What are the Mindsets?
Entering into Public Value Thinking requires you to utilize a few philosophies that shape the way you will interact with, and find success in, applying the lens.
Developing, Not Finding
As you work through the canvas, the team will constantly find itself diverging and converging around purpose, value, and all sorts of other ideas. This is okay. You are not using the lens to find the value but instead developing a doable, valuable, and authorizable path forward to recognizing the value.
Thinking is Acting
As you work through the essential questions found in PVT, you are taking action. This is important to remember not only because you are continually making progress but also because you are changing the conditions in the surrounding environment - even if it is only the potential to take action! This means that as you think, and act, you need to re-evaluate your work to ensure there is still alignment.
Dynamic Not Fixed
As you work through the canvas, the metaphorical focal length of the lens will change. Sometimes you will be zoomed out looking at the big picture while other times you will zoom in and focus on only one area. To work effectively, you will constantly adjust the lens. The same goes for other aspects of the canvas. As you move through the process, the environment, team, ability to gather support, even the problem, will all change.
Balance Over Perfection
Finding a perfect solution is almost impossible. Thoughtful compromise is needed to move ideas forward. But, we should look for balance across our thinking. This will ensure that the idea has a chance of producing Public Value.
Context Matters
Positive social conditions are relative. Someone (or a group of people) will need to be the arbiter of what is positive or not. Ideally, the people making this claim will be those most impacted by the change in conditions. But, the important thing to understand is that what is positive for you may not be positive for others in your same or different local environment.
A collaboration between George Veth and Mark Moore, the originator of Public Value Theory.