Roundtable on working in a place

Creating the conditions for a fairer system to emerge

Introduction – Laura Seebohm

Laura Seebohm, the Better Way Convenor for the North, gave a quick summary of A Better Way, explaining that the Better Way Network is a collection of leaders who are committed to changing the way things work for people across society for the better.  We are not about leadership in the hierarchical sense.  We come together within and across sectors, learn from each other, share common experiences and identify better ways to do things. 

Laura noted that over the past 18 months we’ve seen certain ideas shine through, themes which seem to emerge and re-emerge in every conversation:

• Four fundamental behaviours - putting relationships first, sharing and building power, joining forces and listening to each other, particularly those least heard.

• And three cross-cutting questions, included one particularly pertinent to this event - how can we remove the road blocks?

These were all explored at our National Gathering on 24th November, she said.  The note of that meeting is here.

Laura explained this roundtable had come about from conversations with people whose purpose ‘in the day job’ is to work in a place, who had said they would welcome a group where they could explore the challenges more deeply with others working in places, exploring how to help create the conditions to bring about change, recognising that it can be hard to unpick where barriers lie and wanting to share honest reflections about the complexities.  

We had decided to make this an ‘invitation only’ meeting and to restrict the numbers, unlike most Better Way roundtables, she explained, in order to make it easier for open reflection, and to see if the group might want to work together, build up mutual trust and support each other after the first meeting.

We started with some opening contributions, moving to breakout groups and back to plenary.

Reflections from Kelly Cunningham, Changing Lives, working in York

·       She wanted to talk about feelings and emotions, not processes, because she thought it was important to acknowledge these in system change work.

·       We don’t acknowledge power dynamics enough.

·       There is no blueprint for this kind of work, and you need to be very self-motivated because the work goes really slowly.

·       There is always a pressure to see impact, but in fact there is no ‘big boom’ and sometimes it is hard to see the ripples of change.

·       Importance of building legitimacy and allies is important, but this takes time.

·       You need to change the conversation but in a way that you are not always seen as an ‘agitator’ – it can be a fine line between being radical and being irritating.

·       Need to let go of some of your own views, ‘not do the do’ and step back.  This is very hard – we need to model behaviours ourselves.

Reflections from Harriet Ballance, Lloyds Bank Foundation

·       Set up phase takes time and it’s important to hold your nerve.  This can be hard when there is pressure from colleagues within your organisation and within communities to show progress.

·       Covid-19 forced us to slow down and to get to know each other, which has been helpful in establishing strong relationships for this work

·       Capacity building is important– LBF try to identify people to work with them who have amazing networks locally.

·       Sometimes it works well to have LBF neutrality, not being from a place and able to ask different questions – about things that may seem obvious to people in a place – and this can create a different conversation. 

·       Getting a shift in ‘the way we do things here’ is often difficult.

·       Need to sit with discomfort and be very aware of how this work feels for people.

·       How do we make this something that people actually want to do? – we are thinking about how to develop spaces that feel different and that people value

·       Some of the tools adopted by LBF have been very useful in unblocking blockages, and providing a guide or framework in uncertainty eg training in restorative practice has provided a helpful framework.  Service design led thinking has also been a tried and tested tool.

Reflections from Andy Crosbie, Collective Impact Agency, Gateshead

·       Lots talked about ‘place-based’, ‘co-location’ – but what do we actually mean?

·       The real test for place-based work is whether it engages communities, those people living in a place, non-specialist and non-institutional roles.

·       Working a fine line between the old system – need to engage within it and find allies – and new ways of challenging orthodoxy and assumptions.  This is difficult while you are trying to build relationships.

·       Need to carve out a space free from assumptions and bureaucracy – a new space to grow

·       This work can be lonely and exhausting, messy and slow.  The old system loves clarity and efficiency, neither of which we can provide!

Some of the points made in discussion included:

·       The issues raised by the opening speakers really resonated.

·       It can be difficult to support systems change in a place when you are an outsider but it easy to slip into false assumptions. 

·       ‘Wisdom sits in a place’ and you really need to understand it, and take time to do so.

