400 words (4 minutes reading) by Carole Parkinson

I am always on the lookout for new and useful thinking. Sometimes the new thinking is not that new – it is old thinking in a new context. This is why a post on a new Substack caught my attention. It is a novel application of some proven thinking about value .

The author, Stephen Thorpe, is the principal of consultancy Nova Ratio and an experienced leader in Australian local government. He says the Substack is about ‘new ways of thinking about old problems’, and the first post starts out strongly in that direction. The story begins with a council open space advisory group that has become bogged down in operational minutiae instead of advising the council on the strategic issues it has been appointed to address. The Chair of the group is a councilor and they are concerned about what has happened. They want to find a way to lead the group to be more strategic in influencing the council.

As the story explains, this happens using diagram based on nested boxes that represent the different types of value expected by the community or provided by the council in public open spaces. There are gaps between the boxes that can be reduced or eliminated. According to the story, the idea proves to be so successful that Thorpe continues to evolve the thinking and he starts using the ‘nested value boxes’ to help his team contextualise problem solving and decision making related to public value. It also turns out to be a useful communication tool for elected representatives.

An example of the application of the thinking is provided in relation to street trees and two petitions that were presented by residents, each asking the council to do the opposite thing with trees in the street. Fancy that. The story explains how the nested boxes concept helped the council to understand the conflict that was occurring between private and public value.

Thorpe goes on to discuss the use of the ‘Nested Value Boxes’ (the label he has given it) to support a focus on the value being provided by services, and not just the cost of those services. This idea is undeveloped in the post and hopefully there will be more about it in a future post. This post finishes with a guide to readers on potential uses for Nested Value Boxes.

I won’t go say any more. The Substack post is quite detailed and will do a better job than I can in explaining how you can help people shift their thinking from operations and costs towards strategy and value.