Let’s get serious - being expert in an age of slop

Themes: Collaboration | Team

Agile and modern project management have given us powerful ways to collaborate: workshops, retrospectives, participatory exercises, visualisations and increasingly sophisticated approaches to stakeholder engagement. But what happens when the problem itself demands a different kind of engagement?

Over the past few years, Alastair has worked with organisations including the Design Council and Royal Academy of Engineering on Beyond Net Zero and climate crisis projects. Working with citizens, activists and professionals has challenged a familiar assumption: that engagement is more effective when it is playful, energising and collaborative.

This talk explores seriousness as an engagement method - and what Agile and project leaders can learn from it. When stakes are high, people may need different forms of facilitation to express disagreement; less simulation and more access to expertise and decision-makers; and clearer proof that their participation will affect outcomes.

Drawing on public consultation, climate projects and a decade of workshop practice, Alastair will explore how we can design engagement that matches the complexity and consequences of the problems we are trying to solve.

Participant takeaways

• Take people seriously: Make space for dissent, frustration and difficult conversations.
• Bring serious people in: Put expertise, authority and decision-making power into the room.
• Show serious consequences: Demonstrate how participation changes decisions, priorities and outcomes.