·       People locally are often extremely pressed for time, and it’s important to use that time well, and make sure that it is funded.  One key function to fund is a ‘systems facilitator’ who can bring different parties together and provide a convening space. Core, not project-based funding, is critical, otherwise local people are lurching from one funding crisis to another. Putting programme money into a community can be important but it can also be a curse because it distorts behaviour.

·       Achieving change in a place takes time, you have to be patient and give yourself and others permission not to know the answers. It’s important to think hard about the starting point, as this determines what follows. 

·       Given the slow pace of change, some indicators of success would be helpful.

·       Culture change may be the most important result that can be achieved, in order to free up the system.  A theory of change is valuable.

Summing up, Bonnie Hewson from Power to Change said that it is ‘not what you do but how you do it’ that matters, and understanding your own power, and why you are using it. Being a funder can be uncomfortable, and there are huge challenges to working in a place and to create co-operation, and it’s important to share your power, which can be humbling.  It’s critical to be led by the place and to ensure the process is fun, and very easy to constantly underestimate the wisdom of places whose main problem is often ‘not having capacity to build their own capacity.’

Caroline Slocock, a national co-convenor for a Better Way, ended with a reflection that perhaps the Better Way behaviours – putting relationships first, sharing and building power, listening to each other, particularly those least heard, and joining forces   – might provide one guide for how to work in a place and deliver systems and culture change.  Looking for evidence of these behaviours might be a way to measure progress, she added.  She hoped the group might meet again, if that would be useful.

Annual Gathering 2021

We held our annual Gathering this year on 29th November, bringing people together online for the second year running. This was an opportunity to share learning from the past year and help formulate our strategy for the next and beyond in an interactive way.

The theme of the Gathering was ‘Building the Bigger We’. This was the stand out phrase from our 2020 Gathering, and captured the need to build momentum around the principles and behaviours set out in a Better Way by growing the network and spreading the word. Ultimately, we had previously agreed, building a Bigger We would mean a very different kind of world in which:

• Everyone is heard and believed in, given a fair opportunity to thrive, and the ability to influence the things that matter to them.

• Every community comes together, looks out for each other, respects difference, and enables everyone to belong.

• Society as a whole values and invests in everyone and in every community.

A Better Way in turbulent times?

We opened the Gathering by discussing ‘where we are now’, starting with what the network had been doing over the last year. Caroline Slocock, the national co-convenor of A Better Way, explained that the network had grown. We’ve become bigger and more diverse and members have shared ideas and inspiration in more than 50 meetings. We’ve expanded from 680 to 880 people, and our twitter followers have grown from 1,660 to 1,850. Our Time for a Change publication which set out our Better Way model, was warmly received and circulated widely, not least on twitter. More people from across the country, and from many different backgrounds and organisations, are joining us, and our understanding of how to improve services, build community and create a fairer society has deepened as a consequence.

In the wider world, we’ve heard inspiring stories from our members about how a Better Way approach can change how things are done, she said, especially at local level. As the pandemic has shown, mountains can be moved when there is a common purpose and when there are strong relationships within communities and across organisations.

She explained that we’ve also heard that divisions in society have deepened during the pandemic, and it’s becoming harder to challenge injustices. Services are struggling and sometimes failing. Too often, power, which is already in too few hands, is being consolidated, and the voices of those with least power are still not being heard. Faced with this, there is a deep and growing unease about what lies ahead, from global warming to a country and world becoming ever more unequal.

Despite all this, momentum toward a Better Way does seem to be building in many places and in fields of activity, with champions in both the public and voluntary sectors,  but this still falls short of the system-wide change, for example in areas like health and social care, which will move us closer to our ultimate vision.

We then asked the Gathering whether they recognised this picture and what they were doing and feeling at this time. Breakout groups reported back that the picture painted above did resonate and they agreed that at the outset of the pandemic, despite the challenges, people had pulled together and there was an optimism about the potential to shift to a better way of working, as people took more risks and joined forces and achieved things at much greater speed. However, they also said:

• There is now enormous pressure on those we serve and massive challenges in the community. Trust is also breaking down and social division is growing. We need to ‘lean in to trust building’.

