The Lankelly Chase System Behaviours have been published online for less than a month. They describe the behaviours and relationships that we would expect to see from people and organisations who are working within healthy, well functioning systems (systems that achieve their purpose).  For example, the first of these behaviours is that:

“People view themselves as part of an interconnected whole:                                             Everyone working towards positive change understands that their actions                       form part of a web of activity made up of the contribution of many others.                         Everyone wants the system as a whole to work, and knows they cannot                           control it.”

Another is:

“Power is shared, and equality of voice actively promoted:                                                All people are able to play their fullest role in building an effective system.                       Unequal distribution of power, including structural inequality, is continually                       addressed.”

I have already found that these system behaviours have been useful in conversation with public sector bodies who are interested in system change. Twice within the last month, as part of the project which is exploring the implementation of a new, complexity-informed paradigm for funding and commissioning of social interventions,  I have had conversations with public sector commissioners who come to the realisation that their role is not to commission services which deliver outcomes. Instead, they understand that their role is to create the effective eco-systems from which good outcomes emerge.

This realisation comes with significant challenges for public sector bodies. Not least because it requires them to perform a role – creating healthy eco-systems – for which there is no manual or road map. They must abandon the apparent (but illusory) safety of specifying KPIs and target-based performance management, and move instead into a world which requires them to build both the network and information infrastructure which underpins good outcomes, and nurture the relationships of trust between the actors in the system which enable communication and collaboration to be authentic and honest.

This is where the System Behaviours have proved very useful. They provide examples of what those charged with creating healthy systems should be aspiring to. Also, if turned into questions that those performing this “eco-system engineer” role use to reflect on the state of the system,  they provide ways for those who are undertaking that role to reflect on whether they are doing that role well, and where they need to prioritise. For example, if they ask a range of people: “to what extent is power shared, and equality of voice actively promoted?” and they receive feedback that it is not well shared, then those responses give a clear sense of the work that is required.

It is important to stress that Lankelly Chase view these behaviours as part of the enquiry that they are pursuing into place-based system change. They are not saying that these are necessarily the right ones. They are keen to know whether these are the behaviours that indicate a healthy system, whether there are any missing ones, or whether they are different in different places. And as with all indicators, there is a danger that people use them as performance targets, rather than tools for learning. But, so far, they have provoked some very useful conversations for public sector bodies seeking to change the way they see their role.

We have begun a journey to build a Community of Practice for funders, commissioners and delivery organisations working in the environment described by ‘A Whole New World: Funding and Commissioning in Complexity’.

Our research and development work so far (which you can see here) shows that people – over 200 so far – want regional conversations between funders, commissioners and delivery organisations, together with more specialist national-level conversations and an online resource hub. Also, some access to help and support to enable them to work in this way: through training programmes, and support with organisational development.

We have continued having conversations with different infrastructure and network bodies to identify where such regional Communities of Practice can be built. There’s huge interest from Scotland (we spoke at the Firestarter Festival) there. In March and April, we’re trying out some mini Community of Practice events for commissioners in North East England and South West England, as opportunities.

If seedcorn funding is available, we can support regional events where you are, as a space for funders, commissioners and delivery organisations to explore how to work in this way – just contact us, and we’ll see if we can help.

We’re currently having discussions with the funders about the resources to make this “collectively brave” community happen, and we’re receiving some positive feedback (keep your fingers crossed!) If you’re a funder, and you might be interested in helping financially support the creation of this Community of Practice, do get in touch!

Lastly, we are recruiting an action researcher to feed knowledge into the Community of Practice about key questions, such as:  what does a healthy system look like, and how do we know if we’ve got one? What makes for effective learning systems? What are good reasons for funders and fundees to trust one another? What forms of accountability work in complex environments?

We’ll keep you posted about all of this work as it develops. And do get in touch if you’d like a conversation about any of this.

