Why use Agile Methodology in social sector projects?
Stone Soup Academy is offering an Agile Methodology for Social Impact workshop this Autumn, hosted by our consultant Daniel Manitsky. Read his blog post below on the methodology and why it is of benefit to the social sector.
As the world becomes more interconnected, we in the social and environmental sectors are being asked to take on ever more ambitious efforts. We are facing demands to innovate faster, work more seamlessly with other organizations, and tackle increasingly complex problems.
These new demands have created new management and leadership challenges. We find some of the most vexing of these challenges include:
- How to manage projects that involve partners with complimentary but nonetheless different missions, values, and priorities;
- How to create system-level impacts even when your organization is a small part of that system;
- How to measure success, report to donors, and control for first on projects that are so complex you can only figure out the way forward through trial and error.
Traditional methods for designing, managing, and measuring success on projects increasingly cannot stand up to these challenges. In fact, many traditional project management tools might actually be counterproductive when success is dependent on rapid learning, innovation, and coordination among many actors.
European Investment Bank Institute – a long and mutually enriching relationship
An overview of the seven year partnership project with the European Investment Bank Institute by Sophie Robin, co-founding partner, Stone Soup Consulting
Stone Soup Consulting has had the pleasure to collaborate with the European Investment Bank Institute for more than seven years now, ever since the Social Innovation Tournament (SIT) – a European wide contest awarding the best and most impactful innovations in Europe was established. During the first few years, Sophie Robin was a member of the Jury and acted as the President on various occasions. In order to allow for a healthy turnover of jury members, Sophie Robin offered to step down from her jury duties after five successful and effective years services.
Stone Soup Consulting was then invited to participate in the pre-selection process of the following edition (2018). Sophie Robin and Maria Raurell reviewed more than 300 projects, and participated in the pre-selection of the fifteen finalists for that year's edition (check out this video with the winners).
Successful social business planning with Stone Soup
A social business plan can help identify your project's strong and weak points. It can prioritise actions, show its competitive advantage and analyse the profile of your desired client/ customer.
A social business plan can help you reflect on new products and services and how much you can charge for them.
It will help you take decisions in an objective, strategic and coherent way.
Stone Soup can support you in the process of building your plan. Do you want to know how?
A community agreeing their guiding principles: Stone Soup code of ethics
Written by Rowena Hennigan, Communications Officer
Day to day I check in with my professional behaviours, that is, my internal guide with my standards, my morals for business behaviours. That is my own validation, my own internal test on how to behave (or how to try to behave). As one person, it is a relatively simple exchange! So, how did a socially-driven international organisation like Stone Soup Consulting gain consensus on their moral principles and create clear guidelines on their community behaviour?
The Stone Soup Consulting code of ethics was published this month. The result of 16 months of consultation, involving the whole community of “stone-soupers”, it is a remarkable achievement (involving more than 50 consultants, based across 9 countries). An outsider can dip into this document and get a view into the soul of Stone Soup, an insight into their ethos, philosophy and integrity. This code serves as the basis for inquiries, ethical debates and/or dilemmas on the community’s professional practice. In summary, it guides and advises action and behaviours, underpinning their organisational culture.
Introducing Stone Soup Consulting
Stone Soup Consulting is all about maximising social value. A socially-driven international company whose mission is to help optimise strategy creation and implementation for organisations so that they achieve their greatest social impact. This mission is realised in a highly collective and collaborative set of processes, using a wide range of independent social consultants, who make up the Stone Soup community. All of the community work remotely (coming together in person on client sites to deliver project), therefore explicit and clear communication is paramount in all community interactions. What better way to strengthen and unite this community than to create clear set of ethics and guidelines for behaviour. Stone Soup Consulting is also a certified B Corp and in 2018, it was recognised by B Lab as one of the Best B Corps for the world in the customers category.
A meaningful path
March 19th 2019
By Liliana Dias,
Human Resources consultant at Stone Soup Consulting
This month, we aim to celebrate with you the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. As a society, we have become more and more focused and even almost obsessed with the search for happiness in our lives, relationships, work and organiSations. Several psychologists define happiness as a state of comfort and ease, i.e., feeling good in the moment. Many research studies coming from Positive Psychology have shown that searching for a continuous state of comfort and ease actually leaves us unhappier and unfulfilled.
True fulfillment of people actually, research founds, comes from meaning.