Note from Changing Organisations Cell 2
Second meeting of the Better Way ‘Changing Organisations’ cell, 8th September 2020
1. SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
We heard how different organisations are attempting to practise radical listening, from small community organisations to large national charities and local authorities. Their experience suggests that the following are essential elements:
Small scale conversations, often one-to-one, where those in a leadership or management role hold themselves back from problem-solving , and instead create a social space for people as service users and citizens to talk about what really matters to them, and using this to inform what the organisation does.
Moving away from centrally-conceived organisational plans and targets towards a shared set of guiding principles, which allow for maximum adaptability and responsiveness at the front-line.
Making time for everyone to practice radical listening, as a core activity.
At our next meeting we will consider how to make more of this happen, and in particular the role of Boards, and of local authorities.
2. IN MORE DETAIL
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of a Better Way, explained that this was a second meeting to explore further the Better Way Call to Action theme of ‘changing organisations to focus on communities and solutions’, and in particular putting those we serve first, listening to and reflecting them in everything we do.
In our first meeting Karin Woodley had described her experience of radical listening at Cambridge House, creating informal spaces with an open agenda for people to talk about the things that matter to them and develop the work of the organisation accordingly, as well as changing the composition of staff and volunteers to become more like the community served.
Caroline noted that radical listening is difficult, but seems to be central to many elements of Better Way thinking, including sharing power, and changing the narrative, as other Better Way cells have been exploring. So in this our second meeting we want to explore further the ‘essence’ of radical listening. Caroline introduced our two speakers:
MARGARET ADJAYE, CEO OF THE UPPER NORWOOD LIBRARY HUB
Margaret described how she spends time with service users who come to the Library Hub, having informal conversations, asking how they are feeling, what is going on in their lives, what is not right, what could be improved.
The Library Hub provides various well-being as well as library and learning services, and support for enterprise start-up. Many of the Hub activities have emerged from ‘nuggets’ of informal conversation, not from formal consultation exercises. For example a chat over an hour or two with an elderly lady, who was isolated and lonely, led to a very popular ‘tea and tech’ service, where around 30 people at a time take refreshments and socialise with others, while also learning how to use computers.
Margaret is also the convenor of the national Community-Managed Libraries Peer Network. During COVID-19 many of the 480 people in that network have been calling Margaret, looking for help, and sharing ideas about how to maintain or adapt their service and support their local community.
In Margaret’s experience it is the incidental and one-to one discussions that matter most, whether in the library space, on the phone or on Zoom, hearing stories, sharing sorrows, and celebrating together.
Radical listening, she said, depends a lot on the listener, as a person, being humble enough, and having the time to sit down and talk to people, to hear what they say and respond accordingly. If it is not possible to deliver what people are looking for, then it is important to say so, but when it is in the listener’s gift or power, then it becomes possible to work with people to make something worthwhile happen.
FRANCES DUNCAN, CEO OF THE CLOCK TOWER SANCTUARY (CTS) IN BRIGHTON
The CTS works with young people in crisis, to avoid them becoming part of the long term homeless population. The following diagram describes the opportunities the CTS is developing for young people to have a voice, with the timeline showing the time it may take to reach that point.
As the diagram shows, the work begins with individual self-expression, to help young people understand what the CTS does, understand more about themselves, and express themselves (in positive or less positive ways) about what they want and what they need. Sometimes what young people say is uncomfortable to listen to. The interactions depend on trust and an enabling environment, and at the CTS, young people do not need to ‘jump through hoops’ to receive services.
The blue oval in the diagram includes the stage when young people are encouraged to influence what the organisation does internally and includes a ‘wall of words’ where the things that they say are placed, to bring about internal change. They’ve found that one to one consultation and residential awaydays work better than a ‘client council’.
The green oval shows how they hope young people work will with the CTS in presenting to external audiences, at forums and conferences, or by acting as mentors, running their own workshops, creating a film, telling their own stories (not CTS stories), meeting with funders and corporate partners.
Finally, the orange section indicates how, as a small team with limited expertise and capacity, the CTS works with others, pulling in expertise from elsewhere.
Frances mentioned that Karin Woodley’s essay on radical listening in the Better Way Insights collection became a blueprint for revolutionising the way her organisation engages with young people. This included enabling staff to have more time for listening, and over half of the staff and Board now have experience of issues the young people face. Frances believes that placing young people on the CTS Board would be tokenistic at best, but Board members are all expected to spend some time as frontline volunteers in the organisation as part of their induction. The CTS tries to build an atmosphere where staff and volunteers and the Board feel able to challenge the organisational status quo, and, for example, young people are invited to suggest the training needs of staff. This had taken time, as it involved a change of culture.
Because CTS are not paid by results linked to specific outcomes, CTS are able instead to use guiding values developed in discussion with those the young people they worked with, the first of which is that the people we serve come first, and they used these as a checklist against which they continuously judge what they do.
- - - -
Breakout sessions were then held to consider further the essence of radical listening. In the following discussion participants made the following points:
SOCIAL SPACES CAN GENERATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LISTENING
It is important to provide a ‘social space’, a version of ‘home’ which feels safe where unplanned and unexpected conversations can happen. The Upper Norwood Library Hub, for example, has a community bar, and a theatre, and these provide a space for people to come together and to socialise, and from this many other things can emerge.
PEOPLE ARE NOT ‘HARD TO REACH’, IN A ONE-TO-ONE DISCUSSION
There are many people who appear ‘hard to reach’ because they don’t want to engage in formal consultation exercises but they can be engaged in one-to-one discussions in an informal setting. And that can lead to services that are truly accessible, and valued, and used by all parts of a community to a much greater degree.
LEADERS MUST BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY
People in leadership roles need to move away from problem-solving and instead model radical listening, by simply sitting and listening, not summing up, not providing leading questions, not fitting what people say into some preconceived notion of what they want to do. Leaders need to shut up, listen from beginning to end, and let people finish what they are saying.
Action which shows people have been heard and what is changing has to follow. Sometimes this means listening to and acting on things which appear less important to managers, at least to start with, and remembering ‘it’s not about me’ – what feels important to service users is important. Two examples were given of people being consulted asking for better quality toilet paper, or wanting more teaspoons in the kitchen area. There’s also a deeper message there: people want the place to feel more like their home, and less like an institution.
