We’re feeling energised as we zoom through the first month of the new year. That’s because we can see what’s ahead, and we’re excited about the possibilities. Are you ready to set sail with us? We’re celebrating what’s been achieved in partnership with people just like you so far, while setting our sights on facilitating more important conversations in more places and having even more positive impact on more communities. We’re ready to embrace where engagement and deliberation are going, are you?
A message of thanks to you - our clients, participants, partners and friends - and hope for what’s ahead. As we head towards the end of a big year of big conversations, our team shares what they’re grateful for, their biggest highlight of 2023 and what’s really lighting them up when they think forward to the new year ahead.
Meet the newest additions to the MosaicLab team: Belinda Lowing and Fox Gillen. Both Belinda and Fox have long career histories that span across interesting and complex roles that have included facilitation and engagement in many forms. Learn more about these two and gain some insights into who they REALLY are through their answers to our fast five questions!
Ever wondered what makes our facilitators tick? Meet the newest additions to the MosaicLab team: Jody Kingston and Aaron Bosch. Both Aaron and Jody have fascinating, diverse backgrounds and have come to MosaicLab and facilitation via interesting pathways. Find out what they love about their work, what impact they hope to have and how they answered a list of fun and probing questions that we like to call The Telling Top 10...
Four language interpreters. Child-minding. Recruitment challenges. Birthday cake and a lot of laughs. These are just some of the unique highlights of our work with Quit Victoria and VicHealth in 2022 on a project to reduce tobacco-related harm in public housing. This case study takes a detailed look at how MosaicLab supported this process with a residents’ panel and sense-making workshops. All to drive improved, long-term outcomes for community and public health.
Fires, floods, a pandemic, wars and economic stress – humans everywhere are living through or witnessing a multitude of distressing events at once. It’s a time to connect with and support each other, even if we fear emotionally charged topics or feel uncertain how to approach them. Here are nine skills you can use in everyday conversations with family, friends and colleagues to help you and them process these events, bear heavy emotions and move forward together.
Many of the engagement processes MosaicLab delivers are built around big, complex or strategic issues or decisions. These processes can result in outcomes that affect large cohorts of staff across an organisation.
Not only will some of these staff be required to implement the decision, but involving and informing them from the start of the process will contribute to the overall success of your project.
We wanted to delve deeper into this topic, so we sat down with two internal communication and change specialists with backgrounds in the public sector. They’ve shared easy-to-implement internal communications tips and ideas that you could apply to any big project, engagement process or change.
The rise of social media has transformed how we communicate with each other and how organisations communicate with their customers and communities. This rapidly changing landscape can be unforgiving to those who play it safe, and, often, government is seen to be lagging behind the private sector.
Effective communication is a key component of every engagement process. So, today we’re providing some communication inspiration - exploring some examples of bold, creative public sector campaigns that cut through the clutter.
When you’re preparing information inputs for a community engagement process, organisations can spend a lot of time producing glossy brochures and simplified, summarised content. It’s easy to get lost in all the posters and paragraphs and lose sight of what’s important - what you’re really saying about the issue or decision at hand.
Getting the balance right can be challenging. So, in this post we’ll not only address this months myth, we’ll also give you 6 simple tips for providing the right information at the right level of detail.
Online tools are an important part of the modern engagement landscape. They offer a broad range of benefits from ease and flexibility of access to handy data analysis options. They can be absolutely worth the investment, and are integral parts of most successful, contemporary engagement processes.
However, it's a mistake to think that a great online platform or tool alone will solve all your engagement problems or attract high levels of participation - no matter how much you spent on building it or how long you spent on perfecting it.
This monthly myth touches on a mistake that is pretty easy to make and can catch organisations out, leaving them without much of a return on what can be a significant investment.
Many organisations try to minimise risk by 'holding the reins tight' when it comes to communicating with their communities and stakeholders around engagement processes and major projects/decisions.
This so-called 'risk averse' approach tends to include carefully constructing tightly worded (yet often very uninformative) key messages and strictly withholding any information deemed potentially inflammatory or uncomfortable - even when inextricably relevant to the issue at hand.
There's also approval processes applied to the release of any information, which can slow down communication activities - sometimes to a considerable extent - depending on how rigid or intricate these processes are.
While organisations tend to feel comfortable with this well-worn approach, the promise of 'safety' through control is generally just an illusion.
