PG #49: Navigate a noisy world by mapping your values

Humans are natural pattern finders. We can’t help but search for similarities and differences in behaviour, events, data, so that we feel we can understand the world a little better.

We are also notoriously bad at it. Patterns we find often are biased towards our own worldview, and even knowing which data to consider valid is (and always has been) political.

2019 for us has been a year of attempts at pattern recognition. This is Paper Giant’s third full year in business, and we figured three times through the loop is enough to start connecting some dots.

In that time, we’ve noticed the work get more complex. We’ve noticed that rote methods to problem solving have stopped working, if they ever did. We’ve also noticed that people are growing more comfortable with complexity. Our clients still want and need answers, but they also want to learn how to listen more carefully to their customers and communities, so they can change with them. They expect the answers to their questions to be different to the answers they’ve always gotten.

We’re incredibly proud of the year we've had. In 2019, we opened a Canberra studio so that we can more easily service the complex problems of federal government. Through the year, we delivered over 50 projects across government at all levels, in financial services, and for the energy, disability, software and legal sectors. We delivered numerous training courses both privately and publicly, and hosted hundreds of people in our Melbourne studio to hear talks on accessibility, diversity and inclusion, and innovation in the justice sector.

Through all this, one pattern is clearest. Things are changing, rapidly. In order to continue to deliver on our purpose of helping organisations understand and solve complex problems, Paper Giant is going to continue adapting to the needs of modern problems.

2020 is the start of a vital decade, and we're looking forward to taking a rest, rolling up our sleeves, and staying with the trouble.

Happy new year.