Leaders also need to be willing to have a more honest conversation with funders and commissioners. Otherwise, the decisions about what should be done are set by funders and cascaded down through organisations, and what the users actually want is disregarded.
ORGANISATIONS NEED TO ALLOW TIME FOR RADICAL LISTENING
It can sometimes feel as if radical listening can only happen in ‘stolen moments’, a guilty diversion from real work. But radical listening, for managers and for frontline staff, is the real work. Without it, everything else will fail to produce true value. It does take time, but this is time that is well spent.
RADICAL LISTENING REQUIRES A SHIFT AWAY FROM PLANS AND TARGETS TOWARDS PRINCIPLES
Some organisations are attempting to change the way they operate, with a different theory of change. This includes moving away from centralised planning and control and targets towards a set of core principles (which act as ‘strategic anchors’ or ‘guiding lights’) that encourage greater local autonomy, including self-managed teams, with the intention that the people they support should be at the centre of decision making.
EVERYONE HAS A CONTRIBUTION TO MAKE
In order to develop good strategy the conversation needs to involve everyone, service users, staff and Board, where possible drawing out shared experience.
STATUTORY ORGANISATIONS NEED TO MOVE TO HUMAN SCALE LISTENING
For those working in a statutory setting it can be especially difficult to move beyond formalised ways of operating, and practice radical listening. In Northern Ireland community infrastructure is well developed and community planning is enshrined in legislation but, in a society that remains divided in many ways, it is not easy to reach common agreement, and some voices remain unheard. Community Foundation Northern Ireland has introduced a deliberative democracy programme, and it was suggested that informal contact with citizens on a smaller scale (whether in person or online) allows a greater level of interaction and understanding, and can be more productive than larger scale exercises which can become de-personalised and can reinforce division.
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
Note from an online meeting: Removing the barriers between services and campaigning
Note of a Better Way roundtable on ‘Removing the barriers between services and campaigning’, held on-line on 21 April 2020
Fifteen people, from across the country, participated in this discussion, which was introduced by Steve Wyler, co-convenor of the Better Way. He explained that at the launch event of the Call to Action for a Better Way, in November last year, several people spoke of their desire for those working in the social sector to be bolder, and to break down the barriers between services and campaigning.
Sue Tibballs, from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, made the opening presentation.
She pointed out that it is often thought that there are two traditions in the social sector: on the one hand charity (the provision of immediate relief) and on the other social reform (working for long term change). Typically, the one is transactional, the other transformational. This Sue said, is a false dichotomy, and she described it as a weed that needs to be pulled up.
In recent years, Sue explained, the social sector has moved towards the charity model, believing it can secure more money by positioning itself to deliver commissioned services, employing professional fundraisers, and telling the story of its work in ways which drive fundraising income, rather than bringing about more radical social change.
At the same time there has been a narrowing of what people think campaigning is, an assumption it is confined to public affairs and lobbying. The social sector’s models of leadership have narrowed as well, so that it looks for those who have managerial strengths, and not necessarily those who will be bold and brave.
In the last decade or so we have seen the emergence of a ‘sock-puppet narrative’, which asserts that those in receipt of public funds should not use those funds for campaigning, and it has become even more difficult to be seen to be ‘biting the hand that feeds you’. The social sector was told to ‘stick to the knitting’ and largely obeyed, and kept its head down.
This means that the sector has lost much of its power to deliver on its mission and drive transformational change.
Yet, as a sector, it is not just here to pick up the pieces, it is here to build a better world.
Most change proceeds from personal experience. Campaigning takes many forms and is not just about public affairs and policy. By believing that it is, the social sector has become a supplicant to government, and petitions rather than makes demands. Yet history tells us that civil society drives many changes and that governments do respond to pressure from civil society.
The language of ‘campaigning’ is difficult, and Sue has found that the term ‘social change’ allows more people to engage.
There are organisations which are rethinking their approach, many of whom are service providers, using their experience and evidence to drive systemic change. Some are able to work in mature partnership with the state, respectful of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and working to shared outcomes. Others are holding the state to account, by bringing challenge. And the best manage to do both.
Some use the term social influencing. Others describe themselves as social activists, and see themselves not as providers but enablers. And for some campaigning has become a service, providing encouragement and resources for people to be agents of their own change.
If we don’t sort this out, Sue said, the writing is on the wall. Much significant change is coming from outside the formal social sector. When private companies are using purpose to sell product, and activism is adopted by the private sector, just when it becomes illicit in charity, we must know that something is wrong, and it is time, said Sue, to ‘take our purpose back.’
Steve thanked Sue, and he noted that in response to the coronavirus emergency we have seen a great number of formal and informal organisations step forward and provide immediate services, but also, woven into that, many are also trying to make change. For example, the scandal of what is happening in care homes was exposed by charities speaking out, sometimes at risk to their own funding, and the organisation Charities So White has drawn national attention to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities.
The meeting then divided into three breakout groups, to allow everyone to contribute. The following points emerged from the breakout sessions, and the subsequent plenary discussions, facilitated by Caroline Slocock, Better Way co-convenor:
Rediscovering purpose as social change organisations
The social sector would benefit from an organisational framework where social change becomes the overriding objective, and services are seen as a means to achieve that objective, in authentic ways.
Organisations which give a prominent role to lived experience in their service design and delivery may be less likely to act in a paternalistic way and more likely to be contributing to transformational change, it was felt.
Service delivery organisations not only have responsibility to help the individuals they currently work with, they also have responsibility to help the next generation.
Some charities have adopted right-based models of working. Sometimes this has always been implicit, but at other times it has been made explicit. Mention was made of the cross-sectarian work of Bernadette McAliskey in the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme, an organisation which regards the UN Conventions on Human Rights as its constitution.
Understanding systems change
If we fail to make change happen we fail the people we work with, by keeping them stuck in a detrimental system, where inequality persists. Our role, it was proposed, must be to become systems change leaders.
We noted that ‘systems thinking’ has become fashionable, as a means to bring about social progress when faced with complexity. While this may be welcome, its practical application is not always clear. Does it imply a different way of working with individuals, or does it require a wider change in how organisations and institutions operate? Or both?
Being more outspoken, and also influencing behind the scenes
The voices of the social sector are too often those of professional people and as a result are too often sanitised. We need to allow more authentic voices to be heard, loud and clear.
On the other hand, there are times when charities can influence change in quiet ‘covert’ ways, or change the conversation, and this should be recognised too.
