What do we mean by mindsets?

● Mindset is referring to a way of thinking and understanding the reality of

facts and that it characterizes a person, or people. It is associated with
principles and values.
● If mindsets inform how you perceive situations and how you decide to
act, then essentially, they are a set of attitudes and beliefs which shape
how you see, think, and act.

What do we mean by beliefs and attitudes?

● A belief is what we hold to be true. It is a conviction that does not

necessarily correspond to reality that, however, influences a person's
interpretation of and response to events. It refers to "the attitude we have,
roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true" .
● Attitudes shape how we interact with the world based on how we see the
world. So, while beliefs are in essence about how we see the world,
attitudes are about how we interact with the world.

New Generation, New Sustainable Mindsets

It is very common to hear how the new generation is already showing more
awareness of and motivation towards these changes. It is not hard to find
examples of 6-year-old kids teaching adults how to separate materials to
recycle at home, just as they have learned in school. In 2007, the United
Nations Global Compact already noted, through its Principles for
Responsible Management Education, how academia has an important role
in the change towards sustainability, helping to shape the behavior of our
future leaders. Integrating this matter into a school curriculum is not
something new, and we can find different frameworks, ideas, and research
on ways of achieving this, from kindergarten to higher education.
One of the difficulties faced by educators is the broad and interdisciplinary
nature of the field of sustainability. Some argue that creating one specific
course to teach this topic will not deliver the expected results, and that it
should be spread out, embedded in most (if not all) other courses. If you
are teaching marketing or finance, you could use sustainability as a lens to
create your content. This allows students to get a deeper knowledge of
what sustainability actually encompasses, while also encouraging them to
apply the concept to varied scenarios and situations, creating the new
experiences and memories that will shape their future professional and
personal behavior.

Consistently incorporating sustainability into so many different classes is

not an easy task. Even schools that have already developed a framework
for this still need to take into consideration the issue of academic freedom
and the right of teachers to choose which topics and approaches they want
to use in the classroom. Overly prescriptive instructions from the institution
on how to bring sustainability into class could impinge on free thinking,
inadvertently blocking the exploration of ideas that lead to new knowledge
and other advances. Teachers are the experts in their fields, and their
methodology, beliefs, and experiences should shape the format and
content of their classes. In this scenario, a lot of what students learn today
about sustainability comes from the motivations and beliefs each educator
has, which leads us to the vital question; How willing are business
professors to include sustainability as a key aspect of their classes?
“See” refers to our perception system - what we see and hear,
not just in the physical world, but socially, culturally, politically.
How we ‘see’ things is largely determined by the ‘frames’ we use
to make sense of reality.

“Think” refers to the way we make sense of situations

(consciously or subconsciously). We develop mental models of
how the world works and anticipate how causes and effects may
lead to certain situations. This also affects the way we interpret
information, create patterns and ask critical questions.

“Act” refers to the ways we use the data and signals we see and
think about to inform the behaviors and activities we deem
possible and appropriate, and the manner in which we’ll carry
them out.
Mindsets and SDGs

People We are determined to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms
and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfill their
potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.

Planet We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including

through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its
natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can
support the needs of the present and future generations.
Prosperity We are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy
prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social and technological
progress occurs in harmony with nature.

Peace We are determined to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies

which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable
development without peace and no peace without sustainable
development.

Partnership We are determined to mobilize the means required to

implement this Agenda through a revitalised Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development, based on a spirit of strengthened global
solidarity, focussed in particular on the needs of the poorest and most
vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all
people.

The UN Secretary-General calls this moment a “wake up call” for

multilateralism and humanity at large, articulating the choice between
continuing ’business and usual’ and facing perpetual crises, or embracing
global solidarity, renewing social contracts and reinventing our measures
for economic prosperity and progress to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

COVID-19 has made the consequences of “sleeping through the alarm” all
the more evident, laying bare the ways that social divisions, short-termism,
and siloed ways of responding to interconnected issues surface as
compounding humanitarian, human development, and ecological crises.

It was in the midst of the disruption of COVID-19 that we began an

exploration of systems approaches with a very different starting point:
ourselves. The inescapable truth was that our ways of working weren’t
working and, at the same time, that the status quo wasn’t fixed either.
Where we saw systems shift, we saw collective action driven by shared
awareness and recognized that inner transformation is a fundamental
driver of systems transformation.

This led us away from the “what” of development, to more seriously

consider the underpinnings and assumptions that drive our “how.” It
sparked new questions which we have explored over the past two years.
How do we move beyond responding to crises, to sensing and actualizing
the just and equitable futures we’ve articulated in development plans? How
do we go deeper than a commitment to leave no one behind to confront our
own blind spots and understand the systems we are part of, including those
designed to leave people behind?

