There are many metaphors that are useful in our work. You may be familiar with the flywheel concept from Jim Collins’ Good to Great, Gladwell’s Tipping Point, or one of my favourites the Garden Mind, as distinct from ‘machine mind’ and all about spreading and growing what is good. I’ve used this in some recent articles on health and care integration and exploring what it takes to spread and grow what is good.
These are helpful models and thinking processes for our work.
The Challenge
In the same way that I was challenged on where we get ‘Stuck‘ following an overly optimistic, hopeful and rose tinted glasses piece on shadowing great leaders, I have also been challenged to find the courage to surface what’s getting in the way of change across our system.
GM Moving evaluation has shown us that there are Enablers for Change, and we use these to guide our approach as a system. And yet each of these, when absent or inconsistent are huge barriers to change too.
Honest Conversations
Let’s be honest about the things that are getting in the way. They’re not always made explicit. But in Greater Manchester and in my work on GM Moving, that is changing. We’re facing the brutal realities more regularly and more honestly. The pandemic has made sure of that.
So if we turn those enablers on their head, here’s what we see, feel, hea and are complicit in. You’ll find better ways to describe it from your own experience. I know this because I hear it some form every day in most spaces I’m in.
- A lack of effective whole system strategic leadership and/or collective leadership in some places and in some agendas.
- A lack of effective work across and between sectors.
- Governance and processes that disable positive change processes.
- Fixed mindsets, the absence of learning cultures in people, organisations and systems. Stubborn. Not adaptive.
- A lack of belief in, commitment to or action involving local people and growing assets. Sometimes unintentional and more often through a lack of depth of understanding of what coproduction really means or takes in practice. And a lack of time to do it well as an embedded cultural practice.
Governance and Processes
I’m focussing in this article on governance and processes specifically. But all these enablers are interconnected and interwoven.
Using those models above, I think about the grit in the flywheel of Machine Mind. The grinding cogs. The rusty nuts and bolts. Garden Mind thinking takes me to the weeds with deeply entrenched root systems that are hard to pull out. The blockages and barriers above and below the surface. Visible and invisible.
What are these governance and process things?
Let’s make it more real. These things below come up regularly in our work and are surfaced through our embedded researchers in the evaluation team. They also come up in wider GM reform and transformation work we’re involved with, and with our national-local partnerships.
- Legal barriers (contracts, agreements).
- Perceptions of risk and attitudes to it.
- Commissioning and procurement approaches.
- Short term pressures on the system and the need for ‘demand management’ alongside the need for long term sustainable systemic change.
- The complexity of demand and the way people and systems try to fix it with simple, linear approaches.
- Financial mindsets and processes where the need for investment is long term and iterative and the budget processes drive us to budget and spend within year (or lose the budget next year).
- Commissioning approaches (top down, delivery, triage through systems alongside bottom up, spread and grow, iterative approaches)
- Strategic commissioning approaches – commissioning for outputs rather than outcomes.
- Contract management and performance management cultures and processes. You can change commissioning but if that doesn’t flow through the rest of the system, it will still fail.
- The culture around measurement, evaluation and learning.
- All this can be underpinned by an Alpha culture (briefly mentioned here and something I’ve committed to writing more about).
First things first. This is not an ‘us and them’ article. There’s no finger pointing and no blame game. I have never met a colleague that isn’t turning up to work every day to make a positive difference in the world. This is tricky territory. There are genuine concerns and fears when it comes to experimenting with our statutory duties or our organisation’s licence, sustainability, accountability and responsibility. I’ll be honest. This is the stuff that keeps me awake at night as an organisational leader. The fear is real.
What do I see happen when we try to change things?
We notice what’s in the way. The friction in the system. We slowly and courageously start to talk more openly and surface the issues. We work together to make positive changes. Every day in every area of our work.
And some things change fairly easily. But with governance and processes, we get stuck. It’s the ‘enabler’ for change where we get most tangled in the weeds.
Even when we manage to clearly identify the root of the problem and we come together with shared purpose to change it, we struggle. Personally and professionally. We bring collective leadership and energy to it. But then we find that we’re all stuck.
Energy seeps out of us.
Or we go follow the mantra of ‘go where the energy is’, and avoid the weeds. We go where things flow. But that doesn’t challenge or deal with the people, things or processes that are stopping the energy flow to the places it needs to.
So we get tired. And give up. We put these things in the ‘too hard to do’ box and put our energy elsewhere.
Or we end up working around them. Accommodating them. Making excuses for them.
So what? Why does it matter?
