Solution Phase

Where this fits

This is the heart of the SiD process. The Intelligence Phase built the knowledge base. Now that knowledge converges. The team involves stakeholders, enters co-creation sessions, and cycles through the SiD method in iterations. The output is concrete solution concepts, roadmaps, and action plans. Even the smallest SiD process contains this phase.

Steps in this phase

• SiD session preparation
• SiD co-creation sessions
• Solution documentation
• Stakeholder involvement
• Roadmap development

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3.4.1 SiD Session Preparation

Thorough preparation maximizes session effectiveness. The focus is on three things: finding and preparing a great room, ensuring working materials are present, and processing all research from the Intelligence Phase into usable session materials.

Room and materials

For detailed specifications, see the tools section. The following content material should be ready in printed form, in both large poster format and A3/tabloid sizes for drawing on:

System mapping material. Drawing templates for analysis in time, space, and context. Maps of the area, corporate structure diagrams, supply chain diagrams. Use light, semi-transparent prints that are easy to draw over.

Reference documents. Data tables, existing vision and strategy documents.

SiD tools templates. Pre-made templates available for free download from ThinkSiD.org.

Posters and books. Inspiration/precedent book and posters, data book and poster, trend book and poster, market analysis book and posters, SiD reference posters (ELSI poster, SNO diagram).

Priming the team

A week-long collaborative session can be miraculous for all involved, or painful if the collaboration does not work. The difference is motivation, attitude, and chemistry.

A week before the sessions, organize a small get-together. Inventory everyone's perspective: their hopes for the outcome, possible concerns. Review the materials. If team members do not know each other, use this meeting to break the ice and let people show who they are.

Send the program to all participants at least a week in advance. Include the poster material for pre-reading. This saves time at the start of the sessions.

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3.4.2 SiD Sessions

The SiD sessions are the heart of the process. Everything before prepares for them. Everything after activates what they produce.

The format

SiD sessions ideally consist of five days of intense collaboration in a single room, with the core team and representatives of the client and stakeholders. The team cycles through the method: goal setting, system mapping, system understanding, and solutioning, in several iterations.

The results: elevated insight, systemic understanding, a roadmap, and clear action plans.

Why this format works

True sustainable development requires perspectives from multiple disciplines and immersion in system dynamics. That does not happen in a regular working environment. The SiD session is a deliberate break from normal work patterns, designed to create the conditions for deep, integrative thinking.

Except has experimented with different formats, group sizes, lengths, and facilitation styles. For serious challenges, the sessions work best at five days, with six to seven people (maximum eight, including the facilitator). Deviation is possible but reduces effectiveness.

Session structures

A typical five-day session allocates the days roughly as follows:

• Day 1: Introductions, agenda, goal setting, scan the prepared intelligence material
• Day 2: System mapping in small groups, discussion, switching team members, evaluating maps for new insights
• Day 3: Revisit maps, then a joint journey to clear the head and process understanding (a walk in nature, for example). Afternoon: commit new ideas to paper
• Day 4: Set out the solution pathway framework, line up intervention ideas, draft a timeline, build a roadmap with short-term actions and long-term vision
• Day 5: Evaluate results, make refinements, divide roles, create an action plan

Four-day and three-day variants exist but compress the critical "step 3" (the shift from understanding to insight) into less ideal time slots: evenings or early mornings. A three-day session is extremely intense and should be chosen only when no other option exists.

What happens in a session

The team works from 9am to 5pm without distraction, in a separate environment. In the evenings, the team has dinner together and continues discussion. Ideally, everyone sleeps at the location to maintain the immersive "bubble."

Work is intense, mostly on paper, alternating between individual work, small groups of two or three, and whole-group processes. Groups are constantly mixed for cross-pollination. Group discussions are kept brief because they can drain energy and efficiency. The sessions are led by an experienced facilitator who steers the team toward a strong solution.

Attendance

The session includes the core SiD team, led by the PM as facilitator, with at least one scientific thinker, one design thinker, and one business thinker present. If the PM is not an experienced facilitator, they can participate as a team member while an external facilitator runs the session. The facilitator structures the decision-making process but is not the decision maker.