• There is an issue of resilience for people trying to bring about change, with an increase in demand while resources are getting even tighter, and some loss of optimism. Under pressure, some organisations are reverting to type, with ‘management by Gant chart.’ And it can be hard to keep in mind the bigger picture when faced with the short-term, sometimes fear-driven, focus of the media.

• Relationships were identified as being very important, but are not always seen to be so, and competition for resources could also be undermining, we were told. Lots of people in the network are seeking to apply Better Way principles and behaviours but get stuck when talking to decision-makers who don’t see relationships as important.

• We heard of some local authorities that are consciously trying to build on the relationships established through the pandemic. Newham was creating, for example, an anti-poverty alliance. It is clear that the statutory sector’s lead is very important. We also heard about the Time for Kids initiative in Surrey which had grown out of a small group of positive people from across the statutory and voluntary sectors who wanted to work together to achieve a better way.

• New technology had helped connect some people, but were we listening to everybody?

• Networks like a Better Way which allow for peer-to-peer conversations were seen as very important to building resilience among those seeking to drive change.

In an online poll taken during the Gathering, over 70% felt that momentum for a Better Way is rising (8% fast, 65% slowly), a quarter felt it is about the same and 3% said it is falling slowly.

The key messages that came out of the discussion were: ‘be intentional about making change happen’, go where the energy is’, ‘get out there and reduce the distance’, ‘build on positive relationships’, and seek to ‘create constellations out of single points of light.’

Behaviours for a Better Way

In the second session, which was introduced by our Convenor in the North, Laura Seebohm, we heard about what the network had learnt through its discussions over the course of the year about the four behaviours for a Better Way - putting relationships first, sharing and building power, listening to each other and joining forces.

David Robinson

Putting relationships first

David Robinson from the Relationships Project, the ‘thought leader’ for our Putting Relationships First cell, explained that we had held five sessions with lively discussions:

• making relationship-building the purpose of our work.

• turning organisations into communities, not machines.

• seeing people as the solution, not the problem.

• building good relationships in adversity and conflict.

• relational leadership.

Some of the key points coming out of the discussion are featured in the draft document circulated for the Gathering, and are shown here.

We had heard of many really good things happening in this area, David said. Over 2021, we had also been taking stock regularly, up and down the country, about the impact of the pandemic. It was clear we are still on a very uncertain course, and that there is likely to be a long, long tail with ‘deep tissue damage’. The challenge we have faced is to turn a common sense idea into common practice, he said, and move from ‘one place wonders’ to good examples being everywhere. We are accustomed to campaigning against things we oppose, and are less good at campaigning ‘with the grain’, elevating the importance of relationships. When a social worker, for example, puts relationships first, we say that s/he ‘goes the extra mile’, but we need to change this so that behaviour is seen as the ‘first mile’. Barriers to this happening are multiple, from culture, leadership models and systems, and he agreed that the challenges are getting bigger. To move forward, it’s important to demonstrate human qualities ourselves and build trust and share power. We can move from ‘Me to We’ and increase social capital, he concluded. The window that had been opened in the early stages of Covid-19 as people supported each other is still open.

Some of the comments from the discussion that followed in breakout groups and plenary included:

• Relationship-building is critical but tends to be ‘stamped out’ by command and control practices and targets. This can be changed by consciously changing the norms e.g. by including relationship building in job descriptions.

• ‘Relationships on their own aren’t enough of course, but making them a core operating principle, rather than the ‘fluffy extra’ is the point.’

• ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’, so don’t start with strategies when trying to change things, address the culture. But ‘relationships eat them both for dinner!’ one person suggested.

• Leaders have the power and responsibility to set a new culture. This quote from Prof Edgar Schein was provided by one participant: "The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening."

• Change is a continuous process. It must involve informal as well as formal behaviours.

• ‘People are the air within the Better Way “beach-ball” [i.e. the behaviours model] – their whole lives – not just the bits we can deal with.’

