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THE OTESHA PROJECT UK
HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
THE OTESHA PROJECT UK
Contents
Page
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Introduction
Past projects
The overview
01: Gather your people
02: Kick off
03: Learn the issues and pick your theme
04: Map the landscape and develop your expertise
05: People research
06: Draw insight
07: Design your project
08: Plan your project
The Art of Making Things Happen
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HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
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Hello.
We live in interesting times. When future generations look back, our guess is that they'll see this
moment in history as the point when we, as a society, stood up and faced our unprecedented
challenges head on. We know that the things we do every day - what we wear, what we eat, where
we shop, how we get around - have impacts on ourselves, other people and our environment, and we
think that now’s the time to make sure our actions have good impacts, not bad ones. We want to build
a cleaner, greener, fairer world, starting right now.
We can already see loads of people joining with us to start do things differently, better than we’ve ever
done them before. There's no one path forward in this and no one leader. Instead, it’s about everybody
making progress in their own way. Government has a massive role, yes. Business too. But individuals
and communities are perhaps the most important players. More and more people are wanting to see
and be a part of a better future, wanting to reach out to friends, family and neighbours and create
positive change that works for them in their own contexts.
It’s undoubtably worth doing, but it can seem hard or awkward or something.
We thought we might be able to help. So we made this. It’s a guide for people who want to create
their own projects. It’s designed to help you get a group of people together and change something in
your lives/ community/ school/ college/ street/ etc. to make it feel better and work better in our changing
times - to make it more sustainable, in other words. You might have an idea already, or you might need
to get an idea. Either way, this is designed to help you. And hopefully, it’ll help you do it in a way that is
fun, and doable, and in which you learn a lot and do actually change things for the better.
If you find this guide useful, or have any suggestions for improvements, we’d love to hear them at
[email protected]. Thanks!
More about Otesha
The Otesha Project is where global issues meet personal lives. It’s a growing group of people who are
responding creatively and personally to big issues like climate change and poverty. These issues are
serious but they also give us an opportunity to make our lives, our communities and the world better
than ever before. Otesha started in Canada in 2003, Otesha UK started in 2007, and now there is
also an Otesha Project in Australia.
Over here in the UK, we do a few main things:
Change Projects: We help groups of young people work together to change something in their lives
and communities to make them more sustainable.
Cycle tours: Each summer groups of people aged 18-28 hop on their bikes to travel around the UK,
learn loads about social & environmental issues, visit interesting projects, and inspire other people
to create change in their own lives. The teams stop off at schools, youth clubs, festivals and, well,
anywhere really, to perform a play about how global issues connect to our personal lives.
We also run one-off workshops about things like ethical fashion, Fairtrade and growing your own
food and we’ve written a book called The Otesha UK Handbook, which you can download here:
www.otesha.org.uk/handbook
Stay in touch by signing up to the monthly Otesha e-newsletter: www.otesha.org.uk/newsletter
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Past Projects
Dirty Weekends In The Back Garden
The Goldsmiths Enviroclub Food Garden
We worked with Goldsmiths University Enviroclub for six
months in 2007-2008.
Their theme was food, and their broad focus was to help
people in their community grow food. They also wanted
to strengthen relationships between the transient student
community and the local community, and help people
learn how to cook delicious things with seasonal
vegetables.
They put a sofa on the high street and offered cake to
passers-by in return for sharing their views on food
and environmental issues. It was the opposite of a
protest. They found that the local community didn’t
seem to know or care much about climate change,
and few people realised there was any connection between
food and environmental issues.
Universally, everyone loved growing food. Everyone. But few people actually did, due to a
handful of clear barriers. The students came up with a design to overcome those barriers.
They’ve turned a small disused piece of land on the University ground into an edible garden, based
on permaculture principles, so that more students can grow and eat their own food. They’ve even got
a little stage in their garden for parties, music and theatricalities.
After almost two years of to and fro, Network rail have given Enviroclub a large plot of land to turn
into the long awaited community garden. They’re are now in the process of getting together a team
of people to manage the project, with someone from the local school, the surrounding residential
area, and from college, to really get a community garden going that can go on and on.
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Cooking parties and seasonal feasts
With Tower Hamlets Summer University
We worked with Students in Tower Hamlets Summer
University for one week in 2008.
They decided to focus on food. They wanted to learn how to
buy and cook healthy, seasonal and sometimes organic food,
but they also wanted to explore how the world could make it
easier for them, their families and friends to eat this way.
They spoke to the people running market stalls, shops and
cafes in Whitechapel, and found that they didn’t stock
organic, local and Fairtrade food because it was more
expensive and they had no sign that consumers wanted it.
So, the summer university lot:
• Decided to start asking the cafes, shops and markets they
use about seasonal, organic and fairtrade food, and they
emailed other people encouraging them to do it too.
• Wrote to their MPs asking them to do something about the price of organic food, considering
the growing evidence that organic food is more nutritious, and that our fruit and vegetables have
become less nutritious and more dangerous to our health since we started farming with chemical
pesticides and fertilizers 60 years ago. They also sent a template email to their friends and family
so that they could do the same.
• Gathered recipes, worked out where to buy local and organic food, got their friends and some
mothers together, and had a cooking party. Then they invited guests and hosted a Seasonal
Summer Feast. It was stunningly delicious. We hope there is an Autumn one and a Winter and on
and on…
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The Overview
step 01
Get people
We’ve developed a process for designing a
great project and making it happen
step 02
Kick off
It’s fun. We think it works, and it’s influenced by a) a classic
design process, b) the process used by policy innovators
at the Design Council and c) the process used by Doug
Mackenzie, a leading Canadian behaviour change specialist.
step 03
Learn the issues and pick your
theme
It starts with learning all you need to learn in order to design a
great project (steps 3 – 6).
step 04
Map the landscape and develop
your expertise
Then you design your project, and test it at a small scale
before you do anything big (steps 7 – 10).
step 05
People research
We’ve found that people also really enjoy doing smaller things
all the way along - making changes in their own lives, visiting
interesting projects, screening films - stuff like that. It turns out
that this also keeps project’s energy high and helps your team
learn, really building the team’s expertise.
step 06
Draw insight
Learning is really important. It’s how things get better. The
project can learn all the way through; this process is designed
to help make that happen.
step 07
Design your project
The process is pretty adaptable. Sometimes it gets scrambled
up. That’s okay. We’ve done it in a weekend, a week and over
the course of a year in fortnightly meetings.
Other things are possible.
step 08
Plan your pilot
It’s all possible.
step 09
Run your pillot
step 10
Learn & refine your project design
step 11
Ramp it up!
Plan & run your full-scale project
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01: Gather Your People
But how to find them?
We’ve found that a group of between 3 and 20 people works best, but don’t limit it there. Some people
will come from time to time, others will become committed regulars. Don’t pressure anyone, see what
emerges. But bear in mind that you do need a few reliable key individuals.
Sit down and come up with a plan of how you’re going to find people. Here are some ideas:
1.Find your co-pilot (ok, bad metaphor… your tandem cyclist?) - one or two keen and capable friends to run it with you. You’ll feel more confident, have more fun, and get more done
2.Talk to or email your friends. See if they’d be interested in getting involved
3.Make a poster. You can make your own, or we can help you with this - just ask!
