Setting The Path To Minimize Risks

Oh, I couldn't agree more.

It's such a simple tool and it's strength-based.

So it starts with what's working well first.

So it gives people, as you said, a bit of a perspective of actually there are some things that are

moving in the way we want them to move.

Even if it's just that we're having this conversation of and say, even if it feels like nothing's working, you're too scared to ask that question, the fact we're willing to sit down and talk about it, that is progress.

And then the other thing it does is it allows space for the pain point.

Yeah.

It's actually okay.

We're actually normalising talking about the struggle.

So that's the next thing I like about it.

The third thing, as you said, it actually helps you focus on, well, what are we learning? And then it promotes innovation.

And as you said, more than ever before, regional councils, all councils, all organisations at the moment in our current economic climate are needing to do more with less.

And so innovation is really important.

And the other thing is it's collective innovation.

It's we.

Where are we struggling? It's not you.

There's a collective nature to it, which means we're all in this together.

I really like that.

And I think that was a very empowering, practical setting up for success that the council did there.

Yeah, and it kind of heads off one of the things we found in that 2026 research that where people move from feeling well to fatiguing first becomes that, oh, is the change working moment? But where they start to move from fatiguing to quietly cracking to that trying to hold it all together on the outside but hiding that inside they're starting to fall apart is is when self-doubt and self-criticism that inner critical voice we all have starts to get much louder because what we know from the research many of us tend to do is when we start to worry that change isn't working we tend to assume that we are the problem that everybody else somehow has it figured out it's all working for everyone they're okay but it's just us and so that masking that comes with that quiet cracking is so bound in that sense of self-doubt, inner criticism, the fear that it's really just us.

So I'm really curious, in addition to the safety check chat, which to your point, it's getting the struggle talked about openly, it's through a we lens, so it's not just you that's the problem, Are there other things that you did through this process to help people sense into their self-doubt? Because of course, self-doubt can also be really informative for us.

So we don't just want to dismiss it, make it all good, say it's not you, it's everything else.

We want to use self-doubt as part of the learning tools that we have available to us.