The implications of funding practice
The funding community has a big responsibility, it was argued. Many organisations are funded only to deliver services, or only to pursue innovation in service delivery. They are rarely funded to act as campaigners or influencers.
On the other hand, some suggested that charities are too much inclined to blame their shortcoming on funders. This betrays, it was felt, a lack of their own bravery.
Inevitably some organisations will have embedded relationships with funders and will find it harder to ‘bite the hand that feeds them’, while others are relatively free from funder dependency, and can be more easily outspoken. It was suggested that these types of organisations could be encouraged to work together more, so that the respective strengths can be combined.
What prevents organisations acting as agents of social change?
There are vested organisational interests in maintaining the status quo, i.e. only addressing the manifestations of social problems, and never addressing the underlying causes, or failing to create opportunities for people to make change happen themselves. After all, it was suggested, social sector jobs depend on the problems persisting.
Services that support people, public or social sector, continue to stigmatise people, when we should be helping them claim their rights. We fail to employ people we serve, or appoint them to our Boards, and maintain a ‘them and us’ way of working. We label people as ‘vulnerable’, but inherently they are not, we make them so.
We also noted, that in the current crisis, statutory bodies appear to be referring fewer people to independent advocacy services, thereby stifling challenge and reinforcing inequality and unfairness.
It was suggested that the Better Way, with others, could help to build up examples of organisations which are moving from a narrow service delivery model to one which where services become a contribution to transformational social change objectives. It was felt that this could be an important contribution to shaping the post COVID-19 world.
Final reflections from Sue Tibballs
This is a rich and important conversation, Sue noted. We do need to keep challenging ourselves. But also the crisis has revealed what others think about the social sector, she felt. The Chancellor invoked Victorian language when he spoke about ‘the gentleness of charity’, and, even though governments had pushed social market models so much in recent years, social enterprises have been hung out to dry.
We should say as a sector that we are about change and delivering social value and social good, and everything in our organisations must integrate in pursuit of that. Campaigning is one method, when there is something identifiable that can be changed in a fixed period of time, and where the campaign is winnable. If we understand that our organisations exist for change, than everything we do can be seen as contributing to that, not only when we run a campaign.
Sue also suggested that the social sector should change the way it describes itself, and not be known as the charity sector, or the voluntary sector, or the third sector, but as the social sector. And explain that the social sector works within civil society, and that it is about social good and social value. Yes, she acknowledged, it is ambitious to encourage shared language, but it would serve the sector well to do so.
Note from a network discussion: Beyond command and control
NOTES OF A BETTER WAY DISCUSSION ON 12 NOVEMBER 2019 WITH PROFESSOR JOHN SEDDON, FROM VANGUARD CONSULTING
John Seddon’s latest book Beyond Command and Control explains what is wrong in prevailing models of services to the public: a system of control with budget management at its heart. Those who are employed to provide help are constrained by unit cost controls, eligibility thresholds, specialisation of function, and activity targets. The consequence is that help is not provided ‘right first time’ and failure demand (a ‘revolving door’ for many users) is generated in huge quantities – comprising 90% or even more of all service activity. This, according to John Seddon, is the true story of why costs are rising in the public sector and elsewhere and why services are failing to improve. The book looks at examples from utilities, banks, insurance and financial institutions as well as services in other sectors working with people with complex needs.
Managers currently focus much of their time on staff performance but should instead focus on the system as it is this that prevents staff from doing a good job and indeed the job they generally want to do. Digitalisation of services often makes things worse and often drives change rather than supporting it – it should be the last thing to do, not the first. The system of control needs to change and this requires three things:
Knowledge of demand which can only be gained if leaders study for themselves what actually happens to real people in the system;
A rigorous focus on the work which produces value for the customer/beneficiary, and cutting out everything else;
Achievement of purpose in customer terms.
Change requires no plan – change is emergent, the scale and speed of the change cannot be known in advance. The leader’s job is to study and change the system of control, and when this is done well the results speak for themselves. Workforce motivation and productivity increase when the workforce is given responsibility and flexibility, the services improve, and costs fall.
In discussion the following points were made:
1. Command and control exacerbates and creates inequality
Command and control systems embed and reinforce inequality. Prescription and standardised forms of service delivery impact most negatively on those who are socially excluded or who have the most complex needs, excluding large numbers of people, and maintaining them at the margins of society. First, the un-user friendly nature of many services makes it harder for them to access them and, second, when they do their needs are most likely to remain unmet, universal credit being one example. This may help to explain why efforts to tackle service inequality which focus on a presentational shift in staff behaviour and advertising to make themselves more welcoming to the so-called ‘hard to reach’ have often achieved much less than hoped for: the systems of control themselves need changing.
2. Funders, commissioners and regulators make things worse
Funders and commissioners and regulators reinforce the problem when they focus on top-down measures and compliance with standard specifications. This accounts for the striking examples of institutions failing their users which have nonetheless passed inspections with flying colours. Characteristically, when services are failing, command and control practices by funders and regulators increases, making the problem worse.
Measures have value but should always be based on what users of services genuinely want from that service. The best tactic is to ask how we would know whether we are doing a good job and then measure that.
3. Marketisation of public services is part of the problem
Marketisation of public services produces a focus on targets, unit costs and outputs, often the wrong ones from the service user viewpoint. This makes it harder to achieve right-first-time services (let alone undertake preventative work). But this model is showing increasing signs of strain in public service delivery, with well-known failures, and we can push back on this collectively and at operational level by collecting evidence about what is genuinely works best for users of services and about the inefficiency of excess costs caused by failure demand.
Marketisation has also produced a tendency towards larger and larger service contracts, in the misguided belief that this can achieve economies of scale. But this does not reduce cost and pushes aside locally responsive services, which are more likely to address need effectively, as was documented in an earlier Vanguard/Locality publication: Saving Money by Doing the Right Thing: Why ‘local by default’ must replace ‘diseconomies of scale’.
4. Command and control can lead to seeing people as ‘other’and seeking to impose norms
Command and control models can reinforce the tendency for service delivery organisations to see people in difficult circumstances as ‘other’, to focus only on their problems and deficits. Because they push toward standardisation, the operating model can seek to impose ‘norms’ on people who are genuinely different, rather than build in flexibility to appreciate and respond to these differences.
