Chapter 4The Choice-Strategy-Action Trilogy

The AskingCities model emerged from living practice, from real experiences accumulated at AskingBristol, and from the careful observation of what worked, what did not, what generated trust, where friction appeared and what connections were significant between actors who, under normal conditions, hardly interacted with each other. This empirical origin is key to understanding why MAX is not a conceptual artifice, but a natural response to the complexity of civic life.

During its first years, AskingBristol generated a wealth of reflections, learnings, intuitions and patterns that appeared in any interaction: a meeting with an NGO, an email from a university professor, a spontaneous conversation with a municipal technician or an unexpected comment in a primary school. It was a rich knowledge, but fragmented, and it was necessary to organize it, translate it and turn it into a replicable language so that it could be taught and transferred.

The question that changed everything was:

How do we teach AskingCities to another city without us being present?

That question revealed that to transfer the model it was not enough to accumulate good practices or trust the intuition of the team. A clear framework was needed to explain which parts of the model are essential and need to be preserved, what aspects can be adapted according to the context, how the collaboration process is organized in practice, how the concepts that structure AskingCities are causally related, what is the sequence that allows a city to start with meaning, and finally, what mistakes or excesses should be avoided to maintain simplicity and traction.

Without this structure, AskingCities ran the risk of being dispersed into incompatible local interpretations, losing identity and coherence. Understanding this challenge was the first step towards a replicable architecture: a design capable of preserving the essence of the model and, at the same time, adapting to diverse contexts.

4.1How the Option-Strategy-Action trilogy emerged#

To address these questions and turn the accumulated experience into a replicable system, it was decided to use the SODA (Strategic Options Development and Analysis) method, created by the British academic Professor Colin Eden. SODA is an approach designed to structure complex problems by integrating diverse perceptions and identifying strategies, actions, and options through facilitated processes.

In the two structured workshops held with key people from AskingBristol and AskingValencia, and with the participation of Professor Eden as facilitator, perceptions were represented, causal relationships were explored and related concepts were grouped. This process allowed categories to appear naturally as the functioning of the system became clearer.

4.1.1Options Level#

The starting point was the Options, that is, possible ideas, potential resources or elements that worked well in certain contexts but were not essential or necessarily replicable in all cities. These options opened up possibilities, offered alternative paths and showed how each territory had resolved specific aspects. Among them were proposals such as promoting academic research linked to the model, creating a local figure with public recognition that would act as a bridge, designing an Onboarding or favour self-organization by domains of experience. These options represent the contextual flexibility of MAX and are developed in the Chapter 8.

4.1.2Strategy Level#

By grouping the options together and exploring their causal connections, they began to form consistent configurations: guidelines that different participants expressed in different words, but that pointed to the same deep meaning. These were not tasks or operational decisions, but Organizing Principles that give direction to the system. These included maintaining structural simplicity, developing a replicable guide, understanding the network of Givers and their motivations, generate impact stories or activate the institutional supply chain. This is the strategic level of MAX, described in Chapter 6.

4.1.3Action Level#

From these strategies emerged concrete and observable actions, that is, the practical steps that allow strategic orientations to be converted into real progress. These actions are teachable, measurable, and allow you to evaluate whether the strategy is working. Among the actions identified are documenting and telling Quick wins, map third sector actors, measure narrative impact, create a common workspace to AskAuthors or accompanying institutions to refine their offerings before connecting them. A detailed description of these actions appears in the Chapter 7.

4.2The OSA trilogy as a result of the process#

The OSA (Option-Strategy-Action) trilogy was discovered from within through a SODA process that allowed to order complexity, identify causal patterns and distinguish between the stable core of the model, the operating procedures that move it forward and the flexible repertoire that allows it to be adapted without breaking it.

The trilogy protects the essence of AskingCities when replicated, reduces operational complexity, allows you to enter the layered model, and turns learnings from one city into useful knowledge for all others. OSA is, in this sense, the backbone of the movement: the conceptual skeleton that makes AskingCities a replicable, clear, light practice capable of sustaining itself in any city that decides to activate it.

Thanks to this architecture, AskingCities was able to make the leap from local practice to coherent social franchising. The OSA trilogy accurately distinguishes the structural from the contingent, what must be kept stable to preserve identity, and what can be freely adapted to resonate with each territory. This allows AskingCities to be exported without dilution, to grow without fragmenting into incompatible versions, and to teach new cities without overloading the design.