A Response to Upheaval & Place

Image By Artist: Mathieu Bernard-Reymond from his amazing Disparitions Series

Place is a critical element within society and business which requires the utmost consideration.

Frazer works to: Resolve or formulate a response to the problems of people and place involved in complex and difficult matters. He will develop an approach to place that will benefit your business, staff, and end user.

(Quick link to: Business Benefits)

When you consider that whatever we do, it is always done in a place. Place is a critical element within society and business which requires the utmost consideration. A complicated and overlooked aspect of life that has the power to influence our emotions and actions, how we relate to each other and ourselves. We live, work, travel, and sleep in specific places hardly giving a thought to their nuanced impact. They serve to protects us and we trust them, they are integral to our thoughts, memories, and ambitions. They have the capacity to inspire, depress and even represent us. We automatically value the spaces they create and are conditioned to adapt to their characteristics, relating to them instinctively and feeling their integrity and value. They set the scene for an interaction with whomever or whatever they represent

For a business, home, or relationship to be successful, developing an approach to place and recognising its potential is important.

We cannot afford to ignore the potential that places offer. A sophisticated approach to place negates the chance that a place will aggravate rather than support plans for the future

Frazer Macdonald Hay can help develop an approach to place that will benefit your business, staff, and end user.

Frazer is a specialist in Place, Humanity, and Social Cohesion. He is a Mediator with a unique combination of experience and skills in architecture, politics, peacebuilding, and conflict. Working on projects which range from the design and build of the new Scottish Parliament with EMBT architects to humanitarian work with the United Nations in Iraq. He developed an approach and lens from which to assess and articulate the potential places can deliver.

In any phase of adaptation and change, Frazer is an asset to his clients. He will explore and identify the challenges of place-making with you. He will suggest and discuss ways to approach the social fabric of people and place. Working to reveal the potential of your place, he will help develop a progressive strategy that that sets you apart from the rest.

At any stage, whether it’s formulation of strategic planning, employing a practice of architects and designers or applying for funding, your business would benefit from a rolling consultation with Frazer. He will help sharpen the project’s focus, consolidate, and tighten the brief and help you get the most from the redevelopment of your place.

Frazer advocate’s: A process under which all parties work through their concerns with an experienced person, a mediator, who assists clients in reaching a mutually acceptable and co-produced agreement.

Collaborative problem solving, with a focus on the future, rebuilding relationships establishing a network of trust and resilience.

An efficient method of finding a solution to complicated and emotionally entangled issues of place.

A social-economic intervention that:

• Helps people progress past confrontational conditions and difficulty

• Creates a positive environment to explore problems and solutions safely (A productive environment for participants to find constructive responses to risk, to explore the issues and their context whilst recognising and acknowledging the feelings and relationships involved in planning avenues to move forward.)

• Encourages the airing of all points of view, goals and objects

• Promotes flexibility and adaptation

• Ensures a purposeful approach to problematic situations

• Respects Client Confidential

A process that:

• Allows those involved to understand and empathise with the feelings of those involved.

• Gives participants insights to their own behaviours and that of others, it opens a collaborative opportunity for change

• Encourages valuable dialogue and helps the people involved to find a remedy that builds trust and offers solutions that benefit all.

• Uses the energy generated by risk and complication in a positive way, enabling conditions from which to rebuild and take ownership of the group’s future.

• Suggests, clarifies, interprets, reasons and informs the participants of possible solutions to their issues

• Develops self-awareness, highlights the potentials in developing a dynamic and authentic sense of place whilst building attitudes to difficult conditions that radiate competence.

• Encourages win/win conditions for all those involved

Simply Frazer works to: Resolve or formulate a response to the problems of people and place involved in complex and difficult matters.

Paths often taken:

Route least likely to end in a positive solution:

• Coercion (does not last)

• Procrastination (Not professional)

• Arbitration (Win/lose)

• Buying Off (Does not win real respect)

• Creating coalitions (develops even more mistrust)

Route most available

• Separation (keeping antagonists apart where possible)

• Performance and behaviour counselling

• Mediation

• Opening the issue Q&A and an action plan

Route most effective:

• Changing composition of work group and place

• Finding a common goal

• Integrative bargaining and negotiation

• Mediation – Long Lasting agreement

Business Benefits:

• Reduce or elimination of stress involved in using more formal and top-down processes

• Retaining valuable employees

• Reduce the amount of time-consuming grievances raised

• Development of an organisational culture that focuses on managing the development of people and places

• Avoids the cost of defending employment tribunal claims etc.

• Reduction of sickness absenteeism and fear

• Maintains confidentiality and Promotes Trust and Competence

• Enhances business resilience

• Mitigation of risk