4.Put it up where the kind of people you want to attract hang out. Cafes. Inside the doors of loos in
pubs. The Student Union. You know what’ll work for you
5.Make your project into a social thing for like-minded people
6.If there’s an event you could go to, go along and speak to people. You could make a poster, collect
people’s email addresses (don’t expect them to be the ones to make contact afterwards - it’s really
important for you to follow up), and you’ll need a good conversation starter.
Breaking the ice can be tough. Here are some ideas for starting up conversations with potential new
group members:
• Make cake and offer small pieces of it
• Hand out squares of chocolate from Fairtrade chocolate bars (people love food!)
• Instead of telling people what you’re doing, start by asking them questions. If you’re interested
in doing a project about food, you can ask them if they like to eat, or cook, or grow food. If you
think you might want to do a project about cycling, you can ask people if they cycle. If not, ask
why not. Then see if they’re interested in getting more people cycling etc.
• Even better, get them to ask you a question first. People are much more likely to listen to what
you have to say if they’ve asked you to tell them
• Explaining your idea
Before you start talking to people, you’ll need to be good at explaining what the project is (which is
hard given that there isn’t really a project until the group creates one).
It’s a good idea for you and your co-bicyclist to practice on each other until you’re making each
other very excited about the idea of the project! It might feel a bit awkward to practice with each
other, but trust us, it works.
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More ideas for finding your people
Just in case the suggestions we’ve given so far aren’t quite enough, here are two more:
• Is there a Transition movement in your area? Transition Town groups often work on sustainabilitythemed projects, so you could get in touch with your nearest group and see if they’re doing anything
similar, or if their members want to help our with your project. You can find a list of all the Transition
Towns on this website: www.transitiontowns.org
• You could have a Green Film Season. It’s a great, high-entertainment, low-commitment way to
get people learning and talking more about the issues and your project. If you want ideas for films to
show, ask the Otesha team (email [email protected])
Key things to tel l other people abou
t you
r project
We think we can do better than all
the climate change and poverty in the
world, and we’d like to make our own
neighbourhood / school / uni better
too.
We think that when people do things
differently, change happens.
We want to do a project to change som
ething – like <insert something you
might
like to change… the food in the uni
canteen… how it’s not safe to hang
out the
in the local park, how buses or cycle
lanes could be better, etc>
There’s an organisation cal led Otesha
that’s giving a bit of help to people
like
us who want to start up projects. Th
ey’ll give us training in how to thin
k
up
a
project and make it happen - then we
just need to follow through.
Tips for getting people to meetings
• Make sure everyone has a role
are) Don’t land roles on people, work it out together. But people feel (and
more important when they have a clear role to play.
what • Ask people to bring something to each meeting and make them feel that
they’re bringing is really important
• Have somewhere consistent to meet, somewhere that’s nice to be
a drink or
• Have sociable things happening afterwards (from time to time go for
a coffee together)
• Have a welcomer for people who join halfway through
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02: Kick Off
Time: 2 – 5 minutes per person there.
Stuff: Food! You could go to a bakery that throws out its unsold food at the end of the day and ask
them to give it to you instead, and add a big pot of hummus; if you’re a student you could ask the
Union to provide funding for refreshments; or you could ask people to bring something along to share
(though people don’t always actually do this).
Location: If you haven’t got a location yet you could meet in a pub (if your project doesn’t involve
under 18s), a park, or a cafe where you know you’ll have some space and quiet. But pretty soon you’re
going to need to find a home for your project.
This is a no-commitment general introduction session; introduction to each other and the project idea.
You may have other ideas, which is great; we suggest you run it something like this
1. Give an overview of the meeting
Thank everyone for coming and tell them what’s
going to happen.
2. Introduce yourself and Otesha
Begin by talking about who you are and why
you’ve convened the meeting. It’s good to say
your name, what you’re doing at the moment,
how you came across Otesha, how you feel
about the issues, and why you’ve decided to try
to help something happen. You can explain that
you’re getting some help from Otesha.
3. Ask everyone to introduce themselves
You can ask people to say their name and why
they’re here. If you want, you can also ask them
to say what they’re interested in, what other
groups they’re already part of, or anything else
that’s relevant for your meeting.
Finding your project a home
It’s important to find a regular meeting
place. You need space, light, peace and
quiet, and comfort. Not having a regular
space adds a lot of faff and confusion. In
an ideal world, you would also have access
to: a projector and a screen sometimes,
the internet and a space to store
documents (though it’s fine if you don’t
have these things). A regular meeting
space is essential though. Find it before
your first meeting if you can!
4. Introduce the concept of the project & listen to people’s ideas
Your project is a way for people who care about the same things to come together to make tangible
improvements in their community. Pages 6 and 8 should help you to explain this bit. Once you’ve
explained the concept of the project, you’ll want to open it up for ideas. Ask the people at the meeting
what think about the idea of doing something – what would they like to see change?
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learn names
The best way in the world to
Time: 5 minutes
Stuff: an orange
It sounds geeky but it’s great. People will end up
laughing and smiling. The mood will feel good,
and everyone will know each other’s names.
Stand in a circle. You have an orange.
Part one: the thrower says their name
You say your name, and throw the orange to
someone. They say their name, and throw the
orange to someone else. And so on.
Part two: the catcher says the thrower’s name
Hannah throws the orange to Charlie. Charlie (the catcher) says ‘Hannah’ (the thrower). Charlie
throws the orange to Lisa. Lisa says ‘Charlie.’
Possible part three (if there’s a large group and the game needs to continue longer for people to
learn names): the crowd determines the catcher.
You have an orange. Someone calls out someone else’s name, and you have to throw the orange to
the person they’ve named. E.g. you have an orange, Sarah shouts ‘John’ and you throw the orange
to John. Jamie shouts ‘Anna’ and John throws the orange to Anna.
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03: Learn the issues & pick your theme
Time: About 2 hours
Stuff: The Otesha Quiz; Ideally, a projector and screen, but no problem if not – a laptop, or printed copy
is fine; a big roll of paper (you can get rolls of brown packing paper from the post office pretty cheap
– you might need lots of these over the course of the project); post-it notes; felt tip pens; blue tack or
masking tape.
This is the first full session and it’s important that as many people as possible come.
The first step is for the group to learn about the issues and decide what it wants to focus on.
If it’s a collaborative decision, everybody will feel a sense of ownership of the project, and that tends to
give people more energy for it.
By the end of this section you should have:
• A focus from your project that has come from the ideas and interests of the whole group
• A more aware, engaged, enthusiastic group that is starting to bond
1. The Otesha Quiz (I hour)
In advance
Download the quiz and presentation from www.otesha.org.uk/17/tools-for-campaigners/toolsfor-campaigners. You’ll need to figure out how to present it. If you can get access to a screen and
projector, that’s ace. If not, a laptop is fine. If you don’t have a laptop, print it out.
