→ A rubric for guiding our business development and choosing projects that come to us. It gives us a mid-to-long-term perspective on balancing projects that keep us (a) financially stable, (b) in alignment with our mission, and (c) interested as thinkers and doers.
How does Field States decide which projects to take on and which to say no to? How do we ensure our work is aligned with our studio values, advances the kind of change we hope to see in the world, encourages personal growth, brings us into alignment with partners and clients we respect, and—at the end of the day—pays the bills?
As our team has navigated these questions and spoken with colleagues in other fields and studios, it became clear that we could design something to help us ask these questions, discuss, and eventually make decisions as a team.
While it’s unrealistic for every project to check off every box (and that’s ok), we want to be intentional in choosing projects, and which factors we consider to aid in that. To do this, our team is developing what we call the Responsible Project Portfolio (RPP). The framework takes a portfolio approach—considering all of our projects together—to account for and balance across all our work as a collective effort, rather than siloed individual projects.
The RPP is a framework to help us figure out:
The RPP is a useful guide. It’s more art than science—but we think a little math can help. Numbers help illuminate the path, but the true calculation is relational and creative; it’s about embracing discovery; and requires patience and intentionality. Our goal is to choose and manifest projects over time, and help us evaluate our work in retrospect, as a learning mechanism.
After we translated our values into criteria to which we could assign scores, we assembled a good ol’ fashioned spreadsheet to house the rating system, and drafted a protocol for when and how to use it. This helps us see everything we’re working on (and thinking about working on) at once, and by building it into our [cycle], we make sure we stay accountable.
Example snapshot of the RPP matrix in a spreadsheet.