6-week research cycles

Something new for us, what they are and how they might work.

I miss people and love learning from them. I think I’m not the only one. Starting this week we’re going to run our first community research cycle.

So, what is that? It’s simple: over 6 weeks, we at States of Change will hold space for this community to work together on an idea, challenge or burning question. It’s a space to pool what we understand and explore together what we don’t. At the end of the 6 weeks, we’ll have learnt something, created something or honed our questions so we’re asking better ones. After that, we can decide what we want to explore next. That’s it.

We’re getting the first 6-week exploration started with the question: What lessons have we learnt from the pandemic that we can use to face that other crisis, climate change? If you’re asking similar questions or are interested send me an email. If there are loads of you that’s great, email might descend into madness so we might look at an exploration Whatsapp group to keep the conversation ticking over. We can figure that out if we need to.

I know a lot of people are not able to be active in these sorts of things. We’ve got busy lives and lots on our plate, so for you, I’ll make sure that everything we cover is written up or published so you can catch up in your own time. I’ll send these out in the fortnightly States of Change newsletter. If it’s not accessible to you, it’s on me, let me know how I can do it better, I’ll do what I can.

That’s the idea in less than 250 words and if you’re interested in developing these with me, drop me a line and let’s get to it. If our first topic isn’t quite for you but you like the idea of working together for 6 weeks, tell me that too and we can think about running another of these on a different theme in the future!

A bit more about what it is

The feedback you gave us from the Learning Festival could generally be summarised as lots of positivity and now you’re eager to take the topics deeper. Which is fair, over 3 weeks and 40 sessions we covered everything from decolonising behavioural insights to Indigenous perspectives and ‘government as a brain’. A whistle-stop tour of different views and ideas. Now, we want to hold a space where we can go deeper on a single idea: over weeks, not hours.

Plans are just guesses. So there’s a lot here that might change or adapt as we go. But this is what my Miro board sketches came up with to give you and I, dear reader, an idea of what this might all look like.

How it will work (I think)

1. Ok, so it’s 6 weeks because that feels long enough to develop a project but short enough to feel a looming deadline.
2. Each cycle starts with a brief, or a hunch, of what we think is worth spending those 6 weeks on. A question we want to explore (or try and answer) I’ve written the brief for our first one, it could be you who writes the next one.
3. We use the fortnightly States of Change newsletter as a community board to share what we learn as we go, making sure if you miss sessions you can catch up, read the notes, find the recordings, whatever it is. It’s also proving a great way to showcase the projects you are working on, so there’s that too.
4. At the end of the 6 weeks, we will have something to show for our collective work. I can’t sit here and say what that will be exactly, that’s for us to figure out. It might be a framework, a way of running a workshop, a blog post, a video… it’s completely up to us whatever works best. Previous R&D projects we’ve done at States of Change have developed the competency framework, the impact assessment tool and the guide to the behaviours of an innovative team. Whatever it is, we will let form follow function.

What it might look like

The closest example we’ve had recently is the 6 weeks we spent collaborating with the Long Time Project. They wanted to explore ways to institutionalise long-term thinking. So their fab team ran a session on long termism, a whole lot of you signed up for it and that formed part of a useful toolkit to think about the future, today. That was just 6 weeks. So my challenge to you is, what else could we achieve within 6 weeks?

How you can help

• Help us refine the scope of each brief. These topics need to be relevant and useful, so help make sure they are. Be our critical friends.
• Offer your expertise and experience. What might be obvious to one person, isn’t to others. Don’t be shy about what you can bring to the table.
• Share your contacts. Good people thinking about this? Let’s amplify their work. Even better if they have smaller platforms, let’s raise them up, who needs to be seen and heard?
• Host a session. Enjoy the topic and want to spend time chatting about it? Hold an hour with someone you want to speak with and let’s book it in and make it public.
• Write for us all. Got good thoughts on this? Write it down and help guide the discussions. We could run specific sessions to run through your posts.
• Share your work in progress. Got half-formed ideas? Or working on something and want helpful feedback? Test it out here. Get perspectives from across the globe.
• Sponsor a topic. Or contribute to running these.

That‘s it for now! We’re excited to work with you all and see what comes of this experiment. Who knows, we might make friends along the way. Reach me at @jamesoriel if Twitter’s your thing, or if you prefer email, try my States of Change email address if you’ve got an idea you think might fit.

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