WHERE WE’VE TRIPPED UP (AND WHAT IT TAUGHT US)

Members of the N Square team come from different professional backgrounds but share experience in and a cultural affinity for creative process. In the worlds we come from—emergent strategy, futurism, sustainable management, scenario planning, industrial design, process design, graphic design— the idea of “failing forward” is practically gospel.

We don’t set out to get things right immediately. Rather, we set out to be usefully wrong, ferreting out problems and solving them quickly as we iterate our way toward better solutions. This is a process that our friend and mentor Arnold Wasserman, the illustrious industrial designer and jury vice chair of the INDEX Award, describes as “progressive approximation.” In that spirit, we offer reflections on where we have fallen short of expectations (others’ and our own) and what we have learned as a result.

Communication and Dissemination

“I would like to see more analysis of what has made an impact and why, and what didn’t. The idea of fostering creative networks is truly important. But we need to do that armed with knowledge.”

Funder

“Sometimes it feels like participating in N Square is a one-way street. I’ve been contacted … to provide expertise to people working on nuclear issues that aren’t in the field. I’m happy to do it, but rarely do I hear anything back about impact of the project/successes, etc.”

MID-CAREER NUCLEAR PROFESSIONAL

For some time our team has been painfully aware that we have insufficient communication capacity. That has resulted in our overfreighting staff members in regard to public-facing communication while underinvesting in other areas. As the comments above indicate, there are two dimensions in which we know we need to do a better job: closing communication loops so all members of our community are appropriately recognized for their contributions, and analyzing the effects of our interventions so others can benefit from what we have learned.

An example of closing communication loops: Cohort 4 of the innovation fellowship provided specific feedback about where they would have liked more support after the end of the program. While we were able to provide some of what was requested, and did our best to communicate about that, some members of the cohort were left feeling that their needs had not been met. We should have more quickly attended to ongoing needs and/or concerns and will be better prepared to do so next time.

An example of analyzing our work and disseminating findings: After funding a third-party developmental evaluation process several years ago, the staff and funder collaborative decided to discontinue that investment. As a result, we have collected less data than we would otherwise have done, leaving us to rely on anecdotal evidence and survey responses about the impact our network is having in the nuclear community. While this report is one way of communicating impact, going into the next phase of work we will consider other mechanisms for gathering evidence and disseminating findings.