Patrick Vincent and Juliette Monaco
As part of the think-and-do-tank approach and the Dynamic Living Lab (DLL) framework developed in the Lyon Métropole public innovation ecosystem, the Action Tree aims to inspire organisations facing complexity and uncertainty in their transformative journeys. Rooted in systemic design, it offers a coherent structure that links inner transformation with outer action.
The Action Tree is a visual and open deck more than a prescriptive roadmap. It helps general-interest organisations and communities navigate the diversity of levers available for robust and profound change. It encourages actors to select, combine, and contextualise actions across five complementary branches, ensuring that no dimension of transformation is overlooked.
[Editor’s note: Advance online publication version of Think-and-Do-Tank is available. September 3, 2025.]
Intentions and concept
The Tree is organised into five systemic branches:
- Legislation, Organisation & Governance—actions related to rules, structures, and regulations, balancing centralisation and decentralisation while fostering accountability
- Onboarding & Community Leadership—practices to engage, empower, and sustain communities of actors
- Thinking & Decision-Making Methods/Personal Development & Wellbeing—bridging inner growth, mental models, and collective decision-making for resilient transitions
- Action, Innovation & Awareness—prototyping, experimentation, education, and awareness strategies
- Commons & Narratives—governance of shared resources and the role of storytelling in creating collective meaning
Together, they form a balanced framework that supports the shift from individual initiative to collective action, connected with Donella Meadows’ twelve leverage points for systemic change.
Each branch unfolds into more concrete orientations, harmonised as: welcoming and retaining members; establishing rituals; structuring a collective; recruiting and challenging talents; sharing stories; training and awareness raising; experimenting and prototyping; testing robustness; promoting wellbeing; exploring collaborative spaces; documenting practices and commons. These categories offer both inspiration and practical guidance while leaving room for contextual adaptation.
Creative process and modes of use
The Action Tree is designed as a multi-purpose facilitation device for workshops, retreats, or participatory events. It can be used in three ways:
- Inspiring exploration as a source of reflection and diagnosis of one’s own organisation.
- Participatory action planning – participants collect inspiring actions across the five branches to build a balanced action plan, either structured with the DLL matrix or on a blank canvas. Detachable cards can be used to compose and prioritise actions.
- Collaborative enrichment – the poster can be presented blank or semi-completed, with participants adding their own cards to feed the branches, turning the Tree into a living, evolving artefact.
Through these modes, the Tree serves both as a reflexive library and a collaborative action tool.
Reflection
The Action Tree aims to address a recurrent difficulty: the tendency to focus on narrow interventions (e.g., regulation, awareness campaigns) while neglecting others (e.g., wellbeing, commons, narratives). By organising interventions across five systemic dimensions, it ensures that strategies remain balanced, robust, and multi-layered.
An educational pathway for discovering and implementing the principles could be proposed, drawing on Donella Meadows’ leverage points, from parameters to paradigms, and incorporating certain principles of general interest developed in different ways in organisations (see Ostrom on common pool resource governance, robustness strategies inspired by biology, and co-design practices such as prototyping, feedback, and learning). However, the map does not include a classification of the maturity level of the principles used, nor any indication of the level of difficulty in implementing them.
Finally, an educational program for discovering and implementing the principles could be offered. This option could be based on a digital version, to be developed.
Designers
Patrick Vincent, Public Project Director, Erasme Public Innovation Lab from Lyon Metropole Administration, https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickvincent1 | pvincent@erasme.org
Juliette Monaco, Global Designer and Innovation Project Manager, Design by and for living beings, Erasme Public Innovation Lab from Lyon Metropole Administration, https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliette-monaco-designer | jmonaco.pro@gmail.com