It means we don’t support and enable change in our communities. So the stories that are told by the courageous, the frustrated, the angry and the broken-hearted are heard, but real change doesn’t come quick enough, deeply enough or in ways that change for good. Systems and processes continue to get in the way and they inhibit us and it serves no one. You only need to read the work of Hilary Cottam and Mandy Berriman, or listen to Darren McGarvey read Poverty Safari to feel the impact of our failure to shift governance and processes.
We need to think differently and I’m looking for solutions.
- What will it take clear the weeds and their roots?
- What have we already learnt about this that can be applied more of the time?
- How do we unlock the true potential of our collective energy and work?
- How could lives be better if we can find ways to shift these things that help things to flow?
- What kind of leadership does this take?
- How can emergent systems be nurtured as the dominant systems adapt, align or die off?
Don’t forget what we already know.
Individually and collectively we have we already how to navigate some of this. Possibly in different spaces or places, but it’s all translatable. We have learning that we can apply more of the time and can hold on to for hope and optimism.
We can help each other to hold our nerve and find safe spaces for making change happen.
Because we have cut through some of these weeds before and in some cases we’ve removed them never to be seen again! I have also realised that some of the Pointers for Leadership Practice are key to this too. This slideshow is a good place to start.
Solutions, Safe Spaces and Small Steps
Look beneath the surface: Name the problem. The real problem. Not the one on the surface. The hidden, below the surface problem that has never been named.
Small Things, Big Impact: We know that in changemaking, some of the smallest things can make the biggest difference. The converse of that is that some of the smallest bits of grit in the flywheel can bring the whole machine to a halt. Don’t ignore them.
Incremental steps and safe spaces to test and learn: Looking back at our successes and the incremental steps taken to date, I can see that we have employed both of those strategies outlined above (sometimes unknowingly), with a sequencing of reforms in ‘air pockets’ or ‘test and learn’ spaces, recognising that further, more widespread and deeper reforms will be necessary. And by showing that changes can be made without catastrophic results, gives others confidence to follow and then eventually we’ll reach the tipping point.
For example when I think about the GreaterSport leadership role in GM Moving, we have had a sense of permission to do things differently. GreaterSport has hosted roles on behalf of GM Moving partners (Local Pilot and Population Health transformation). We have been able to test and learn new approaches and role design with Sport England too.
As a small, agile, adaptive charity host, we have been able to test new approaches to commissioning, organisational design, recruitment, evaluation and budgeting within a safe space and a culture of permission to ‘fail-fast’ and embrace adaptive learning approaches.
The learning we have gained in these spaces has shown that different approaches are possible and outcomes in the work can be better. So we can work in the dominant system whilst helping the emerging system to evolve. That can help us to take similar paths with other areas of work, based on the learning, with less of a sense of risk.
Find the true source or power. In my experience we can often identify the problem or the grit. But no one really knows who has the power to change anything about it. The people at the bottom of the ‘hierarchy’ can assume that the people at the top have the power and autonomy to change things. It often feels like it gets stuck in the middle, but the people in the middle don’t feel they have the power, authority or agency either. Everyone can blame politicians, but they don’t have magic wands either. Unpicking where the power to change lies in a complex situation is not easy and it’s rarely in one place or with one person. Which links to many of the other points in here. And we need to mind the myths too…
Mind the Myths. With governance and process there can be a myth culture. Often, no one knows why a process started, but over the years that process has become ‘law’ within the organisation or system, and has been handed down by generations of staff. This is linked to risk, but without the challenge the risk is always maintained as high regardless of when it was identified or why. So we need to be prepared to trace things back, check whether the reasons rules and ‘laws’ exist are still relevant and important or whether they can be changed.
Embed principles and ways of working in the DNA of the work: Mark Lovell reminded me of this in his comments below. The Principles for Public Service Reform helped to shape the principles and ways of working around Greater Manchester’s MOU with Sport England. They’re hard wired into the GM Moving strategy and in the principles and ways of working of the Local Pilot. When governance and processes aren’t aligned to these principles, they become leverage to shift things.
The Importance of Small Steps
People Power matters. People with the courage to name the issues, in productive ways can come together as a force for good. Together we can reach that ‘Tipping Point’ on the tough stuff that’s hard to shift.
New mindsets lead to new models. As commissioners and providers start to work more collaboratively, they start to see that new ways of working are possible. This can help to embed and normalise different commissioning approaches. It can lead to different forms of evaluation, that give a deeper understanding of impact and change. This video below is a helpful example of this.
And here’s another slideshow here of helpful reminders and visuals. Please send me any more that help you to think about this:
What else have you found that helps?
As usual, I’m crowdsourcing the collective wisdom of colleagues for this. Please contribute, challenge and share your learnings. I will keep adding to this. You can comment below, email me hayley@gmmoving.co.uk or find this on Twitter @hayleylever and keep the conversation going ‘out loud’.
