Crises – even terrible and painful ones – give rise to new things. In the world of organisations, this is reflected in structural arrangements that are both the framework and expression of development. Two types of such transformative structures are „bubbles“ and „foams“ (a more in-depth examination of these phenomena, brought to the fore by Peter Sloterdijk, can be found here).

While the phenomenon of the bubble was dominant during the Covid crisis, civil society foam structures are currently forming in many places in response to the war in Ukraine. They are the bow wave of a systemic crisis intervention, whose evolutionary dynamics can be traced as follows:

As is often the case in crises, the first organised response to the war comes from the community: Those affected and committed individuals take matters into their own hands, Initiatives and alliances bring initial solutions and offers of support to the streets in spontaneous forms of action. In this first wave, the bubbles of action form into foam, which is sometimes redundant and improvised, but usually impressively functional are.

In the second wave, professional aid organisations and foundations join in., who search for best practices and leverage points by surveying the field. In concerted actions, they expand promising arrangements from the early stages alongside their own operational programmes and continue to network them. This second wave is the adapter between the foams and the institutionalised order.

Thirdly, state actors enter the field, that integrate, consolidate and scale effective models when setting up long-term programmes and embed them in a systemic framework.

The dynamics can be summarised as follows: „The foam innovates, the system replicates and scales to an effective level.“. However, several problem areas have emerged in this process:

• At an individual levelThe impact of the crisis is particularly severe in Schaum, especially given the lack of structural support arrangements. overwhelmingCommitted individuals encounter people in extremely difficult situations and work under conditions of extreme inadequacy. For sustainable commitment, it is necessary to create support and processing spaces and to strengthen the skills and perceived legitimacy of self-care and self-management.
• At the level of the foam constellation, the Mode of emergent evolution effective, but often too slow given the great pressure to act. The strong focus on action in the foam often prevents the conscious improvement of processes and configurations. In order to arrive at good solutions as quickly as possible, the actors must develop regular routines for collective self-observation and process reflection.
• At the level of systemic scaling, identifying effective models is problematic: here, functioning and effective foam constellations must be tracked down, their model content decoded, and templates for further interventions derived from them. Often, models that appear compatible with the respective logic of action of the system actors in their intervention grammar are identified as best practice.. Many valuable models – especially those that have developed innovative approaches on a small scale – are overlooked.

One tool that can address all three problem areas is the Intense Period Debrief (IPD). In IPDs, following intensive sequences of action, participants are asked to reflect briefly as a team on the effects they have observed, their experiences and their insights into the action process. IPDs are mainly used in advocacy campaigns, but are also used in disaster relief and are similar to after-action reviews in a military context.

The following IPD format is designed as part of a systematic reflection and support structure for engagement in aid contexts. It can be used in moderated team interviews (45 minutes, 3–5 people, online or live) and has three levels:

1. Central level: Identification of Lessons learnt and potential for improvement in the intervention process

What were the successes and magic moments, how did they come about, and what potential do they reveal? Where are the friction points – what can be improved quickly and concretely in terms of approach and processes?

2. Reference to individual level: exchange and check on individual stressful situations and support needs (from here, referral to individual psychologically based support services if necessary)

How are you feeling right now? And how will you feel the day after tomorrow if things continue like this? What do you need to stay healthy?

3. Reference at system level: Identification effective solutions for key issues (feeding into a best practice model collection, if applicable)

 What were your biggest challenges? What answers did you find that might be of interest to others?