Annabel Davidson Knight: annabel@collaboratecic.com

Toby Lowe: toby.lowe@newcastle.ac.uk

And if you haven’t already signed up, you can register here to be kept informed of how the Community of Practice is developing: http://eepurl.com/dgg3Lr

Building a Complexity-Friendly Community of Practice

In November last year we hosted an event for funders, commissioners and delivery organisations who are exploring new ways of working in response to ever increasing complexity. These people and organisations are rejecting old norms of siloed, target-driven delivery and have identified that they want to fund, commission and deliver social interventions within the new way of thinking and working described in the report: “A Whole New World – Funding and Commissioning in Complexity”

We came together to explore how a Community of Practice might help to support people trialling such approaches, and bring into being a step change in how we resource and deliver social change in ways which respond effectively to complexity:

• Recognising and using intrinsic motivation
• Focussing on learning as the driver of performance improvement
• Looking after the health of the system as a whole, and nurturing relationships of trust

The event gave people the experience of talking with others who wanted to work in a complexity-informed way in their own practice. We gained a better understanding of who wants to talk with who, about what, and what are mechanisms and platforms are needed to facilitate those conversations.

At the event, participants worked to identify what they considered the key issues relating to building a better way of working. Eight key shifts emerged;

Themes discussed

Use of Data & Evidence

That the traditional ‘scientific paradigm’ with a hierarchy of evidence –  with RCTs at the top and people’s experiences at the bottom – is not helpful for understanding how to work in complex environments. People (especially those on the frontline) need to develop and use a range of evidence, and have the capacity to interpret this evidence locally. Evidence moves from being something which the frontline implements, to something it has ownership of. Evidence is no longer captured solely by numbers, but by stories, vignettes and exemplars which are contextualised by local context.

Collaboration and Competition

We need to change the mindset of all actors in the system from competition to collaboration. His will involve changing cultures and behaviours, and making our networks more transparent and accessible. Collaboration needs to extend across traditional boundaries, including between levels of government, across sectors, and between service users and providers. We need to share successful collaboration case studies as a tool for learning.

Leadership and culture change

‘Command and control’ styles of leadership don’t work for complex environments. We need to bring government, auditors and practitioners together in mixed groups, and challenge existing leaders to both ‘measure what matters’ and move beyond what is measurable to talk about what good looks like. We need to provide moral support for leaders who work outside of command and control leadership styles.

Co-production

We need the time to make co-production real, and to introduce it earlier in thinking/planning processes – going back to the principles of co-design. Co-design and co-production need to be part of the whole planning cycle – including scrutiny and audit.

Creating system change

We need to create space to fundamentally redesign systems – creating room for experimentation at a place-level,  using co-production. We need peer support for those undertaking system change, and spaces for learning. Communities of practice – both online and in person – can facilitate systems change, through providing a place for reflection and learning.

Places as systems

There are a range of ways to conceptualise ‘place’ and differentiate ‘places’. Traditional distinctions including urban and rural, or neighbourhoods and localities, make it easy to pre-package interventions and standardise service responses. However they don’t build around what citizens and communities understand as places. To make progress, there needs to be a clear focus on place and the issues involved, but we also need to engage in transparent conversations with citizens to make this relevant.

Trust

How do we create adult-adult relationships across sectors, moving away from the parent-child relationship which is too often the basis of funding/commissioning relationships? We can start to do this by having trust-building conversations about the work away from conversations about money. Sharing case studies of trust building is very helpful.

Creating learning systems

Those whose actions support dysfunctional systems need to reappraise their approach. But more than this, leaders need to engage in learning systems themselves. A community of practice should engage in learning about learning, by capturing and sharing what has or hasn’t work in its approach. While linking to others engaging in similar work, they should aim to operate at a local level.

Taking this forward

Participants identified three types of need

Help us to understand more about this way of working

There is widespread recognition of the problems which Communities of Practices address, and curiosity about how to work differently. There is now a need to clarify the basic principles of a Community of Practices, provide practical guidance for how they can function in real-world settings, and to demonstrate their value through case studies.

