Building culture for co-production - Chapter 4. Projects and programmes

Everything has to start somewhere. Here are some pointers for beginning your activity, project or intervention:

• Begin with the Sustainable Development Principle and the 5 ways of working. We are duty bound by the Well-being of Future Generations Act to apply these ways of working to all that we do and decide. What are the first 3 things you can do that will embody the 5 ways of working?
• Next, take a look at the Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA). How can you engage with people in ways that will help you answer questions in the IIA?
• Make sure to set up a Lesson Learning Log early on, so that you capture thoughts and experiences as you progress. Review this log at regular intervals during your project.
• Set up a continuous evaluation process for your project from the start.
• Set up a good, simple way of keeping people updated and gaining on-going feedback.
• If your project is related to other projects, keep in regular touch to make sure you maximise synergies and efficiencies.
• As you get up and running, make use of emergent planning and prototyping to maximise your positive impact and responsiveness to changes in the external environment.

Project and programme boards

Bring the project leads together for a programme meeting or action learning set at regular intervals. Those who cannot attend in person should send a deputy who is also active on their project. Work in rounds using the following questions or similar.

Context – much like an ordinary check-in (i.e. each individual takes a turn to answers the questions for their project):

How am I?

How is my project (the element of the programme for which I am responsible)?

How does the programme feel to me?

How are the programme team?

What are other people saying and doing?

Progress – since last meeting (again, each participant takes their turn to answer this set of questions):

What have we achieved?

What is causing us difficulty now? (issues)

What might go wrong soon? (immediate risks)

What might we have missed? (long term risks)

What have we failed to understand?

Resource (as a circle but them moving into a more general discussion):

What have we learnt? (from this phase of the project and this discussion so far)

What interdependencies do we need to be alert to?

What changes do we need to make to help move the programme forward?

Action (make sure everyone’s voice has been heard in the resource discussion, then ask people to offer or request under the following headings):

Allocations and adjustments

Timescales and next steps

(Agree and note actions as they arise.)

Messages

Who else do we need to tell about our decisions?
How will we do this? (straight away!)

Check out – how do we feel now? Who do we want to thank and for what?

Executive and scrutiny boards

This technique can be used for boards of directors or other high level groups such as programme boards or stakeholder reference groups.

Hypothesis

Any board has (at least) 2 main ways in which it needs to engage with the materials presented to it - collaboration mode and challenge mode. It is important to choose the correct mode for any given situation. Many boards identify one of these modes early and develop strong skills in this area but this can lead to a loss of skills and practice in the other mode.

Collaboration mode

In this mode you are working together as equals, everyone brings something useful to the discussion and your focus is on solving a problem together. Here you are looking for what might be possible, what are the innovative opportunities, what action could you take to support the management?

Challenge mode

In this mode the executive is seeking to challenge the management to test the practicality, sustainability or effectiveness of a proposed operation, project or programme. Here you are looking for what might go wrong and how this can be changed into an opportunity to do something even better.

Useful tips in both modes

• Start from a position of not knowing and be humble. There are no ready made answers and there will be a myriad of different answers for each situation.
• Develop a spirit of curiosity. This will encourage questions; enjoy the discovery and learning.
• Learn to be more comfortable with ambiguity. Get started anyway!
• Keep the Disability Equality principle ‘nothing about us without us’ at the front of your mind. Make it possible for people to be involved from the very start.
• You are not alone, find others seeking to learn and work with them.

Simple ways to improve effectiveness

For each agenda item, indicate whether challenge or collaboration mode is being requested (for example, with a suitable emoticon).

Hold away days at which the board can practice one or both modes of working to hone their skills.

At the beginning of any project or programme

Establish your first set of 3 main messages at the start and share widely.

• Agree and disseminate a clear start-up message including answers to these questions: What is this programme for? Who will make decisions and when? How can people assist, join in or be kept informed?

During the project or programme

• Add a final agenda item called 'main messages' to all meeting agendas (programme boards, project boards and regular stakeholder meetings).
• During each meeting, agree a maximum of 3 main messages.
• Circulate to meeting participants by email the same day.
• Translate and make available via the website within a week from the meeting date.
• Invite meeting participants to disseminate the email message to their organisations and networks, discuss it and bring back any feedback to the next meeting.
• Discuss this feedback at your next meeting.

Context

The Sustainable Futures Architecture provides details of the changes we are seeking to make throughout the Welsh Government in order to implement the Well-being of Future Generations Act. Here is what it says about risk:

We need to move away from:

Risk documentation where we put our faith in carefully designed risk logs and detailed processes that protect us from criticism and help identify the cause after failures have occurred. We tackle symptoms rather than underlying causes.

Towards:

Risk management where we can learn and improve only by taking risks. Increasing our understanding of the substantial long-term risks facing us now and in the future helps us to increase our appetite for taking appropriately managed short term risks immediately.

Risk processes

It isn’t the paperwork that is the most important aspect of risk management but the way in which we discuss, process and respond to that paperwork. We can improve this aspect of what we do by improving the quality of our risk meetings:

• How are your risk review meetings?
• Do you (and other participants) feel engaged and involved?
• Are you acting to prevent, as well as to respond to risks?
• Are you taking action to improve things now, in ways that also increase our chances of a better future?
• How are you incorporating Future Trends into your risk management?

Use your responses to these questions to re-design or re-prototype your risk process.

One of the most important things to do is to maintain meeting momentum. Don’t cancel a meeting because only 2 of you can get there. Instead use this smaller meeting as an opportunity to go deeper or to reflect on the risk process itself.

Risk review meetings

Here are some of the questions you might want to ask (using rounds) during your risk review meetings. Select one to three to share in each meeting.

• What is the biggest current risk that each of us is actively managing?
• Whose help do I or we need to manage this (particular) risk?
• What is the biggest (overall) risk we currently face? How are we building tackling this into our other risk responses?
• Which risk am I most concerned about today?
• Which risk am I feeling most confident about today?
• How well is our management of this risk integrated into our ordinary management processes?
• Which of these risks is really an issue (i.e. it has already happened)?
• What is (still) missing from our risk register?

Think of your own specific questions that suit your circumstances.

Give everyone present the opportunity to respond. Use some of the general advice on improving the quality of your meetings to help you.

Everything has to have an end as well as a beginning and nothing is totally linear. Here are some top tips for closing your activity, project or intervention. Some of these activities might be combined for small projects but don’t confuse or muddle them, as you need all the pieces.

• Continue your natural team meetings longer than you think you need them. You will need at least a couple to cover completion and closure of your project documents and manage the final stages of your evaluation process. In addition, you will want to hold a number of main workshops.
• Hold at least one Lessons to be Learnt workshop. Invite everyone who has been involved. Share the latest lessons learning log with participants and ask them to reflect on this and their experiences and bring along the 3 top lessons that they think they need to learn.
• Hold at least one Stakeholder Sharing workshop to discuss how the project has developed, what it has achieved and receive further feedback for future.
• Complete your Summative or Final Evaluation.
• Use the 5 ways of working to ensure that your lessons to be learnt are embedded in any new structures and processes for whatever you and your team members are going to do next.
• If the team is breaking up, hold a final session to acknowledge the success and challenges of your project before you move on. If you will continue to work together this can simply be a team meeting. Recognise losses as well as gains, maybe setting some good questions using this method.
• Say thank you and goodbye and wish everyone well.