On the night
Ask people to get into quiz teams of 2 – 4 people, and name their team. Draw up a score table on a
piece of brown paper on the wall. Pose each question, and get each team to give their answer after a
few seconds. If you want to go all out you can bring some music and play ten seconds of it after each
question so that teams don’t hear each other figuring out their answer.
Teams get a score for every correct answer, and the winning team gets a prize, or at least a round of
applause. Bring out your sense of humour for this one, you can really play it up.
Allow there to be a bit of discussion during the quiz if it bubbles up. People will probably have some
knowledge that it’s good to chip in, and there might be some disagreement or controversy – that’s all
healthy. Do make sure you’ve got enough time to get through the presentation and discussion in an
hour.
2. Figure out what the group is interested in (20 mins)
Once you’re done with the quiz, keep people in their teams and ask them to talk about the issues. Give
them three questions to discuss and write them somewhere visible:
• Which issues do you care about most? (food, money, transport, trade, media, energy, fashion and water)
• Which particular problems stand out to you? e.g. ‘I’m interested in transport, and I’m particularly worried about cars and CO2’
• What outcome would you like to see? e.g. ‘Fewer cars’
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Facilitation tip
People should put their own feelings and ideas on the post-it notes- each team doesn’t
have to come up with one set of suggestions between them. Ask people to step up and step
back: say “if you’re usually quiet, step up and speak a bit more; if you’re usually loud,
step back a little and make space for others to talk. That way everyone can contribute.”
Give each group some post-it notes and felt tip pens. They write the key things they’re interested
in on the post-its.
While they’re talking, write the 8 themes in a line along the top of your paper. Put it up on the wall. After about 15 minutes ask everyone to wrap their conversations up and stick their post-its on the paper
under the relevant themes. When they’re done, gather around the paper.
3. Voting (15 minutes)
Give everyone a pen. They have two votes.
First
Get everyone to vote for the Otesha theme (transport, food, money etc.) they’re most interested in by
drawing five stars by the themes written on the brown paper. Each person can put all their five stars
by one theme, give five themes one star each, or anything in between.
Then stand back… your group should now have
it’s theme. If there are two winning themes,
improvise. You could either try to do a project
mixing both themes, or see what comes up in the
next voting session and decide then.
Second
Get everyone to vote on what interests them most
in the clusters of post-it notes under the winning
theme, what they’d most like to work on. Same
method – five stars, off they go.
Then stand back: you have your broad focus.
Articulate it to the group: so it looks like we’re
doing a project on something to do with…
Check it’s ok with everyone. If some people aren’t
keen on the decision, give it a bit of discussion,
don’t let that tension go under the carpet. Ask
them why they don’t like it, then give others a
chance to respond. Finally say what you think.
Try to talk about it until there’s consensus.
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HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
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What you’ve just done is collaboratively decided the direction of your project. Everyone should feel an
equal sense of ownership as a result of the process you’ve gone through, and go away feeling a sense
of direction. At this stage, you don’t need to have a project idea, and if an idea has emerged, don’t
consider it to be final. The project idea will be developed and sculpted once you’ve learnt a bunch more
stuff in the next section.
4. Write it down
…where everyone can see. We recommend creating a google group (where you can share
documents) or email list. That way, key information (like what your project is going to be about) will get
emailed to everyone and they can discuss it if they want, and people who couldn’t make the meeting
can be kept in the loop.
Now:
• Make sure everyone knows the plan for the next meeting
• Between now and next time, ask people to have a think about what they could do about the issue they’ve chosen in their own lives and to chat about it with the people they live with that evening
to find out what they think
• Roll up your paper and guard it with your life: see the note on documentation below
• Go home feeling good. Or go to the pub together. Or whatever.
Congratulations! Good work. Your project has begun.
Documentation
Guard your documents
with your life. When
documents get lost, proje
cts get wobbly. It’s like
losing your diary, or yo
ur mobile phone.
It’s important that a very
reliable person keeps
the documents and brin
gs them to each meeting
.
Usually the co-ordinator
.
Get one of those cardbo
ard tubes from the post
office, write a bold label
on it and store your
documents in there. Trea
sure them like baby
chickens.
13
Your key documents are:
• The timeline
• Lists of everything that
needs to be done
• The project aims and
objectives
• The full Stakeholder ma
p, with everything
you’d like to know and
your insights from the
people research
• The landscape map
• The roles document
HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
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How to be a great facilitator
Although you might want to facilitate your group’s
meetings at the beginning, it’s great to eventually let
different people facilitate different sessions, in order to
to spread ownership of the project.
Here’s what a facilitator needs to do:
• Keep the conversation on track. Keep in mind the
objectives of the overall meeting, and each chunk of
talking. It’s useful to draw up an agenda. This can be
done by the facilitator in advance, or at the meeting
collaboratively by people saying what they’d like to
cover in the meeting. Then put those things in an order
that makes sense and allocate a time limit to each.
• The group will often veer off track. If you’re not
sure whether to rein the conversation in or go with the
tangent, use consensus hand signals (described in the
right hand column here).
• Manage the time. Make sure you cover what you
need to cover.
• Give everyone a say. Some people will dominate while
others will be more quiet. Try and balance that out
by saying things like, ‘hold on Maggie, let’s hear what
other people think’ and ‘John, you haven’t said much,
how does that sound to you?’
• Make sure everything important is documented. You
can either do this yourself or ask someone else to do it.
If everyone needs to see what’s being documented, it
can be useful to do this on flip chart paper. Otherwise
it’s fine to take notes that can be emailed around to
people who couldn’t come to the meeting. They’ll also
be a good record for later.
• Be nice. The facilitator has a strong influence on
the way the meeting feels. Arsy facilitators make
people arsy. Calm facilitators keep things calm. Funny
facilitators make people laugh and enjoy the meeting
more. Don’t be so funny that it stops you doing the
points listed above.
• Be an ‘elder’. An elder isn’t judgemental. An elder
recognises that everyone has value and everybody has
something different to give. Recognise and accept the
value that each person is offering to the group.
• Don’t take sides. The facilitator must be neutral.
This is quite difficult if you’re also a group member.
When you’re facilitating, be as neutral as possible:
if you need to express your own views, say something
like, ‘to take off my facilitator hat for a second,
what I think is….’ Then when you’re done, put your
‘facilitator hat’ back on. You can wear an actual
facilitator’s hat if you want.
• Sometimes the conversation goes off track, but you
think it’s still valuable. What to do? This:
Consensus hand signals
• Put your hand out flat, palm down – tilt the hand
back and forth so the thumb and little finger rock
up and down alternately. Make eye contact with
individuals in the group with a questioning look on
your face. Without interrupting the conversation,
you’re asking them ‘shall we keep talking about
this?’
• People respond with one of two hand signals
• A gesture like moving a glass to the lips means,
‘it’s interesting, but let’s talk about it over a drink or
cup of tea later’
• A thumbs up means, ‘I’d like to keep talking
about this now’
• See what the majority want, and give it to them. If
they want to shelve it for later, say, ‘right, we’re going
off track, let’s shelve this for now. The thing we’re
trying to address /answer /figure out /decide is x, and
we’ve got 4 minutes left. Go’ etc.
• You need to train the group to use this method
before you put it into practice. The second meeting is
a good time to do this.