Help us to work in a complexity-friendly way

Participants want to work in a complexity-friendly way, but need support both in the practical infrastructure, and in creating the right cultures and practices in their organisations/networks. They need practical help to design ways of working in their particular contexts, and access to platforms (both online and offline) to engage in Community of Practices.

Help us reflect on how we’re working

People and organisations are already working in a complexity-friendly way, or are aspiring to do so. However, they are often operating in isolation, and without learning from one another’s practices. They need help reflecting on their practice, developing models of good practice, and to have access to connect to others, so they can share experiences and solve problems together.

What forms should a Community of Practice take?

It was considered important to make communities of practice problem-based, and focussed on exploiting available opportunities.  Other groups stressed that communities of practice should not be tightly defined, and must allow participants the opportunity to shape their structure. Some wanted Community of Practices to encompass commissioners, charitable funders and delivery organisations. Others felt it was important to retain a locality character, with regional networks then linking to national bodies. Participants therefore were clear that Communities of Practices were a good way forward, but less certain over exactly how they could be constructed.

A virtual Community of Practices was suggested as a useful route for sharing practice, although there was concern that these could be underused. While the consensus was that Community of Practices should have a physical presence, virtual services could play an important supporting role. Participants wanted the ability to access contact information of others to initiate informal conversations, to begin to build connections independently, and to help share stories and interact on an ad-hoc basis outwith Community of Practice meetings.

Next Steps

Collaborate and Newcastle University are currently in discussions with funders to create the physical and digital infrastructure which will support this Community of Practice.

We hope to have more news by Spring of 2018.

If you would like to join

If you would like to join the Community of Practice, and you haven’t already been to one of the events, sign up to our mailing list using the form below: http://eepurl.com/dgg3Lr

For more information, contact annabel@collaboratecic.com or toby.lowe@newcastle.ac.uk

To build on the fantastic level of interest in the A Whole New World –  Funding and Commissioning in Complexity report we’re hosting an event which will help a community of practice to form for people interested in how to work better in complex environments. A community of practice means a group of people – charitable funders, commissioners and organisations who deliver services and other social activities – who want to talk with one another about how to do this work well.

The workshop will be held at Newcastle University Business School on the 13th November 2017 from 12:30-16:30. 

At this session we will update you on developments since the initial release of the report and outline ambitions for the work and particular priorities for action, before moving onto three open discussion sessions that explore these themes further, experimenting and stress testing what complexity-friendly funding models would look like in practice.

Your input is crucial to ensuring we build on momentum and develop concrete plans for how we can continue to hold the space and create the ‘learning infrastructure’ that will encourage experimentation of the ideas put forward in A Whole New World. This event will be an opportunity for you to begin to form and design how the community of practice will work and grow in the future.

Please register to attend via this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-whole-new-world-learning-group-workshop-tickets-38577075070

It’s been a month since we launched ‘A Whole New World: Funding and Commissioning in Complexity’ and the response has been incredible. Over 120 people came to the two launch events, and more than 1000 people read the report online in the first week. We’ve also started to have some excellent conversations about how to take this work forward.

In this post I want to briefly outline the key ideas, and talk about what we might do next.

‘New Public Management’ is dying – about time too

New Public Management (NPM) has been the dominant paradigm for public services for the last 40-odd years.  Its worldview is based on the idea that public servants cannot be trusted to organise and run public services, and so must be extrinsically motivated to perform well – by means of competitive markets and performance targets.  It seems that an increasing number of people recognise that this way of funding and commissioning public services, and other social interventions, is no longer helpful.

Now, we can begin to see what an alternative could look like, and a number of Local Authorities, other public bodies, and charitable funders have responded with interest.

A new paradigm: Complexity-friendly funding and commissioning

Complexity-friendly funding and commissioning offers a new way to think about and do public services, and other social interventions. It is based on three core ideas:

Motivation

Working in this way assumes that those doing the work of social interventions are intrinsically motivated to do a good job. They do not require ‘incentivising’ to do the right thing. Instead, they need help and support to continuously improve their judgement and practice.

