4. The TANGO-W treasure chest: specific learning content at a glance
4.1. TANGO-W practical guides
One principle of the TANGO-W project was the implementation of continuous feedback loops within the framework of the f2f format and online CoPs (Community of Practice). The supervising external perspective thus installed enabled the municipal project managers and consulting researchers to periodically look at the overall system and contextual changes during the course of the project.
The cooperation between the municipal project managers and their consulting researchers was scrutinised, as was the scope for shaping their own roles as municipal project managers and consulting researchers. The "do's and don'ts" collected in the process are summarised in the following sub-chapters as "practical guidelines" for municipal project managers and consulting researchers. The "do's and don'ts", which are of central importance for both roles, are emphasised as overarching, transformative guidelines.
4.1.1. TANGO-W guide for transformative urban developers and researchers
Guidelines for shaping your own role as a transformative urban developer/researcher |
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4.1.1. TANGO-W guide for transformative urban developers and researchers
Guidelines for shaping your own role as a transformative urban developer/researcher |
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Guidelines for transformative leadership of teams |
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Guidelines for transformative context governance |
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4.1.2. TANGO-W Guide for transformative, municipal project managers
Guidelines for shaping your own role as a municipal client |
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Guidelines for shaping your own role as a municipal project manager |
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Guide for transformative leadership of teams |
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4.1.3. TANGO-W guide for transformative researchers
Guidelines for shaping your own role as a transformative researcher |
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Guidelines for transformative leadership of research teams |
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Guidelines for transformative context governance |
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4.2. Transformative governance instruments
According to H.v. Förster (1998), transformations cannot be forced and controlled from the outside. Experiments with cities and other organisations have shown that such approaches only trigger resistance in cities as complex social systems: Each city has a very individual history in its cultural context and thus also a very unique communal memory with specific experiences, values and patterns of action. This communal memory is analogous to a black box in the sense that different, unpredictable reactions from the municipalities must always be expected in response to identical impulses from outside. According to H.v. Förster (1998), this is what makes them non-trivial in contrast to aeroplanes or cars, for example.
This results in the paradox that someone who wants to prevent change only has to place himself at the head of a group that loudly demands change in order to trigger the necessary counter-pressure in the system, which in the medium-term blocks desirable changes.
4.2.1. Conditions for the success of municipal transformation processes
If it is not possible to control transformations from the outside, then it is necessary to create the conditions for them to emerge within the social system itself. Helmut Willke (1998) calls this approach "context governance".
Context governance positions itself neutrally in relation to change requirements. It offers a communication space in which municipal project managers and their co-operation partners are "determined to be self-determining" (Willke 1989, p. 46) in the sense that they themselves have to decide whether and how to change. Regular evaluation and governing meetings between municipal project managers and consulting researchers are one format of this context governance. The co-creative governance of transformation processes is thus essentially based on this attitude of "change neutrality". Only this fundamental openness to all possible forms of preservation and change enables both to assume the function of a catalyst and mobiliser for municipalities and their relevant environments and to support existing potential for self-transformation.
In various models, change theories describe how cities as social systems usually react to external pressure to change. According to Claes Janssen (1996), external pressure to change initially triggers shock in the system, which subsequently leads to denial and defence measures (aggression). Insight itself only arises when it is experienced that all the old routines no longer work and come to nothing: This is the time when the need for transformation can be accepted by the system itself. The time from shock to realisation usually varies greatly from city to city and usually opens up the space for curiosity and thus for the start of experimental search processes for new possible solutions.
Project consortia usually comprise four to five EU countries, each with two Urban Living Labs. Completely unknown at the time of project submission is the partner cities' respective openness to transformation - beyond a fundamental expression of interest in the topic of the call. Among the cities, there is usually at least one that is satisfied with its current situation and sees no real need for transformation. Research projects can only offer resonance from an external perspective as the desired added value. It is just as likely that the project consortium will include a city that is overwhelmed by the pressure to change. In this case, the research partners are experienced as aggressors from whom one must protect oneself by taking sides in favour of change. Only in exceptional cases can the cooperation necessary for successful transformation projects between the municipal project manager and consulting researchers succeed. These dynamics and the task of finding a productive way of dealing with them were also core elements of the TANGO-W research project.
Change-neutral context governance enables all cities to find their own way of dealing with new issues and the associated transformations. What has changed in any case is the awareness with which they (do not) do something. This is made possible by the implementation of the transformation room, which offers communication and learning formats beyond the daily communication and control routines.