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04: Map The Landscape and Develop Your Expertise
Time: 2 hours
Stuff: Big roll of paper; marker pen, blu-tack or masking tape
To design a really good project, you need to know a bit more about your context: the landscape of
issues, organisations, projects and people that your project is emerging within.
At the end of this step you should have:
• A plan to learn more about the issues and report back to the group
• A map of the relevant projects and organisations that you know about right now
• A visits team
• A map of all the people your project might touch
1. Figure out who will become The Experts (5 – 10 mins)
It’s good for the group to know more about your theme. In particular, what the problems are, the
possible solutions, and the priorities. Sometimes the most popular issues are not always the highest
impact, and learning more about the issues will help you maximise your impact.
Figure out who is going to become an expert: it’s up to the group how they want to go about finding out
more. Are one or two people in the team going to find out more and report back, or are you all going to
go away and learn at least one thing to share? Now’s the time to decide.
Where to look:
• Read the relevant chapter of the Otesha book - www.otesha.org.uk/handbook
• The Otesha website is, unsurprisingly, full of really useful stuff especially ‘Action Ideas’ and ‘Tools
for Campaigners’ in the ‘Do Something’ section - www.otesha.org.uk/15/action-ideas/more-actionideas
• You can also do a bit of web surfing, talk to people you know, keep an ear open in the news and so on.
Teaching the group
It can be a good idea to write down what you learn and email it to the whole group, who can add their
knowledge too. It can also be a good idea to take a few minutes at the next meeting to talk about what
you’ve learnt.
If you’ve chosen to have a small team of experts, they should make a plan to meet up, and decide
when to report back to the whole group. You’re more likely to do some research, and it’ll be more fun, if
you do it together.
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HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
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2. Map The Landscape (10-20 minutes)
It’s important to be aware of the context that you’re creating your project within – who your allies are,
which organisations you might need to partner with, who you need to get onside or the whole thing will
flop, all that.
Create a spider diagram with your project and area in the middle. Around the edge, write the names of:
• Similar or related projects happening in the area
• Projects further afield that you could learn from
• Organisations that exist to support projects like
yours
• Organisations that your project will affect
• Organisations that might oppose your project
• At this stage you might only know one or two
things: expect to add things on and cross things off
as your project develops
3. Create a Visits Team (5 minutes)
Visits are really important. You can learn a lot from
what other people have done, what’s worked, what
hasn’t. It’ll improve your project, and it can be very
inspiring, keeping the project energy high.
Invite one or two people to volunteer to be the visits
team - ideally two people since it’s more fun to do
this with someone else than alone. They should both have good people skills.
What the team does: team members will keep track of the landscape mapping document. As interesting
projects and organisations come up it’s their job to make contact and arrange visits and meetings
where appropriate. As soon as the team is created, they should make a plan for when to meet and
arrange visits.
4. Map The Human Landscape (aka ‘stakeholder mapping’) (10 minutes)
Your project needs to involve people. People hate having change forced upon them. So if anything’s
going to change, the people affected will need to be genuinely involved. Start by identifying all the
people who your project might touch, and writing them along the top of a piece of paper.
For example, if your rough objective is to green the canteen, the people are: customers (students,
teachers, other staff), chefs, the canteen owners, the canteen managers, the canteen suppliers,
servers, food growers and producers, suppliers / wholesalers. Write them along the top of a big piece
of paper with a good gap in between each.
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You’ll use this document for the next couple of sessions. Let’s call it your ‘stakeholder map’.
Keep it safe.
At the end of this step you should have:
• A plan to learn more about the issues and report back
• A map of the relevant projects and organisations that you know about right now
• A visits team
• A list of all the people your idea might touch, aka your ‘stakeholder map’
05: People Research
Part A: preparation
Time: 1 hour – 1h30
Stuff: Your piece of paper from the stakeholder mapping exercise in the last session, post-its and pens.
Before we can really involve people or design something that will work for them, we need to understand
more about them. We get that understanding by doing people research. It’s an essential part of your
project design. It’s also called ‘user research’ by designers, ‘market research’ by business people and
‘insight’ by social marketers.
It’s extremely interesting and will make your project design much better than it would otherwise be.
By the end of Part A you should have:
• A list of who you want to talk to
• Identified what you want to know about them
• A plan for how you’re going to interview them
1. What are people doing, and what would be better? (10 – 30 mins)
Put your stakeholder map on the wall. You’re going to create a table on the paper. (You already know
this but for clarification, in a table rows run horizontally from left to right, and columns run vertically from
top to bottom).
In the first row you’ve written the types of people your project might touch.
Your project will create changes in what some of these people do in relation to your issue, so they
move away from what they’re currently doing – for example, eating fruit and veg flown in from around
the world - and start doing something more sustainable – for example, eating more local, seasonal
produce.
So the next thing you need to know is what they currently do, and what a more sustainable alternative
might be.
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On the paper, create two more rows underneath: the first is ‘what they do now’ and ‘what might be
better’.
Then figure out, group by group, what you think they do now and what you think might be better, and
write it on the paper. It’s fine to leave blank spaces where you have no idea.
2.What would you like to know?
(10 – 15 minutes)
Create a new row: ‘what do we want to know?’
As a group, discuss what you would like to know about each group, and write it on the paper.
You’ll probably want to know things like:
• What they currently do (you’ll need to check your guesses)
• Why they do that
• What they think about the more sustainable options:
1.What attracts them
2.What’s stopping them
This might be a good time to think a bit more about why people do what they do, and how to create
change. In other words, it’s time to think about the increasingly popular topic of ‘behaviour change.’
There’s a simple way and a more in depth way to
think about this. Here we’re going to focus on the
simple way. If you want more information about
behaviour change, get in touch with us and we
can send you some research!
Here (and on the next page) is the simple way: 18
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Understanding the "barriers and benefits"
that make people do what they do
When something benefits us, we’re more likely to do it. When there are barriers – it’s difficult, or
unpleasant, or not normal – we’re less likely to do it.
Change involves moving from an old way of doing things to a new way. The old way of doing things
probably has more perceived benefits, and fewer barriers, than the new way. The new way is competing
with the old way.
The point of your project is to make the new way win - so that it has more benefits and fewer barriers
than the old way. That in essence is how your project is going to successfully change things.
You can map this pretty easily. Let’s say the old thing is eating processed food, and the new thing is
eating fresh, seasonal food. You can map the perceived barriers and benefits of each.
The Thing They Do
Barriers
Benefits
Eating processed
foods
Can be unhealthy (this is only a
barrier if they care about their
health)
Cheap, quick, easy, filling, tasty
Eating fresh, seasonal Takes time
foods
Takes knowledge – what is in season,
where to buy it, how to cook it
Can be more expensive
Feel healthier and happier – better
mood, more alert, more energy, better
concentration.
Look better – better skin, probably
better figure
This simple model from Doug Mackenzie, a Canadian behaviour change specialist, can help us start to
think about why people do what they do, and what’s stopping them from doing the new thing.
Here we see that while most people would like to feel healthy and happy, if you don’t have the knowledge
of how to buy and cook delicious seasonal food, and you feel that you don’t have the time or money, you
might stick with the cheap, quick and easy food you’re currently eating, even if it’s unhealthy.
