No. ACF is built to be self‑contained. You get a comprehensive playbook with scripts and templates. Think of it like IKEA furniture: it arrives flat‑packed but complete. You assemble it yourself.

If you are an individual civil servant, you can use ACF on a single tricky issue inside your own mandate. If you represent a department or a whole city, you can adopt it as a shared method across teams. In both cases, your own people run the process – which means your team truly owns both the process and the outcome.

The pilots were in Swedish cities, but the foundation is global. ACF is built on international research in negotiation theory, behavioural science, and social identity theory. The “ambition–action gap” is not a Swedish problem; it is a human one.

Whether you are a single official in Stockholm, a cross‑departmental team in Singapore, or a mayor’s office in Seoul, the same frictions show up: formalities where mandates collide, and budgets are tight, structures where siloed departments pull in different directions, and relationships where informal ties and unspoken trust decide what actually moves forward.

ACF gives both individuals and whole organisations a shared way to see and address those frictions, wherever you start.

Yes – and that’s the point. “Complexity” is often used as an excuse to do nothing. ACF does not deny the complexity of urban governance. It simply stops it from paralysing you.

If you are one person, ACF helps you create a tightly structured two‑hour window with the right people in the room – just enough to unlock a stuck decision path. If you are leading a team or a city‑wide effort, the same structure can be repeated across multiple issues.

In both cases, ACF creates a “minimum viable consensus” – just enough agreement to start moving. And once you are moving, it is much easier to steer. You cannot steer a stationary bike.

Most workshops end with a “vision”. ACF sessions end with an agreement.

For an individual facilitator, that means you do not stop at slogans like “climate neutrality”. You work down to specific quality‑of‑life outcomes and named tasks with clear owners and deadlines.

For a city or department, it means you can rely on a repeatable format where every session ends with a concrete list of who is doing what, by when, and how they will report back. A simple test: if the session does not end with a clear understanding of who is doing what by Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., it was not an ACF session.

Two hours is enough to crack the friction and get the system moving.

At the level of a single case, ACF will not solve every technical detail, but it acts as a wedge: it opens a stuck conversation, aligns key players around a shared purpose, and nails down the first steps.

At the level of a city organisation, repeating this two‑hour format across different issues helps build a new working habit: short, focused conversations that lead to shared decisions and visible follow‑up. ACF is not a magic wand – it is a practical way to turn years of accumulated friction into a series of solvable next steps.

Most frameworks try to balance departmental interests. ACF starts from the emotional and relational realities that usually stall urban governance.

Three things make it distinct – for both individual users and whole cities:

1. From mandates to quality of life. Instead of getting stuck in narrow departmental trade‑offs, ACF points everyone to a shared North Star: future liveability and economic prosperity. One person can reframe a single issue this way; a city can use the same North Star across many processes.
   
   

2. From visioning to anchored storytelling. We swap free‑form brainstorming for vetted, science‑based story templates. These keep imagination realistic, aligned with climate science, and grounded in everyday life. An individual facilitator can use a single story in one room; a city can reuse and adapt it across many.
   
   

From neutrality to identity. Many models urge you to “separate the person from the problem”. ACF does the opposite. It invites personal and professional identities into the room. By acknowledging who people are and what they care about, you reach robust agreements on the common good faster – whether in a single high‑stakes meeting or as a new organisational habit.

Fair question. Corridor chats and shared coffee are the natural lubricants of any city. They matter. But they rarely unlock structural deadlocks.

ACF is different because it is a structured process for results. A coffee builds relationships; ACF turns those relationships into actionable consensus.

If you are one person convening a session, you use fika strategically inside the process to lower barriers and find common ground – but you surround it with:

• science‑based storytelling so everyone is moving towards the same future

• clear decision steps that move the group from ideas to priorities

• concrete accountability so every participant leaves with a mandate, a deadline, and a way to report back.

If you are responsible for a team or a city‑wide programme, you use fika – and the structure around it – in the same way across many meetings. In short: you channel the human power of informal conversation through a method that actually turns the municipal machinery.

 Informal chats are perfect for building trust. They are poor at turning that trust into change.

For an individual official, ACF takes the energy of informal connection and adds just enough structure to produce results:

• From vibes to accountability. Instead of ending with “we should do something”, you end with a specific task, a date, and a reporting line.

• Aligned imagination. You replace ad hoc brainstorming with structured narrative templates. Everyone is picturing the same kind of future city, which makes it easier to set aside departmental egos and focus on residents’ lives.

For a city organisation, the same elements become a repeatable system:

• informal influence no longer depends only on personalities and networks

• ACF becomes a documented playbook that turns consensus‑building into an institutional skill anyone can lead.

Very little. ACF is deliberately low‑threshold. You are already busy; this is meant to plug into your reality, not add a new layer of work.

You need four things:

1. A specific deadlock. Pick one city hall ambition that has gotten stuck because of departmental friction or clashing priorities. If you are an individual, start with the case that is keeping you up at night. If you are a team or a city, start where the gears are grinding loudest.
   
   

2. The Playbook. Download the guide with templates, scripts, and step‑by‑step instructions. One person can use it for a single session; a city can make it a standard way to run key meetings.
   
   

3. The right eight people. Bring together 5–8 stakeholders who have the formal mandate to make decisions on that specific issue. This is true whether you act on your own initiative or on behalf of a whole department.
   
   

4. Two hours. Block the time. No phones, no interruptions.
   
   

That is it. No external consultant budget. No six‑month pre‑study. You just need a day of planning, the playbook – and the courage to put the right people in a room for 120 minutes, whether you do it once as a motivated individual or repeatedly as a city‑wide practice.

For about 30 years, we treated climate change primarily as a knowledge problem or an ideological issue. In reality, it is mainly a problem of cooperation.

Many academic ideas work elegantly on paper but fail in city hall. ACF was built the other way round: from years of hands‑on work with municipal officials, in their meetings, under their constraints.

We focus on the who. Traditional models aim for objectivity and try to strip out identity. We start from the fact that personal and professional identities are what actually drive – or block – decisions.

For an individual user, that means you finally have a method that matches the real politics of your daily work – not an abstract model that ignores it.

For a city, it means you can scale a way of working that is:

• Anchors over visions. Instead of vague “2050 visions”, you use science‑based narrative anchors that make the future feel real rather than like a spreadsheet.

• Practitioner‑led. ACF is not an academic hypothesis. It is a flat‑packed system designed for the everyday reality of the city hall.

Whether you are just one person trying to move a single decision or a whole city ready to shift how you work, ACF is built so you do not have to wait for perfect conditions. You can start where you are – and move from ambition to action together.