Added to the core team are usually client and stakeholder representatives, sometimes one or two external content experts. Total should not exceed nine. Ideally, six to seven.

Everyone should attend the full session. Partial attendance disrupts the dynamics.

The room

The best sessions happen in a place unfamiliar to everyone, in a natural setting, where everyone also spends the night. A hotel with a workshop room, for example.

The room itself needs to be large, with plenty of material to write and draw with, large sheets of paper, and wall space to hang them. All working materials should be present: fast internet, projector, screens, music, whiteboards, flipcharts, and brain nourishment (fruit, water, tea, snacks). Direct access to the outdoors is ideal. The room should not be disturbed by outsiders during the session.

A good SiD session room looks like a mess within half a day. That is a sign things are working.

The first morning

The first morning sets the tone. A tight program welcomes everyone, then inventories (or reviews) the desires and expectations of each team member. Then: goal setting. While goals were set in the Initiation Phase, this is the moment to revisit, rework based on gathered intelligence, and prepare sub-goals and boundary conditions.

The PM takes the team through a tour of the problem, using the prepared system maps and posters. After this introduction, a short individual exercise lets each person express their vision on A3 paper, hung on the wall. This serves as a brain dump, getting initial ideas out and out of the way.

Running the sessions

While Day 1 is usually tightly programmed, subsequent days shift based on the group's movements. The facilitator sets aside time each evening to plan the next day's program, and adjusts during lunch.

After the first morning, what follows depends on the project: system mapping, serious games, roadmapping exercises, design exercises, or combinations of all of these.

Tips for great sessions

Establish brainstorm rules. Print them and pin them up. The most important rule: reserve negative criticism. Never say "no." Say "what if we do it this way?" Saying no can stop the process dead.

Stay flexible. Allow organic shifts in the program. Small reviews of goals, stepping back to analysis during solution work, and splitting groups for parallel tasks are all productive moves. Make sure no participant gets stuck in only one method step. It is tempting to keep the "scientific mind" on analysis, but everyone should participate in all steps.

Manage group size. For sessions larger than nine (such as second-round stakeholder sessions), design processes that break groups into sizes of eight or less. Minimize whole-group activities.

Mix work with reflection. Include drawing, walks in nature, evening outings. Stress is the biggest block. If a single person is disruptive without prospect of improvement, consider removing them from the team.

Protect the bubble. Ask participants to not be late, not leave early, and try to be well rested. Leave phones off. If someone must check messages, they step out of the room.

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3.4.3 Solution Documentation

In the first week after the SiD sessions, make a complete summary document of the solutions, roadmaps, and the analysis and insight that produced them. Circulate it to the team for feedback.

This document becomes the foundation for the Execution Phase and for informing stakeholders. If a stakeholder session follows the SiD sessions, this document provides the briefing material. If stakeholder sessions happened before, it registers the SiD session outcomes and serves as input for execution.

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3.4.4 Stakeholder Involvement

Involving stakeholders in the development process is a powerful, and often required, component of successful projects. This may take the form of user feedback panels, community involvement sessions, or mass online surveys.

Why involve stakeholders?

Involved stakeholders care. Primary stakeholders who participate in the process gain new insights, feel connected to the challenge, and make it part of themselves. Those who participate in SiD sessions usually become strong project champions, which helps decision making and support.

You learn vital success factors. Stakeholders see the topic differently than your team does. They will teach you the finesse of success factors and reveal hidden patterns of behavior you cannot discover otherwise.

You speed up the process. Stakeholders who hold deciding votes, who need to be involved in decisions, or who will implement parts of the solution later: onboarding them early smooths out the process, saves time, and increases positive outcomes.

You save on communication efforts. An enthusiastic stakeholder communicating to other stakeholders can be more effective than any formal communication campaign.

How to involve stakeholders

Once stakeholders are mapped, determine who to include based on impact assessment, willingness to cooperate, knowledge and experience they can contribute, and other considerations. Include the most important stakeholders as soon as possible.

Options include selecting stakeholder-group representatives to join the core team for the entire process, or bringing stakeholders together for separate mapping and solutions exercises that feed into the core team's SiD sessions.