Learning and adaptation

Working in this way assumes that learning is the mechanism to achieve excellent performance and continuous improvement. Learning comes from many sources – from measurement and analysis, and also from reflection on the sense-making and judgements we make every day in situations of uncertainty. This new paradigm views learning as a feedback loop which drives adaptation and improvement in a system.

System health: quality of relationships

Outcomes are created by people’s interaction with whole systems, not by particular interventions or organisations. Funders and commissioners working in this way take some responsibility for the health of the system as a whole, because healthy systems produce better outcomes. They take a system coordination role. They invest in network infrastructure which enables actors in the system to communicate effectively; they invest in building positive, trusting relationships and developing the skills of people who work in the system.

All this is underpinned by a realistic and unflinching acceptance of the complex messiness of the world as it is, and rejects the idea of oversimplifying problems to make management of social interventions easier.

Case studies: making complexity-friendly funding and commissioning real

Through these case studies, we can begin to see how funders and commissioners are putting this into practice.

Plymouth Council – Commissioning in Complexity for adults with complex needs:

https://campus.recap.ncl.ac.uk/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=df91ebad-4f28-4a8b-a24a-84b4137f90d3

The Whitman Institute – Providing complexity-friendly charitable funding

https://campus.recap.ncl.ac.uk/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=1a658315-8dbf-4447-837b-6bf86f23be28

What next: taking this movement forward

The report was only able to outline the new complexity-friendly way of funding and commissioning in the broadest brush strokes. At the launch events we hosted discussions which enabled a wide range of people to identify the work that is required to make this paradigm useful and practical for them. From these discussions, we have been able to identify three broad areas of potential work to be done:

1.      Expanding knowledge – what do we need to know in order to make the paradigm work in practice?

Drawing from our conversations with a wide set of stakeholders at the events and subsequently, we have identified there is work to be done in the following areas:

• Accountability and measurement – people need to understand what accountability systems and structures work within complex environments, and how measurement can most effectively contribute to learning and improvement
• Knowing what a ‘healthy system’ looks like – what are the indicators that enable people to recognise that they have a healthy system, or that there is work to do to improve system health?
• Leadership – connecting the ‘complexity-friendly’ work with emerging ideas on distributed and compassionate leadership
• Competition and collaboration – when are these methods appropriate for funding/commissioning within complexity?
• What are the differences between charitable funders and public sector commissioners in practice. There is more to be done to understand the detail of how it can work best in these two different contexts.
• Delivery organisation and user voice perspectives – the work so far has only identified what ‘complexity-friendly’ looks like from the perspective of funders and commissioners. What does it look like from the perspective of delivery organisations and ‘end users’? For example, what are the workforce requirements of complexity-friendly delivery organisations?

This work will involve a strand of action research which supports commissioners, funders, delivery organisations and users in different contexts to experiment and explore the kinds of issues identified above.

The result of this work should be guides which help organisations to implement this way of thinking and working in practice. People have asked for ‘how to’ guides, but this doesn’t feel quite right, as it doesn’t recognise the complexity of how work must be done differently in different contexts. It will more likely be guides which highlight the right questions to ask, processes which have enabled people to answer those questions well, and case studies of the kinds of answers that people have come up with in different places.

2.      Inviting people in and distributing leadership

There is work to be done to promote the paradigm – to ‘invite people in’ (in the words of one of the events) and to create distributed leadership, so that there are a range of voices and perspectives shaping it and helping to take it forward.

This will likely involve:

• Digital discussion – e.g. blogging about the work, engaging in on-line conversation
• Face to face – presenting the work at practitioner conferences etc
• Building a leadership group(s?) – forming a funders (and commissioners?) group to problem solve, create a common direction and share information and ideas

3.      Developing communities of practice – building the learning infrastructure

The conversations at the events placed huge importance on building a community of practice for this way of thinking and working. Such communities were seen as crucial in providing the space to enable people undertaking this work to learn from one another and that being part of such a community enables people to be brave – to have the courage to assert the importance of this way of working to colleagues and others.