Sharing and Building Power

Sue Tibballs from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, the ‘thought leader’ for our Sharing and Building Power cell, reflected on what we had learnt over the course of the year, with some key points set out in the draft document circulated for the Gathering shown below.

Sue Tibballs

Sue explained that the cell had discussed these topics:

• Authentic voices, hearing from Jude Habib from Sound Delivery and Brenda Buringi and Amanda Hailles, both of whom talked about how Sound Delivery had helped them to take on leadership roles as people with lived experience and how important these voices are. It was right, Sue said, to start with these voices.

• How power works and the tools we need, drawing on learning from SMK’s wider work which was to be launched in December 2021.

• How to build inclusive and equitable communities around a common cause.

• How to unlock the power of imagination, including the power of the arts, for example Forum Theatre which can help homeless people reimagine their lives.

• How to challenge abuses of power, including by practising ‘servant leadership’ rather than making citizens a servant of powerful institutions.

It is really difficult to change the culture, she concluded. At the heart of all this, she said, it’s important to understand power and become more literate in how it works. Power is not binary, as we tend to think, happening on one side only. The key is not so much about giving power away as recognising that we all have power and must use that power conscientiously and well. Sharing and building power is fundamental to the three other behaviours in the Better Way model - putting relationships first, listening to each other and joining forces - and these behaviours are critical to sharing and building power, so much so you could almost think of the latter as an overarching, core principle.

Some of the comments from the discussion that followed in breakout groups and plenary included:

• It’s important to be reflective about the power we have and use it wisely, but also allow ourselves to be challenged in a good way by community power.

• ‘Given we are saying that being power aware is in part recognising that we are all limited by our own experience and so we need to ensure there is real diversity of experience in the ‘room’ if we are to have a chance of really understanding.’

• ‘For sharing power to be real within an organisation it needs a culture within the organisation that supports that effort and that culture needs to be the same for all in the organisation and not just some.’ The right culture includes being able to share vulnerabilities - genuinely being allowed to share and express when things didn’t work as expected and to learn from this.

• It helps when sharing power to also have clarity of purpose, clear objectives and focus. Large organisations inevitably become hierarchical, but this can be mitigated by the potential use of distributive leadership.

• ‘Reflecting on what I've heard, I think there is a need to try to articulate what 21st century leadership is/can be. Greta Thunberg is a fantastic example of this. Undoubtedly a leader, but starting with absolutely no positional power. Personal power can achieve so much in a positive way.’

• The four behaviours are heavily inter-related.

Karin Woodley

Listening to each other

Karin Woodley from Cambridge House, the ‘thought leader’ for our Listening to Each Other cell, then reflected on what we had learnt in the five discussions during 2021 on these themes:

• Changing how we lead so we can listen better.

• Recruiting the right people, those best placed to listen and act on what they hear.

• How we can listen better together.

• Citizens’ Assemblies.

• Using citizens’ scientists and other techniques in research and policy-making.

Karin said that cells had explored how to create respectful relationships where it is possible to listen deeply and each had focused on different ways to address failures in the existing process in order to use experience to change policy.

Some of the key points from these discussions are included here.

She said that ‘radical listening’ meant stopping the normal ‘intellectual sorting’ process and ‘unlearning’ how we lead. In order to truly realise the transformative nature of relationship building and listening, we must radically change how we listen, recognising that ‘we are not the specialists’ and being quiet and resisting the temptation to speak and sum up. It is especially important to listen to people who have been pushed to one side and remain voiceles in the pandemic, amplifying their power.

Some of the comments from the discussion that followed in breakout groups and plenary included:

• Proper listening requires time and space. ‘Post-Covid panic can mean there is even more pressure to find 'solutions' when in fact Covid had demonstrated that we need to spend time and allocate resources to empowering lived experience voices.

• We must reach out to the crucial people who are too often overlooked. Generalised language, such as ‘young people’, can obscure groups who are being excluded from the conversation. ‘Listening is critical when diverse communities are concerned. Now we have many mechanisms to engage but we need varied methods for understanding what we are listening to.’

