Note from Changing Organisations Cell 1
First meeting of the Better Way ‘Changing Organisations’ cell, 8 July 2020
1. SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
Some organisations are practicing ‘radical listening’ – creating informal spaces for the people they work with to talk about their own experiences and ideas, and be heard, and develop an agenda for action accordingly.
This can result in better services, capable of responding to people on their own terms, building their agency, and bringing humanity to the organisation’s work.
This is very different from the widespread practice where organisations have their own agenda and seek to engage service users in it, effectively treating them as ‘other’.
In order to practice radical listening well, organisations need to break down the boundaries between themselves and their ‘service users’. This includes employing more people from the communities they serve.
Radical listening can happen on-line, as recent experience has proved.
Some funders are enabling organisations they fund to work in this way. Statutory agencies can too, although they often find it hard to do so.
2. IN MORE DETAIL
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of a Better Way, explained that the group had been set up to explore further the Better Way Call to Action theme of ‘changing organisations to focus on communities and solutions’, and in particular looking outwards, putting those we serve first, listening to and reflecting them in everything we do.
COVID-19 has been an opportunity to do more of this, and to think how organisations can operate differently beyond the crisis. We hope this cell will not only enable participants to share insights with each other but will also provide material that we can share with the wider network.
Caroline introduced Karin Woodley from Cambridge House, who has agreed to act as a ‘thought leader’ for the group. Her presentation included these points:
In recent years organisations have had to navigate hostile economic, regulatory and policy environments and many have responded by implementing strategies driven by a financial bottom line. They have become distanced from service users, and handed over the definition of impact and values to funders and commissioners.
COVID-19 has the potential to make this situation even worse, with organisations protecting themselves rather than service users. But, said Karin, this could also be a moment to work with communities to shape a new era.
Karin explained that radical listening is a process to put those we serve first and to create connections, disrupting stereotypes, and empowering and transferring agency to those most affected by social injustice and poverty.
It is an opportunity to challenge paternalistic cultures, gain control of our destinies, working hand in hand with service users, rather than delivering a plan to a passive group of the under-privileged.
Our hearing has been contaminated, said Karin, and we have failed to listen to the lives and experiences of our service users. We have said too much ourselves, and not listened properly. Instead we have filtered what we hear with our preconceived notions.
We need to become the vehicles through which the communities in which we are based speak, and not act as their translators and gatekeepers.
But who is doing the listening? Often our staffing structures are White, middle class, well-meaning and liberal. This too needs to change.
Radical listening means you don’t reflect back, you don’t summarise, you don’t reshape sentences. Instead it means allowing people to get to the end of their sentences, to talk about their whole life experiences, to tell their whole stories.
Karin shared two examples where radical listening has led to change:
Cambridge House provides a statutory mental health advocacy service under a government contract. Karin baked a cake and held a discussion with a group of older Black women, to create a space for them to talk to each other and reflect on their experiences at the Maudsley Hospital. As a result it became clear that the advocacy service needed to change to address matters such as food and diet, which had previously been neglected.
The law centre at Cambridge House was providing generalist advice on housing employment and benefits. But after holding a discussion with service users it turned out that generalist advice was not what people really wanted. They wanted court action. So Cambridge House has moved away from generalist advice and became a specialist in taking legal action, eventually winning a landmark case against the local authority in the Supreme Court, changing the definition of statutory housing rights for those who are homeless, disabled or with a mental health condition.
During COVID-19 the initial response from staff at Cambridge House was that services could not be delivered without face-to-face contact. But virtually all service users had phones, even those who are poor, or in care homes, or homeless, and so the organisation moved to digital services. There was urgent need – in some care homes people were dying, criminal landlords were increasing their activities, families were losing tenancy rights as a result of a COIVID death, and there was a rise in COVID-related suicides. There was high demand for support from Cambridge House. Because staff didn’t have the expertise, service users played a big role in designing on-line services, establishing multiple ways of communicating with Cambridge House. There is now more service user engagement and feedback, not less.
Looking forward, Cambridge House is considering how it can ensure that service users will be able to speak to the organisation on their own terms, using their preferred methods of communication, combining wider on-line reach with building-based delivery, and at the same time refocusing services to protect human rights, and provide more opportunities for people to speak out themselves and take action to bring about change.
In the following discussion participants made the following points:
ORGANISATIONS CAN BECOME MORE WELCOMING AND MORE RESPONSIVE
Some organisations claim to put people at the heart of everything they do, and wish to give the appearance of this, but don’t actually practise the type of radical listening that Karin has described, and carry on doing what they want to do, according to their own agenda. Many organisations operate from buildings and pride themselves on offering welcoming spaces, but actually they are only really welcoming for those who come to do the things which the charity has arranged at particular times. But in the recent crisis many organisations have discovered that they can be adaptive and flexible and have been learning to listen better, and when they do so, they become more welcoming and add more value for their community.