This will likely involve:

• Building reflective communities of practice – working with existing network organisations to enable them to create mechanisms for peer learning, and a ‘positive error culture’ (a culture in which talking about mistakes and uncertainty is a good thing). The phrase at one of the launches was ‘we need space to talk about our dirty little secrets’. It is likely that this will require learning infrastructure at a variety of scales and geographies.
• Mentoring/buddying – creating 1-2-1 learning relationships
• Hosting learning materials – creating a knowledge-resource repository and maintaining that.

These are some initial ideas – what else needs doing?

Join in!

To accomplish even half of this, we need people and organisations to join in, who want to help take this work forward.

Newcastle University and Collaborate will continue to help facilitate the development of this paradigm. Could you help too? Do you want to lead aspects of this work? Do you have ideas about how it could be done? Are there things missing? If so, please get in touch. Leave a comment below, or contact us…

Toby Lowe – Newcastle University – @tobyjlowe

Annabel Davidson-Knight – Collaborate @annabelLknight

This piece is an attempt to pull together some of the ideas which have emerged from a series of conversations with those involved in seeking to create changes in the way that systems of social interventions work to improve the lives of people who are experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage.

These ideas are incomplete. The purpose of attempting to assemble the ideas in this blog is to see whether this ordering of ideas resonates with people, to identify where they need adding to, and to help to weed out those which are unhelpful. As such, your comments would be very welcome!

Terminology – Place-Based Systems? Human-Centred Systems?

How should we describe systems of social interventions and actions which are designed to improve people’s lives, particularly the lives of people who are currently experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage (in Lankelly Chase’s terms)?

Here, we’re referring to the variety of interventions and actions which people with severe and multiple disadvantage access and experience, and whose purpose is to help them in some way. These interventions and actions range from ‘traditional’ public services, such as healthcare, to specific interventions, such as housing or drug rehabilitation, to the mixture of formal and informal interactions which happen in community centres and other parts of civil society. People have referred to these as ‘place-based systems’. This helpfully emphasises the idea that there are a variety of interventions and actions that cluster in a particular place in order to help the people there. But does the term ‘human-centred systems’ convey more accurately the sense that such systems could operate better if people were put at their heart? Is there a better term than either of those? Some people have found both terms particularly unhelpful preferring to focus on community. For the moment, were going to refer to them as human-centred systems.

What is a human-centred system?

A system is a set of people, organisations, cultures, processes, relationships and actions which combine to make things happen. The things that happen are the result of the interaction of all the elements of the system: of interactions between the individual elements themselves; and also between individual elements and the system as a whole. Some aspects of systems are codified whereas others elements are unwritten but just as influential.

The things that happen as a result of such systems are not under the control of any one person or organisation within the system. (In technical terms, the results of such systems are ‘emergent’). Such a system is one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A human-centred system is one in which the purpose of the system is to support the people within it to live the lives they would like to live. The elements of this system include both professional people (those who are getting paid to design and deliver interventions) and civic society (people who live and act within places as volunteers).

The scale of human-centred systems

There is no ‘one size fits all’ definition of the appropriate scale of human-centred systems. In fact, there is not one ‘system’ at all. People are part of multiple, interrelated systems. The crucial question in determining the scale of a system is:  what are the boundaries of the system which impacts on the issues with which are preventing the person living the life they want to live?

Sometimes these boundaries will be associated with neighbourhoods. Other times, the appropriate system boundaries are city-wide, national or international. Sometimes it could be a community defined more by interest than by geography.

The two crucial points are:

• to draw the boundaries of the system from the perspective of the needs and strengths of the person/people who are asking for help to live the life they want to live.
• to have effective mechanisms for different systems to communicate, share information, and build relationships with one another

What have we learnt about how such systems work and how they are created?

