Routine burning and 3D modelling: Come behind the scenes at TACSI

We’ve recently spent time reflecting on our own growth and development of an organisation and how we can better lean into our ambition to mainstream social innovation. In the spirit of openness, we thought we’d take you along on the journey with us.


2 April 2025

By Chris Vanstone and Kerry Jones, TACSI co-CEOs

Shaping TACSI’s Future

In mid March, TACSI held one of its triennial all-in sessions. This is when the whole organisation comes together and downs tools to connect, reflect on strategy and direction, and intentionally shape our future. Each session is carefully curated, building on previous work to ensure meaningful progression.

This particular all-in was a continuation of work we began in November — the first day of our co-CEOship — when we set out to develop a shared vision and direction for TACSI. 

Back then we collaboratively painted pictures (literally) of what we thought TACSI’s future relationships and partnerships with First Nations organisations should look like, and built models to explore who TACSI would be in relationship with in the future, and how. These explorations were preceded by deep conversations about intermediaries and field builders, the future of consulting and learning businesses.

From those sessions, the beginnings of a new narrative for TACSI emerged

This new narrative extends our relationships across a broader range of organisations and sectors while leaning further into our mission of mainstreaming social innovation. Nothing in this narrative was entirely new (and we were okay with that). Instead, we surfaced things that were at the edges — underfunded, under-resourced, and often squeezed into downtime.

In the months since, we’ve been refining TACSI’s narrative (the kind you may see in an explainer video). We’ve also worked to:

  • Get clearer on what we mean by social innovation

  • Develop a model for how TACSI operates, allowing us to align around the experiments we need to evolve our organisation

TACSI team members listening to a team member talk.
 
TACSI team members listening to a team member talk.

Next we turned to systems change

Since we’re talking about evolution, we turned to complexity science, particularly David Snowden’s work on effective strategy for systems change. His Vector Theory of Change suggests that in complex systems (like our organisation), change isn’t best achieved by setting rigid visions of the future but rather by working with the system’s existing energies. 

This means asking: ‘What’s strong?’, ‘What do we want to see more of?’, and ‘What experiments do we need to run to grow those strengths?’

To bring this thinking to life, we created a 3D model of TACSI out of cardboard (because organisations are not two-dimensional). This model represented the unique set of capabilities that define TACSI, and our analysis and experiments were grouped around these core areas:

  • Relationships 

  • Whole-network wellbeing

  • Governance and advisory

  • Social innovation practice

  • Business practices

3D model of of TACSI made of cardboard

To further test our thinking, we role-played different narratives about our next phase of development — imagining how we’d explain TACSI’s evolution to a politician, a kid at a birthday party, a First Nations community leader, and an NGO CEO with a passion for cycling. These narratives will now shape our communications moving forward.

And then we paused all internal meetings

For two and a half weeks leading up to the all-in, we put a pause on all internal rhythms and routines including ALL internal meetings. As part of our networked model, we’d built various hubs and groups to facilitate strategy, wellbeing, and relationship building  activities, but over time, these structures had begun to fill up our diaries. We hadn’t created a mechanism to reflect on them or stop them when they were no longer needed. 

Inspired by the practice of cultural burning in fire management, we dubbed this pause 🔥culture burn🔥. It gave everyone a chance to assess the value of our existing rhythms (and reclaim a lot of time). 

Coming out of the all-in, we’ve decided to trial a more streamlined approach. For the next season (until July), we’re aiming for sophisticated yet simple rhythms — reducing our non-project internal meetings to two hours max, per week, per person across the network and structuring our focus areas in a way that rotates, much like the moon orbiting the Earth.

Looking ahead, we have a whole set of experiments to run. Over the next month, we’ll be bringing together folks with relevant expertise across our network to refine, detail, and prioritise these experiments. Some key areas we’re exploring include:

  • A new approach to relationship-building

  • A new change unit focused on knowledge

  • Better management of social innovation practices

We’ll continue to keep you updated as these experiments unfold.

We're social
Get in touch

ADELAIDE
Level 1, 279 Flinders St
Adelaide SA 5000

SYDNEY
1/145 Redfern Street

Redfern NSW 2016

Subscribe to our newsletter
Be the first to hear about TACSI events, resources, our big ideas, and new projects.
© 2025 TACSI
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and Owners of the lands in which we work and live on across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders of the past, present and emerging. We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination and creates a better future for all. Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this website may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or printed material.
At TACSI, diversity and inclusion is more than a statement; equality and accessibility are guiding principles embedded in everything we do. We strongly believe that it’s the collective sum of all our communities differences, life experiences, and knowledge that enables both ourselves and our partners to come together to tackle complex social issues. That’s why we’re committed to having a diverse team made up of people with diverse skills from all backgrounds, including First Nations peoples, LGBTIQ+, mature-age people, and people with visible and non-visible disabilities, regardless of sex, sexuality or gender identity.