ORGANISATIONS FACE CHOICES IN HOW THEY TRANSLATE RADICAL LISTENING INTO ACTION
It is not enough to be listened to – the ability to make things happen and bring about change is what matters most. In recent Better Way discussions we have talked about solidarity. Many charities operate vertically, people in positions of privilege doing things for the poor. The alternative, it has been suggested, is solidarity, people combining with others to do things for themselves. This is essentially a community development approach. But some felt that this, by itself, is not sufficient. When, for example, someone comes home to find their landlord has put all their belongings out on the street, they just want someone to provide a roof over their head. And where there is a pattern of injustice, organisations can work with service users to take targeted action to bring about a wider change.
EMPOWERING FRONT-LINE STAFF IS PART OF RADICAL LISTENING
It is easier for organisations to listen if their front-line is empowered and are therefore more able to develop relationships and to respond flexibly. Equally it can be a big challenge for larger organisations to listen – and learn – from their front-line staff. You have to invert the normal order.
ORGANISATIONS CAN REDUCE ‘US AND THEM’ BARRIERS
Organisations can do more to break down the perception that their staff and their services users are different in kind. We need organisations that are open and inclusive, capable of behaving as if staff and service users are all part on one family. Lived experience inside organisations is important.
We will need to appreciate that experiences of lockdown have been very different. For some it is been a relatively pleasant few months, for others a troubling and confusing time, and for some the worst experience of their lives. We will need to find ways to allow people to listen to and appreciate these different experiences.
FUNDERS CAN CREATE FAVOURABLE CONDITIONS FOR RADICAL LISTENING
In the COVID crisis some independent funders have been changing the nature of the conversation with those they fund, listening to charities more, allowing them to work responsively, and not holding them to plans set three years ag
STATUTORY ORGANISATIONS CAN ADOPT RADICAL LISTENING, BUT FACE PARTICULAR CHALLENGES
One of our participants shared an example from South Korea, a country which has had an authoritarian history, and where citizens have not been used to public participation. Nine years ago Seoul City declared itself to be a ‘listening city’. A symbolic ‘Big Ear’ was placed outside the city hall, where citizens could make complaints or share ideas. The Mayor of Seoul set up a mobile office, meeting local residents in different neighbourhoods, and even spent some weeks living in poor housing in deprived neighbourhoods. But after four years, it became clear there were limitations to this listening exercise. It was also necessary to shift the internal system of how City government works, for example establishing participatory budgeting, and building relationships between City officials and citizens and local community groups. This remains work in progress.
In this country statutory organisations find radical listening very difficult, in part because they have formally prescribed agendas. They can sometimes provide licence to others to operate without formal plans, and to act in response to what they hear from the people they work with. But such experiments are nearly always of short duration, and rarely translate into mainstream practice.
It was suggested that radical listening can flourish best in the spaces between formal institutions.
ORGANISATIONS ADAPTED DURING COVID-19, ALTHOUGH THERE WERE DIFFERENT DRIVERS FOR THIS
During the COVID-19 there has been a notable difference between organisations which have adapted by listening to and learning from their ‘front lines’, and those that haven’t. The government response to the spread of the epidemic in care homes was a tragic example of the latter, when they failed to listen to front line voices, until people were dying in large numbers. If ever there was a time when ‘the last should be first and the first should be last’ this was it, it was argued.
At the same time, COVID-19 has also shown that financial drivers can produce positive change. Some parts of the private sector, for example supermarkets and private schools, have been able to re-engineer their business models with great success, at scale and at speed, listening to and responding to customer demand in ways that arguably would not have happened in the public and voluntary sectors. However, it was also pointed out that people working in many charities have also shown themselves to be nimble in COVID-19, willing to be pushed and be challenged.
ORGANISATIONS MUST NOT REVERT TO THE PRE-COVID MODELS
Over many years we underachieved in terms of social equity. If we had been more successful we wouldn’t have seen the obscene level of inequity we have seen in COVID-19. Organisations, it was felt, must ‘steal the moment’ to do better, not revert to how things were done before.
Suggestions for topics for further meetings:
Can we distil the essence of radical listening, learning from different examples?
What is needed to change the composition and roles of staff and boards in organisations to support radical listening?
How can statutory sector organisations create more space for radical listening.
We will invite others from our network to join the group.
NEXT MEETINGS
The next meeting will be on 8th September at 3.00-4.30pm.
We also agreed to arrange a third meeting in November (date to be set).
FURTHER READING