Thanks to all contributors below:
Mark Lovell, Principal TSAP and Head of the Outcomes Investment Fund for Big Issue Invest.
- Positive constancy of purpose in leadership/behaviours: as you note it is easy to complain and lobby – linked to your point on “start and take small steps” – accept it will not work on day 1, but make day 2 better. There will be set backs but that doesn’t mean stop.
- Use faith not trust as a basis for collaboration. Trust has to be earned and faith can be freely given immediately. And learn. (I’ve written about Trust before, and this point about faith is a good one)
- Iterate to success: you will not define the ‘answer’ at the outset (finance model, policy solution, ‘right’ partners, interventions etc.)
- Enshrine the behaviours as part of the ‘contract’: I use MoU’s to set out the joint understanding on approach and ‘why’ we are doing this – as people get tired and fall away, promoted, change (because you are looking long term). You need a one/two page document setting out the ‘why’ and conditions – people look at the weird thing and can either say ‘yep’ that’s still relevant or ‘no stuff has changed but we know why you did so we can take intelligent decisions to course correct’. Of course legal and commissioning teams are often not bothered or don’t want to do this.
- Encourage inherent curiosity: if you aren’t curious and open to new things /change don’t work on these types of agendas. I always focused my leadership messages on the journey, not the destination – if you take enjoyment and happiness and fulfilment from reaching the ‘end’ then don’t work with me on these things – if like a journey, hope on!
- Build eclectic teams with the capacity of leadership to get the best from them: this means you will bring together people with different skills and world views so clearly there will be fall out so you need techniques and capacity to work that out/through.
Belief Systems, Junctures and Strategies for Change
Thanks to John Hannen for this article, which has some helpful lenses on the problem, using concepts from economic and political theory. Here are a few insights that I found helpful.
“First, at the individual level, the institutional structure inherited from the past may reflect a set of beliefs that are impervious to change either because the proposed changes run counter to that belief system or because the proposed alteration in institutions threatens the leaders and entrepreneurs of existing organizations. Where fundamentally competing beliefs exist side by side, the problems of creating a viable set of institutional arrangements are increased and may make the establishment of consensual political rules a prescription for short-run disaster“.
“interaction effects between distinct causal sequences that become joined at particular points in time…. [these] junctures are critical because they place institutional arrangements on paths or trajectories, which are then very difficult to alter…. The concept of critical juncture shows that comprehensive or ambitious reforms in minimally functional institutions (or networks of institutions) during “normal” times are likely to be strongly resisted. As path dependence theory emphasizes, much institutional change will be incremental and will occur on many small margins. Indeed attempting too much may be a recipe for achieving too little“.
And some strategies:
“There are two potential (and complementary) strategies for dealing with this conundrum. First, reformers may be able to identify some institutions that can be more easily detached from a broader mutually reinforcing institutional matrix or be created de novo…..This strategy may enable more ambitious stand-alone reforms that nevertheless have important showcase effects, although even here the experience with semi-autonomous [agencies] suggests that these institutions are likely to be fragile without complementary reforms, over time, to the surrounding institutional matrix.
The second strategy is to reform existing institutions that are interconnected and mutually reinforcing in a time sensitive manner by prioritizing a sequence of reforms beginning with certain core reforms but recognizing that further complementary reforms will be necessary“
Chris Rushton, CEO, Active Tameside
Whole system productivity can only be evidenced in financial terms by a whole system P&L i.e., the overall societal benefit transcends any given commission eg leisure investment benefiting health or policing – that’s why SROI multiples are fundamental to change.
Duncan Wood-Allum, Founder, SLC
Increasingly thinking we need to invest more time in engaging with political leaders to create better conditions for exploring alternate approaches. In return, we need to accept more risk and less certainty bolstered by greater transparency and accountability.
Paula Whylie (OD/HR): Sometimes we don’t notice the change that happens around the edges, especially if it a fringe benefit to something else..
Andy King: (YourTrust, GM Active)- Superb blog on barriers to change. Alpha culture possibly the single biggest barrier? The ‘ladder’ analogy spot on – small steps make change possible. Common purpose and courage to commission outcomes with freedom on process essential. Get a @tracey_t2 commissioner!
Tracey Harrison (above said T2 commissioner): It takes the whole team to realise change and we certainly did that. Your blog hit the nail on the head. The whole system needs to be receptive and willing to be bold!
Tom Overton: Another thought while swimming this morning, is about trust. Many processes are put in place and/or poorly implemented because at the heart the relationship/s lack trust….and try to make up for that lack of trust through bureaucracy & ‘policing’.
Hayley Lever 