Design Thinking for NSW Government Farming

Challenge

Farming is a key industry for NSW and government policies aim to help farmers run their businesses in a way that contributes to long term resilience, productivity and profitability

The Strategy Group partnered with the NSW Government to analyse the barriers to increased business planning and risk management of farm businesses. By actively involving farmers in the development of new services and solutions, the NSW Government believed that recommendations would be aligned to stakeholder interests and hence more readily accepted and adopted by them.​

Approach

Strategic advisory for a Government-led Design Thinking project​

The Strategy Group has worked extensively with the DPI/OSBC team to develop their capability in Design Thinking. For Project Thrive, we supported the two department teams in a strategic advisory role, strengthening the design thinking skills of key team members to become design thinking facilitators. The team leads had built a core knowledge of design thinking and were now ready to train a new team in their respective departments to apply the methodology.​​

The team visited the homes of individual farmers to empathise with them, to assess the strength of current risk management measures and scope out areas for improvement. What came out of these discussions were deep insights that will be used to ensure current services are well targeted and meet farmers’ needs.​​

The team discovered that there are many existing services and tools for business planning, but it can be hard for farmers to know what’s good and where to start. Through one-on-one prototyping and testing of new and improved service ideas, we gathered data and feedback to design and propose services that would increase farm risk management. Through this validation process the team were confident that the solutions designed would increase the uptake of business planning by farmers in NSW.​

Outcomes

Developing capability and delivering lasting impact​​

The new service ideas will make it easier for farmers in NSW to conduct business planning in ways that best meet farmers needs while supporting industry growth and development through:​

• Development of a pilot on-farm placement program for agribusiness students to work with farmers to develop farm business plans​.
• Targeting business planning information and services at intermediaries who advise farmers, particularly accountants and “trusted” professionals​.
• Centralising and better promoting grants for various business planning services.
• A central location to provide access to business planning information and services​.
• Improved messaging and marketing materials to highlight that farm business planning is holistic and not just restricted to managing tax and BAS.

‍