This table suggests that helping this person develop the skills to buy and cook tasty, affordable, healthy
seasonal food might reduce some of the barriers and lead to change.
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3.Figure out how you’re going to do it (10 – 20 minutes)
Now, taking some post-its figure out
how, when and where you’re going to
learn more about each group of stakeholders. You might be able to visit
and speak with some.
Others you may want to write a letter
to – for example, if the government is
one of your stakeholders, you might
want to write to your MP. Others you
may not be able to connect with. For
example, it may not be possible to
speak with the people who actually
grow food in other parts of the world.
That’s ok – you have to draw the line
somewhere.
For each group, get precise: when and where are you going to ask them your questions? Is the whole
group going to speak with each stakeholder, or are you going to divide up?
Once you decided it, write it on a post-it and stick it on the paper.
By the end of this section you should have:
• A list of who you want to talk to
• Identified what you want to know about them
• A plan for how you’re going to interview them
Now:
Check that the Experts and the Visits Team have their plans to meet before the next whole group
meeting.
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Taking to the streets
One of the scariest but probably most rewarding elements of people research involves taking to the
streets.
Here’s what some other groups have done:
Goldsmiths Enviroclub wanted to involve people of all ages, ethnic and social backgrounds in their
community food garden. So they put a sofa on the high street on a Saturday afternoon, made some cake,
and invited people to sit with them, eat cake, and talk about food and climate change. They discovered
that the community was hugely enthusiastic about their idea. They came away feeling energised and very
confident that they were onto something worth doing.
They also learnt that most people they spoke with didn’t really know or care about climate change, and
hardly anyone knew that there was a relationship between food and climate change. (Food is 25% of our
ecological footprint). But everybody loved getting dirty and growing food, and if they didn’t, they loved
eating very fresh food that someone else had grown.
Most people who came from other countries had grown food in their home country, but they didn’t grow
food in the UK because they didn’t know how to do it in this climate, or they thought London soil would
all be polluted, or they didn’t have access to land.
This taught the Enviroclub which buttons to press, and which to avoid in all their future messaging.
They learnt that a poster saying ‘Come grow food because it’s good for the planet’ would fall on deaf
ears, but something saying more like ‘Join us for a Dirty Weekend in the Back Garden – we’re going to
grow fresh organic food together in London’ would have more purchase.
The students at Tower Hamlets Summer University emailed questions to their MPs, spoke with their
parents, and went out in pairs to speak to the managers of local shops, cafes and market stalls.
They discovered that nobody was selling local, organic and Fairtrade food in Whitechapel because they
didn’t think that customers wanted it, and their wholesalers weren’t providing it. So the Summer Uni
crew, aiming to make it easier for themselves to shop sustainably, decided to simply start asking for it
where they couldn’t find it, showing that there was consumer demand. Power in numbers, they thought,
so they emailed their friends and family, asking them to so the same.
This would never have happened if they didn’t ask the questions, and they found that everybody was
keen to talk with them. They really enjoyed it.
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Part B: preparation and practice
Time: 2hours
Stuff: Your stakeholder map; a notebook and pen for most people
By the end of this section you should have:
• A list of who you want to talk to
• A good understanding of what kind of knowledge you’re after
• Your questions for them
• Practiced on each other
• A feeling of confidence about doing the people research
• A plan for how, who, when, and where you’re going to do it
1. Hear back from The Experts and Visits Team (10 – 20 minutes)
What have they learnt? Are any visits arranged?
2. Prepare your questions for the people research (10 – 30 minutes)
Refer back to what you want to know on the stakeholder map. Write the questions somewhere clearly
so that you can take them out with you for the interviews. Keep them fairly short and to the point.
Obviously, you’ll probably have different questions for different stakeholders.
3. Read out this guide to doing interviews (5 – 10 minutes)
The next step is to practice on each other. Before you do, here are some tips on doing interviews to
read and discuss with the team.
There are five key things to remember when doing interviews.
1. Be polite and grateful. Say hello, explain who you are and what you’re doing, and ask if it’s okay to
talk for a few minutes. After the interview, thank them warmly for taking the time.
2. Document it really well. Take notes, or even better, have a friend taking notes. You could record
the conversation on a tape recorder or, if they’ll agree to being filmed, a video (though that can inhibit
people – you tend to get more truth without it). But it takes a lot of time to listen back and take notes
from a recording – it’s better to use your notepad and your memory. (If you’re doing professional
research, do also use a tape recorder every time so you can capture quotes accurately.)
3. Don’t stick to the script (but do know it intimately). If you know what sort of knowledge you want
to get, you can be freer with the script and go with the conversation a bit more. If, in answering question
1, they start to also answer question 5, go with that. If that creates a new question in your mind, ask
it. A caution: if you don’t know what you want to know, the conversation can become too loose to be
useful with this fluid approach. But if you know the umbrella topics and keep the conversation within
them, you’ll both find it far more comfortable, flowing and interesting.
4. Take their picture if you can. You’re working with and for these people, so it’s good to take their
picture and keep them in mind – but remember to ask their permission first. Do this at the end of the
interview not the beginning, once you’ve gained their trust.
5. Never judge them – see the subtle art of interviewing on the next page.
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4. Practice on each other (20 - 25 minutes)
You are stakeholders too. What is your role? What do you currently do, and what would the more
sustainable alternative be? What would you like to know about each other? Come up with four
questions to ask each other (5 minutes). There’s an art to people research and it’s good to practice on
each other before you hit the streets. Ask the group to divide into groups of three and take it in turns
to be the interviewer, interviewee and note taker. Ask them to swap roles every 5 minutes (15 – 20
minutes).
The Subtle Art of Interviewing
Street people research is the opposite of a street protest. In a protest you stand on a street corner and shout
really loud, hoping that the people in earshot might pick up some of your views. In people research, you ask
people to tell you their views. You really listen. And maybe even offer them a spot on a sofa, or a piece of cake.
Which would you rather receive?
Get your ‘stuff’ out of the way
While you’ve been learning about the issues you’ve been developing your own emotional reactions and
working out where you stand. People research is the time to put all that aside and receive the stories of where
other people are – completely accepting them, even if they’re in a very different place to you.
When we care about things we tend to try to tell people about them and influence them. At the same time, we
don’t really like it when people try to persuade us. We prefer making up our own minds.
Give people answers and they’ll try to question them. Give people questions and they’ll try to answer them.
People research is often a very important part of the change process. When people are asked questions about
this stuff, they start to reflect on what they really think and feel about the issues and what they actually do
in their lives.
This might be the first time they notice any conflict between their thoughts and actions, and their ideas
will develop through the conversation. Their own ideas will probably have a far bigger impact on them than
anything a stranger might say. The attitude and behaviour change process has begun.
Listening without judgement also encourages people to be more honest, and that gives you useful information.
If you don’t know where they really stand, you can’t design a successful project – you’ll be aiming for a
blurry target. If you try and tell them what you think, they’ll be less likely to share differing opinions with
you.
