Understanding Global Goal 8
Visual Frameworks Are Powerful Things. Applying Structured Visual Thinking™ To The Global Goals
In this article we are showing simple images to explain the centre pieces of the frameworks we’ve used within the Global Sustainability Network (GSN) team. Together with the questions we design and ask around them they are at the core of the modules that live within the evolving framework itself.
A visual framework is a mixture of pure imagery and the right narrative — the labels and the content that’s valid.
These components tell a story in their own right and, by being designed to suit the topic, can be applied to force better conversations around any challenge or opportunity. We hope they start to explain how they create the right debate and force the required thinking.
Because there’s a natural sequence to the way they unfold the conversations are always much richer.
Clear Goals
Goal 8 of the Global Goals
The Website We’ve Built To Explain Our Approach:
A major slice of humanity are signed up, at Government and Institutional level, to achieve 17 Goals. Goal 8 itself has 12 targets embedded within it. We picture each of them below to give them a little more clarity.
They Aren’t Small Things.
Each of these targets are complex and crucial things to solve in ther own right. They are massively interrelated — not just within Goal 8 but within the entire 17 Goals and possibly beyond that too. But it’s not acceptable to allow the difficulty of the task to stop the world trying to fix them
Starting To Climb The Mountain
Creating a clear definition of the challenge and the opportunity is always the first place to start. Knowing the context, appreciating the moving parts, getting under the skin of everyone and everything involved and creating a clear and coherent purpose — without these we may circle around basecamp for ever.
Knowing What Success Looks Like
We know that any goal is an idealised state, we know that for any progress or realistic achievement people will need more practical help to get started. In our experience that means more practical ideas about what the goal actually means — more detail and properly grounded in reality so that resources can be arranged against each aspect.
Understanding The Dynamics At Play
As we look at the challenge in each target and generally the challenges become much easier to understand. The dynamics themselves gives everybody the clues as to what is going on — what’s driving everything, what’s causing the issues that are prevalent and how hard or what’s required to start to solve them.
Creating A Tangible Future Vision
Giving everyone a clear picture of what’s required and where we are headed is paramount if we are to avoid waste, duplication, frustrated cycles of work, misunderstanding and so on. By collaborating on the ‘purpose’ — the how and where all the initiatives for success line up (and where there are gaps) it’s far easier to ensure effective planning and efficient working.
Identifying The Actors
In every enterprise and situation there are the main players. The stakeholders with influence and decision making rights. They may not be at equal levels of involvement but they are always implicated. Knowing them and their aims and opinions can often make the difference between an ordinary or an extraordinary outcome.
Establishing Clear Themes
Work happens and actions are established by well meaning people all the time. In many businesses it can be wasteful, duplicative and simply a reactive function of historic practice. In this new world all actions and initiatives must be aligned around outcomes and properly designed for efficient and effective deployment and execution.
Developing The Story And Plan Of Attack
We say that all strategy is story. We go further to say that all business is story. Without a clear and coherent narrative nobody cares, everything is mediocre or risky and cultures lack the inspiration and motivation to deliver.
The soundtrack of a healthy business is directly related to how well everyone gets the story and the story has to be meaningful and relevant to each and every individual involved.
Putting It All Together
As you can see from above there’s a lot involved. The framework(s) have a logic, a sequence and an integrity to them that would take a lot longer than this to explain but you can get a glimpse in these images.
How They Fit Within The Grander Scheme Of Things
As we’ve said challenge such as this will not be as simple as one framework — this challenge requires many things to come together and we’ve shown just a few glimpses here. There will be more and it will grow and evolve as we embrace more and more insight into the topic.
Building A Community — The Global Sustainability Network (GSN)
The GSN has been formed to help bring all of these initiatives and ideas together. Not creating yet more initiatives but helping everyone make the right connections and acting where required a positive facilitator and enabler for the achievement of them.
Developing Structured Frameworks For Global Achievement
A powerful platform for achievement — an interconnected web and mechanisms of opportunity.
Scaling The Value — Making Best Practices Work Globally
A major plank of the thinking within this means taking the best examples and what actually works (and is going to make a difference) and helping them happen at far larger scale.