5. Charities are being pushed away from their mission by command and control
Many organisations in the charity sector have themselves adopted command and control models, and this produces huge tensions between their operations which are constrained by numerical targets and cost constraints, and their underlying values and mission, which at best is informed by user experience and expertise
6. Contracts can be challenged – be brave
Many charities have become complicit in a funding system which insists on compliance with command and control. If they want to work with the State this is often seen as unavoidable, though it is possible to challenge it, as one of the participants had successfully done, mid contract, by showing how the measures were not working for their clients.
7. Change to the commissioning model is starting to happen
There are some tentative signs of change in commissioning. The Welsh Assembly has adopted a policy for working with people whose lives have come off the rails: starting with understanding what matters to them. In Gywnedd this is leading to changes in commissioning practice. An instance is given in John Seddon’s book:
Julie, head of adult services in a county council, describes the change as moving from asking “What’s the matter with you?” to “What matters to you?” Asking the former leads the service down the path of prescribing a set of predetermined service-driven solutions to a problem. The latter leads to a conversation about what a good life looks like to an individual citizen. That conversation may take two hours, two weeks or even two years to answer fully, but the important thing is to get a complete picture of the citizen and his or her requirements in their own context.
We need to build confidence that we can change commissioning for the better – shifting practice away from low cost procurement into commissioning informed by good knowledge and good local relationships, where all parties can be more honest with each other, especially when things are not working as well as hoped for.
For those in commissioning roles at mid-ranking levels it can be very difficult to challenge orthodox practice. In the NHS for example a continuing stream of standardised top-down targets and regulation makes it very hard to take account of different local circumstances.
One tactic would be to encourage curiosity among those in senior commissioning and strategy roles, so that they take time to study properly and see for themselves what is really going on. We discussed one example where this is working well, partly because of good relationships between commissioners and contractors, and partly because the commissioners had good knowledge themselves of users and the services. It can be more difficult to influence procurement where the account manager and procurer are different.
8. Ask the question ‘Why?’
These practices are so widespread that they can seem unchallengeable and overwhelming but one technique used by one of the participants in her own organisation is to ask the question, ‘Why?’ This encourages reflectiveness about what the purpose of different actions is intended to be, which then allows you to judge whether this is what was intended and whether the measures to deliver this purpose are working.
9. Seek 'better practice’ not best
We should avoid talking about ‘best practice’, and instead talk more about ‘better practice’ – and remember that this always begins with studying and acquiring knowledge in your own area – simply lifting practice from elsewhere may result in just another standardised delivery process.
10. Community development principles provide a model for listening to users about what works
We should also remember well-established community development principles, such as those advocated by Robert Chambers in the context of international rural development (putting the last first, finding out what people in poor communities themselves suggest and can do, rather than imposing solutions invented and controlled by privileged professionals coming in from outside).
11. A ‘whole systems’ approach is needed for complex issues, requiring collaborative leadership
Single organisations on their own can rarely develop services capable of tackling complex problems, and what is needed in order to develop meaningful responses is an alliance of agencies prepared to work together, and study together, looking at the system as a whole that delivers, for example, health, or homelessness.
12. Shifting the narrative
It is necessary to shift the narrative because the dominance of this model is a major barrier to change. It should be possible to build a direct, powerful story that explains what failure demand is and why it is so damaging, how we could run things differently and the benefits that would be produced. But it is difficult to do so. Most journalists and most of the media have accepted the command and control narrative as an article of faith. When there are national scandals about public service failure the underlying reasons are rarely discussed, and it is always tempting to ascribe blame to individuals rather than to system failure.
Moreover, the impetus to run things differently rarely comes from rational discussion, and more often from direct personal encounters with what is really happening, which profoundly shake people’s assumptions, and produce the energy needed to make change.
It would be useful to tell the stories of how leaders have tried to move beyond command and control, the obstacles they have faced, and the tactics they have used to overcome them.
It would also be powerful to tell the story ‘the other way round’ ie not through the eyes of managers but through the lived experience of service users.
13. Influencing the system
The Better Way network has some channels to influence practice at national government level, across the political spectrum, and we should make use of them, starting with the Call to Action for a Better Way launch at the end of November 2019. At the least we should be encouraging Whitehall to stop doing things which make the system of command and control even worse.
In his previous book The Whitehall Effect John Seddon documented the public service failures of government, and pointed to remedies, but it has proved extremely difficult to bring about real change at this level. Having said that, there have been times when profound change has been achieved across government, and the current reliance on command and control thinking need not be permanent.
14. Change starts with us
For some of those involved in the discussion, their focus was on what they can do directly in their organisation to change the system. For others, there was interest in how to counteract the dominant narrative and a belief that now might be a turning point. We ended by talking about the final Better Way principle:
‘Changing ourselves is better than demanding change from others. The best starting point is what we ourselves can do, putting the common good first and our vested interests last. The more we achieve, the more others will follow.’
We can seek to influence people within our reach, including those ‘just above us’: senior managers, funders, and so on, as well as colleagues within our organisations and networks. In so doing we can use human stories, translate the messages in ways that can be quickly understood, and encourage people to study for themselves.
Note from a roundtable: Organisations without walls
BETTER WAY ROUNDTABLE, 16 MAY 2019
Introduction
Caroline Slocock from Better Way identified the problem: organisations can operate as if they are an end in themselves, erect walls between people and between organisations, hoarding rather than sharing power, failing to collaborate. They can build a poverty industry, seeing their business as achieving delivery targets, and people as units of production, or as the problem. But of course there are many counter-examples, as articles in our Insights for A Better Way document and blogs on the Better Way website illustrate. Many of these are focusing on building communities not services. At their best they engage all elements of a community and unlock its power.
Karin Woodley, who reminds us to keep our organisations ‘personal’ and practise ‘radical listening’: communities should be seen as partners, not consumers, and be representative of those they serve.
Clare Wightman, who demonstrates that people in the community can sometimes provide better support than that provided by organisations and services.
Ollie Batchelor, writing about how they’ve established a food co-op, rather than a foodbank service, in Gateshead, who says it’s a community ‘where every person matters and brings their own strengths and qualities to the table’.
Sona Mahtani, who explains how the Selby Centre in Tottenham brings a diverse group of people together from right across the community and ‘unleashes creativity, opportunity and energy people create themselves’.
