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We share what we learn and what we’re doing so that others can learn from us and we can learn from others. Comments welcome!
Learning from COVID-19 grassroots leaders: What we found (part 1 of 2)
At the start of the pandemic, we talked to 11 fascinating individuals about COVID-19 grassroots responses. Here’s what we learned.
You can see an overview of the research on the study’s project page. Read the full report to get all the details of how we conducted the study, who the participants were, evidence for our findings, along with our takeaways and recommendations.
Our goal was to understand how we might expand our services to support Spontaneous Leaders — people who emerge as leaders in situations of ambiguous leadership — during a crisis.
This blog is a brief summary of our findings. Our takeaways will be described in another blog.
Our first finding – an affirmation of CCL’s mission!
Our first finding confirms that SLs emerged in response to COVID-19 and are likely to do so in other crises. It also affirms that starting a grassroots response is emotionally and logistically difficult, and that SLs would benefit from the kind of training and empowerment support services that align with CCL’s mission – spreading the skills and mindset necessary for collective action and improvised leadership.
The study revealed a critical need to tailor service delivery to the needs and attentional resources of individual SLs – the SLs interviewed exhibited substantial variety in backgrounds, skill sets, and bandwidth for taking in new information.
The study also underscored the difficulty of identifying and reaching SLs in the midst of a crisis. This suggests that spreading awareness of the role and importance of SLs to crisis response, prior to a crisis, is essential to successful delivery of prospective CCL services.
The rest of the findings – What support do SLs need?
The rest of the findings describe the support that SLs need.
- The SL journey is difficult and fraught with obstacles. Guidance along the journey would be highly valuable to maintaining motivation and momentum. Interestingly, and maybe unsurprising to some of our readers, the SL experience bears striking resemblance to that described by Design and Entrepreneurial Thinking.
- An SL’s effectiveness is strongly correlated with their situational awareness – their understanding of the larger situation they’re working within. This includes understanding what resources might be available, knowing what those they are helping need, what social, logistical and economic forces are at play. Unfortunately, SLs’ ability to understand the situation is often hampered because they are overwhelmed and operating in unfamiliar waters.
- In COVID-19, most SL efforts were focused on “brokering the last mile” — getting available resources to the individuals that need them. Grassroots efforts are often instrumental in filling local gaps, providing detailed knowledge of local conditions and community members.
- Networks and relationships are critical to an SL’s success. Social connections are invaluable in overcoming issues of awareness and trust. SLs especially rely on connections forged before the disaster happens, but also need to be able to develop new ones quickly during a crisis.
- SLs must have the trust of the community they serve and the resource providers they need. Without legitimacy and credibility, SLs struggle to maintain the connections needed to succeed.
- Eventually, most SLs need some form of professional advice or help, most commonly, legal counsel, accounting and tax support, fundraising and marketing expertise, insurance coverage, and even mental wellness support. Unfortunately, SLs may not recognize their need for professional help or have the wherewithal to obtain it, complicating their journey and possibly placing them at personal risk.
In conclusion
CCL is on the right track! These findings give us heart that SLs are out there and they need our help. Furthermore, the findings provide insight into what kinds of support would be of value to the SLs.
Read about possible support services in this blog
Read the full report
Our COVID-19 research report is out!!!
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we set out to learn how we might expand our programs to help those who are helping others.
We extend our deepest appreciation to
- Garett Dworman for generously volunteering his time and skills to conduct interviews, analyze data, and write the report,
- Zach Pipkin of Tableau Software for his copious help with recruiting and data analysis, and
- Malina Cheeneebash for her invaluable support with finding and vetting leads, and with data analysis.
Special thanks to Amy Alberts and the User Research team at Tableau Software for their extensive support with research planning, identifying leads, recruiting, and scheduling participants, especially Britta Fiore-Gartland, Eden Heller, Erin Bartuska, and Melanie Tory.
Our gratitude to Meghan Ede, and General Assembly graduates Adriana Orland, Hannah Feldman, and Victoria Zhambalova for their support with research planning and recruiting efforts.
Finally, our heartfelt gratitude to our study participants for giving us their time, and for giving of themselves to help others get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study is dedicated to the
Spontaneous Leaders who try, including those who fail.
They accomplish more than you think.
Storyboard, storyboard, storyboard!
We aim to learn from everything we do. That was certainly true of our recent video project.
Collectively, we have a wide variety of experience in design, education, performing arts, and video production. But this was the first time we, as a team, set out to create a video from scratch.
We’re proud of the result, but have some ideas about what we want to do differently next time.
The Process
The video came about because we decided to experiment with delivering learning experiences virtually. In talking about a pilot event, we realized that it would be easy to capture video of just about everything. That led to deciding to create a promotional video.
So, we recorded everything that was happening on Zoom during the event, and asked participants to record what they were doing on their phones. Then we used otter.ai to transcribe the resulting video recordings so we could pick out the “good” bits more easily.
The amazing Peter Cromwell did an fantastic job putting together a first cut. After two revisions, based on comments from our internal team, we sent it to a small group of “friendlies” for review.
Their reactions were highly favorable, but their feedback all had one thing in common: There isn’t enough context to help the viewer understand what the video is about.
Fixing that was not as simple as it might seem. We could re-conceive the piece entirely, and change the structure we had. Or we could add clarifying materials, and call it good enough. In the end, we opted for the latter, and collected learning opportunities.
The Learning Opportunities
First off, we did several things right:
- Capturing video materials was, to begin with, a great idea. Having participants record their activities was even better.
- Getting all the videos transcribed immediately was a huge time-saver, and really helped in identifying pieces that connected to each other.