• Listening can surface conflict and anger. We need to get conflict out in the open and not suppress it. And also listen to others with courtesy and respect, which can be hard in the currently toxic environment. ‘When we are unheard, we shout. When our unmet needs remain unacknowledged, we express them in the language of judgement and blame.’ ‘The trick is not to get emotionally hijacked by others' anger; that's what enables us to remain courteous and to listen.’

• ‘Not all communities shout when they are poorly served - many I work with retreat into greater silence and despair….Hard to reach groups tend to be very easily found in the criminal justice system.’ And another comment: ‘Hard to reach means easy to ignore’.

• ‘Trust in listening processes frequently requires all people in the conversation to share lived experience.’ People also have to trust that their voice will really be heard.

• ‘The language has been hijacked and that is a problem. Co-production and recovery are words with radical roots, and they need to retain their radical meanings to prevent disingenuous and disengaged consequences.’

• ‘There are forces that are dangerously and deliberately whipping up people's fears and spreading misinformation - we see it on vaccines, refugees, a backlash to Black Lives Matter etc. So while we need to reach out and engage communities we also have to be wise and savvy and seek to challenge and minimise negative voices.’

• ‘If listening is a process and not an event then it needs to be a continual relationship and dialogue that includes action and delivery. Often we listen at the “what is the problem” stage, conducted by those who aren't the arbiters of the resources, who filter and filter what they have heard, and then the dialogue stops as the powerful go away and design the solution. Which they then "consult" on in processes designed to affirm their assumptions, and by which time it is too late to change.’

Cate Newnes-Smith

Joining Forces

Cate Newnes-Smith from Surrey Youth Focus and Time for Kids, the thought leader for our Joining Forces cell, then shared her reflections on the discussion held over the year on these topics:

• Developing a shared language to build collaboration.

• Building systems leadership into job roles at all levels.

• Dealing with imbalances and inequalities when joining forces.

• Joining forces across sectors, particularly with the private sector.

• Joining forces to inspire, rather than to control.

Some key messages from these discussions are shown here.

Cate said that the key lesson she had learnt during these discussions was the difference between true collaboration and partnership; and explained that in a Better Way we had chosen to speak of ‘joining forces’ because it seemed more active and definite than collaboration. Partnership was a bit like inviting other people to your own party or, when more participative, inviting others to help you throw a party you’ve organised, for example, by bringing food, or helping others to set up their parties. Joining forces, or collaboration, in contrast is much more like a street party, where everyone joins in and the event is organised together.

Some of the comments from the discussion that followed in breakout groups and plenary included:

• ‘Covid-19 has shown that not working together is not an option, so the question is how to join forces well, not whether.’

• ‘We are running a race together, but we don’t all cross the line together.’

• Power dynamics in collaborations are very important and there needs to be honesty about power imbalances. Relationships and trust are critical and need to be built between the voluntary and statutory sectors.

• ‘We need to move from a focus on our own organisation to a focus on community i.e. putting the community above our organisation. The bigger the organisation, the harder this becomes. Strict personal KPIs often work against this e.g. spending funding by year end not being in best interest of people served. We need common principles, but not necessarily a common understanding, as that may not be possible when joining forces.’

• One breakout group reported that there wasn't agreement around seeking allies in the business world - there was a feeling that people in the public sector have spent too long trying to win hearts and minds there and we should concentrate on powerful allies in civil society.

Three big cross-cutting issues

The next session looked at three big cross-cutting issues that had come out of the many many meetings we held in 2021, with each being introduced by reflections from a speaker.

The first question is:

1. What kind of leaders should we be?

During 2021, we’ve started to talk about a new kind of leadership where:

• We become leaders not because we hold positions of power, but because we give power to others.

• We deploy the four Better Way behaviours to build connection and community beyond our organisations.

• We create the conditions for those at the sharp end to take more control.

But how can we counter the existing ‘command and control’ and managerial leadership model and make this new style of leadership more widespread? What kind of leaders should we be?

Nick Sinclair

Nick Sinclair who runs the Local Area Co-ordinators Network and Community Catalysts New Social Leaders programme, said he had found that many people had been provoked by the pandemic crisis to ask themselves, ‘What does it mean to be a leader?’