Radical listening
Karin Woodley from Cambridge House described how our sector has been walking a path towards self-destruction. We have broken down service users lives into disconnected problems, and as a result have stigmatised users and failed to combat oppression, serving instead the patriarchal requirements of funders and stakeholders. We undervalue lived experience, and constantly marginalise people. Our models of tackling exclusion have become complacent.
But a practice of radical listening can help organisations to become authentic change-makers, transferring control back to the people we work with, bringing people with lived experience to the fore, and stimulating outside-in continuous improvement.
Organisations need to act boldly to change their own composition. At Cambridge House the CEO decided that for six months the only people to be recruited were those who had been in prison, and made it happen.
To become radical listeners is a real challenge. Our support models imply that service users are not as capable or as confident as us. Our communication is undermined by saying too much. We need to get much better at engaging people we work with in conversations where we listen rather than talk.
We need to learn, in group and one-to–one meetings, how to place the emphasis on questions rather than propositions. We need to stop ourselves recapping what has been said, making generalisations, categorising, joining the dots, proposing solutions. Only in this way will we create space for authentic insight to emerge.
We need to develop a theory of change which is based on the agency of the people we work with. We can only succeed in this if we liberate our front-line delivery staff, stop undertaking short term projects, and see ourselves not as in the service of the state but rather as radical activists for change.
A community not a service
Clare Wightman from Coventry Grapevine acknowledges that formal services are sometimes needed but what people usually need most is what services can’t provide. Love, companionship, friendship. Services are limited but what people will do for each other can be unlimited. Clare told us about a boy with Downs Syndrome and his mother. The boy was locked out of school, left in the playground in the rain, punched someone and ran off. Services were offered – counselling, a parenting programme – but this help didn’t help. Grapevine connected the boy and the mother to people who were prepared to help as friends, who would be there for them in tough times. At school the boy had been rejected for the school pantomime, and failed the literacy requirements for the drama courses, but it turned out he had acting skills, and, encouraged by his friends, is now a successful actor and dance artist.
Coventry Grapevine received funding to help 1,000 people to become physically active. Rather than a project or a programme, they build a social movement, mobilising people in the community to mobilise other people, leading from the back. They ignored the targets, in the expectation that the numbers would look after themselves, and they did – and moreover, four of the six initiatives that people set up as a result are still going.
The difference is this. A service model usually means providing limited help for people who need it, focusing on a particular problem. A community model is fundamentally different. It taps into richness and abundance, with multiple mutually beneficial relationships, producing lots of additional support and activity.
Discussion
Community is what we do and how we do it – not simply a synonym for place. Community models can enhance accessibility, especially where people are free to act on their own ideas and run with them, rather than fit into a pre-set model. But we do need to acknowledge that not all community models operate in accessible ways, and some groups can be made to feel unwelcome in some community settings, because of race, or class, or other characteristics.
Some of us feel that there is an important and legitimate role for government, to help society become fairer, and kinder. Others that government will always be an impediment because it cannot listen well, it always tries to control and direct.
Our responsibility is to be catalysts for change, not produce the change our leaders want to see.
Radical listening can be informed by the practice of coaching, or of action learning. It requires more than passive listening, for example asking questions in the spirit of inquiry.
Most forms of ‘co-production’ fall short of radical listening. Radical listening implies a shift away from services, and towards the practice of mobilising people to mobilise others. It implies that design and decision making should be much closer to those affected. Using techniques such as community organising can make subsidiarity real.
In the field of homelessness for example, people can become institutionalised by the charities, separated from wider society. The task must always be to reconnect people to society.
How can we nurture more radical listening, and bring about a shift from services to community? We need a national narrative to promote these ideas. We need better mechanisms to help people determine the outcomes and benefits which matter most to them, rather than being expected to conform to those established by remote governments. We need to find ways of creating space and time for people to come together to make the difference they want to see. We need positive ways of dealing with negative community behaviours. We need to reward bravery, courage, the entrepreneurial spirit. We need more charitable trusts and foundations and public institutions willing to think in this way.
Note from Better Way Organisations cell 4
Building Better Way organisations
London cell 4: 11th October 2017
The topic we discussed was how to build a Better Way organisation, following on from an earlier dinner on this topic by three other London cells.
We started by noting that we need to move away from notions of leadership and see ourselves as change-makers, and this requires an ability to build relationships rather than issue directions. It also means that we need to live with change around us, not treating organisations or our operating environments as static.
Those of us who are paid to work in social sector organisations are mainly from well-off backgrounds and we rely on these organisations for our income and prosperity. There is therefore pressure on leaders of organisations to maintain the status quo, to protect staff, allow us to pay our mortgages, ultimately to prevent us becoming ‘beneficiaries’. We are running essentially conservative organisations designed to keep things as they are, not to generate change.
We practice open recruitment for posts, but we know that this is not producing more diverse organisations, and inclusion and equality of opportunity is more talked about than practised.
We constantly promote deficit thinking – and we cannot just blame this on funders.
In many social sector organisations it is difficult to get people to talk about wider purpose and politics. We have ‘professionalised’ our staff teams, creating distinct roles, producing silos within our organisations, with a narrowness of function and outlook.
Cambridge House recognised these problems. It took various steps, including recruiting staff for 12 months only from St Giles Trust (ex-offenders). It created opportunities in the working day for staff to come together to have tea and cake and conversation. It closed down pro-bono relationships with corporates which were not adding value. It developed new strands of work, which required different ways of working, for example a Safer Renting initiative, supporting vulnerable tenants who are victimised by criminal landlords or negatively affected by enforcement action.
Sometimes such actions encounter opposition from staff and managers who want to keep things as they were. Change is difficult for everyone, but sometimes we need to remind our teams that the people they are there to help are having a much worse time. And we must overcome a ‘them and us’ mentality. A good question to ask – would you invite a service user to supper?
Galvanising action through fear is not the best means of achieving longer term change. In organisations which are driven by the need to protect their own institutional interests it can be particularly difficult, especially for staff at more junior levels, to make a stand against poor service practice, or against a target culture which is failing service users.
Organisations operate at different layers – the senior level holds the relationship with funders and commissioners, playing the game to keep things going, and this is kept entirely separate from accountability to communities. As in a trifle, the custard never permeates the jelly! The more layers of management there are between decision makers and the community the more it is difficult to ‘walk the talk’.
