Shifting SOIL Conditions: Regen Melbourne’s Model for Systems Transformation
Regen Melbourne is dedicated to accelerating our city into a safe and just future. Given our systemic inertia and the extent of our metacrisis, this is giant ambition. Our first three years have seen us evolve from a community research project to a collaborative experiment, and then into an engine for ambitious collaboration in service to our city. One of the most common questions we are asked is: what exactly is it that you do?
Which is fair enough. We’ll usually respond with a mixture of jargon from the world of systems thinking, place-based organising and Doughnut Economics. These descriptions of course only get us so far. For converts to these ideas, our language feels safe, comforting and perhaps even exciting. For others it can feel alienating and confusing. And for most it actually sounds completely irrelevant. And so, as we hit the three year anniversary of our work, we have spent some time reflecting on our work in practice and how that has been developing into a more tangible model.
In one sentence, our work is to organise and orient business, capital, individuals and community-led organisations towards projects that will transform Greater Melbourne to be in service of people and planet.
Of course, the complexity of our work is also nearly impossible to summarise in just one sentence. The following is a definition of our work, now and into the future, and a framework to help us talk about what we do with anyone who comes across it — no matter their existing knowledge on systems thinking and transformation.
From icebergs to roots
One of the most common ways of describing the need and role of systems change is an iceberg.
As the analogy goes, the issues that we see in our society manifest above the water, while their causes and drivers lie below. Of course, icebergs are often much bigger below ground than above ground, helpfully symbolising how ineffective our ‘solutions’ can be when they neglect the massive drivers that lie below the surface.
Recently the Centre for Systems Innovation and Auckland Co-Design Lab designed up a roots version of the iceberg — recognising that all those ‘underground’ causes and drivers are dynamic, moving and interconnected forces.
“Unlike the traditional ‘iceberg’ model of systems … a living metaphor (tree, roots, mycelium, ant nest) can help us see how important connection and communication is between layers of the system.”
Leaning into this roots analogy further, the need and role for systems change can be thought about in the way a garden grows. Unless the soil conditions are healthy then it doesn’t matter how much energy you put into your gardening, you will never develop a thriving ecosystem. At Regen Melbourne we believe that our current economic, political and cultural systems are contributing to fundamentally unhealthy soil conditions. As a result, while our city is a beautiful place to live for many, it doesn’t matter how much effort we put into ‘solving’ the social and ecological concerns that we have, we will consistently face bigger and bigger challenges.
Regen Melbourne exists to shift these soil conditions so that a healthy and thriving city can emerge. A city that brings people above a shared social foundation and operates within our planetary boundaries.
Which brings us to SOIL, our emerging model for systemic transformation.
RM’s work is centred around a portfolio of ‘earthshots’– wildly ambitious projects that can move us towards a regenerative Melbourne. These include making the Birrarung Yarra River swimmable again, ending food waste, rejuvenating our democracy and creating a wave of regenerative streets. As a connected portfolio of ‘earthshots’ they act as pathways, where we are building the collaborative infrastructure and capabilities for the city to work in a more ambitious and coherent way towards a thriving shared future.
RM’s ‘earthshots’ — the wildly ambitious projects which act as pathways into the Melbourne Doughnut.
The SOIL model for transformation outlines how we work on these earthshots.
This model emerged from the intersection of practice and depths of knowledge drawn from: Dan Hill’s work on Mission Oriented Innovation, Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation thought and practice leadership (particularly the latest Challenge Led-Innovation workbook), Systems Innovation Initiative and their many diagrams, Moving Feast’s systems-convening and many other local and global practitioners that we have the privilege to learn with and from.
There are four main aspects, or phases, in developing and delivering our earthshots: sensemaking, organising, insights and leverage points.
Sensemaking
Sensemaking: pattern spotting for emerging energy in the system, coming from engaged organisations working to solve our major social and ecological concerns. It means giving ourselves the time, space and permission to literally make sense of the potential emergent opportunities.
Usually this emerging energy surfaces in pockets and there is a hunch that it taps into an ambitious goal and it’s time to create new alliances of actors to embark on the collective sensemaking.
We explore questions like:
What are our visions for the future?
What is working and what isn’t?
What would we do if resources weren’t a restraint?
If we could make sweeping changes to our social and cultural dynamics, what would we do?
If we could fundamentally change our policy landscape, how would we do this?
Imagine if…
Asking these questions opens up a permission space for new possible futures, and for imaginative new ways of working. Doing this collectively shifts the responsibility away from single organisations who carry all the obvious systemic dynamics which typically constrain innovation and creativity (short term profit cycles, narrow funding parameters etc).
As we work through the sensemaking process, we begin to narrow our focus towards a shared ambitious challenge (or ‘earthshot’). This earthshot aligns with the existing goals of a diversity of actors, but extends these towards an ambition that meets the extent of our metacrisis.
