The Getting Ready Project – A sector leaders’ forum towards Innovation

Following from the IMPACT Conference in June, colleagues have said to us “to make a bigger difference we have to do things differently”. We need some disruption!

We’ve asked Leonie Freeman, leader of Housing Connect and the Auckland Housing Summit to help us get ready by exploring:

·Is our business model fit for purpose and for growth?

·Is what we are doing making enough difference?

·Can we do more – and still maintain our commitment to quality and community?

·How do we grow and lift our partners at the same time?

·What are the potential disruptions, threats and risks facing our sector?

·How can we get ready to fully participate in a housing collective impact initiative?

·How will our sector reach ambitious targets such as 15,000 new social and 85,000 new affordable homes by 2030?

As community housing sector leaders, we can act with our own mandate, power, skills, and resources to shape the kind of collective impact that we want. We have heard you ask us to help you get ready for this, to achieve a huge difference both for your organisation and for the sector overall.

This series will equip us all with skill sets to:

1.Hold open and honest coversations, demonstrated in practice

2.Support growth during these changing times

3.Understand the three key steps of the innovation framework

4.Understand peoples’ behaviours and attitudes towards change

5.Understand the principles of why there are business failures alongside many great successes

6.Enable you to identify and implement innovation within your organisation and in the sector, and seek out ways to build solutions

7.Create strong, effective cultures among organisations, for collaborative results

8.Do more with more – scaling up, exponential versus linear impacts.

Since the June IMPACT Conference, we have been working with Leonie and the Auckland Housing Summit, and with the Human Rights Commission to understand how we might organise ourselves. We have settled on a three-layer approach encompassing:

·Homes Accord: the top-level framework for ‘All New Zealanders well-housed’

·Regional Housing Summits: starting with action at the Auckland Housing Summit, replicating a locally appropriate approach in additional centres

·Delivery Partnerships: the detailed, local implementation.

While a full collective impact initiative on housing would work across all three layers, the ‘Getting Ready’ project starts within our sector – progressing the change we can make in our sector, so that we lift each others organisations along the way.

If the wider collective impact doesn’t progress, we will continue to make all the change we can in our sector. If we are able to get a wider project going – with the private sector, Iwi, finance community, council and government – then we will be prepared to lead by example, through strong, trusted partnerships that deliver, aligned to clear principles we agree to work with.

After the initial session there will be a follow-up meeting in February with the date to be confirmed. We are currently raising further funds to continue the ‘Getting Ready’ project and a wider collective impact approach.

For more information click here