Many celebrated organisations are too dependent on a visionary, charismatic leader. When Wonsoon Park, founder of the Hope Institute in South Korea, was elected Mayor of Seoul and left the organisation, it lost its innovative edge. In contrast the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) seeks to operate as a network organisation, with a very horizontal structure. At the same time it is attempting to operate an ‘anti-consultancy’ model, not making false claims of expertise, but rather building networks to connect innovators, for example creating a ‘social innovation community’ across Europe. But this is never easy and it needs to present itself in more traditional ways in order to win funding bids.
We recognise that we need to operate in the ‘real world’, that we must not retreat into a virtuous and self- congratulatory comfort zone. All organisations we create for social change are bound to be imperfect. We need to make constant complex adjustments and should not unfairly malign others, eg local authorities, who face equivalent problems. Nor should we categorically dismiss the private sector: there are some socially driven organisations which use private sector company structures because they allow for more operating flexibility than charity or other social models.
Having said that, we also need to recognise when an organisation becomes part of the problem. Some form of organisation is always necessary, but once something exists its inevitable tendency is to maintain itself at all costs. We should therefore encourage people to use existing organisations rather than setting up new ones.
We also need to get better at brokerage, providing platforms and connections through which people can come together, experience a sense of belonging, and from which many useful activities can emerge. At a local level, churches used to be good at that, as did friendly societies. Does a more hopeful future lie with new communities of shared belief, modern forms of mutual aid? But if so, we have to recognise that the forces stacked against this are immense. In so many areas of life positive human relationships are under threat, or have been all but eliminated, and this makes it harder than ever to build solidarity.
And yet, the impulse towards association runs very deep. The language we use and the stories we tell can remind us of this, and can build the confidence to drive change. Small changes in language can signal a deeper intention: at the Clitterhouse Farm Project the local volunteers who are bringing a historic Victorian farm in North London into community ownership are called ‘stewards’, and this works because the people involved recognise that their role is both responsible and reciprocal, and that they are all playing a part in a bigger and enduring story.
Note from Better Way Organisations cell 3
Building Better Way organisations
London cell 3: 5th October 2017
The topic we discussed was how to build a Better Way organisation, following on from an earlier dinner on this topic by two other London cells.
We started by noting that collaboration, and sharing, can produce added value. But a great deal of what we learn through life pushes us in a different direction, towards individualised achievement. Indeed at school we are often taught not to share and even that sharing can be cheating.
And some of the language we use, ‘sharing economy’ and ‘social capital’ for example, reveals the extent of the problem: as if collaboration can only be validated through the concepts we use to describe competitive free market economics. We need better ways of telling the story, and we discussed the power of parable (as in the Biblical story of the loaves and fishes).
We noted that in the voluntary sector, as public funding has reduced and the operating environment has become more difficult, collaboration has sometimes improved. One example is the recent co-operation among race equality agencies, with joint bidding, potential mergers, etc. But equally external pressures can produce the opposite response, with agencies keeping their heads down and fighting their own corner, and ultimately disappearing. This was the case with BME-led housing associations in Yorkshire, which rejected the opportunity to merge, and instead were swallowed up by mainstream housing associations, and their community identity was lost.
Under pressure, in times of crisis, we tend to act in a highly directive way, in order to overcome problems, and get the job done, but this can develop a centralised culture of control which is hard to break. When we cannot find time for involvement of others we act on our ‘instincts’ which are an expression of values for good or for bad.
We touched on the precarious nature of contractual relationships to deliver public services in a climate of spending cuts: we become an instrument of the state, but progressively starved of capital and revenue, we become constrained and limited in what we can do, and trapped in a failing system with no way out. The introduction of private finance and social investment into this mix can make things even worse, as our organisations lose their sense of core purpose and their agendas become determined by commercial considerations.
We discussed the implications of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. On the one hand we observed that many agencies, including charities, were quick to stereotype the residents as poor, marginalised, and vulnerable people, inherently victims. But this misses out the rich variety of their lives, their considerable skills and talents, the range of occupations and wealth, the pride that many took in their homes, the network of neighbourliness in the tower block. As this demonstrates, there is a prevailing tendency for social sector organisations to think about beneficiaries, service users, communities in negative terms, as ‘them’ - essentially different from ‘us’.
On the other hand, we felt that over recent decades in many groups of low income residents, there has been a loss in collective identity and solidarity, and consequently in grass roots social campaigning. People are concerned with addressing their individual needs, but much less so in collective action.
So what can we do about all this?
We talked about the role of intermediaries, skilled individuals as well as agencies, which can create bridges between people with power and resources, and those who feel powerless. Such individuals and organisations (eg community ‘anchor’ organisations) can be valuable change agents, building connectivity and relationships.
We considered the notion of ‘radical listening’, discussed at another cell meeting recently, where the direction of listening is primarily directed towards communities rather than towards funders or government.
This brings profound implications for the types of organisations which can achieve most to bring about positive social change. Can we develop ‘buildings without walls’ – truly permeable organisational structures – which nevertheless can be capable of sustained existence? In such organisations diversity and connections between diverse groups and interests would become an obvious prerequisite for success rather than a token gesture.
We often claim, falsely, that our organisations deliver outcomes. It would be better to say that we sow seeds – nurturing growth and development in individuals, communities, systems. Or, to use a different metaphor, we walk alongside (‘accompaniment’) and by promoting social change we help to clear the path.
Note from Better Way Organisations cell 2
Building Better Way organisations
London cell 2: 2nd October 2017
The topic we discussed was how to build a Better Way organisation, following on from an earlier dinner on this topic by the founding cell.
We started with the Better Way principle: collaboration is better than competition. Steve Wyler gave an example: the School of Social Entrepreneurs had recently created a new form of grant funding called ‘match trading’: pound-for-pound grant funding which matches an increase in trading income. This is designed to incentivise and reward income generating activities, and therefore to achieve more sustainable social impact. Early results were extremely promising and the School had wondered whether to ‘patent’ the idea for its own organisational gain but decided instead to collaborate with others to build a shared brand and community of practice, believing that would better meet serve its own cause as well as the wider social sector.
Other examples were explored and the point was made that collaborations such as these also bring multiple benefits. Relationships of trust are formed that make it possible at a later point to work together on bids, for example. Being forced into social impact bonds and competitive behaviour often lead to attempts to create a market when it does not exist. The model often does not work for activity with a social purpose, where value is generated differently. An understanding of social purpose is a core strength of the social sector and can undermined by competitive models, it was argued. The sector should have more confidence. How about a delegation to Silicon Valley to bring our knowledge of social purpose to them? Despite their initial idealism and mission statements, the big social media companies are driven cynically by money not people.