We’re not alone in exploring these questions. From emergent movements

like the Inner Development Goals to more governments attempting to
redefine the purpose of economic systems and metrics of progress based
on collective wellbeing, to growing discourse recognizing deficits in social
imagination as a crisis in itself, and the proliferation of systems
transformation frameworks and methods – development actors’ attention is
increasingly directed to the space of inner and relational dimensions of
systems transformation.

This growing shift is also resonant in the ambition of our new Strategic Plan
(2022-2025), where we recognize that our ability to serve as an effective
partner for change is not simply a matter of building new skills, but about
building a new culture. Our exploration of the inner work of systems change
forms part of a broader landscape of culture-building and business model
innovation across UNDP: from the Strategic Innovation Unit’s work on
portfolio approaches, to the Conscious Food Systems Alliance’s efforts to
deepen sustainability through consciousness-driven collaboration, the
Accelerator Labs’ experimentation with new forms of collective intelligence
and learning networks, to work our Asia and the Pacific region to embed
foresight and futures thinking into decision-making.
HARNESSING OPPORTUNITIES BORNE FROM
DISRUPTION
Against this backdrop of disruption and possibility, UNDP opened new
spaces to connect as a community and make sense of what we were
seeing and experiencing. In the summer of 2020, we partnered with the
Presencing Institute to launch a series of global dialogues on
“awareness-based collective action.”

More than a space of conversation, the dialogues invited forms of reflection

and interaction that were radically different from how we normally work at
the UN. This was about deep listening, mindfulness and focusing on the
interpersonal and relational dimensions of systems transformation,
alongside the tactical and structural components.

From this initial experiment in being together in new ways, we found an

entry into deeper ways of seeing and responding to systemic challenges
together. There was widespread interest and openness among UN
practitioners to engage in spaces that brought the matter of inner
transformation to the fore. Over the course of four dialogues, more than
1,000 people participated from every region of the world, representing
different job profiles and perspectives across the UN family.

CREATING NEW INFRASTRUCTURES TO REIMAGINE

What had arisen as an experimental response to an immediate need
revealed a much larger opportunity and challenge: How do we expand
transformation literacy as an organization and embed “awareness-based”
modes of collective action into our core work?

The most significant learning has been the power of the collective spaces
that build reconnection, relationship, and agency from which a deeper
awareness of the drivers of social issues and confidence to act can
emerge. Our starting point was that, if we could hold spaces that allow
practitioners to observe themselves and their relationships to the
ecosystems they work within, we could nurture forms of collective
awareness that reorient how we address development challenges, from
poverty and inequality to climate change and biodiversity loss.

This became our exploration in designing spaces for a very different form of
systems leadership and collective action. From this recognition, in 2021 we
co-designed an Action Learning lab for Systems Transformation with seven
UN entities. Over 400 practitioners across the globe participated in this
four-month applied learning journey, involving a mix of guided, self-directed,
and peer-led learning, action, and reflection.

Three points of reflection on our experience to date:

● The significance of creating conditions: The work of developing inner

capabilities, space for reflection and relationships out of which collective
intelligence can be harnessed is key to realizing the 2030 Agenda.
● The power of holding space for relationships and experimentation:
Innovation, especially within complex systems and uncertainty, doesn’t
come simply from more tools, frameworks, and knowledge. It is often in
spaces where change agents can ‘be’ rather than ‘do’ that they discover
the sense of safety and belonging that fuels new opportunities and
confidence for collective action.
● The need to look for ingredients of awareness-based systems
transformation holistically: There is no single theory or best practice
when it comes to shaping the supportive conditions and ecosystems for
transformation. Part of the work is learning how to better recognize
possibilities and identify ingredients for systems work across diverse
contexts: ensuring that tools and frameworks aimed at structural or
institutional change, such as those advanced by UNDP’s Strategic
Innovation Unit to embrace complexity and embed adaptation into the
ways we manage programmes, are integrated with initiatives that target
the inner and relational drivers of change.
HOW CAN AWARENESS-BASED APPROACHES
TRANSFORM THE WAYS WE "DO" DEVELOPMENT
AND THE KINDS OF OUTCOMES WE VALUE?
The global dialogues and Action Learning Lab provided ways to collectively
see challenges and the space needed for practitioners to translate ideas
into practice. While the practitioners already held the seeds of change, the
collective practice space helped them better connect to the inner and outer
resources needed for their seeds to bear fruit. This included cultivating
grounded courage to act amidst uncertainty and drawing on intuition and
the capacity to listen and learn from many parts of a system as guides for
action. From this, they developed initial ideas for prototypes informed by
awareness-based practices to advance progress on the 2030 Agenda.

