Some more reflections on our discovery into fires and floods
Matt Mills is the Head of UK Operations Transformation and Strategic Coordination at British Red Cross. He sponsors the team’s work into fires and floods.
Do we really understand what people’s unmet needs are to prepare for, respond to and recover from fires and floods? This is a problem we’ve been working on over the past few months. A range of excellent blogs from our brilliant team working on this discovery have explained what we’ve done and the insights we’ve gained and now we are ready to move on to the next phase.
As sponsor of this work I’ve been in a privileged position to see how the enormous volume of direct feedback gathered from 50 in depth interviews has been distilled into 18 key insights. And from which we have focused down on a few key areas of exploration as we move into “alpha”.
Being user-led and human-centred
Over the last few weeks I’ve been asked for views and opinions on direction of travel — and it’ll come as no surprise to people that know me that I usually am pretty willing to share them! But for this project I have keep at the front of my mind what it means to be user-led and human-centred. It doesn’t really matter what I think — it’s all about the needs of people affected by crises.
Fortunately, I have never been affected by fire or flood, so what do I know? Those people who have real life lived experience, or those who are at heightened risk are the best placed to tell us what they are worried about. What they want and need. What they felt was good or bad in any response or support they received, or of course, they didn’t receive.
Keeping things real by using the actual words of those impacted or affected by fires and floods is so powerful. Cara’s blog exemplifies this by giving some great insights from people affect by floods in Somerset.
A voyage of discovery
I have worked on a few projects in my time: events, buildings, contract mobilisations, restructures, and so on. We’ve had a clear end product — we know what we’re creating — but this project has been different. Using an agile service design approach (read Harry’s blog for some great reflections) has been a newer experience for me. We do not have a specific product or service in mind. What we have is a problem to solve and therefore our energy has been directed to properly understanding the problem in the first place.
Only once have we genuinely understood the problem can we start to think of possible solutions. And we’re now at that stage. Having a broad range of voices, robust but constructive challenge and a healthy tension in the process has ensured that we’ve not simply been retrofitting the things we’ve heard into existing project, products or services.
Working openly
The approach to “working in the open” has helped enormously with this. Having all of our insights, feedback, issues and things to do on display where people can drop by, ask questions, challenge, clarify and engage has resulted in a rich, considered conversation.
The decision making process has been democratised — no one person has any greater or lesser contribution to make. The team adopted a really collaborative approach to distilling insights, prioritising them and working out where our energy and focus should be directed. Whilst it’s critical to keep senior stakeholders on board, the process has been one of exploring and informing, rather than simply asking for decisions.
What now
As Jo points out in her blog now we’ve completed the discovery phase we’re moving on to the alpha phase of work. My commitment to the team working on this — and more importantly to the people who so generously gave us their time to share their personal experiences and reflections — is to keep asking “are we answering the exam question”? How do we know that the things we’re doing will genuinely meet the needs of people affected by fires and floods?