And of course, everything we’re doing in this phase is relational. Every conversation and forum we’re in we’re setting out to build trust and the social-political licence to continue acting in the space by asking “how can a collectively held ambition, be in service to your work?” The RM team are not experts in the food system nor are we experts in deep democracy — only by building trust with those who are experts in their fields can we have the legitimacy to act forward.
Practically, this phase looks like:
general forums like our seasonal assemblies
visioning workshops
focused round-tables once we sense an emerging theme
The RM team attending events and workshops held by other organisations
lots and lots of coffee with existing members of the alliance, new organisations as they join, and our trusted sensor networks (board members, advisors)
A series of images from sensemaking phase from different projects: spending time with alliance organisations, presenting during event series like MPavilion and running discovery workshops
Organising
Organising: as a shared goal is established, we start to see how an ecosystem of actors is already connected and engaged with one another. And where the gaps or barriers are across silos and sectors. We then work to organise and orient these actors towards the goal.
This includes the obvious communication channels and existing collaborations, but extends to more subtle relationships like who shares audiences/customers. It also considers what power dynamics drive an ecosystem and how resources (of all kinds) currently flow. The work then shifts towards (re)organising an ecosystem around the achievement of the earthshot. This is subtle work that builds on the relational capital we built during the sensemaking process. It also relies on a willingness of actors to themselves define new ways of organising together.
Practically this phase can include:
the creation of thematic working streams to begin connecting organisations in new ways
making maps in Kumu on the visible clusters or organisations and activities we see emerging around the work
making introductions across the alliance
collective innovation processes to unlock new ideas
Activities from the organising phase: workstream session on River Health for Swimmable Birrarung and an evolving systems map for Participatory Melbourne
Insights
Insights: the sensemaking and organising phases generate significant insights that iteratively inform the role that Regen Melbourne takes in any ecosystem. And these organic insights need to be complemented by the power of research to ensure we’re staying attuned to existing and emerging knowledge and not entering naively into any new spaces. Otherwise we risk being a flash in the pan injection into an already fatigued system.
This phase begins with what we call ‘research organising’ or channelling the power of research in service to our earthshot. This includes assessing relevant existing research and finding research gaps that the collective (including our university partners) can contribute to together. The insights phase is driven by the RM Lab, a formal collaboration of Melbourne universities.
Practically, this phase can look like:
Research forums
Traditional research including: summary white-papers, new publications, general population surveys
Embedding research fellows into projects
Establishing entirely new research programs
Developing live stakeholder and system maps to visual the emerging opportunities
Activities from the insights phase: research roundtables, gathering insights from Melbourne, from different knowledge systems and with international partners like Dark Matter Labs.
Leverage points
Leverage points: only after dedicated work below the surface (in the soil), do we begin to explore which existing and potential projects can unlock systemic transformation. (For context, it took two years for the Swimmable Birrarung to get to the beginning of the leverage points phase).
This phase involves assessing which leverage (or “acupressure”) points in an ecosystem have the most systemic potential and which initiatives could be supported/amplified or developed to most powerfully affect that leverage point. Through this iterative analysis Regen Melbourne develops a portfolio of projects which we actively lead the set-up of and the recruitment of organisations into the specific collaborations as each project is made up of multiple actors working in concert.
Behind the design of each project (or prototype) is a set of assumptions about the system shifts we’re looking for as a result. And therefore, as we embark on the activation of these projects we’re paying attention to the impact and ripple effects they have in the broader system.
In this phase (and throughout), there are of course other projects and initiatives underway which we celebrate, support and learn from. The projects designed for the leverage points are intended as additive injections to unlock oxygen into the system for more transformative action.
Practically, activities during the leverage points phase can look like:
Momentum building — creating coherence across a portfolio of initiatives in order to build new collective power towards the achievement of the earthshot
Collaborative projects — establishing and driving new initiatives with discrete groups of alliance partners
Funding architecture — unlocking resources (of all kinds) for existing and new initiatives
Policy engagement — using the ‘above the ground’ projects as way to intersect with the policy landscape more tangibly
Impact — seeing what effect the projects have on the system, and thus we return to the beginning of the SOIL
SOIL: sensemaking, organising, insights and leverage points.
A simple way of framing complex work. Ultimately, most people will perceive Regen Melbourne’s work through the last phase, the most visible ‘above the ground’ work. They will see that Regen Melbourne is leading portfolios of tangible projects aligned with our inspiring set of earthshots. They will see the top of the stem, perceiving only what is happening above ground.
But the only way we get truly transformational outcomes that create systemic change is by changing the soil conditions. Most of our work remains here. Getting our hands dirty in the soil. Shifting conditions to allow transformational projects to emerge.