In addition to the core operating principle of pain + reflection = evolution, we have a set of foundational approaches that guide our work:
Perennial - We want to create things that last. An idea, an approach, a product that continues to provide what you need for years into the future. This also means that we keep in touch with the projects and people that we work with over the years to build meaningful relationships that continue to renew and evolve into the future.
Antifragile - Our goal is to create things that benefit from disruption. When disaster strikes, fragile systems break. Resilient systems can rebound to the original starting point. Antifragile systems get better with disorder and chaos. A humanitarian response organization is the ultimate example of an anti-fragile entity: The organization works to prepare and prevent disasters in ‘peacetime’. When an unexpected disaster happens, the organization demonstrates its expertise and gains funding to provide aid. The organization benefits both from stability and disruption. We apply this mindset to each system and person that is a part of the humanitarian practice to give each system the chance to benefit from disorder.
Algorithmic - We learn by recognizing patterns, and documenting the best response to those patterns so that we can make the right choice when that circumstance inevitably repeats itself. We use the algorithm approach to learn and codify knowledge, tune it to each environment and apply it consistently.
Exponential - Many of the problems that we seek to solve are exponential in complexity and nature. We seek exponential imagination, design and creations to meet these challenges in contrast to repetitive, linear approaches.
Human Performance- We study and apply ideas and practices from human performance in sport, academia, entrepreneurship and military to inform our own work/life and our support to your group. We use our project Social Sector Titan as a lab to test and share ideas that we can bring to bear on our strategic design/build process.
Evolution - Nature informs our work. The team loves and is inspired by nature. After an intense deep work session, the natural world helps us recover and do our best work. We also gain inspiration from evolution, the force driving the natural world. Evolution optimizes for the good of the whole. We use that principle to drive rapid evolution that optimizes your organization’s ecosystem.
We also live and work by the core humanitarian principles: Neutrality - Humanitarian actors must not take sides in hostilities or engage in controversies. Impartiality - Humanitarian action is needs based giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress and making no distinction of origin or orientation. Humanity - Human suffering must be addressed where it is found. The purpose of humanitarian action is to protect life and health and ensure respect for human beings. Independence - Humanitarian action is autonomous from political, economic, military or other objectives.
Tools & processes that we use: Learning log- Whenever something goes wrong we enter it into the learning log. We then add reflections and action for follow through to improve our process. Project management approach - we use a rigorous project management approaches to ensure on time and in budget delivery of all products. Design thinking process- We love good design of all kinds and use design thinking to inform our process. This includes the empathic process of understanding pain and needs and designing a wide range of potential solutions that we narrow before building and testing prototypes. Connected data approach - We use available data to support our analysis and where appropriate, we visualize and share this analysis to support our work. Disaster Response Catalogue - This is a catalog of International disaster response scenarios and outcomes that serve as the basis for our learning and evolution in serving our client’s needs. Although each disaster scenario is unique, we can still use past lessons to continue to perfect our response planning. All seasons approach - Humanitarian organizations have four main ‘seasons’ or phases: responding to a crisis, preparing to respond, growing, or distilling. We understand these seasons and use that framework to understand and apply our problem solving cycle to each challenge. Rapid learning - We create a rapid build-mistake-learn process to accelerate our learning and service to the client and the cause.
Note on Humanitarian Outcomes We are relentlessly output focused. The infinitely complex environments and hard problems that we face are ultimately out of our control. We do control our focus, our work and the quality of our deliverables. We keep our focus on what we can control and strive for consistency in our output. We take full responsibility and pride in our outputs, and recognize that these may or may not contribute to theultimate outcome. We don’t pretend or claim to control the outcome.
We strive to create an extraordinary company of high performance and service in support of the humanitarian enterprise.