Last week saw the beginning of our very first financial year (1st May). DPP Shape is up and running and very busy.
The timing of Shape’s start is key to our business model. Everything is changing. Certainties are less clear. We all need to revaluate how we do things. Particularly, how we can be, better, quicker, smarter, greener and cheaper…fundamentally, more content and less packaging. Content, means for us and hopefully for everyone else, an emphasis on ideas, creative ingenuity and enthusiasm, directed closely to the problem at hand, by people who really know how to make a difference. The packaging…in this case, an unhealthy and expensive reliance on overbearing business systems, protocols and hierarchical structures that promote mediocrity and stasis. We are now witnessing the collapse of large scale systems by an inability to respond quickly and effectively, or even predict a future, which they themselves claim to shape…. I am thinking of the car and banking industry of course.
So Shape is emerging out of dramatic change. Although in a sense nothing has changed. We still need to design and plan our way out of climate, economic and social meltdown. We still need to regenerate and strengthen all of those failing communities, bring back to life all of those desperate places, build all of those much needed houses – and most importantly continue to shape our towns and cities into, beautiful, thriving and increasingly sustainable ventures.
So what is Shape’s ethos, philosophy etc…?
Well Shelagh and I are in the position of not having to invent something here. Years of experience have shaped our values, judgement and enthusiasms. What we do - Shape is. We just have to find the time to write it all down for those who might be interested.
However, for now I can safely say that we, orchestrate, shape and define change on behalf of others. This means we have to responsibly think things through mostly with other closely involved people, which also means we have to foster, encourage and collaborate creatively and effectively.
We also believe that solutions are discovered rather than invented, convinced that the powerful idea lies in the place and people who are part of it, rather than the mind – but also knowing that the right mind set is needed to see it…
And finally to know that, statistics, information, and analysis only serve to define the problem and tailor the idea. They are not the idea…. we still need someone to sit down in front a blank piece of paper and draw, while exclaiming…’ why don’t we do something like this?’
So that everyone else can see the idea too and together we can shape it and make it happen.
Mick Timpson
