Steps a) and b) would generally be undertaken by staff in advance of an Ecocycle Planning session.
a) Gather Insight
- Identify the area of focus (e.g., broad organizational planning, pandemic planning, department or program specific planning, topic specific such as anti-Black racism or GIPA/MEPA, client-focused planning such as aging with HIV).
- Identify any stakeholders to involve (be strategic and consider who and why, based on the identified area of focus); this can include service users, staff, volunteers (including the Board of Directors), any Advisory Committees or Councils you have (e.g., PHA Service Advisory groups) and key service partners.
- Utilize a survey and/or other relevant processes (e.g., complete the OODP Emergency Continuity Assessment Planning Tool, review relevant OCHART data) to get information on the identified area of focus (see Appendix C for a survey template that can be used).
- Identify draft criteria against which to assess possible shifts in activities (i.e., moving activities from one place on the Ecocycle to another) – consider existing information (e.g., service quality, accessibility, health and safety risks, partnership relationships, cost, sustainability).
b) Engage in initial Ecocycle Planning
An example of a general detailed process for Ecocycle Planning is available through Liberating Structures. (Ecocycle Planning, n.d.) A modified process specific to this toolkit is outlined below.
- Provide each participant with a blank Ecocycle Planning map (Appendix B).
- Set up the room (or virtual meeting space) to support small group work and prepare a large wall-poster version. Virtual brainstorming and sticky note tools such as Zoom, Jamboard, Mural, Padlet, LucidBoard, Stormboard, Miro or NoteBoard can also be utilized.
- Clarify the area of focus identified in a) i) above (e.g., broad organizational planning, pandemic planning, department or program specific planning, topic specific such as anti-Black racism or GIPA/MEPA, client-focused planning such as aging with HIV) and invite participants to individually identify relevant activities that they are spending time on
- Provide some specific examples (e.g., draw a few content responses from the emergency continuity assessment planning process if one was completed in b) above)
- Pose a question to initiate thinking (e.g., What are some key activities we are doing in addressing the needs of aging PHAs?)
- Present relevant details from any insight gathering process utilized.
- Ask participants to work in pairs:
- To determine where each activity they came up with is situated on the map (i.e., within the four developmental stages: creation (tending), maturity (harvesting), creative destruction (plowing), and renewal (sowing)).
Be a “critical friend” with your partner – don’t be afraid to ask probing questions to get each other to your best thinking! - Create larger groups and have participants discuss and finalize activities and their placement on the Ecocycle Planning map.
- Ask each group to place their identified activities on the larger map.
Steps c), d), e) and f) can be completed in one longer session or separated into three sessions (note that e) and f) should be combined for the third session in this instance).
c) Reflection and Analysis
- Facilitate full group reflection and identification of activities where there is consensus of placement on the Ecocycle Planning map. Note where there is disagreement or other themes or natural groupings. Reflect this visually (e.g., using a different colour or shape) using ‘sticky notes’. Work towards gaining consensus on placement of any outlying activities.
- Prompt reflection on which quadrants within the map show the greatest and the least amounts of activity.
- Invite group discussion to identify activities that have had (or are likely to have) the greatest impact on the goal (reflect this visually such as via the use of dotmocracy).
- Invite group discussion to identify activities that have taken (or are likely to take) the greatest amount of time and resources at the organizational or initiative level (reflect this visually such as via the use of dotmocracy).
- Encourage discussion on where there are significant mismatches between resource allocation and perceived impact.
- Manage people feeling like their activities aren’t of worth!
- Discuss what factors contribute to scarcity and rigidity traps within the organization.
- Take the time to name a range of contributing factors and invite additional input from participants.
- Consider different kinds of factors including:
- Financial: time-limited funding cycles; concerns around a drop in donor or government contributions
- Interpersonal: organizational culture regarding change; ways in which individual comfort levels and needs are acknowledged and contribute to planning
- Structural: organizational practices to document, honour, and let go; partnership relationships
- Systemic: anti-Black, anti-Indigenous racism and other forms of racism which have shaped the systems within which organizations work; HIV and other forms of stigma; system dichotomy of community vs hospital
- Encourage reflection on strategic questions such as:
- To what degree do we appear to be focusing our time and resources on the efforts or activities that we believe have the greatest potential for impact?
- Which potentially influential activities might require more resources?
- Where might we (or others) scale back our resource investment due to low anticipated impact?
- What implications for action do we see in this map?
- What might cause us to take these actions?
- Facilitate discussion as to whether there are opportunities to shift attention between phases to achieve greater balance?
- Reference Appendix D to identify activities which need to move towards creative destruction in order to create space and energy for new opportunities and which activities need invested resources to move towards creation and growth?
- Review the draft criteria for assessment of possible shifts in activities (developed in step #1), and add any additional criteria that people might now have.
d) Engage in sub-layers of Ecocycle Planning as needed
- Complete an Ecocycle planning process for relevant intersecting ecocycles (e.g. Programs Department, equity, GIPA/MEPA).
e) Reconstructing Ecocycle sub-layers
- Review and incorporate insights from other Ecocycle Planning sub-layer work into the core Ecocycle Planning framework and/or into the Action Planning step.
f) Develop an Action Plan
- Invite the group to formulate action-steps linked to each phase: action-steps the organization will take that accelerate growth during the creation phase, action-steps that will extend life or increase efficiency during the maturity phase, action-steps that will prune dead wood or compost rigid practices during the creative destruction phase, action-steps that will connect creative people or prepare the ground for birth during the renewal phase.
- Incorporate identified action-steps into the Action Plan template (Appendix E). This step can be structured in a variety of ways such as entering directly into a Word or google doc displayed on a wall or utilizing a wall-poster version and markers.
g) Engage in Organizational Planning revisions
- Review and update the organization’s Strategic Plan Implementation Plan and if required, revise the Strategic Plan.
- Utilize the checklist in Appendix F to identify other organizational planning documents which require revision as a result of the forward-thinking planning process.
h) Build Organizational Capacity
- Intentionally review the process and identify further actions to establish norms to strengthen for organizational success and adaptivity.