4.2.2. What does "context governance „mean and what is it used for?
But how can transformation processes be supported from within the system? Which communication formats can serve as enablers for "change beyond the need to achieve concrete results immediately [...]" (Neuvonen, Ache, 2017, p. 76)?
And this is precisely where the model of context governance by systems theorist H. Willke (1998) comes in: This is essentially about creating new types of creative and decision-making scope beyond the usual everyday routines. Their implementation itself already represents a break with the usual communication routines: Where the preferred conflict partner is lost, the corresponding communication patterns come to nothing.
Context governance enables transformation. This is why we refer to their communication formats and the way they are combined as "transformation room " (Wilhelmer et.al. 2020) for short. What is essential is that in a "transformation room", much of what previously characterised everyday life like a law of nature suddenly appears to be open and shapeable again. Transformation rooms arouse curiosity and joy and mobilise experimental search processes in communal systems.
By defining the geographical, content-related/technological and social boundaries for experimental research, real-world laboratories and urban living labs define the central framework conditions for context governance: in the ULLs, the big world is tested on the stage of the "small world". The architectures of the transformation room then go far beyond this basic definition of the framework conditions for experimental research.
In terms of their impact, they provide municipal project managers and consulting researchers with a lens for recognising helpful and obstructive communication patterns in the overall system and facilitate the identification of actors who are willing and able to take the baton of transformation in the city into their own hands. The resulting focus of attention generates a new understanding of the dynamics of the overall system and supports the development of appropriate cooperation formats that promote creativity and decision-making inside out.
In contrast to project organisations, transformative architectures combine different functions (e.g. project manager, project client, expert, etc.) and committees (e.g. project team, advisory board, resonance board, decision-making group, etc.) with each other in such a way that a communicative space for transformation/learning processes is created. In this way, the transformation room enables a) the implementation of co-creative reflection and governing meetings between the local project manager and consulting researcher, a) the development of cooperative relationships between the external consultant researcher and all decision-makers/committees of the city relevant to the project, c) the development of a social architecture with different project functions and committees - supplemented by workshops, coaching sessions and interviews - that enable creativity and decision-making processes at eye level.
Of central importance here is the functionality of the regular meetings between the municipal project managers and their consulting researchers in an atmosphere of trust and appreciation: This is where co-creative governing of the overall process takes place at eye level and this is also where a) drafts for a social architecture and the staffing of the corresponding functions and committees are developed, b) hypotheses on the current dynamics and needs in the overall system are regularly developed, c) the next measures and interventions are planned on this basis and d) the effects of the implemented measures are compared with the initial hypotheses in order to develop further ideas for next steps based on the difference. Both the consulting researcher and the municipal project manager assume that truth is impossible and that only subjective-reflective experimentation in the transformation room can lead to suitable results for the city.
Another key basic assumption is that successful transformation processes require the moderation of neutral, external researchers. This moderation facilitates a joint orientation towards overarching goals as well as mutual learning and understanding and the joint development of new, feasible solutions. This a) interrupts routine cycles of action and b) utilises the creative potential of the city and its stakeholders to promote their ability to govern themselves (Wimmer 1990, p. 509).
4.2.3. What transformative governance instruments are there?
Systemic organisational development (Königswieser/Exner 1998) distinguishes between "social", "temporal" and "content" architectures as modes of transformative context governance. As the content architecture comes very close to the standardised milestone planning of project management and thus has little novelty value, it is not categorised by TANGO-W as a transformative governance instrument.
International management consulting firms that are invited to restructure processes usually set up a mirror-image parallel structure to the organisation being advised. The aim of this is to take the organisation's decision-makers into a kind of "controlling embrace" and thus prevent deviant behaviour on the part of clients and project managers. This approach has only been partially successful in supporting urban transformation processes as cities, as part of the multi-level governance of public administration and their cross-sectoral responsibility for the common good, have a far greater degree of complexity than commercial enterprises: Instead of being able to establish a mirror-image management structure, external researchers are usually integrated directly into municipal project teams as technical experts with the task of realising the goals of their municipal clients. This structural embedding in the role of executive project employee reduces the possibility of co-creative influence on objectives and transformation processes to almost zero. Otherwise, however, the basic paradigms of management consulting firms largely coincide with the approach of traditional, discipline-oriented technology researchers.
