Reflection - visualisation Unlocking community facilities

Challenge I work for a local government (council) in Melbourne, Australia. Management and  elected members  were concerned that council managed community facilities were difficult to access by community  organisations and members of the public. My team is not responsible for the management/booking  of any facilities, however, is responsible for planning for the demand for additional facilities. The  scoping stage of the challenge indicated that: • Council hired 56 facilities • Facilities were managed by 5 different departments (8 different work units) • There were 32 different customer categories • More than 140 different fee options • Seven different booking systems • Eight different booking forms and hire agreements

The project scope was to: • Improve the experience for the customer, while not centralising the management internally • Optimise community access and use of council managed community facilities

The project was considered a wicked problem to solve because:  • The problem was human-centered - we had no information about how intricacies of the

management system, nor customer experiences/expectations

• There were too many moving parts to clearly understand/document the problem as such we

relied on gut-feeling

• There was a large amount of uncertainty around what the current practices were • Whilst there was a corporate booking system, the data was unusable for analysis

Due to lack of data, storytelling was a powerful tool to keep the project’s momentum and to trial a  number of ideas.

Selection One of the biggest challenges was for the different officers in charge of bookings to accept current  practices were inefficient and bad customer service. As it was impossible to apply process or  analytical thinking to this problem, storytelling was a powerful tool to get consensus and buy-in to  the project. It was essential the catalyst for a series of little changes to current practices that had  long term positive benefits to the organisation and community groups.

Application There were many stories told to help describe the current situation. For example: • The story of a bogus example of what it is like to deal with council when contact is made to book

facilities, the trials, the tribulations and the frustrations from a customer’s perspective. The story  started by describing the customer, a non-English speaking older lady with no interest.

• The story about how council potentially can ask the same community volunteer for the same

piece of paper 17 times every year.

These stories helped set the scene. From there ideas were generate from a number of unlikely  officers to improve the situation. My name is Menna and throughout the process I used the ‘Menna’s  Dancing Dogs’ as a bogus storytelling narrator. So much so, that stakeholders were using ‘Menna’s  Dancing Dogs’ when talking about ideas in later stages of the project.

Insight and approach Storytelling was used a lot. Some stories were real life examples modified to protect the identity of  customers, others were fictitious to either provide insight to current practices or to test/talk through  ideas.

Storytellng, in its many forms used of the last couple of months, have been pivotal in helping people  stay focused, to share experiences, and most importantly emphasise with council’s customers -  especially in an environment where there were considered a nuisance and difficult to deal with.

In two months, officers have implemented a number of changes, most have been successful - some  were not successful but ones that we still learnt lesson from.