Specialized agencies have perfected the craft of finding, addressing, and involving stakeholder groups. Their skills can be valuable, but be aware: these agencies may not include the full spectrum approach SiD aims for. They rarely account for remote stakeholders, future generations, or non-human stakeholders. Keep an eye on this.

Account for representation gaps

When dealing with large stakeholder groups (city district residents, for example), some groups will respond more readily than others, skewing the feedback. Use multiple methodologies. Design involvement processes that draw out the largest critics and those with serious grievances, and ensure their concerns are heard.

For stakeholders without a voice (animals, ecosystems), consider involving someone to serve as their "agent," making their interests known. If no representative exists, research their needs and ensure their interests hold ground in the process.

Motivating stakeholders

Not all stakeholders will be enthusiastic. Some will not care. Some will find participation a nuisance while holding important positions. Five elements help:

Insight. Show stakeholders why the project affects them and why their contribution matters. Place the stakeholder at the center of the system. Make them aware that the process can help them see the full landscape and discover solutions that benefit them directly.

Drive. Create a vision that guides content and motivates cooperation. Beyond a system goal ("a sustainable neighborhood"), a concrete goal ("create a closed energy loop in this neighborhood") energizes people. Formulate motivations that connect to personal drives and create intrinsic commitment.

Incentives. Intrinsic drive rarely sustains itself against everyday reality (no time, no money). Provide tangible incentives: money, goods, status, time savings, market position. Scan each stakeholder for their most important values. Be aware of negative incentives that need to be overcome. A financial investment today is a strong negative incentive; if the payback is far in the future, few will commit. Balance short-term and long-term, weak and strong incentives against each other.

Alignment. Adjust your language to stakeholders' jargon. Show how their interests are served. Relate to their experience, strengths, and values. In complex social settings with tension or opposing forces, tools such as Spiral Dynamics (see Tools section) can help unravel the language and position of each party.

Fun. Make participation enjoyable. Engage stakeholders in analysis and solutioning. Show them the satisfaction of grasping complexity, generating ideas, and mapping those ideas onto a path toward realization. Celebrate small successes. Remember that failure is productive: it leads to insight. Keep it fun, and teams and stakeholders will continue working together even after the project officially ends.

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3.4.5 Roadmap Development

Roadmapping creates a plan to realize systemic change over time, establishing steps toward the goal and plotting them on a timeline. While roadmapping is part of the SiD method cycle, it often warrants a separate process phase for refinement, adjustment, and evaluation.

What roadmaps do

A roadmap is a pathway in time: action points in the short term, performance goals in the long term. It is where all solutions come together in a comprehensive plan, the materialization of strategies, ideas, and interventions. It is also an essential communication document for all parties involved.

Expressing ambitions

A roadmap contains a timeline, goals for each time frame, and interventions to reach those goals. Plotting goals on the timeline sets the ambition level. For a city, choosing to become energy neutral within ten years is aggressive. Choosing fifty years is conservative. Placing all goals on the same timeline reveals synergies and enables meaningful milestones.

Making a roadmap in a SiD session

Take a large piece of paper, stretch it across a wall, and draw a timeline of twenty to fifty years. Place goals, interventions, and milestones to define where the system state should be at each point. If there are not many interventions yet, start with goals alone. Plotting goals on the timeline creates the opportunity to backcast: work backward to figure out what interventions are needed to reach each goal on schedule.

If there are many solutions, write them on sticky notes and place them in time. Review for realism. Add missing steps. Build out the roadmap iteratively.

Simple roadmaps may take a few hours in a SiD session. Complex ones may need separate sessions to develop the main channels and milestones, review with stakeholders, and research the pathways.

Formalizing the roadmap

After its use as a creative and strategic tool in sessions, the roadmap can be formalized into anything from a simple timeline drawing to a comprehensive action plan document with detailed pages for each execution phase. As the process moves forward, the roadmap becomes the single most important document that ties everything together.

Takeaway

The Solution Phase is where knowledge transforms into action. SiD sessions create the conditions for deep, integrative co-creation. Stakeholder involvement ensures the solutions are grounded in reality and supported by those who must implement them. The roadmap translates it all into a plan that stretches from tomorrow's first step to the long-term vision.

Next: the Execution Phase, where the roadmap comes to life.