How do human-centred systems work?

In our discussions, people who are undertaking this work identified various elements of what is working for them in order to create human-centred systems, what is frustrating that work, what they are struggling with, and what the preconditions for that work are.

We have brought these points together to explore the characteristics of the people, organisations, relationships and actions (interventions) which make human-centred systems work well and those characteristics which make human-centred systems work less well.

Characteristics of people who make human-centred systems work

• They are driven by a strong sense of high level purpose: to help create social justice/a better world
• They display openness to the ideas of others – they value the process of enquiry
• They display strong emotional intelligence and empathy
• They seek to collaborate with others
• They are prepared to make themselves vulnerable by admitting their own limitations, uncertainties and failure
• They use both information and experience to make judgements in complex circumstances
• They invest time in building relationships and trust
• They understand the value of risk and failure
• They do not seek to control the system

Characteristics of people which make human-centred systems work less well

• They are overly focussed on tasks rather than purpose
• They are overly focussed on the short term
• They are not able to be honest about mistakes and uncertainty
• They have a narrow understanding of what counts as ‘evidence’
• They defend a pre-determined position rather than engage in genuine dialogue
• They pretend that systems can be controlled

Characteristics of organisations which make human-centred systems work

• They collaborate with others to achieve their mission, including:
  • constantly seeking to learn about the relationship between their actions and how outcomes emerge as a result of the operation of the whole system
  • sharing information with other organisations
  • planning and decision making in concert with others
• They have authentic, on-going dialogue internally (with staff at all levels) and externally (with all those with whom they engage). This necessarily includes having on-going mechanisms for authentic dialogue with those whom they serve.
• They create interventions which respond to the authentic and well-understood needs and strengths of those they serve
• They enable frontline workers to build relationships with those with whom they work
• They empower frontline workers to use their judgements about what actions to take
• They understand and manage the time and resource implications of their actions
• They critically reflect on their work – embracing uncertainty and mistakes, creating safe spaces for people to admit vulnerability
• They seek and offer trust – and seek/offer transparency of practice in return
• They use evidence of all kinds to help make judgements, not to replace judgement-making
• They use relationships and good governance processes to create accountability, rather than using measurement to create accountability

Characteristics of organisations which make human-centred systems work less well

• They work in silos
• They focus on targets, not on people
• They do not know (and plan for) the resource implications of their actions
• They pursue their own agenda to the expense of others
• They do not listen to dissenting voices
• They do not share information
• They do not know who they should trust
• They plan from the top-down, not the bottom-up
• They compete when they should collaborate
• They use compliance-based forms of commissioning and performance management (they use New Public Management as their management ideology)

Characteristics of relationships and dialogue which make human-centred systems work

Dialogue

• They are based on discussion about the appropriate frame of reference for any dialogue, meaning:
  • They draw the boundaries of the relevant ‘system’ based on an understanding of who needs to be heard in order to effectively discuss the issue at hand – with a presumption of inclusivity if it is not clear (bringing the right people together to talk about the right things)
  • They make clear what the terms of any particular dialogue are: what is being discussed, and why
• Trust – They invest time in building relationships and use their judgements to know who they can trust – to get on with doing the right things, and to tell them what others may not
• They allow and encourage challenge – by giving platforms to those with different perspectives
• They create effective, safe spaces for dialogue which:
  • promote equality – by building the capacity of everyone to make themselves heard within those spaces effectively. (“pre-work”)
  • Enable people to express what they need from and in those spaces,
  • Contract with people in the space so that everybody’s role is explicit and understood
  • Create a positive error culture – actively encourage people to make themselves vulnerable – and to talk about uncertainty and mistakes
  • Understand and acknowledge the history of that place – and the context which that has created
• They create spaces with an integrity of process – with equality and attributability agreed
• They use different kinds of spaces for different purposes – for example, using neutral spaces when bringing together people who all need to step outside their existing contexts and roles
• They value the integrity of process and time and resources required to undertake dialogue well. They see this as “high value” work.
• They use evidence to inform dialogue – developing a deep understanding of issues, strengths and needs
• They separate enquiry from conversations about money
• They view dialogue as on on-going process, rather than a one-off event
• They encourage dialogue between professionals (those who get paid to undertake action which helps people to live the lives they want to lead) and civil society – the people and organisations who live and act within particular places.

