What placemaking taught me about the future of strategy
I recently completed a 46-hour course on building better futures in place, with the School of Critical Design. It took me though what we mean by place, how to work with the people who live, work and grow there, and how to imagine and then create those better futures collaboratively.
A few key points stood out to me as being not just useful for place making, but for exploring and creating different futures in almost any context, whether that be in organisational design, comms planning, or creating new cultures as our current consumption-based model fails.
Planning Better Futures Toolbox:
Ask good questions: this is both a simple first step forward, and a hard step, but getting the question right will determine the success of execution.
‘Think in multiples so that we’re prepared for uncertainty’: This isn’t something we’re good at in business, we tend to plan for the single, most desired outcome, then scrabble to adapt when change hits. We need to figure out what a ‘multiples’ version of strategy looks like.
Value human imagination, creativity and empathy: AI can do a lot, but it cannot be weird, it cannot create the brand new, and it cannot feel in its gut when something is likely to fail when it hits real life.
Acknowledge the full ecosystem of people impacted by the future we’re planning: and figure out how to bring them all along with us. Eg in comms strategy it’s not enough to get the client on board, you also need the agency team, client stakeholders, and media partners to buy into the future you want to create.
Prototype, test and experiment: we don’t need to plan an entire paradigm shift before starting work, we can begin right now and use feedback to improve. We all say we want step change, but let’s not forget the value of ongoing, incremental change in delivering progress.
I’m especially interested in what ‘thinking in multiples’ looks like, so if you have any thoughts or would like to discuss - drop a comment :-)
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Course Creators:
Gemma Jones - Co-founder of School of Critical Design
Rosanna Vitiello - Founder of The Place Bureau