Some of the challenge areas practitioners explored:

● reimagining institutional approaches to building teams and advancing

culture.
● infusing greater mindfulness and integrated knowledge practices into
strategic planning.
● strengthening the efficacy of co-creation approaches within projects
addressing climate, biodiversity, and food systems.
● embedding more adaptive, pluralistic, and power-aware approaches into
governance programming and capacity development support to national
institutions.

CREATING SPACE WITH THE POTENTIAL

TO SHIFT SYSTEMS
Our exploration advanced in 2022 with a challenge to design one of
UNDP’s foundational leadership certificate programmes. Our intention
remains to shape democratized spaces where ‘leaders’ are understood to
be all of us, activating “power with” rather than “power over.”
What continues to echo most loudly in the feedback from participants is
that transformation necessitates space to slow down, reflect, and most
critically, connect in more profound ways with peers. New methods and
tools, while helpful, are not what create systems transformation. Gathering
diverse views in one room doesn’t create integration.

To realize change at the level of systems, we need groups of people who

have learned to trust, bear witness to and be transformed by each other.
This can activate different choices and decisions and contributes to both a
reimagination and reorganization of our social and economic systems.

Among the leadership capabilities needed for 21st-century development

challenges is the ability to create space for care and connection, because
this leads to the level of trust, authenticity, and resilience that’s needed to
navigate a complex context. Our experience to date suggests that without
consideration of the inner dimensions of development challenges, with
dedicated spaces and approaches to attend to them, the solutions we seek
will likely continue to elude us.

Our next post will share the direction for our next phase of work, focusing
on building the infrastructures and movements to connect our experiences
and development challenges at scale.

THE TOOLS OF CULTURE AND

CONSCIOUSNESS BUILDING: A PLACE TO
START
We didn’t arrive at a single answer – and we didn’t expect to. But we saw
an important entry point in focusing on the social technology of dialogue, as
a critical pathway for effecting change across many of the dimensions
raised.
While there are many important dialogic interventions applied in the context
of UNDP-supported governance, transitional justice, peacebuilding, food
systems and SDG localization efforts, we recognized a gap in the ways we
hold space for dialogue when formulating policy decisions in the face of
uncertainty, or when trying to make sense of systems and the solutions that
yield deep change.

This culminated in a co-designed HDR Dialogue Field Guide, intended to

bridge some of the most important tools from the Leadership for Systems
Transformation certificate, with the discursive spaces and policy processes
where new modes of leadership and governance might ensure.

The Field Guide is intended to enable modes of thinking and action

conducive to realizing more transformational outcomes in the face of policy
uncertainties - articulated by the HDR 2021/22.

This was not dialogue for dialogues’ sake, but rather, designing dialogue to
helps instill conditions we know are critical for navigating uncertainty – from
being responsive to the power dynamics in any room, to embracing many
ways of thinking, and rewarding listening and reflection as much as talking.

While this might not be rocket science, as our failure to do this in many
cases attests, we can benefit from having more intentionality and structure
in dialogues, with common language to articulate why it’s worth investing
the time in the first place.

Some elements we highlight in the guide include:

● Creating the baseline conditions for a group to connect, so that they feel safe to
think outside the box, challenge each other in generative ways, or express what
needs to be said.
● Examining power at all stages of the dialogue: Looking beyond who is included,
to what they are being included into – from the rules of engagement, to the ways
that different modes of communication and beliefs about the world are invited into
a dialogue space.
 ● Expanding our understanding of what constitutes a system and drives risks:
Harnessing diverse perspectives is not just about listening to more people or
collecting more data, but also expanding the ways we listen, the relationships we
establish, and our openness to being changed in the process.
● Making space for ideas to settle and transform, such as by bookending cycles of
action and discourse with moments of stillness, reflection or art, to ensure that
learning has a chance to crystallize into creativity and innovation.

The HDR Field Guide aims to help leaders navigate each of these design
elements within an HDR-inspired dialogue process. It’s only one piece of a
puzzle; we hope that more than the tools themselves, the guide serves as
inspiration for leaders to (re)orient more of their intention and attention to
the tool of generative dialogue as a key building block for navigating
uncertainty and transforming systems.

We plan to build from this initial iteration and treat the guide as an evolving
resource that reflects the practice and experience in different contexts. This
will be advanced through channels for learning and connection with others
working to strengthen the links between the shared values we hold, and the
protocols we design to shape collective thinking, culture and innovation for
development progress.

We’re already benefiting from the learning and leadership of the UNDP
Colombia team, in their work advancing generative dialogue in La Guajira,
one aspect of which is articulated in a recent blog.

To start, visit SparkBlue here to share any feedback, experiences or

learning that surfaces as you engage with the field guide or related
stakeholder engagement approaches. In addition, this becomes a
guidebook for UNDP’s knowledge networks and our new cadre of
dedicated Community Managers.

