The tools presented here support collective work in Shared Agenda processes. They help participants frame place-based problematic situations, interpret system change dynamics, identify system conditions, work with tensions, and connect action with learning over time.
Each tool includes a visual template and a short PDF guide.
Supports collective understanding of place-based problematic situations by making different problem framings visible and creating the basis for shared interpretation before analysis and action.
Used to make sense of how practices, rules, investments and coordination currently interact in a place in relation to a specific challenge and a defined direction of change.
Supports collective sense-making about systemic change in relation to a place-based challenge by relating landscape pressures, dominant practices, and emerging alternatives, and how their interaction shapes change over time.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
This tool helps participants recognise that a place-based challenge may contain different types of situations, each requiring a different way of working.
It clarifies which parts of the challenge call for standard procedures, technical analysis, experimentation and learning, or immediate stabilisation.
It is especially useful at the start of a Shared Agenda, when participants need to align expectations about planning, uncertainty, learning and control.
The problem framing wheel structures collective work around how a place-based problematic situation is understood from different perspectives.
It brings together different ways of describing the problem, its causes, its consequences and the opportunities that emerge when the situation is reframed.
It is used in the early stages of a Shared Agenda to define the scope of transformation before systemic diagnosis, portfolio design or experimentation.
The pentagonal map structures systemic diagnosis around the conditions that shape movement towards a shared direction of system change.
It helps identify facilitators and inhibitors across policies and governance, markets, investment and financing, science, technology and infrastructures, and society and culture.
It is used once the place-based problematic situation and the shared direction of system change have been defined.
The multi-level perspective framework supports a shared reading of how system change unfolds through the interaction between broader pressures, dominant practices and emerging alternatives.
It helps participants interpret why change gains traction, slows down or takes unexpected forms, and how local action relates to wider system dynamics.
It is useful when participants need to understand how a place-based situation is changing in relation to broader dynamics.
The polarities template supports work with persistent tensions that shape collective action.
It clarifies the value of each pole, the limiting effects that appear when one pole dominates, the actions that can retain value, and the signals that show how the polarity is evolving.
It is useful when discussions become repetitive, coordination loses clarity or initiatives pull in different directions.
The theory of change template connects the shared direction of system change, system conditions, systemic portfolios, assumptions, outputs and system-level signals.
It clarifies how collective work is expected to influence relevant system conditions and how progress will be interpreted over time.
It provides a working reference for maintaining direction, interpreting contribution and connecting learning with ongoing collective work.
The facilitators and inhibitors template helps interpret how system conditions operate in practice as evolving constraints.
It examines how specific facilitators and inhibitors influence movement towards the shared direction of system change, where their effects become visible, and what may need to change, adapt or strengthen.
It supports a more precise understanding of how system conditions affect coordination, experimentation, adaptation, continuity and the development of alternatives.
The polarity loops tool helps participants interpret tensions that shape Shared Agendas processes. It supports a more precise reading of how dominant practices and emerging alternatives interact, what costs current dynamics generate, what value alternative practices can bring, and which conditions could strengthen them.
The systemic portfolios tool helps participants organise collective action around specific challenges within a Shared Agenda. It connects complementary capacities and resources with possible areas of action, relevant facilitators and inhibitors, and assumptions about contribution. It supports the identification of where to start while keeping a broader portfolio of connected action in view.
Themonitoring tool helps participants define a shared monitoring system connectedto the Theory of Change. It identifies signals associated with the desiredvision of the future and relevant facilitators and inhibitors, and relates themto outputs, contribution assumptions and wider landscape developments. Itprovides a shared basis for interpreting change, contribution and widerinfluences over time.
