A report released last month in New York as part of the International Conference on Urban Affairs explores a range of critical factors that can support or hinder the effective learning of lessons from foreign experience and projects. Research director for the project Matthew Trigg unpacks key learnings.
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The Urban Translation Survey aims at to understand success factors of people who have worked in multiple countries. In this survey a third of participants had worked in Australia. By combining average importance and type of impact into a single score the project aims to give a simple way to determine supporting factors and barriers then showing how these change for different types of professionals.
Overall and across most cohorts the most effective ways to support the learning were skills in good communication and dialogue and receptiveness to outside ideas.
Awareness of cultural values and awareness followed, along with shared aims and values, trusted personal connections or relationships, and perceptions of good or ‘best’ practice respectively.
The two most significant barriers to effective learning were identified as racial prejudice or assumptions and false or misleading information, such as from media coverage.
Those with greater public sector experience saw risk aversion as an even bigger barrier across the factors that were considered.
There was also a notable difference in the range between the most supportive factor and most significant barrier based on gender identity, with the gap being 1.9 times greater for women than men who presented a comparatively more narrow range of scores.
Men also saw trusted personal connections or relationships as comparatively more important while women expressed shared aims and values as more supportive.
The survey showed there is an increasing reliance on applying insights from elsewhere to reduce project risks, invest limited public funds well, and avoid delaying community benefits due to less predictable trial and error approaches.
This provides a new toolkit for project teams and decision makes to assess and accommodate for conscious and unconscious bias, without.
Other key findings from the study included that those with greater public sector experience identified more barriers but with less negative impact.
The public sector also saw trusted personal connections or relationships as more of a supporting factor and racial prejudice or assumptions as less of a barrier. While the private sector saw receptiveness to outside ideas as less of a supporting factor and that Sufficient time and resources more facilitated learning.
Native English speakers identified fewer barriers and with less impact compared to non-native speakers. By contrast, non-native speakers saw sufficient time and resources and Perceptions of good or best practice as more supportive for learning from foreign experience.
Racial prejudice or assumptions, the biggest barrier overall, also had the highest number of opt-outs. Simulation and gaming was the only factor seen on average as both negative and insignificant.
The research was presented as part of the International Conference on Urban Affairs with a summary of the findings available on the Urban Translation Project’s LinkedIn Page. In addition to Australia, other regions participants have worked include United States (62 per cent), United Kingdom (51 per cent), and Canada (38 per cent).
Further work on the application of the findings is ongoing, including how the insights can be applied across major projects to further reduce risks, costs, and delays. Those wishing to be involved in subsequent qualitative interviews should contact Matthew or the Urban Translation Project.