- Making sure someone with professional skills was doing the editing was absolutely the right thing. (Even if we may have driven Peter crazy.)
But we also uncovered an important lesson:
- It’s about the story. We defined our goals and objectives for the video early on. But we didn’t have a vision for what story it should tell, thinking that the story would emerge from the materials we collected. It turns out you need a clear storyline to bridge the gulf between knowing what the story is about and good visual materials. In hindsight, we should have storyboarded a general storyline, even before the event.
As a consequence of not having a story vision, we left it up to Peter to create one. We were lucky. He did a great job. But, on the next one, we will have the team walk through the “good” bits of visual material together to see how they fit into the initial storyboard, and adjust the story. That would probably yield a stronger result, and save a round or two of revisions.
In other words, next time, we storyboard from the beginning!
The Result
Special thanks to Larry Mirkin of Mirkin Creative for helping us to understand this learning opportunity.
Ready, Set, Earthquake!
We are very proud to announce the release of our first video, Ready, Set, Earthquake! This short promotional piece shows how our training events work, and illustrates the benefits of combining discovery-based learning and live-action roleplay.
It came about, in part, because of a small grant from International Paper that we received with our partner, The Game Academy.
We were working on a short demo experience to give prospective community partners a sense of the emotional and intellectual engagement of our learning experiences. That plan was stalled by COVID-19, when we turned our attention to understanding what support spontaneous leaders in an actual crisis need.
When we got back to our training program, the funds were still available. Aaron Vanek had the brilliant idea of using the grant for a virtual pilot event, and then creating a promotional video to serve our demo needs.
This is the result. Please let us know what you think.
“Does everyone have pants?”
In this time of Zoom, not wearing pants has become an occasional embarrassment, and a common joke. However, participants in our most recent event realized first-hand that it can be a harsh reality of disaster,
“… we may end up leaving this home, pretty much with just clothing, no shoes, cause we went out the back door, we didn’t take shoes.”
— Garett
This was our first experiment in delivering our immersive learning experiences virtually, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We were thrilled at how well virtual delivery worked! Read the full report to understand what we did, what worked and what didn’t. Continue reading for a brief summary of what we learned.
What did we do?
The learning experience was a 2.5 hour simulation of a catastrophic earthquake. As in our physical events, the action took place in participants’ homes, and around their neighborhood — in this case, a virtual neighborhood.
Seven individuals from three households in three different states participated. Two of our trainers supported delivery.
Verbal communication (outside of households) was over Zoom — including “visits” to neighbors.
Participants received live challenges and situational updates via GooseChase, a mobile app designed for scavenger hunts.
Trainers used the GooseChase dashboard to issue challenges and view responses.
What did we discover?
While participants came away with a better understanding of the realities of disaster, we came away with three big takeaways.
1. It works!
OK, this one isn’t new. We already have confidence in in-person delivery. We were happy to see the virtual pilot be equally successful.
Participants find the virtual event enjoyable and satisfying, just as in the in-person events,
“I had a blast.”
— Amy
“That was an enjoyable experience.”
— Jeremy
The immersive format increases engagement,
“For me personally, actually sort of felt very real when I was hiding underneath the counter on the floor. So there’s like a little bit of — even though I know it’s fake — a little anxiety creeping up there.”
— Zach
Participants get insights and inspiration to improve their preparedness,
“It definitely helped me organize my thoughts on how to prepare in some ways, because, before this, I’ve long gone, okay, we got to prepare by doing some stuff, but I’m not really sure what, you know?”
— Garett
2. Virtual delivery provided advantages over in-person delivery
To our surprise, there were some major advantages to virtual delivery.
First, it eliminated the to’ing and fro’ing that is inherent in physical events. In a physical event, there is inevitably waiting around while people walk from place to place, go to the bathroom, finish the side conversation, etc. In Zoom, people pop right back in, so a 5-minute break actually takes 5 minutes!
This makes it much easier to stay on schedule. More importantly, there are fewer and shorter breaks in the story of the simulation. That makes it easier for participants to keep up the energy, and stay in the story.
Second, our in-person events have relied on paper to communicate challenges, as a significant number of participants were not comfortable with mobile technology. With virtual delivery, however, participants were already on their computers and phones for verbal communication, so introducing a mobile app was a minor matter of app familiarization.
Third, since participants submitted their solutions via GooseChase we had very detailed insight into what participants were doing as the event progressed. This allowed us to be much more responsive in adapting challenges and adjusting the overall storyline in real-time.
Finally, eliminating physical concerns — traffic safety, inadvertent bystander involvement, catering, etc. — meant that event management was immensely simpler.
3. It’s time to dig deeper!
The experiment hammered home that we are ready to dig deeper into the design of the learning experience itself.
In particular, it highlighted two areas for improvement:
- Refine learning experience design to target increasingly sophisticated learning objectives, starting with basic preparedness and building up to the improvised leadership skills and mindsets that are our ultimate goal.
- Find ways to engage younger children. Ultimately, our community events need to be a whole family/whole community experience. At present, smaller children can lose interest, forcing a parent to drop out to focus on childcare.
Summary
The pilot demonstrated that virtual delivery can maintain participants’ sense of immersion, and give them insight into the realities of disaster. The increase in technical complexity and much greater demands on interactive experience management, were more than offset by the vast simplification of overall event management.
Our conclusion is that the advantages of virtual over physical delivery fully warrant pursuing more virtual events, and using them as a testbed for developing our learning experiences.
As a bonus, organizers don’t have to wear pants!
Thanks
With thanks to our sponsor,
and our project partner,
