What on earth is 'purposeful co-creation'?

BY MARCIA BALZER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

A short answer to this question might be the old saying 'two heads are better than one'. That ancient proverb captures the essence of the fancy phrase we've used in our latest Baptist Care Australia organisational strategy - purposeful co-creation.

This approach makes a lot of sense for us. The problems we're trying to help solve are complex, and people have been trying to solve them for a long time. It takes lots of clever and compassionate people coming together with all their diverse ideas, thoughts, and efforts to make any progress.

As a peak body, Baptist Care Australia has always sought to work together to achieve goals that member organisations can't achieve on their own. Traditionally, these goals have been in relation to social policy advocacy, and achieving productivity benefits such as through national purchasing contracts.

Our new strategy for 2019-2021 takes these ideas one step further. It puts the idea that we are stronger and better when we work with others front and centre of our plans for the next 3 years.

Through both our words and our actions we want to help build strong communities where everyone is respected and heard.

We will do this through intentional efforts to co-create new ways of working alongside people inside and outside Baptist Care Australia. Inclusion, co-creation and collaboration create a powerful force for change. We seek to improve our organisations, our programs, social policy and Australian communities through co-creation with one another, and others who share our goals.

You can take a look at our strategy page for some of the details about how we intend to do that.

In the world of business, 'co-creation' is often used to describe how companies bring their customers into the process of designing or improving products. When our 'product' is 'caring' or even 'better caring' for people experiencing difficult times, it's crucial to remember that the people we serve have an important role in improving what we do, and helping to create change at the larger level.

We'll make sure to remember this over the next three years as we bring people together to "shine a light on the root causes of social problems and solutions, and model the implementation of these solutions". The value of including people with lived experience when co-creating solutions must not be forgotten or underestimated.