Soon to come – a dedicated space as part of the forthcoming UNDP

Human Development Community, managed by the Human Development
Report Office, where we’ll host peer-exchange and practice opportunities to
further inspire and accompany your efforts.
 A

A Decade of Action
With just under ten years left to achieve the Sustainable Development
Goals, world leaders at the SDG Summit in September 2019 called for a
Decade of Action and delivery for sustainable development, and pledged to
mobilize financing, enhance national implementation and strengthen
institutions to achieve the Goals by the target date of 2030, leaving no one
behind.

The UN Secretary-General called on all sectors of society to mobilize for a

decade of action on three levels: global action to secure greater leadership,
more resources and smarter solutions for the Sustainable Development
Goals; local action embedding the needed transitions in the policies,
budgets, institutions and regulatory frameworks of governments, cities and
local authorities; and people action, including by youth, civil society, the
media, the private sector, unions, academia and other stakeholders, to
generate an unstoppable movement pushing for the required
transformations.

Transformation

It is necessary that we address “transformation” as one of the values

embedded in 2030 Agenda. It is important to note that the 2030
Agenda is titled “ Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development” and contains several references to
transformation. Some references are extracted for emphasis:
The 2030 Agenda is thus calling for transformation, not just change or
reform. One would say that it is calling for replacing reforms that have
been on-going in many institutions with transformation which is a
profound change that would lead to creating good societies in all
countries.

Towards a culture change in government, institutions and

organisations...
Why do new mindsets matter to realize the 2030 Agenda?

Public servants need to:

• make decisions in the face of uncertainty while being able to

legitimize these decisions;
• set out a bold course of action while adapting to and improvising for
unforeseen situations;
• explore new possible futures while focusing on outcomes and
committing to real-world effects;
• keep the big picture in mind while also considering citizens’ needs at
an individual level;
• be reflective and critical while having a strong bias towards action.

Managing such dynamics effectively requires that right mindsets lead

the change.
What is required to change the mindset?

Public servants still need:

The classic management skills of good diagnosis, planning, and

implementation, as well as contextual legal and political knowledge.

Emerging approaches drawing on design, digital, data,

experimentation, behavioural insights, regulatory methods, and public
engagement.

New Competencies
● Mindsets must go in hand in hand with new competencies, which
call for specific knowledge, skills, and attributes. In this respect,
governments may need to make urgent investments in retooling public
services and equipping civil servants with new knowledge, skills, and
competencies (CEPA, 2018).

● A competency should result in essential behaviors from the

application of a set of theoretical knowledge and of technical and
practical skills expected from those working for an organization”.

● The new competencies in the public sector should be aligned with

the mindsets required to implement the SDGs.

UN DESA’s Competency framework for public servants to

achieve the SDGs

In its work of developing a competency framework for public servants

to achieve the SDGs, UN DESA, in collaboration with schools of public
administration, has identified key mindsets and associated
competencies as critical to moving forward with the realization of the
SDGs. They are forward-looking and describe officials' skills and
attributes to build a new organizational culture and meet future
challenges.

Mindsets and competencies are grouped according to the principles of

Effectives, Accountability and Inclusiveness
Mindsets, and competencies for institutional effectiveness

Agile Mindset for systems-thinking and strategic intelligence in support

of integration

Innovative/Problem-Solving or Experimental Mindset for innovation

and critical thinking in support of transformation and competence

Evidence-based Mindset in support of sound policymaking

Mindsets, and competencies to promote institutional
accountability
Mindsets, and competencies to promote institutional
inclusiveness
Mapping the SDGs
• Multiple possible problem definitions
• Difficult to address and change with every attempt to
address it
• Many stakeholders with different values and priorities
• Have causes and drivers that are interdependent • Filled
with uncertainties and unknowns
• Require multiple new solutions and impossible to predict if
they work
Biases that often influence policy development and
development processes
Experimentation as strategic mindsets in governments
around the world…

Finland
Experimentation as mindset in both government planning and
among citizens

UAE
Experimentation as mindset to foster radical experiments to
explore new horizons of value creation

South Korea
Experimentation as “listening” mindset to understand citizens
better and experiment with their input and ideas

Colombia
Experimentation as a new mindset of planning: developing the
next national development plan through experimental
explorations

Canada
Experimentation as a new political mindset and mandate: a
political ambition and structural mandate to experiment within
core programmes

Towards a more experimental mindset in government...

Towards a culture change in government, institutions and
organisations...
“Innovation amateurs talk good ideas; innovation experts
talk testable hypothesis.” Michael Schrage (Strategyzer)

“A hypothesis is a testable belief about future value

creation” Michael Schrage (2014)