Body language is really important here. Keep a clear, open face. Make small, positive movements and noises
as they talk – gently nod, etc. Don’t interrupt them. Really accept everything they have to say and try to
understand their point of view.
In sum, try to guide people with questions, not answers. They’ll figure it out for themselves and be much
more engaged as a result. Get out of the way. Listen. Receive. Capture it all. Then you’ll have some really rich
and real stuff to work with.
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5. Reflect on what you’ve learnt – (10 - 30 minutes)
As a whole group, talk about how it felt to ask questions, take notes, be questioned – draw out what
you’ve learnt together. Did anything feel uncomfortable? What bits were the best?
Encourage the group to coach each other if necessary. Someone may have found their interviewer too
aggressive, someone else not clear enough. Other people in the group will probably have some useful
advice to offer, so bring that all out.
6. Wrap it up (10 minutes)
This has been a big session with a lot of learning. It’s good to end it with a simple round. Ask people to
summarise one or two things they have learnt – what has stood out to them – and to say how they feel
about doing the user research.
Go home and talk to someone in your life about the issues. Practice the art of giving questions not
answers, see what they think and feel, see how they respond to your questioning.
Doing The People Research
Here are some important details for when you’re out talking with people:
• If you take someone’s picture, ask for written consent so that you can use it in any publicity material/ on your website/ the Otesha website/ a public flickr or facebook album etc.
• Ditto if you video them
• If you’re photographing or videoing someone under the age of 16, you’ll need written consent from
their parent or guardian to use it for publicity
• Take people’s first names and note their rough age and ethnicity (but don’t ask them their age!)
• Ask them if they’d like to be kept in touch about the project and take their email address and /or phone number if they do
• Your project might need people with specific skills e.g. the Goldsmiths garden needed people with construction and gardening skills, so people who were particularly enthusiastic
and had those skills were noted
• Respect their privacy – explain to them that they don’t have to give their name or photograph if
they don’t want to, or answer any questions they don’t want to answer
• If you’re using a video camera, always ask first before filming someone, and do it from a respectful distance
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06: Draw insight
Time: 1hour - 1h10
Stuff:
• Many big rolls of paper, several big marker pens, masking tape or blu-tack
• Your document from the user research planning session – the one that maps your stakeholders
and what you wanted to learn about them. Stick this up on the wall
• Your landscape map – the one with relevant organisations and projects on. Put this on the wall too
So, you’ve been out and done your people research. You come to the next session armed with your
notes and insights from the conversations you’ve had. The next step is to share what you’ve learnt with
everybody and to collaboratively draw insight for the project from all the conversations.
By the end of this step you should have
• A good understanding of the thoughts, feelings and actions of people in your key stakeholder groups
• A sense of what the sustainable alternatives are that would work for your stakeholders, and what would attract them
• A good understanding of what is stopping people from doing the greener thing – lack of desire,
awareness, opportunity, reward or social norm
1. Write your notes up big for everyone to see (30 minutes)
It’s useful to do one in advance of the session so that you can show the team what to do. Get big rolls
of paper. Ask people to create a big profile for every person they’ve spoken with during their research.
Here’s what goes on it:
• A little drawing of the person
• Their name, type of stakeholder, their rough age, ethnicity, job, and any other identifying factors
• The key points they communicated to you. It can be useful if the whole group uses the same headers to organise these notes, so talk about it now and decide what your headers are going to be
For example, Goldsmiths Enviroclub’s theme was food, and they were interested in growing food more
locally. Their headers were:
<on climate change:>
<on food and climate change:>
<on food:>
<on growing food:>
Insight
p and sometimes
noun: (the ability to have) a clear, dee problem or situation
d
sudden understanding of a complicate
Then, the key ideas were pulled out from a long conversation. What was written were not direct
quotations, but a distillation of the key things people seemed to be really saying - have a look at the
picture overleaf.
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You can learn a lot from what Joan has said. You
can see that a poster saying ‘grow food because
it can help reduce climate change’ would have no
effect on Joan. But give her access to land and a
supportive community and she will probably grow
food – developing a climate-friendly behaviour,
without an environmental motivation.
Important Details:
People may well have mentioned things going on
locally – projects, initiatives and key people that you
didn’t know about. Ask the team to add anything
like that to the landscape map and mention it in
the plenary (a plenary is when the whole group is
together paying attention to the same thing) – the
visits team can develop relationships with them if
your group decides they want to.
Ask someone to document the contact details of
the people who want to be kept in touch, and ask the group to pass contact details to that
person to store. You could put them on a spreadsheet and keep it safe and confidential.
2. Read (10 minutes)
Once people have made their profiles, ask them to stick them up on the walls and to wander around
reading other peoples’ research.
3. Draw insight (30 minutes)
If you haven’t already, put your stakeholder map up on the wall. Once the group’s done reading, bring
them together to draw insight from the research. People will probably have a lot to say about what
strikes them from the notes on the wall.
On motivation
People can do sustainable things for
a
because it’s good for the planet; som variety of reasons. Take cycling. Some people cycle
e people like it because it keeps them
the fastest way to get around the city
fit; for others, it’s
. It’s useful to work out what people
care
fitness or the planet – and to ‘sel l’ the
thing you’re promoting in those term about e.g. speed,
s.
For example, take Joan. Joan really
cares about her health, so helping her
‘sel ling’ it to her on health grounds
would be far more effective than talk to grow food and
ing about the planet.
You could then point out later that wha
t she’s doing and enjoying is also clim
ate friendly.
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You can also use some questions to draw out the insights. Use your initial questions on the documents
to help – what do they do? Why? What would be a more sustainable alternative? How do they feel
about it? What is stopping people from doing the greener thing? What could help?
Document it
On your stakeholder table, write some of the conclusions, the things you’ve learnt. It can be useful to do
this in a different colour pen. Find some space also to write the general findings or insights.
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07: Design your project
Part A
(40 minutes - 1h20)
By now, you have learnt a lot. You understand the issues. You know who your stakeholders are, and
you know what they think, feel and do. You know what they think about the more sustainable things
they could do. Your know the landscape of influences on the situation, and hopefully you’ve made one
or two visits by now.
Now it’s time to figure out what you’re going to do.
By the end of part A you should have:
• A clear definition of your project aims and objectives
• A shared feeling about the project
1. Get your Broad Focus
You wrote this together at the end of the second meeting. It’s time to turn the broad focus into a sharp
focus. Put a piece of paper on the wall and write ‘aims – the difference we’re going to make’ on one
half and ‘objectives – how we’re going to do it’ on the other. Now gather the group.
2. Discuss the aims (10 - 30 minutes)
What exactly do you want to try to achieve? Have a thought shower /thunder chat. Many aims may
be related e.g. ‘reduce poverty; end sweatshops; improve working conditions; change what fashion
retailers do; help people dress more ethically’ – this is a cluster of aims operating at different levels
towards the same outcome.
The note taker should write down the ideas on
post-it notes and put them on the paper.
The Rules of a
Thunderchat
During the aims conversation people will inevitably
throw in ideas about objectives. Write them down
too on post-its on the objectives side of the paper.
