With nine deliberative processes currently planned or underway, plus two standing panels in operation, it's a true panel 'palooza' at MosaicLab! We're excited to collaborate with leaders and decision-makers across three Australian states who are committed to addressing complex challenges. And we're honoured to support our diverse participants. Let’s dive into some of the exciting deliberative adventures ahead! Sneak peek incoming...

A deliberating group is made up of randomly selected citizens from all walks of life. Just as we would see in any community group, these ‘mini-publics’ are made up of people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, communication styles and behaviours. We're exploring some of the most common types of behaviours we might see in a deliberative process, their impacts, and some guidelines for working with them effectively.

Get actionable ideas to transform your customer and community engagement approach in the evolving energy sector. Join our FREE webinar on Thursday, July 18th to hear from sector leaders representing Ausgrid, Energy Queensland and Jemena as they share insights into transformative customer engagement experiences. Plus gain ideas and tips on navigating energy engagement dilemmas from MosaicLab directors and co-founders Keith Greaves and Nicole Hunter. Don't miss this exclusive, interactive hour of engagement power.

Are you strategising secretly? A lot of strategic planning gets done in the dark, which causes plenty of prickly problems. One of the biggest issues with this approach is you get a final plan that doesn’t tackle what’s hard, lacks support and possibly ends up sitting on the shelf. We’re here to help you get your next planning process out into the light. There’s lots of ways to get there, and it doesn’t have to be hard. We’ve got tips to help you develop a plan that has more meaning and impact - something everyone can stand behind.

How should we plan for the new energy future while providing affordable services that meet changing customer and community needs? Two representative ‘Voice of the Customer’ panels in Queensland answered this question. Randomly selected, everyday customers deliberated and agreed on recommendations that electricity distributors Ergon Energy Network and Energex used to prepare Regulatory Proposals for the Australian Energy Regulator (AER).  Delve into a tale of two deliberative customer panels, and gain ideas and insights you can draw on for your next project.

We've just returned from Australian Energy Week, where we engaged with energy sector professionals from Australia and beyond, introducing them to the MosaicLab Spin and Win experience. As the energy sector evolves, so do expectations for customer and community engagement. MosaicLab directors Nicole Hunter and Keith Greaves connected with conference attendees around current sector trends and some significant engagement challenges facing the industry.

We believe in supporting emerging and underserved people and communities to have deeper conversations that lead to stronger democracies. ML Giving is the new name of the not-for-profit part of MosaicLab - a banner for the work we do that gives back. We’re focussing on furthering community inclusion and action beyond just getting input and instead moving into enabling local decision-making. Explore the principles ML Giving will operate under, and the kind of projects and conversations we’re supporting.

We’re very thankful to be in a position to do meaningful work every day. Sometimes an opportunity comes our way that is extra special and this project to empower refugee women to build connections, confidence and a business plan for a new food focused initiative fit that description. As as the first official project under our ML Giving banner, we invested our time pro-bono to support this conversation, that was filled with learnings, challenges and a whole lot of positive impact.

Jemena Electricity Network has been implementing a comprehensive engagement program for the organisation's 2026-2031 Regulatory Proposal, employing a multi-dimensional approach to allow customers direct influence over proposed future pricing and services. MosaicLab codesigned and lead the facilitation of the process, that included a deliberative panel and brings diverse customer, stakeholder, and industry perspectives into the decision-making process.

Elevate your engagement on every level by asking the right questions! Learn how to cut through the complexity, guide participants to think deeply and ensure diverse people can contribute meaningfully. Quality questions equal quality outcomes. Join us on Thursday May 23 at our FREE Lunch and Learn webinar for tips and skills you can use every time you plan for engagement.

As part of the development of Ausgrid's 2024-2029 regulatory submission, two randomly selected customer panels deliberated over a collective 10 full days. The panels, facilitated by MosaicLab and Gauge Consulting, considered how Ausgrid should look to the future while remaining fair to customers today. Ausgrid's three-year engagement process allowed customers to influence what Ausgrid spends customers money on, giving them a rare insight and influence over the cost of electricity, an issue that directly impacts the lives of everyday people.

Power is always at play and often in surprising and unexpected ways. It’s your job as a project manager, leader, facilitator or engagement professional to notice and foresee power problems, address and prevent power imbalance and protect the integrity of your engagement process. In this deliberation disaster we let you know where power issues tend to lie, what you can do about them, and what your role is in tackling them. 

AI is both wonderfully amazing and exciting and fun, and worrying, overwhelming and scary…..and it’s coming towards us at a pace that our brains are finding hard to reconcile. In this article we’re exploring some of what’s coming up for us so far around using AI. Including how our natural, human biases are coming into play, the risks and opportunities we’re identifying and the three key principles we see as critical going forward.  

Have you heard about standing panels? They’re a form of deliberative engagement that can be super effective, particularly if you have a lot of different issues and topics you need to engage your community around. They’re also a really cool way of embedding deliberative practice in decision-making. Plus, they’re already happening in Australia. We’ve got the lowdown on what they are, the key considerations in planning for them and some snapshots of the two ongoing standing panels we’re facilitating in the local government realm.

Deliberative engagement aims to build trusted decisions. That’s only achievable if the people impacted by the outcome have access to information about the process. This isn’t as easy as telling your communication team to send out a media release or publishing a few social posts telling your community the panel or jury is happening. Your communication approach needs to be thoughtfully planned, aligning communication and engagement efforts and ensuring deliberative principles aren’t compromised.

Conflict - generally feared and constantly mismanaged, it’s one of the biggest challenges you will face in engagement. It’s also the most common challenge our subscribers submit to us. If you anticipate conflict, outrage or emotion ahead, this article is for you. Inside - how to avoid the three biggest errors we see made (and they are made a lot) and some simple, yet effective things you can do instead to navigate the situation instead of making it worse.

What are you asking your participants to help you with? Topic choice and how you craft the question, challenge or remit you put to your community is critical to a successful process. In this deliberation disaster, we explore the most common mistake we see made. Plus, there are free tips for selecting and communicating a topic that will result in better response rates, a more meaningful experience for participants and more useful outputs for decision makers.

We’re feeling energised as we zoom through the first month of the new year. That’s because we can see what’s ahead, and we’re excited about the possibilities. Are you ready to set sail with us? We’re celebrating what’s been achieved in partnership with people just like you so far, while setting our sights on facilitating more important conversations in more places and having even more positive impact on more communities. We’re ready to embrace where engagement and deliberation are going, are you?

Ready to put your best engagement foot forward in 2024? We have the free resources for you! Whether you’re prepping an important engagement project, have a tricky engagement problem to wrangle or just wanting to upskill, we’re here to help. We have so many free resources, it can be hard to know where to begin, so we’re sharing what our top 7 resources were in 2023 so you can see what others are reading and learning about. Jump in and let this be your most effective year of engaging yet!