Municipal Insighting Sessions Underway

Communities of Tomorrow has co-hosted a number of municipal innovation sessions with municipal leaders and staff across Saskatchewan, intended to assist them in kick-starting the development of innovative approaches to their infrastructure challenges.

“This idea grew out of our efforts to develop a municipal innovation network in Saskatchewan,” says CT President John Lee.  “The people we talked to in our cities and towns told us that just getting innovative thinking on the agenda could be a challenge, so we decided to see if we could help.”

As a result, municipalities have committed to staging the so-called “insighting sessions”, with 8 already completed.  Communities of Tomorrow provides a professional facilitator and works with the staff of the cities to put together an agenda based on their own needs and objectives.

“It’s really about allowing everyone to think and speak with an open mind,” said Communities of Tomorrow Technical Support and Business Development Coordinator Bland Brown.  “Our previous consultations with municipalities indicated that what was needed was a chance for everyone to discuss their challenges and solutions together, in a free-thinking environment.”

Brown and CT Municipal Innovation Facilitator Harlan Ritchie are working closely with the municipalities, to ensure that the insighting sessions are productive.

“We start with a conference call with the local session leaders, to crystallize the topic areas they want to discuss, set the agenda, and develop the ground rules,” said Brown. “Then it is a matter of getting everyone comfortable with the idea that there are no titles and no hierarchy in these meetings - everyone has an equal voice.”

The result is a free-wheeling discussion in which everyone from the city manager, to the director of public works, to crew supervisors, and frontline workers can talk about problems and share potential solutions.  Some of the sessions have also included consultants and contractors doing work for the municipalities.

“It is all a practical lesson in how to develop innovative processes within your own community,” said Brown. “Hopefully the experience lays the ground work for these groups to work together in a new way, and generate more new solutions to their infrastructure challenges in the future.”

Following the sessions, CT and the professional facilitator they are working with provide reports back to the municipalities, detailing what was discussed. These reports also form the basis of a new body of knowledge that can be shared between all of the communities involved.

“I think this will have a snowball effect as we meet with more and more municipal teams,” said Brown. “You get more ideas and ways of doing things in play, and you start to get a functioning network going between cities. And somewhere along the way, we may be able to identify some very specific challenges that can lead to new research and new product development.”

“What we’re doing is going to the source, in terms of talking to the people who are spending the money on infrastructure maintenance and construction,” said CT President John Lee. “This will go a long way to guiding our work with our other partners in private industry and the research community, helping them to target their work to deliver what municipalities really want and need in terms of innovative infrastructure products and services. Once we are delivering those for Saskatchewan, we can deliver them to the global market.”