The thunderchat could go one of two ways. It could
be simple: one clear sense of purpose could emerge
that everybody is excited about. Or it could be more
complex – there could be a number of different
ideas and disagreement in the group about what to
aim for. If this happens, vote like you did in the first
session: cluster the post-its and make five blobs
each by the aims you like. That should decide it.
Congratulations. You have your aim.
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Very simple – everything goes. A
‘thunderchat’, also known as a thought
shower (and formerly known as a
brainstorm...) is a time to explode the
options and get everything out onto the
table – it’s not about editing, deciding
or criticising your own or other people’s
ideas – just throw them out and down.
HOW TO CHANGE THINGS
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Aims, Objectives and Principles
• Aims are about the outcomes you want to achieve - e.g. ‘get fitter’
• Objectives are they way that you try to achieve them - e.g. ‘go running more’
• Principles are the way you want to go about doing it - e.g. ‘in a way that feels good and works
with my lifestyle’
3. Now, the Objectives: what are you going to do? (20 – 30 minutes)
Again, have a thunder chat about what to do. Many ideas will have emerged by this stage. Get them all
out and onto post-it notes in the objectives part of the paper.
Again, one clear, popular idea could emerge, or there could be many popular ideas. If it’s the latter,
cluster the post-its (if they can be grouped together) and cast your votes.
If there are two winning ideas, don’t split the group and do two projects; stick together and either bind
the ideas or decide to do one first and the other second. If there are a few competing ideas, it’s useful
to consider the strength of them considering three things:
• Doability – can you realistically do them?
• Impact – how much difference will they make?
• Desirability – how excited about them are you all?
Either through clear emergence or through voting, you are beginning to forge your plan.
Congratulations: you have your objectives.
4. Flesh out the vision (10 – 20 minutes)
Now you have your idea. It’s time to flesh out the vision. This part is lovely. The group sits around.
One person takes notes on big piece of paper – ideally a spider diagram, with your project idea in the
middle.
The facilitator asks:
• What does it look like?
• Who is there?
• What are they doing?
• What are they saying about it?
• What does it sound like?
• What does it smell like?
• How does it feel?
Gradually, together, you’ll flesh out the vision and feel of your project.
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Part B: getting into the detail
(1h30 - 2h)
By the end of Part B you should have:
• A clear idea of the things you want to do to achieve your aims, in size and priority order
• An identified pilot
1. Break it down into easy chunks (10 – 30 minutes)
By this stage, you’ll probably have a big, beautiful vision for a huge project. It’s good to be ambitious.
It’s also good to balance ambition with practicality.
The next thing is very important.
Take a new piece of paper and write your project vision at the top. Below your vision, write versions of
the project in increasing degrees of smallness. For example, the vision might be:
Community food garden with kitchen where cooking lessons happen using the seasonal produce
grown there, and community meals where people eat what’s cooked.
The next levels might then be:
Community food garden
Food garden for students on University land
Getting involved with a nearby food garden
Planting one or two edible things in our own gardens
Planting one thing each on our window sills
With each level of reduction, you decrease complexity and increase control. You have a lot of control
over planting one thing on your window sill. But with creating a community food garden, there’s a lot of
stuff that’s out of your direct control – whether you get land, funding, community engagement, etc.
Our advice to you is:
If the group really believes in it, pursue the big idea. But it will probably take patient persistence over
time. If you only do that, energy will drain from your project.
Pursue the smaller ideas at the same time.
For example, you could grow things on your window sills, and some people could get involved with a
local community garden, while other people arrange access to University land (it might take at least
a few weeks), and other people in the team arrange access to land in the community (it might take at
least a few months).
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That way, you have a lot of great stuff happening:
•
•
•
•
•
You’re having more fun all the way along
You’re keeping action and energy high
You’re having an impact from the very beginning
You’re learning and getting new ideas all the way
And you’re laying the foundations to create your big idea
2. Figure out what you’re going to do in priority order (5 – 20 minutes)
You’ve got a bunch of ideas up there. It’s time to prioritise, and make a bit of noise.
Go down the list of ideas, and ask the group to make noise – shout, mumble, clap, woop - to show
how much they want to do each item. That should make your collective priorities clear. Now number
each of them to indicate priority – 1 is top. Make sure everyone is happy with the outcome.
3. Identify your pilot (5 – 10 minutes)
An essential stage of a design process is a ‘pilot’ or ‘prototype.’ As you know, it involves doing a
smaller, one-off version of a bigger idea so you can see if it works before you put all the effort into the
full thing.
With innovation – which is what you’re doing, bringing newness (novia) into the world - the one thing
you can be sure of is that not everything will go smoothly. A pilot helps you to spot weaknesses and
see effects that you couldn’t have predicted.
In the example above, the University garden could be conceived of as a pilot for the bigger idea of a
food garden out in the community.
What is your biggest idea that you definitely want to pursue? What is its pilot? The pilot is probably
already one of the items in your plan
– make sure it’s in there. Write PILOT
by it, and check that it covers a fair bit of
your big idea but on a smaller scale so
Innovate
that you can learn from it.
4.Write down your aims and
objectives (10 minutes)
and ‘novus’
noun; from Latin ‘novo’, to make new new ideas
- new, fresh to introduce changes and
Now write it down. The co-ordinator
should email your aims and objectives
to the group afterwards.
You should by now be able to write clearly: We’re going to try to <write your aims> By <write your
objectives in priority order>. For example, “We’re going to try to cut CO2 emissions and improve
community health and cohesion, by creating a community food garden in our community. We’ll pilot the
idea by doing a garden within the university, and we’ll also volunteer in the local food garden and start
growing food in our own gardens and window sills.”
If you like, you could also add a ‘with…’ For example, “with – flair and humour and fun and….”
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Briony’s take on pilots
“Once I understood how our lives connect to climate change and
poverty, my response was to create what became TheNag.net. To
pilot the idea we created a website called The Hippo Effect during
the big drought of 2005. People could order a free water saving
device called a ‘hippo’. The hippo effect cost about £5000, where
The Nag has cost more like £100,000 all in. We used the pilot to
test out several of our key ideas and see what we’d got right, and
what needed more work.
The pilot helped us to fundraise. Rather than just having ideas on
paper, we had a live website with thousands of users that people
could look at – it was proof of concept, and it showed that the team
was good.
Now, with each Nag we create, we ‘user test’ a mock-up that is like
a pilot. We create the web pages with words only, and check that
we’ve got the messaging, navigation and ‘information architecture’
(the user journey, and the way the information and experience is
organised across the web pages) right.
We always have to make changes, then we test again, and once we’ve got it right, we put in the design
and the more fancy (and therefore expensive) bits of programming. Then we test it once more before we
launch.
We’ve got a ‘Wee’ test that each nag has to pass before it’s launched. It’s has to have the thumbs up
from a group of people – the ‘we’ of the team and the inner crowd of testers. We also have to be ‘weeing’
ourselves with excitement about what will happen when we hit send – how will people respond, how
many people will do it, what impact will it have on the world, etc. If it doesn’t pass the test it doesn’t get
sent out: we keep working until it does.”
