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For practitioners in the fields of:
You'll:
On DAY 2 we'll work in teams to design real life projects using a rigorous step-by-step process.
What they say about the course
"It was great that we got to work on our own 'real life' projects."
- Project officer, Department of Community Services, NSW
"Fantastic! Best workshop I've ever been to."
- NRM facilitator, Hunter, NSW
"I've learnt more in the last 2 days than in the last 12 months."
- HIV project officer, NSW
"Very useful and very practical application of a huge range of social psychology theories. It gave me a lot to think about and provided direction for the future. A very professional workshop."
- NRM project officer, Central West, NSW
"Revealing, engaging, relevant, useful."
- NRM facilitator, Sydney
"Compared to all the spot-fines and emails etc I'd normally deal with over two days, arguably the most productive two days I've had. I'm glad I didn't go to all those 'essential' meetings!"
- NRM facilitator, Benalla, Victoria
"Action-packed and thought-provoking."
- community activist, Central Coast, NSW
"Fantastic! Extremely useful and motivating. Looking forward to confidently using the process in all sorts of change enabling projects."
- NRM project officer, Central Coast, NSW
"Challenging and inspiring, best training I've had in two years of attending workshops."
- Landcare facilitator, Tasmania
"A great use of my time to help me work smarter."
- NRM facilitator, Tasmania
"One of the best I've attended and I've attended lots!"
- Road Safety officer, rural NSW
"Great, our processes of decision making have changed forever."
- NRM manager, Tasmania
"Excellent and really useful. Les is a great facilitator, excellent attitude and I appreciate the way he keeps things on track, interesting, fun and practical. Best facilitation I've seen in my year in this job!!"
- NRM facilitator, Gippsland
"I really liked the way you were able to talk us through concepts. I plan to go back to the workplace and challenge the way we plan our social marketing programs."
- Health marketer, NSW
"Really good, consolidated a lot of knowledge and theories into a comprehensive project planning approach for change."
- environmental educator, NSW
"Thanks for making the tools available so easily. My associates here at council seem to think I am good at writing up project outlines and proposals, but really I just fill in the blanks around your tools."
- Community projects officer, Victoria
"It helped me think outside the square and it was definitely the most useful one I've been to. It actually focused on the area of work relevant to us."
- Road Safety Officer, NSW
"I'm fired up now I have something like this to back me up."
- community project facilitator, WA
"The identification of unique strategies for specific target groups was great."
- stormwater educator, NSW
"I'm very empowered to tackle planning my new program for next 5 years."
- Health marketing manager, Sydney
"I realise the importance of:
- taking more time for tactics, brainstorming is best;
- analysing the behaviour change up front before launching into a campaign;
- thinking about user benefits and states of mind;
- targeting specific audiences in a campaign...not just everyone;
- testing your thinking."
- council marketing manager, Queensland
"When can I start using this!!!"
- NRM coordinator, Victoria
The thinking behind the course
We absorb from our culture a lot of assumptions about what it takes to achieve behaviour change in others ('lay theories of change') some of these have a weak basis in reality or are actually counter-productive. Being able to critically 'surface our assumptions' and collect evidence to evaluate them is a vital ability that enables change agents to learn and their efforts to become more successful.
The Enabling Change training is about sound models, clear thinking and rigorous planning (plus a little theory). It provides a complete tools-based template for developing and evaluating behaviour change projects, with an eye to identifying and testing the assumptions we bring. Not only that, but you'll get a crash course in social psychology with an emphasis on motivation, persuasion and social diffusion. You'll also understand the power of social buzz and how the change efforts succeed or fail according the 'fit' of the behaviours they are attempting to promote.
The course recognises that most behaviour change is social. It depends on 'invitations' by similar, connected, respected people in our lives. Hence one of the aims is to give participants practice in developing PERSUASIVE INVITATIONS. Because it's grounded in social science the course is compatible with other socially based change approaches like the organising model, community development and advocacy.
The course is based on 4 models:
1) The 7 Doors model integrates conventional psychological models and theories into one usable model that offers immediate practical guidance for change agents.
2) Diffusion of Innovations focuses on what it takes for new ideas and practices to spread across a community.
3) A systematic step-by-step design process was developed over several years to meet the needs of workshop participants operating at many scales in many fields. It consists of 17 questions. Many of these are unsurprising, but some are unexpected, vital and easily forgotten. In the training, each question is backed with a tool to allow a small project team to collaboratively create a sound solution before moving on to the next question.
4) The evaluation process is seemlessly integrated into the template used to record the 17 question design process. It's based on current best practice, which is that:
- Projects should be evaluated at the level of outcomes, not just outputs: We use the popular heirarchical 'program logic' model, and encourage people to identify simple indicators at each level, so they can track progress towards desired outcomes.
- Projects should be evaluated according to an explicit 'theory of change' ie. change agents should be able to state their hypothesis about why their efforts should cause something to happen, before they begin. The project then becomes a test of their hypothesis.
We give participants simple tools to develop their own 'theory of change' for each project. This is good discipline because it forces people to become aware of their assumptions so that poor assumptions to be discarded and good assumptions reinforced.
The evaluation model is built into the 17 question process, so participants don't quite realise they are developing their evaluation strategy until it is pointed out to them, which takes the sweat out of evaluation.