How to set up a new meaningful collaboration: the importance of an experimental mindset
By Hayley Ho and Kateryna Pereverza
This is the first story in the series "Meaningful collaborations for systems transformations". In this story we share our experience of setting up a new collaboration by reflecting on our own experience of being engaged in a collaboration for the first time when designing the course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations” in January-March 2020, and analysing its design and our journey in April-June 2020.
Before moving into the reflections about the beginning and further development of our collaboration, we introduce its context — the course and its collaborative set up.
The course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations” and its 2020 edition
First introduced in 2017, the course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations” provides a platform for learning and exploration for involved teachers, students and societal partners. In 2020 the course started as usual, in the middle of January and lasted for two months until the middle of March. In terms of the structure, it included four lectures, nine seminars and four special activities (namely study visit, interim critique, coaching session and final presentations).
"There is something you can do to a problem that is better than solving it and that is dissolving it, how in the world do you dissolve a problem? By redesigning the system that has it, so the problem no longer exists…dissolution involves design as a way of dealing with problems as superior even to research and we don’t teach design because we don’t know it and understand it” — Dr. Russell Ackoff
The course aims to foster a set of competencies and skills important to address complex challenges of systems transformations for sustainability. These skills include critical and systems thinking, long-term thinking, ability to work in a transdisciplinary context, dealing with complexity and uncertainty, creativity, practical problem-solving and action skills. The modular Participatory backcasting, mPB and elements of Design thinking are introduced as frameworks for addressing complex transition challenges such as the one given to the students in the course edition of 2020: sustainability transition of a mobility system for climate-positive Järfälla municipality by the year 2050 with a milestone in 2030. The challenge was formulated in collaboration with Viable Cities Transition Lab and Järfälla municipality which is one of the 9 Swedish frontrunner municipalities with the high ambition of becoming climate-neutral by 2030. The course provided us with an opportunity and responsibility to support active and collaborative learning of 40 students in a series of seminars and other learning activities.
Collaborative set up of the course
The course set up involved a teacher team of different backgrounds and experiences. We, Kateryna and Hayley, designed and facilitated the course seminars with our colleague Hanna Eggestrand who also facilitated communication with societal partners. Course coordinator Olga Kordas enabled the collaboration with societal partners from Järfalla and connected the course to the real-life context of urban transitions and the Viable Cities programme. Representatives from Järfälla municipality, citizens, and employees of companies operating in Järfälla provided students with valuable data, insights and feedback in the form of interviews and conversations during the study visit and final presentations. In addition, our colleague Oleksii Pasichnyi who researches and teaches urban analytics contributed with reflections about the course design and its outcomes.
During the course, we had the pleasure of collaborating with a heterogeneous group of highly motivated students coming from diverse engineering backgrounds, environmental sciences and urban planning. Ability to build upon the diversity of perspectives and problem framings is important for dealing with sustainability transition challenges and the course intends to strengthen the ability of students to learn and work in such an environment. With this in mind, students were organised into groups of 5 people from different backgrounds to address the given sustainability transition challenge.
Our workflow: intentions — design — implementation — reflection
The course provided us with an opportunity to collaborate for the first time. After meeting at Almedalen in June 2019, we looked for a chance to jointly explore the question we found a common interest in: “How do we efficiently set up a meaningful collaboration?”. Exploring this question based on our own experience seemed like a natural option and the real-life context of the course with its requirements and respective responsibilities gave us a chance to do so.
With the course starting in January 2020, we launched directly into design meetings to design and develop ideas and techniques for one or more of the following seminars within the course. In addition, we had “mini design meetings” to finalise the design. During design meetings, facilitation techniques were developed and a script was created for one or two upcoming seminars.
We worked with an experimental approach and open mindset, exploring both tools and methodologies in the process. During the collaboration we came to understand each other’s strengths and developed shared working patterns and rhythms through experimentation, observation and reflection. Roles and responsibilities emerged naturally depending on the context and situation. Unconsciously we gradually transitioned from highly structured and time documented meetings organised in 15 minutes slots that were very exhausting, to a more flexible process that still followed the same principles, but with less strict self-facilitation and fluctuations in intensity for energy recharge during the process.
Each design meeting went through the cycle of “intentions — design — implementation — reflection”, and helped us to prepare for our next meeting to improve the collaboration. Input for each design meeting came from the students who became collaborating co-creators of the process, through direct feedback and observations of their pace of work and interim outcomes.
During our analogue design meetings, we experimented with the tools and spaces we worked in. We tried several locations on the campus of different sizes and with different equipment. The use of post-its for brainstorming, drawing on posters and whiteboards, taking pictures of our work process and its outcomes, and situating ourselves in more than one location during the working day quickly became our main work practices. We kept documentation from each meeting in paper and digital forms using the shared infrastructure on Google Drive. This was invaluable for the analysis process, although going through the digital folders was time consuming.
Moving into remote work due to Covid-19 pandemic
The need to transition from analogue to digital work mode in March 2020 led to another round of experimentation with various software and ways to work on distance. Rather than just trying to recreate inferior versions of in-person meetings, we took some time figuring out how to efficiently collaborate online and keep the essence and energy of our offline meetings. We had the advantage of having become accustomed to the spirit of our collaboration in physical spaces which we could bring with us online. We used Zoom with a mix of Miro and Google Documents. We made additional efforts to take sufficient breaks and make time for general discussions that were not on the list of tasks.
One interesting observation we made after moving into fully remote work is related to the process documentation. As we worked collaboratively digitally it naturally created digital documentation automatically. While this meant that our work and documentation became seamless and continuous from one meeting to another, it became more difficult to pinpoint dates and arrange into a timeline unless we actively remembered to note it down as we instinctively kept building, adding and editing to the same document or board.
Main reflections
During the entire process, the experimental mindset we took supported us in whatever situation we were thrown into and enabled a less stressful transition from one work mode to another. The challenge of moving to remote work shortly after we finally developed efficient practices for joint work in-person, we perceived as another opportunity to learn and explore new spheres. As important were our mutual trust, shared intentions, and transparent and equal responsibilities in whatever tasks we decided to be engaged.
This story is the first in the publication series “Meaningful collaborations for systems transformations”. Check the introductory story in which we launch the series and introduce upcoming stories. Read our second story Tools for reflexivity in meaningful collaborations: Timeline Mapping and Reflections Mapping Techniques for retrospective analysis.