Experts in research and consulting usually take sides with the objectives of decision-makers in politics and administration. In addition, they also take sides for substantive solutions, which they usually bring with them from their research organisation. By advocating for a specific, substantive solution, they clearly take sides in favour of a necessary change in the city and thereby often un-intentionally trigger resistance. At the same time, they see it as their task to contribute to acelerating urban change by providing impetus (Wilhelmer, D. 2009).
In contrast, transformative researchers, like systemic consultants, refrain from instructing from the outside through predefined change objectives and prefabricated, substantive solutions: Instead, goals are always defined jointly by the city's relevant decision makers and the affected and involved stakeholders in a circular goal-setting process. The change does not lie in the realisation of a predetermined goal, but in the assumption of responsibility for the direction of the transformation process and the result achieved.
Transformative researchers establish a relationship with all decision-makers and committees on an equal level and can thus get to know and understand the different perspectives and interests in an impartial manner. This enables them to develop an understanding of the differrent interests in the organisation from an attitude of social neutrality as an appreciative translator system. (Königswieser/Exner 1998).
Beyond a prior commitment to a substantive solution, transformative researchers support the development of a suitable solution for the city and its stakeholders through this process itself.
As a kind of map, the social architecture provides orientation as to which functionaries in which committees cooperate to fulfil which tasks and how they communicate with other committees and the external consulting researchers and municipal project managers. The basic principle here is that all cooperation takes place on an equal footing, without hierarchical rights of access and control.
Once all the committees and functions of the architecture have been filled, the next step is to plan the individual process steps over time. The diagram below shows how the different functions (see left column) are combined over time (see milestones with meetings and workshops in the upper part of the graph) in such a way that the potential and knowledge of all those involved can be incorporated into the co-creative development and decision-making process in the best possible way ((for a description of the functions, see left-hand page).
The temporal architecture thus helps the municipal project manager and consulting researcher not to unintentionally forget any of the relevant internal and external cooperation partners and thus to promote unintended surprising process turbulences.
4.2.4. Transformative governance instruments - lessons learnt from piloting
From a TANGO-W perspective, the following communication patterns were identified as primary barriers to the expansion of urban transformative capacity in cities: a) project leaders work alone without municipal colleagues and external expert teams and stakeholders, b) cooperation takes place bilaterally beyond social reflection and learning processes in municipal groups, c) the number of people involved as well as project meetings and workshops and their duration are reduced to a minimum, d) ) researchers accept invitations from cities to take on the role of municipal project manager in the city.
If the mental landscapes and behavioural habits of individuals and formal and informal groups do not change, no transformation can occur in the system itself. Constrictions in communication settings therefore automatically have a stabilising effect on existing cooperation patterns and communal impact processes.
External researchers are not familiar with the city's internal communication routines and therefore do not have internal networks with relevant decision-makers. As a result, they are unable to assess the nature and functionality of existing information and decision-making processes and therefore cannot provide any helpful, internal city development impulses. This makes them the sole providers of data and agents of fulfilment for decisions already made in the hierarchy of the city. One effect of this is that the city can continue its hierarchical communication and decision-making routines undisturbed and sort out unusual solution proposals from research projects prematurely, virtually without any troublesome reflection and feedback processes.
As part of the curriculum format (2) "Introduction into transformative governance", a one-day seminar was held in Klagenfurt with researchers and municipal project managers. Lessons learnt from this is that although social architectures help to quickly discover dysfunctional communication patterns, the decision as to which changes are acceptable for the system must necessarily remain with the municipal project managers concerned and their internal clients.
Only municipal project managers who are themselves committed to transformative goals can use their own experience to assess the scope for the use of new communication formats and thus determine the type and number of stakeholders and stakeholder groups involved together with the consulting researcher. Without fundamental acceptance of the transformation project in the municipality, even the smallest learning and change processes cannot take place.
The fact that the social architecture as a context for the transformative research process is developed and defined within the framework of the meetings of the municipal project leaders and consulting researchers makes the reliable and continuous cooperation between the two themselves a central, transformative governance instrument for transformation projects.
It is clear that the great diversity of municipal structures and communication patterns must necessarily be reflected in a great variety of possible architectures. However, the basic principles of the architectures themselves can serve as a common basis for recognising and understanding what makes the individual municipalities tick and what scope for action, they actually provide for transformation processes, regardless of the respective local contexts.
Social and temporal architectures can thus be used by municipal project managers and researchers as a helpful starting point for reflecting on communication patterns, dynamics, and taboos in the overall system and thus for setting up a feasible, co-creative context governance per ULL.