PRUB

PRUB - Projects that produce Results that communities will Use to create Benefits

Dr Phil Driver on Action-Oriented Substrategies
We're convinced that to get something to happen, the information you present/share needs to be in the form of a tightly structured action/strategy which people can support. Our thinking is based on the OpenStrategies' rule - ie to work with:

"the smallest amount of information that has the highest value to the most people".

In our experience, people place a higher value on information that advises them about things they can do/engage with than information which merely informs (ie fact sheets).

We find that asking people what they "want" (in terms of "things") is much less informative than asking people what they want to "do" - which is much more dynamic and more likely to lead to things happening.

When attempting to get 'buy-in' to an initiative, we find that people will buy-in when they understand what they need to 'do' rather than when they understand aspirations or the things that are "wanted" or which might be achievable using some clever technology.

That's why we believe that in order to get engagement from large numbers of people it's best to share information in the form of action-oriented SubStrategies - ie very succinct sets of:

"Projects that produce Results that communities will Use to create Benefits." (PRUB)

In the context of such a SubStrategy, "facts" might equate with the Results (outputs) and the Benefits (outcomes). We assemble these in the PROCESS of a SubStrategy which shows how these outputs/outcomes can be achieved.

This gives people something to engage with: "hey, I could create that Project" or "hey, I could use that Result".

So yes, "fact sheets" might create an easy point of entry, but we need much more than an entry or starting point. We need a process that keeps people engaged from start to finish.

In this respect, we encourage people to think about "processes" BEFORE they start having conversations, so that if the conversation can operate with a process in mind for taking the conversation through to actions, the conversations are more likely to result in action plans (rather than just static facts) that people can buy-in to. It's simple good process engineering applied to knowledge management.

More Information

 * http://openstrategies.com/what-is-prub-introduction