The discussion then moved to the role of quality assurance processes in driving organisational improvement. The problem here, the group thought, is that they are often driven by external pressures from funders, including government, and are motivated by the need to prove worth to those in Government or in funders because of lack trust. They can become 'a theatrical performance', may encourage organisations to think inside rather than outside the box and may help to validate ‘zombie’ organisations that should no longer exist. True accountability, the group felt, comes from within. It is far better when organisations move toward ‘reflective practice’, asking themselves honest questions, creating a journey that may genuinely lead to change and not simply reproducing what has earlier been regarded as ‘best practice’.
There were systems changes that could help. Involving HR and aligning personnel systems to reinforce key behaviours, for example, with a golden thread from the mission and objectives of the organisation down to personal objectives. But there is a danger that these systems simply become top down and target driven and fail to create the kind of inspiration and greater autonomy that genuinely creates a Better Way. As one example given in the group illustrated, when you recruit on the basis of the purpose of the new job, rather than specifying a skill set or past experience, you may find people with a better match to what you really want and be able to allow them much greater autonomy. Clarity of purpose is vital.
Clarity of purpose can lead to some radical places. At Scope, we were told that a new CEO has recognised that by focusing on services they are only reaching 1000 people and he is recasting the organisation to be a facilitator not a service provider, which has had radical implication for staff and revenue numbers.
The right governance and leadership are what really matter, rather than the processes. Systems, and the maximising of income that are the current focus of many in the sector. That said, it was recognised that giving too free a rein could lead to problems like those seen at Kids Company. Financial disciplines and clarity not just about purpose were important. There was a healthy suspicion of management tools but a recognition that we can take from the best of them. Money mattered but only when related to mission and good leaders were good at recognising this.
Part of the difficulty of breaking free of current patterns of behaviour and organisational models is that there is not a common space for new conversations. Currently, some organisations dominate discussions, particularly funders, because of their power. We talked of creating ‘an open square’ or a neutral space so that everyone enjoys the same status. One example of this is in the Ignite project in Coventry, where they try to encourage different conversations through a ‘walk in the park’. Local authority members, leaders and residents take turns to speak to each other informally. Perhaps the voluntary organisations should invite funders to come to them to talk about shared objectives, rather than spending time filling out their application forms and pretending that the work of the organisation would meet the funders’ objectives precisely?
‘Driven by dreams, judged on delivery’ from the statement of intent of Community Links was discussed (and picked apart) as a potential model. The general view was it was important to keep sight of how well the organisation was doing in achieving its purpose but that the current funding model of delivery of outcomes or outputs has led to problems. One quotation, ‘I don’t deliver outputs, I sow seeds,’ struck a chord with many in the room because it highlighted the need to take risks and take a long view – ‘oak trees, not annuals’. It also captured the reality that voluntary organisations don’t change lives, despite often claiming this, individuals do. Instead, voluntary organisations ‘accompany’ people on their journey. ‘Sowing seeds’ encouraged ‘humility’ as one person put it, but also encouraged the confidence to articulate an alternative model to the creation of social value to that dominating the sector at present.
The rallying cry that emerged from the discussion was to stop thinking about organisations and start thinking about social change in relation to A Better Way. We need ‘activist leaders’ and the sector should be much bolder and braver about how it works and start being much more innovative about how things are done. It should unlock the potential of individual communities through ‘radical listening’ and put them, not the professionals in the organisations, more in control. One model of new working methods mentioned was Tech for Good, which is creating technology with ‘humankind in mind’.
These changes must be based on mutual trust and genuine dialogue between social partners, rather than just the box ticking of quality assurance systems. Clarity of purpose and an internal culture of honesty that encourages reflective practice and the pursuit of excellence in the delivery of that purpose is also critical.
Note from network discussions: Building Better Way organisations
Building Better Way organisations
Overview of discussions in four London cells, September and October 2017
The overarching thought coming through all our discussions is that we need to fundamentally rethink what it means to be an organisation when we are looking to deliver social change.
Funders are highly influential in what organisations do and how they behave and many of our members called for a different kind of dialogue and relationship with them driven by shared objectives. But we also identified many organisations and their leaders as part of the problem, if not the problem, bolstering a ‘them and us’ status quo, reinforcing deficit thinking, protecting their own privileges, and colluding with funders and policy makers to protect themselves as institutions rather than putting the interests of the people they work with first.
But it need not be like this. Some organisations are adopting more positive behaviours:
Deliberately reducing ‘them and us’ practices, expecting everyone to play a direct role in delivery, including staff at all levels as well as volunteers and service users, to create a broad community united by a shared endeavour.
Pushing against the boundaries of traditional organisational forms, creating flatter structures, focusing more on relationships, networks and collaborations, rather than ‘professional’ functions.
Intentionally sharing knowledge and skills, adopting an ‘open source’ approach, and discovering that more can be achieved in that way.
And some funders do work with those they fund in a collaborative and open-ended way.
Ultimately we are seeking to create ‘buildings without walls’, whereby competitive instincts and self-interest can be channelled towards collaborative and generous behaviours which are mutually advantageous. Of course it is difficult to change organisational culture and behaviour, and resistance can come from many quarters, but we can be tactically astute, with a willingness to be tough and determined but also pragmatic, recognising that we are operating within an ever-changing and imperfect world.
Some of us are practising ‘radical listening’ where our focus of attention is directed towards communities rather than governments and funders. We believe that a willingness to attract and engage with diversity, building bridges within and across communities and identities, is not a nice-to-have, but a necessary condition for success, and to ignore this constrains the potential for social change. And we are rethinking the role of leaders in organisations as social activists, who put change first, not organisations.
We seek excellence, and realise this is best achieved through reflective practice based on a culture of openness and clarity of purpose and peer challenge, rather than imposed quality assurance frameworks.
Organisational models are still dominated by competitive market based thinking, but we can produce a different narrative, emphasising the added benefits of collaboration. The language we use to describe our organisations, our roles within them, and our purpose, can be instrumental in driving change, for good or for bad.
