The Brief

Two teams in Auckland Council approached us in late 2019 with questions about how to empower communities in Tāmaki Makaurau - Auckland.

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.

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.

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.

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.