A few months ago I was initially impressed to find a new site called What Would You Like to Change – it is designed to be a catalyst for public discussion on various community and business issues.
http://www.whatwouldyouliketochange.com.au
Who’s baby?
The first thing I wanted to know was: Who is behind this? Who created it? And I’ve been confused ever since. It is the baby of PricewaterhouseCoopers. What was a big fat corporate doing creating a site like this? I asked a few tweeps what they thought and everyone was confused. On further inspection it seems PwC want to get a handle on the community conversation so they can use the information in their Change projects.
I was fascinated – and I am sure you will be too. Scroll down the left hand navigation menu and you’ll find the ‘Thought starters’ and categories. Click on a Thought starter that interests you then scroll through the comments and the thread replies. Add your own.
Falls short
But that’s about it. You start digging around for the ‘next steps’.. you want a clue about how you can use this information to actually CHANGE something.. Click : Making Change Happen at the top.
According to PwC, the way to ‘make change happen’ is by “asking the question: What would you like to change?”. This, we are told, will “open the door to new possibilities, and change change can happen.” To get us moving on this journey, we are presented with a bunch of inspirational quotes by famous people.
How about picking a few of the hot issues and facilitating a public brainstorm to get some real, tactical solutions then setting some action steps to ensure the solutions come to life? THAT would make change happen.
Good idea?
In today’s papers you will find a full page ad from Telstra with their version of the community conversation starter : ‘ideas for good’ :: http://www.telstra.com/ideasforgood . If you want to know what it’s all about, don’t bother digging around for an ‘about us’ link – you’ll have to sit through the intro video.
Then, click through the topic headings. Is it the cynic in me, or do they all seem to be related to certain Telstra initiatives? It’s a great idea to choose an actual personality to ‘blog’ about certain topics within each heading – then we’re invited to comment on the blog posts. AND – yes, it could turn out to be a great PR idea from within Telstra.
But it’s a little disappointing to see that the Future blog has not even begun? None of the blog posts has attracted more than 1 comment. Surely they should have populated it a bit more before publicising it?
What will be DONE with the ideas? There are so many sites asking for comments and calling them ‘ideas’ but they are really simply suggestions.
K. Rudd’s Ideas Summit
Reminds me of K. Rudd’s Ideas Summit in April 2008 : “an exciting initiative aimed at harnessing the bestideas for building a modern Australia ready for the challenges of the 21st century”. 10 ‘prominent australians’ [read: celebrities] led various bunches of people in discussions about certain topics.
When I’m talking about the Ideas Summit with people, the most common comment is : ‘nothing ever happened after that… what happened to the ideas?’ It seems they did a great job of publicising the actual Summit but not such a great idea of telling the world about the results.
Well, you can find out in this 405 page report :: http://www.australia2020.gov.au/final_report/index.cfm
Words like embrace, establish, empower, encourage, develop and phrases like ‘we need to’ and ‘we should’ can be found in the hundreds through the report.
What next? The report tells us that this is not the end. That we need to continue to discuss and debate ‘the issues’ and that the ideas in the report will be used to shape policy.
Are you wondering, as I am, HOW on earth the best ideas will be chosen, worked on, and how action steps will be set to ensure the ideas get a life?
Over to you
What are your thoughts? What is YOUR best technique for ensuring your best ideas see the light of day?
One page action plan
At IdeasCulture, we follow our productive creative thinking / brainstorming sessions with clients by teaching use of our One Page Implementation plan. This involves setting three action points for each idea. Say you want your great marketing idea implemented within 3 months, you’d set one action step for the next fortnight, one for the next month and one for 3 months. You can download it at http://www.ideasculture.com/downloads.
Oh, and if you want to generate some real, creative, clever business ideas for yourself – download the guided audio brainstorm at http://yvonneadele.com/video-audio/.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Ideas are the easy part. Doing something about an idea is far harder. And, in fact, people often get caught at the “ideation” stage. They keep coming up with ideas or extensions, or become trapped by the interconnectedness of the idea and its implementation. The real trick is to not look too far ahead. Take the idea, own it and commit to it. It will change over time, don’t try to make it “perfect”. Just start doing something with the idea and you’ll be far ahead of the competition.
I totally agree Gavin, perfection is the poison of all possibility… perfect never come because we are constantly evolving.
but it’s the ‘do’ and that is where alot of people fall short.
Ideas are the easy put I get 2 million a day
But that is the difference with successful people, they are willing to go somewhere where most people don’t because they do not put their ideas into practice. That’s why entrepreneur’s are so fantastic because we get ideas and we are not afraid to test them and push the boundaries, we take an idea run with it and make it awesome.
Renee xx
OK, hard to beat a one page plan – but I would add to that and Gavin’s thoughts on ownership…
Owners + Small Wins.
The idea must have an “owner” and there needs to be some identifiable “small wins” associated with it. The owner achieve the “small wins”, links them to the idea, the idea seeds, and is talked about, and snowballs. Simple huh? Maybe not…
Agree with one pager and owners +small wins
I do know that PWC does good work with a social enterprise partner called Volans and their CSR report Steps and Strides leads the field
I too am cynical of the big corporates however at least their talk keeps being the change in the conscious
Seems with each example the focus is on the ‘front end’ with little investment in the delivery. Generates goodwill but could be far more powerful if they can report back in a few months on real progress