In simple terms we are amplifying what we identify as great contributions to the challenge. We are then, by getting them properly franed, helping to identify where it could be better connected and more joined up — these are all going to make it far more likely that we can close ranks on the toxic challenges we are facing.
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And Raising The Awareness
Due to the nature of societies across the world we have to break through all the noise. We live in a 24x7 pressurised media environment. It’s made capturing people’s attention very difficult indeed.
The chances of getting people’s attention are decreasing exponentially. Our aim includes changing the behaviours and habits of human beings. The 7 symbols above show what we are dealing with and what we need to understand if we are to make a dent in these challenges.
This isn’t going to be easy.
Goal 8.7 For Example
If we just look at Goal 8.7 — one of the more emotive of the targets it’s a massive challenge. We are all embroiled in the problem, and for many of us we are complicit — knowingly or unknowingly.
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If Only
If we can change the game and make challenges like this unacceptable we can turn the tide. By working with everyone in the value chain and getting everyone involved become a force for good and not exploiting the resources around us then we stand the chance of achieving the goal and making the world a place we can all be proud of.
In Summary And In General
There are many dynamics involved when engaging with individuals in the enterprise. Everyone has a different context, perspective and world view. It’s natural and yet confounding problem in all multi stakeholder groups. Especially where a single and more unifying effort is needed with the simple intention of achieving collective buy in, to a vision and strategy for example.
In our experience there are always multiple agendas and motivations — they are backed up by differing views of the challenge or opportunity. This is inevitable as most stakeholders view of their business environment is limited to their specific department or functional specialism.
The Curse Of Multiple Agendas
Trying to break through these multiple perspective and definitions is vital but it is not easy. Traditional workshops too often result in unstructured conversations that may feel productive at the time but rarely deliver a sustainable outcome or allow a diverse group to reach a collective decision.
All of this requires those involved to participate in conversations that are also typically quite complex, where each individual is familiar with a part of the complete picture but no one holds a complete and coherent view/perspective in their heads.
The old tools for explaining such complexity are unfit for the task these days and we see organisations weighed down by multiple decks and documents where valuable information never gets to see the light of day.
In Principle
So we invented Structured Visual Thinking™ — three core principles that drive the way we help organisations to engage and reach sustainable outcomes and build shared understanding of opportunity and strategic direction.
Structured — so that we make sure that we have the right conversation and that we can make the best use of the insights and perspectives that are shared by groups
Visual — so that we overcome semantics and multiple definitions and remove the confusion from complex topics. Through visualisation we can bring ideas to life and get everyone to see the same things- the things that matter
Thinking — Very deliberate conversations that are designed to answer clearly defined questions backed up by full consideration of the context surrounding the organisation — as it relates to their ‘exam question’.
What this approach brings that others struggle with is:
Structured Visual Thinking™ is the best way we’ve found for working through a challenge or opportunity collaboratively — with complete objectivity — helping everyone to see past their own views and perceptions and simply focussing on achieving the right answers — for the good of the organisation.
The Power Of Thinking Visually
The ability to sustain conversations in whatever way to make sure that thinking and decisions are always based on the latest context
The means to communicate the conclusions and implications to different stakeholders as needed without ever losing the consistency of message.
We work with senior teams through a rigorous, immersive, structured and highly visual approach. For us the focus is creating value and solving complex challenges. Typically our work is designed to stimulate multi-stakeholder engagement — creating alignment and ‘buy-in’ to the important missions and objectives.
The Evidence
We have proven and long term experience across a wide range of areas. Global 2000 companies, Governments and Institutions and Social Challenges. We are currently working extensively on the Global Goals and other cases that include important issues for society. Through our tools for understanding, discovery, engagement and ownership we’ve worked on:
Electoral reform in Nigeria. Early warning and conflict resolution in the Horn of Africa. The complex and generational challenges of Agricultural reform. Human Rights and Democracy across the African Union. HIV/Aids prevention in South Africa.
Our role is always visual and impartial facilitation of decision making and multi-stakeholder teams. The results are always about making progress and answering the important questions. This results in aligned plans and strategies for the achievement of meaningful outcomes.
Because we work in Corporate and Commercial worlds we bring a genuine balance — practical, pragmatic business and commercial reality always brushes up against important agendas that effect society.
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