FGX Goals — What does bold mean?
What are the FGX goals?
The experience of working with FutureGov is pretty unique. It’s not just what we do that has an impact on the world, it’s how we do it.
We describe the experience of working with us as a client, partner or staff member as ‘FGX’. We’ve created five goals which outline what this experience should look and feel like. This blog post is the third in a series (following energising and positively different) defining one of these goals in more depth.
Introducing FGX goal ‘bold’…
The level of change needed in the world right now is unprecedented. It’s not enough for us to make incremental improvements. We need to push further than we ever have before.
Change at this level requires bold ideas, critical challenge and visionary ambition.
As part of my role as Experience Director, I spend time listening to our clients about their experiences working with us on change. I often hear that it’s been challenging. This isn’t a bad thing, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Change shouldn’t be comfortable. We push people and organisations out of their comfort zones to deliver a purposefully uncomfortable experience, ensuring we achieve the change and impact we’re aiming for.
I like the way Janet Hughes describes the feeling in her blog post on boldness as “the weird whoosh of terror and relief that comes from real, heartfelt boldness”.
“Some people feel uncomfortable, but change is uncomfortable so that’s a good thing!” — Client feedback.
To support our ‘bold’ goal, we’ll support each other to push further than ever before. An important part of this description is the element of support. Being bold is about being brave but not without empathy and thoughtfulness. Setting a visionary mission or making a critical change can be challenging. We need to support each other through these challenges, making progress together.
What does bold look like?
In practice, boldness can take many forms. These examples start to bring to life what we mean by ‘bold’.
Bringing challenge
We frequently challenge the brief, conscious of not just sticking to a plan because it’s what we’ve been asked to do, but making sure we focus on what is actually needed to address the key issues. In our work addressing unemployment, we were initially brought in to build a job search website. Our research identified existing job search sites and highlighted the need for a service that supported residents along their whole journey into new or better employment opportunities (incl. apprenticeships, training etc.). We developed the digital tools to support an end-to-end service to help people get into good work.
Think big, starting small
We know that one of the most valuable roles we can take is to help our clients push beyond what they’re already doing and make tangible change happen now. In Dorset, we supported the team working with families with special educational needs to create a future vision for the service (thinking big). We then started small by identifying simple improvements that could be made to the way things were done. We did this through automating elements of the job and freeing up capacity to work on the larger transformative change needed.
Experimentation
Constantly experimenting with better ways of doing things. We use FutureGov as a testing ground for modern ways of working which allows us to share our learnings with clients and the wider world. We’ve set up Communities of Practice (CoPs) (Product Design, Design Research, Consultancy to name a few) to enable FutureGovers to continually improve and develop their practice. Seeing the success and impact of these CoPS, we’ve now begun to share and support our clients to set up their own CoPs in their organisations.
These are examples of how we’ve been bold in our work. Janet Hughes highlights more examples and makes the point that what constitutes being bold depends on the context and the person. How are you being bold? When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone or felt the whoosh of terror and relief that comes from being bold?
FGX Goals — What does bold mean? was originally published in FutureGov on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.