Relationships

• They build relationships over time
• They build relationships on emotional intelligence and humanity – they are modelled on the most effective aspects of informal and social relationships. E.g. People offer hospitality to one another.
• They are based on honesty – telling and acknowledging different (and difficult) truths
• They actively redistribute power in relationships – for example, by those with more power being hosted by those with less – and taking themselves out of their comfort zone
• They understand and make explicit the boundaries that are required for particular types of relationship
• They build relationships between professional and civil systems

Characteristics of relationships and dialogue which make human-centred systems work less well

• They create competition between actors for scarce resources
• They only value professional opinions, and value the most senior professionals’ opinions most highly
• They only value what can be measured
• They short-cut processes of dialogue

Characteristics of actions (interventions) that make human-centred systems work

This section refers to the characteristics of interventions that people and organisations make within the system in order to help people live the lives they want to live. It covers the projects and programmes which people and organisations undertake, and the actions of people within civil society.

• They build deep relationships with those with whom they act, in order to understand strengths and needs
• They take an asset-based approach, building on people’s strengths, not simply identifying shortcomings
• They have empowered frontline people to build and manage relationships with those with whom they act, co-ordinating other’s involvement. These people use their judgement to tailor the precise nature of the intervention to the person/family, based on a deep understanding of need.
• They are flexible enough to be bespoke, they are not ‘mass produced’ interventions
• They work with anyone who asks for help – “early intervention” – no thresholds.
• They treat people holistically, rather than from a single-service perspective
• They have a strong sense of high level purpose, related to the idea that “I want to help people live the life they want to lead”
• The relationship between those who act lasts as long as it needs to, and no longer
• They blur the boundaries between professional and civic systems – building relationship between social and professional networks
• They use evidence to inform, and continually reflect on, practice
• They actively and systematically listen to the voices of those they act in concert with (strong ‘user voice’)

Characteristics of actions/interventions which make effective human-centred systems work less well

• They deliver to hit targets, not to meet people’s need/strengths
• They do not understand their relationship to other actions and actors within the system
• They turn people away because they are not ‘serious’ enough
• They make people dependent, rather than helping people to help themselves
• They punish/withdraw from people who fail to act in prescribed ways
• They deliver to people, not with them

What are people doing to create effective human-centred systems?

These are the tactics/actions people have been using to bring about change in existing systems, and help to create human-centred systems:

Creating mechanisms for dialogue:

• For those that give a voice to those who currently are not heard
• Which involve local democratic representatives
• Creating shared information systems
• Conversations that foster trust, open, honest conversations that can focus on aspirations

Bringing people together: change is a process that people create together, not a particular destination. This means:

• Fostering collaboration
• Creating culture change, rather than strategies
• Creating a common purpose and plan together. (You don’t necessarily need to all share values, just understand and respect others’ values)
• Exhibiting the types of behaviour you want to see in others
• “We all walk together” – It’s a journey
• Allowing space for piecemeal improvement and innovation. Don’t over specify
• Get a critical mass
• Work with those who get it – “go where the energy is”

Undertaking actions/interventions which exemplify effective-human centred systems. This means:

• Build systems around people – e.g. Vanguard method approach
• Taking an asset based approach – what are your assets? Relationships? Reputation? ‘Capture existing assets’.

We’d very much welcome your thoughts on all of this. Please feel free to comment below.

Toby Lowe – Newcastle University Business School

Alice Evans – Lankelly Chase