Our Response to COVID-19

As experts in stakeholder and community engagement, listening carefully and engaging thoughtfully and consistently with our customers, clients and end-users has always been a key driver of our work. During the COVID-19 crisis and moving into the “new normal” over the summer of 2020 and beyond, this has become more absolutely critical. If we want citizens to return to work in our buildings, to use our public transport networks, to buy our products and engage with our services, to congregate in our public and private spaces, we have to consult with them. We have to develop an understanding of how they feel as this new reality unfolds. We have to ensure that week by week and month by month we can follow their lead.

Now more than ever, we value listening and collaboration as a driver of trust. We want to continue to build solutions that embed a sense of belonging and commitment in communities, where people know that their voices matter. This is how the most robust and resilient solutions are found: together.

Connect the Dots’ core offering focuses on developing stakeholder engagement tools and processes to enable insight-led decision making for public and private sector clients, including Dublin City Council, South Dublin Co Council, Accenture, the National Disability Authority and Meath County Council in Ireland and ComcastNBCUniversal, Independence Blue Cross, South Street Headhouse District, and Center City District Philadelphia in the US.

Through the COVID-19 crisis, Connect the Dots has been working to redefine the processes that drive this core work. As a result of restrictions on face to face contact on both sides of the Atlantic, we have translated our traditional in-person, end-to-end stakeholder engagement process into a robust, remote one.

Connect the Dots can provide:

1. Direct (Remote) Stakeholder Engagement, Consultation Process Design & Management

Connect the Dots continues to design and implement end-to-end stakeholder engagement processes. We have now translated our traditional in-person engagement process into a robust, remote one. We also provide consultancy and capacity building on the delivery of a remote process to those engaged in delivering a face to face strategy pre-March 2020 but who now need to quickly and effectively convert to a remote engagement option.

Our tailor-made, equitable solutions retain the key values of an in-person process, with trust as a driving force. We are currently offering:

Virtual and non-virtual solutions that have been developed and are being slowly rolled out in a range of contexts and environments
A range of proprietary and non-proprietary tools used in tandem during the engagement process to ensure a high-quality participatory experience
Insights on moving projects forward in challenging times, placemaking and effective stakeholder management

Many organisations are already engaged in face to face strategies and projects which pre-dated the COVID-19 crisis. They are now in a position where they need to quickly and effectively convert to a remote engagement option. Connect the Dots can offer the following:

One-off insights and advice on the continuation of a project on a remote basis
Access to Connect the Dots online tools and expert online facilitation to re-start a project and ensure that KPIs are met according to schedule
Capacity Building and coaching of engagement team members to ensure that they are confident and competent in the delivery of a new remote strategy

See our Engaging Through COVID-19 document for more details on re-thinking stakeholder engagement and our experiences so far.

2. Connect the Dots, Insights through People: The Future of Public Spaces and Transit

The future of public spaces, public transit and how citizens will function in our cities, towns and districts is now completely unchartered territory. There is already anxiety around re-entering these spaces. A re-think is needed to ensure that these zones regain their vibrancy and civic relevancy as well as their economic benefit.

Evidence-based design and insight-informed decision making will enable the recovery of our cities. This particularly involves:

insight-gathering and consultation to feed into the (re)design process of public space and transit system
data-driven strategic planning in conjunction with stakeholders
engagement and co-development of solutions with local businesses (specifically in relation to main street recovery)
once updates to the urban realm are implemented, consistent pulse-checks via observations and direct engagement to enable iterative design - to understand how people are reacting weekly, if measures are working, and why or why not

Connect the Dots has the knowledge and experience to partner on this process, to facilitate the re-imagining of these spaces and gain insights on what citizens need to create better lives in more resilient cities.

A sampling of entities we have / are working with on projects in this area include South Street Headhouse District, Dublin City Council, South Dublin Co Council, the National Disability Authority and Meath County Council in Ireland and Newtown PA, Center City District Philadelphia in the US.