We can also tell a more truthful story about what we can achieve, avoiding spurious claims about outcomes and impacts. We want to move away from the language of projects, and acknowledge that we are sowing seeds which may or may not flourish, and that our most productive and effective work is when we walk with people and with communities, helping them take the direction they want and take action to clear the paths of obstacles they encounter.
While we share a sense of urgency we understand that this way of working depends on the building of trust, and requires a sustained effort. Financial and competitive pressure can reinforce the tendencies to drift backwards into self-serving organisational behaviours, and to seek the quick fix, in order to give the appearance of success. But we try to resist this and encourage others to as well. We are looking for a more honest set of relationships within our own organisations, and with partner agencies and funders, and a new kind of conversation about how best to achieve common goals that transcends narrow organisational interests.
To read the full notes of the four discussions please click on the links below:
Note from Better Way Organisations Cell 1
Building Better Way organisations
London cell 1: 12th September 2017
What are the challenges of trying to live up to Better Way principles in an organisation? That was the issue we discussed in the founding cell on 12 September 2017.
Steve Wyler opened the discussion by saying that two of the greatest challenges facing organisations that aspired to A Better Way were 'collaboration is better than competition' and 'mass participation is better than centralised power.'
On collaboration, he gave the example of the Development Trusts Association, which he had led before it merged into Locality. Like many voluntary organisations in recent years, it had become increasingly competitive in its relationship with other bodies, as resources diminished. It had developed methodologies to support community ownership, which it wanted to exploit commercially, even considering taking out copyright. But eventually it realised that this was not consistent with its values and it shared its knowledge freely with 'competitors'. Counter-intuitively it found that collaboration increased its financial success and the organisation grew.
The truth the Development Trusts Association discovered was that the model of market competition actually did not fit the situation, since products emerged though shared knowledge, and the market (funding for community development) was not finite but was capable of being grown. Furthermore, the way to achieve sustainability was to grow a confident, capable and outward-looking movement, and this would attract resources and investment and produce income-generating opportunities. Collaboration also put them in a much stronger position to shape the localism agenda for the benefit of their members and whole community sector. The same instinct toward collaboration led to the merger with BASSAC and the creation of a larger and even more influential body, Locality.
As we talked about it, it became clear that a focus on cause, rather than the organisation, took you naturally to collaboration. The need to find resources to keep organisations afloat was, we reflected, a very common challenge but it could easily take organisations away from their core mission and values and threaten their underlying independence.
Competition has generally been seen as the primary way to achieve efficiency in the post-Thatcher era, and this needs to be challenged, we thought, at least in the social sphere.
However, we also considered whether competitive behaviours can sometimes produce positive outcomes. They can greatly improve value for money, particularly in the private sector. It is also true that some small local charities do need the pressure to change that competition can bring and some are not fit for purpose. And there are examples where competition for funds has driven innovation in the voluntary sector. Competition, we recognised, was not always about money. Reputations, and the desire to maintain control, could lead to competition too. It could be quite a natural force.
We also noted that competition can be combined with collaboration. We see this for example in many sports where high levels of competition exist (clubs competing for the best players; players competing against each other to be selected for teams; teams competing against other teams to win trophies) but within this collaboration among players in a team is essential for sporting success and among teams in a federation for financial success. Similar patterns are sometimes found in the commercial world. Should the social sector always be different, or not?
We agreed that competition is an inappropriate model for activities that rely on the delivery of a common purpose or wider cause. In the West London Zone, for example, organisations work together to achieve place-based impact.
Collaboration is therefore important but it can end up being cosmetic, as happened for example in many Single Regeneration Budget partnerships, and which still happens in many collaborations which are little more than a device to raise funds and achieve profile for individual organisations.,
We talked about how competition has led the voluntary sector to create ever-larger organisations to create apparent economies of scale, taking work from smaller ones. This can bring benefits in some cases, if done well, but it can also lead to 'diseconomies of scale' and poor social value, as argued by a Locality report on this subject, particularly when it comes to providing support to individuals facing complex problems. An industrial model for social issues does not work and small specialist and/or community-based organisations are often better placed to create social as opposed to financial value. The 'forest floor', not just the big trees that provide the canopy, can be just as important, we concluded.
We talked about how charitable foundations had themselves adopted increasingly competitive models and about the pros and cons of this. One example was where a consortium of funders had invited competitive bids for a fund, but the organisations involved asked if they could work collaboratively instead. The funders turned this idea down, losing an opportunity for different place-based organisations to combine forces and learning.
It is also common practice now for charitable foundations to go out to tender for work to be provided by voluntary sector organisations. But voluntary organisations, unlike private sector ones, cannot recoup this sometimes very costly development work (some of which will always be unsuccessful) through their profits, as they already operate on a shoe-string, and there is an opportunity cost to the sector in using up its scarce resources in competitive activity in this way. That said, it was understandable that foundations wanted to get the very best support for their projects and competition is currently the tried and tested method for doing so.
Britain is crying out for a new vision of how social change is achieved which puts collaboration and shared goals at its heart, we thought. This would replace the view that competition is the best means for delivering real value. The new vision would be anchored on collective goals and driven by a new kind of 'weightless engine' achieved through collaboration. Self-interest in this new vision would be seen as leading to collaboration, not competition, and would be recognised as being more productive than the pursuit of selfishness.
We then had a brief discussion about the value of mass participation and the difficulty of consulting widely when organisations are undergoing potentially fatal financial challenges under great time pressure. We discussed examples where Boards and senior teams had had to move swiftly to protect the future of organisations and the challenges this brought. Might the decisions have been better if more people had been involved? Could other solutions have been found? We recognised that there are situations where rapid decisions are required and leaders are forced to rely on internalised values and their focus on mission when they work in emergency 'fight or flight' mode. But the danger is that the Better Way principles are only 'fair weather' friends. The real test of an idea is whether it can survive a pounding and whether our propositions can survive in the real world. Part of the problem here is that our models of leadership, which are internalised and deeply cultural, can lead us to command and control behaviours in times of pressure. Shifting that leadership model is required. We do not have enough examples of distributed leadership in the voluntary sector or indeed elsewhere, we thought.
We ended up by reflecting that the Better Way propositions are not prescriptive. Collaboration may often be better than competition, but not always, and likewise with mass participation versus centralised power. We are trying to swing the pendulum, not create a rigid set of rules, and should not be disheartened if 'rules' are sometimes broken.