was the Community Action on Youth and Drugs team. They were looking ahead to the Cannabis Referendum in 2020 and wondering how they could evaluate young people’s voices in the referendum. Any change to cannabis laws would have a significant impact on young people - whether they were eligible to vote or not. And the referendum provided one of the biggest opportunities to engage young people in a democratic process.
The other team was the Youth Empowerment Team who were interested in creating a stronger working relationship with a new organisation called the Auckland Youth Voice Network. Both teams knew the values they wanted to bring to these opportunities. They spoke about being community-led, about empowering others, about the importance of codesign. But they were unsure how to put those values into practice.
Read on to learn how we guided them through this process.
Our Approach
The discovery process
We began both projects with a discovery process. This involved us asking lots of challenging questions like:
Why do you want to do this project *now*? What would happen if you waited?
What would happen if you didn’t do this project?
What risks are you concerned about?
Why involve an independent facilitator in this? Why not lead this yourself?
At the end of this discovery process, we provided three options to each team for how we could support them to achieve their desired outcomes.
Codesigning the process
Once we had the official green-light, we did some work to understand the lay of the land.
This involved some stakeholder analysis, project planning, and a series of one-on-one interviews with key people. This helped both Auckland Council teams to better understand what the opportunities were and what risks they might need to navigate.
For the Cannabis Referendum project, we also established a Codesign Group comprised of a diverse group of influential community members. This group would play an influential role in shaping the process over the coming months.
We also started to plan some in-person events and workshops to engage interest groups and young people in identifying potential opportunities.
Then the COVID lockdown was announced
We saw the lockdown coming and started to plan with both Auckland Council teams about how we could adapt their engagement methods. All our in-person events for both projects were scheduled for what ended up being Week 1 of the lockdown.
We were confident that we could transition the in-person events successfully to a virtual alternative.
At the same time, we were aware of Auckland Council’s increased financial challenges - with the lockdown significantly impacted the Council’s revenues. And their focus was on emergency management: most other non-essential projects were being put to one side.
Yet we were hearing from our target communities that they still wanted to be involved in these projects. Many people told us they still had time and headspace to participate.
Having completed the bulk of our work, we suggested to Auckland Council that they continue with both projects as they risked a zero return on their investment if they were to pause or cancel at this late stage.
This meant we had to pivot hard to develop a new engagement approach using virtual methods rather than in-person methods.
“That conversation where I was getting cold feet, and you told me I didn’t need to do anything other than attend the workshop - that you had everything in hand. That was such a relief and I would only have let you do that if I trusted you.”
The day of the first Zoom workshop arrived and our team was both nervous and confident. Although the methods were different, we had faith in our underlying principles and processes.
But were we able to achieve the clients’ desired outcomes through virtual methods?
The Result
Engaging effectively through Zoom
In all honesty, we were blown away with the positive feedback and momentum we were able to create in the workshops. Like many people, we were skeptical about what you could achieve with virtual methods.
A screenshot from the first community collaboration hui held by Zoom. It shows a poll that asks “How committed are you to attending the follow-up hui on Wednesday 8 March”? 84% said they were very committed or reasonably committed to attending.
“I was definitely concerned about the idea of a virtual partnership hui. But the way the Business Lab team facilitated using a range of interactive features meant we had a really rich discussion. It was so great to see what you could achieve online with some careful thought put into it.”
“Strangely (given we are at Alert level 4!), I felt very calm and confident about it. Our team was really happy. We felt really energised afterwards. You did an awesome job of engaging everybody.”
Highlighting the potential of virtual collaboration
These two projects demonstrate the potential of virtual collaboration. We have come to realise the benefits of virtual collaboration are multi-layered:
For starters, there are the financial benefits. Reduced travel costs. No venues or catering. Less time spent in traffic. All of this means greater overall productivity.
Then we have the social or cultural benefits. We’ve seen that virtual methods can increase participation as long as your target community has access to devices and some basic tech skills. Virtual platforms often level the playing field of how organisations work. Chief executives take up the same screen real estate as everybody else. And that can enable more inclusive work environments - meaning more people can contribute their best work to their organisation, more often.
And of course there are the environmental benefits. You only need to think back to those quiet and sociable streets to understand the benefits of fewer cars on the road, and fewer planes in the air.
You can read more about our hopes for the future of virtual collaboration in our interview with the National Business Review.
Leaving our clients well placed to take their next step
Since reviewing these projects with both client teams, we have continued to check in on their progress. They can continue to communicate with us through our Monday.com project management platform to ease handover and ensure continuity and accountability.
Our aim is leave our clients in a stronger position than when they started. We look to build their capability by sharing our principles and processes, and by sharing the learning journey with them.
What we have heard heartens us.
“I did miss building relationships with key people in person. But yesterday we were able to set up a social media project really quickly with the Network; it all just fell into place perfectly. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without the groundwork you took us through.”
“It fills me with optimism for the coming weeks and beyond that we can still connect and have a really good discussion online.”
“Thanks for your message Paul! We’re using all the great things you’ve taught us so I’m sure the next codesign meeting will go great!”
“We are often finding ourselves thinking ‘ok so what would the BL team be advising here…’! We are doing great thanks, the co-design group have been very active, which is great, and we’re working hard on the next stages of implementation.”
Are you struggling to choose the right virtual collaboration tech tool?
As you run from one project to the next, you may be struggling to find time to learn about virtual collaboration. Or you may be overwhelmed by all the tech tools out there. If that sounds like you, download our Beginner’s Guide to Collaboration and Engagement Tech Tools to unlock the potential of virtual collaboration.