3. Connect the Dots, Insights through People: Transitioning Back to Work Spaces

As restrictions on movement slowly ease and some employees can return to their offices on a phased basis, it is critical for employers to manage a return to high or low-density work spaces with care. An insight-driven transition process, informed through diverse and thoughtful consultation with employees is an essential part of an organisation’s COVID-19 recovery plan.

Connect the Dots brings learning from extensive employee consultation work with clients such as Comcast and Independence Blue Cross to inform both workplace re-integration and re-design.

Let us work with you to apply our learnings and best practice to develop tailor-made, equitable solutions which include:

Employee-led supports that assist the transition back to the physical workplace
Employee-led iterative design interventions, complying with regulations but reflecting their changing needs as they transition back
Pulse checks to understand how the transition is working, assessing employee wellbeing - this will evolve as the situation evolves

4. Collective Problem Solving with Diverse Stakeholders

We believe that the careful engagement of key stakeholders and leaders in a collaborative, thoughtful way is critical when approaching the challenges we are facing and the recovery process ahead. This is how the most robust and resilient solutions are found: together.

Connect the Dots can bring key stakeholders with sectors or across sectors together for collective problem solving/solution building to drive, shape, and influence responses to key challenges facing an organisation, group or region. We are currently engaged in a similar process in Philadelphia to develop a robust set of guiding principles for planning the city’s COVID-19 recovery process. Suggested key tasks to create a similar process might include:

Identification of key stakeholders and voices appropriate to solving problem – voices that are often heard to those that are not but need to be in the conversation to address it properly
Pre event survey via Connect the Dots Engage platform to understand key interests and drivers in advance of the first (online) gathering of the stakeholder group
Shaping /designing a multi-step discourse to bring actionable solutions to the table and deliver concrete outcomes
Connect the Dots facilitation throughout the process
Key outcomes report ( strategy, actions, plans ) to move the needle on critical topics
Next steps action plan

Please feel free to contact us to discuss any of the above at hello@connectthedotsinsights.com

Our Learnings - Engagement During COVID-19

We have been researching, piloting, and working collaboratively with partners to reimagine remote engagement during these times in a way that is still in line with our core values. We will be detailing progress of these pilots and our collective learnings here in the PDF below, and updating it weekly.

Please feel free to download - we hope they will prove useful to you during these times. We're doing whatever we can to support organizations during these times so do feel free to reach out to our team at hello@connectthedotsinsights.com

Reimagining and Repurposing Engagement during COVID-19

Description of Event

Connect the Dots teamed up with the world-renowned Project for Public Spaces to share learnings and build best practice around reimagining engagement and consultation during this time. PPS is leader in public space development and placemaking having completed projects in more than 3,500 communities in over 50 countries and all 50 U.S. states. The connective and collaborative nature of both our work inspired our two organizations to bring our networks to the table and focus discussion on solutions for our changing world.

Together, we posed the question: How can engagement evolve moving forward?

Speakers included:

Marisa Denker, Co-Founder, Connect the Dots - Philadelphia & Dublin
Priti Patel, Senior Project Manager, Project for Public Spaces - NYC
Aaron Greiner, Director, Culture House - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Valli Morphett, Director, Design Jam - Melbourne, Australia
Sarah Bowman, Director of Strategic Engagement & Impact, Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability at Trinity College Dublin - Dublin, Ireland

This webinar featured a conversation exploring a variety of perspectives, tools and experiences related to engagement practices considering the difficulties posed by COVID-19. Key questions to be explored with international experts from Ireland to the US to Australia include:

As a result of what’s happening now, how will engagement evolve moving forward?
How are communities included in the recovery process?
What can we do to better inform our practice?
What are best practices that can be applied to a range of contexts
Why, instead of putting engagement on hold, it is more important to do what we can right now?

This international conversation comes at a critical time, as the world’s inhabitants share an unprecedented experience, from billions of individual perspectives. While commonalities exist, respect for diversity and equity is the key to creating solutions that work on a massive scale.

Article

Reimagining & Repurposing Engagement during COVID-19