A manifesto for sustainable delivery

For a while now I’ve been thinking about and crafting an approach to ensuring project impact and sustainability in my organisation. We do lots of work that is very impactful, but I believe more could be done add even more value for the stakeholders we work with.

As part of this I’ve developed (for want of a better word) a manifesto, this responds to thinking I’ve covered in previous weeknotes:

I wonder what would happen if we saw things differently? To think about the work as a river, running past us, constantly moving, and each of our projects as an opportunity to jump on a leaf, float down stream with that work a little, before we jump off again.

How would that change how we work? Would we appreciate our time in the stream more and consider our projects an opportunity to maximise our time in the work? Would it shift our perspective away from outputs and finalities and towards continuous value? Towards capability building and organisational change? I don’t know. Like I said. I have a hypothesis.

So I’m wondering. What about this works, what is hard, what have I got wrong, what have I missed?

This is us:

• We care about social impact
• We deliver discrete projects with a start and an end
• Many of our projects have finite budgets…
• But the change work we do doesn’t end, it takes sustained effort
• Systems change doesn’t have neat edges
• Do our clients assume that their problems will be solved at the end of our work? Do they worry about what happens after we leave?

What if?

• We prioritized seeing ourselves as an extension and part of a client team?
• We treated our projects as a part of a continuing programme of work, not as a discrete project?
• We made guiding, coaching and capability central to our project delivery?
• We made it our work to ensure our project teams get buy-in from the wider organization?
• We treated every project asset as something worthy of being left behind?
• We treated delivery as a practice and talked openly about what we are learning by doing?

But how?

• We build ‘one team’ conversations into project kick off
• We are pragmatic, and choose to step towards our vision even when it isn’t perfect
• We explain methodology with care in our language and patience and tenacity in our teaching
• We find ways to share artifacts that can be reused
• We are deliberate about understanding organisational constraints
• We consider how to use physical space to tell the stories of our work
• We collect and curate sketches and scraps in the same way as project assets. We see these as integral to the story

Can these be generalised? Are they too specific? Are they not specific enough? Are they over simplified? Are they just repeating things that are better outlined in other approaches?

Please tell me. I would love to know.