Briony Greenhill, creator of www.TheNag.net
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08: Plan your project
Time: (40 minutes - 1 hour)
By the end of this section you should have:
• Defined the team’s roles, and who is taking forward each bit of the plan
• Your project objectives, in priority order
• An identified pilot
• A common feeling for, and excitement about, the project
• A list of absolutely everything that needs to be done to achieve each objective
• Targets for each objective
• A timeline for each objective, and a timeline for the whole group
1. Create a group of many heads (10 – 20 minutes)
Each of your objectives needs someone to head it up and co-ordinate activity towards making it
happen. Item by item, ask for volunteers to be heads. Write the name of the head by each objective.
Now is a good time to think about roles.
Roles
Everyone should have a role. They’ll have a much stronger feeling of ownership and involvement, and more
will get done. The project will be more alive. Roles emerge throughout the course of the project.
Here’s the deal with roles:
• Have a roles document where the role title and holders are documented
• If you want to change role, tell the group
The group can then figure out who will do it instead, or if the role is still needed. If people just slip away from roles, things won’t get done and it will damage the project.
Here are some roles you’ll need; you’ll probably identify more through the project:
• Co-ordinator
• Documentor – Photography and video
• Visits Team – Develop and manage relationships with other people & organisations, and organise visits
• The Experts – Hold and develop the group’s expertise on the issues
• The Welcomers
What happens when new people join the group half way through the project? Have two designated
welcomers who will look after people at their first session, bring them up to speed, make them included, introduce everyone, etc. Only one person needs to do it each time, but you have two so that even if one is away there’s always a welcomer there.
• Project Health Visitors
It’s good to have a couple of people who keep their eye on how the project and the team are doing. They keep a record of plans and targets. Are they being met? What’s going well, and what could be improved? Does anyone need help? If people have complaints and suggestions about how things are going, they give them to the project health visitors. The health visitors should be reliable, diplomatic, innovative problem solvers who come to almost all meetings.
• The Heads
Each area of your project needs a head to make sure that things are happening and co-ordinate the people involved.
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2. Map out everything that needs
to be done (10 – 20 minutes)
Ask people to gather around the
head they want to help with this.
No head should be alone. If you
have a small group, do this for each
area of the project all
together.
Then the group sits around a big
piece of paper and comes up with
absolutely everything that needs to
be done for each thing, in no
particular order. It should look
something like the image on the
right.
3. Put it on a timeline (20 minutes)
Now take your To Do maps and, with
a different colour pen, circle items that are targets.
A target is like an end point to a cluster of actions. So for all the activity around soil testing, the target it
to have the soil tested and get the results. When a target is done, it’s all done.
Now put your targets on a timeline. (It’s literally just a long line with markers for months, or weeks, or
days - depending on the timescale of your project - and space on either side to write things and draw
arrows towards their deadline on the time line.)
Now, it’s good if each head makes their timeline the same scale as each other, so you can put your
timelines up together.
So draw out your timelines together, then in groups, put all your targets on them. Our advice is add
contingency when you’re figuring out when to put your targets on the timeline.
Using branches in spider diagrams
This is probably completely obvious but it’s useful to use branches in spider
diagrams.
For example, if the project is to make a community garden, one project
might be soil testing. Then
soil testing has a number of things to do from it – find someone to lead
on it; figure out how soil
testing happens; figure out if it costs money; find money or figure out a
free
is secured, organise testing. For this you’d use branches like in the pictur way to do it; once land
e above.
Contingency
Contingency is about putting in a bit more than you think you need. More money, more time, e.g.
“I think it’s going to take three hours, but I’ll put in an hour’s contingency just in case it takes
longer.” Projects almost always take longer than you expect, and if there’s money involved, they
usually cost more than is planned. So always put in some contingency, some buffer.
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Now come together and ask each group to present their timelines to everyone, noting opportunities for
people to get involved with stuff.
Health Visitors, Take Note
Part of your role will be to see how each group is getting on. It might be a good idea to create one meta
timeline for the group, with the timeline for each objective on there in a different colour.
Now take a step back. Does it look healthy? A healthy project needs well spaced targets so they’re not
all happening at the same time and everybody’s too busy to help each other.
You also need to make sure that there’s live and energising stuff happening with reasonable frequency.
The minutiae of making things happen can drain energy from the project; things happening pumps it
back in. If there aren’t enough live things happening, present that to the team and figure out what to do
about it.
Like with all documents, type up or take a picture of the timeline and email it around. Also bring it to
each meeting and put it up where everyone can see it, and keep it updated.
(These documents and the roles document are among the most important documents your project will
have. See the note about guarding your documents with your life on page 13.)
The Art of Making Things Happen
So, you have your aims, objectives, principles, timeline, roles and lists of things to do. You’re on your
marks, you’re set, and you’re ready to go. You’re into the Art of Making Things Happen. Here are some
tips.
1.Meetings
There’s a risk that you’ll get together in meetings, talk a lot, plan to do lots of things, go away, and
never do them. If this happens, the project will flop.
Our advice is to meet up to do your stuff together. It’s more fun and you get things done. Hold the
meetings in a place where you have what you need, like internet access, and ideally during work
hours, so you can make calls and visits right then and there.
If you organise yourself this way, you can also have shorter team meetings every fortnight where you
talk about how things are going, help each other, share what you’re learning and celebrate things
you’ve achieved – celebration is very important, and so is achieving targets – with a big tick, a big
cheer, and any other kind of celebration you like.
2.Communication
Making things happen is all about relationships. Good relationships require good, honest
communication to keep them healthy. Talk about problems as they come up. Talk about them with
the whole group or confidentially with the health visitors, who can get the group to address them.
Everybody needs help sometimes; encourage people to ask for it when they do. Everybody gets stuck
sometimes – get people to yell when they do. With good communication, little problems get cleared up
before they become big problems.
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3. Priorities
If you start to get behind, use the priorities you set in your design stage and sacrifice the lower priority
stuff for the higher priority stuff. Or shift your timeline.
4. Resources
Try to avoid designing a project that needs external funding right from the get-go; there’s so much
you can do without it. Getting funding takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and you can be pretty sure that
anything that is waiting for funding before it happens won’t end up happening, at least not for awhile.
Once your project is up and running and you want to take it to the next level, you might want to think
about getting some funding.That’s when you’ve got most chance of success – you need to prove
yourselves a bit – and it’s also when it’s least disruptive, because you don’t have everything on hold
while you wait for the money to come. When you get to this point, get in touch and we’ll point you to
some
6. Getting the experts in
You’re young and probably quite inexperienced – and that’s part of what’s great about you. However,
your project may benefit from some more expert advisors. Organisations often have an advisory group
or board who can help out and pull strings for you. They really enrich the project. Talk about it with the
group; if everybody has their ear out for potential advisors, when you have a few ideas, maybe you can
invite them to come on board.
7. Working with Otesha
Keep in touch. Call or email us about anything – we’re delighted to help. There is more that we could
train you to do but this is quite enough for now. As more training needs come up for your group, let us
know; if a few of you have them, we’ll put on a learning session.
Good luck!
The Otesha UK Team
“Almost everything you do will be inspiring,
but it’s very important that you do it” - Ghandi
“May the force be with you” - Obi-Wan Kenobi
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