Looking at the example of Local Area Co-ordinators, he thought the key lesson was that when you stop trying to control people and outcomes you allow agency. He told the story of Hugh and Janet who were helped by an Area Co-ordinator, Richard. Hugh has dementia and they reached out for some support which would not involve them separating. Richard spent some time getting to know them, finding out what they wanted, and what they were like. Hugh, it turned out, was a talented carpenter so Richard put them in touch with a timber merchant who provided him with free wood with which Hugh made bird houses. Richard linked him up with community organisations who then auctioned them for charities. What this illustrates is that it is important not to see people as service users, but as citizens and leaders too, Nick said.

He said when he talked to people in his new Social Leaders programme, they often felt like imposters because of a deeply rooted feeling that leadership is about hierarchy and command and control. ‘We can all be leaders and all be followers’, he’d discovered. It all depends on the context and particular knowledge. We should work ‘in a spirit of curiosity to find each other’s potential’. Leading involves being a distributor and builder of power, using the four behaviours in the Better Way model, and becoming a deep listener and facilitator of change. If more of us can model this, the existing model of leadership would change and create the conditions for those at the sharp end to take more control, he concluded.

Here are some of the points made in the subsequent discussion:

• As leaders, morals and principles are important, but we can all too easily be pulled into simply being managers - and sometimes it’s easier to retreat into management in a crisis because it is a kind of comfort zone.

• Safe spaces for leaders to share thinking and challenges are important - ‘self-reflecting, self-knowledge networks. Too often people feel isolated , under par and overworked.

• Faith in the team is required for this kind of Leadership-Followership model, which involves sharing power and shifting the culture. Trust is critical on both sides. A learning culture must be established, which allows people to make mistakes and push at the envelope rather than always getting things right. ‘Part of being a good leader is knowing when to follow, if someone else is already leading on something you want to happen, just follow and it may (or may not) be appropriate that over time you also offer your leadership skills to support.’

• Curiosity is an important quality, listening before acting. Empathy is needed, but we must start with ourselves.

• Leadership is not just something you do at work, you can be a leader in normal life. ‘I'm interested in the statement "when we become leaders." Isn't that old school thinking of leadership being about a position in an organisations? When did Greta become a 'leader'? The moment she sat down outside the parliament, on her own with a placard?’

• Leaders have to develop facilitation and convening skills, and not avoid the difficult issues. ‘I think that leaders have to be able to hold all sides where trust has broken down or been damaged. This might mean we have to challenge our own "morals and values", and those of our organisations.’

• ‘With increasing diversity within the UK population, how do we harness what that brings to the table and change it brings to leadership debate.’ ‘I would add that diversity needs more than representation, it needs to be deliberately inclusive. Also that without acknowledging the inherent inequalities of the structure, we cannot truly shift the leadership role.’

• ‘EDI without Justice is like football without a goal. You can substitute as many players as you want to have different players on the field- but what is the goal? That's why we have a JEDI approach- we foreground the Justice as the goal. Justice is tackling the injustice and inequality and seeking systemic change....’

• ‘Inclusion inevitably means we're working to replace ourselves with more people who share lived experience of inequity and cultural and social stigma but sometimes it’s important to invest in those people, where that is needed to allow equitable engagement.’

• ‘Feminist leadership principles - self awareness, self care, dismantling bias, inclusion, sharing power, responsible and transparent use of power, accountable collaboration, respectful feedback, courage and zero tolerance - work for me.’

• ‘This might be controversial, but I think there's a lot of talk about leadership at the moment and maybe not enough about managing the highly complex environment we are in. I think management needs re-imagining even more than leadership does. But we can't avoid that because it has to be done.’

• ‘Good looks like leading in your mission and values, not just leading your business. Agree we need to work on building trust, we lack brilliant convening and, in some ways, more importantly facilitation skills for building justice focused collaboration, in braver spaces...’

• How to counter the existing ‘command and control’ model? - here’s what one breakout group said:

  • Overall – call it out and don’t be complicit in it – don’t be sucked in to processes that are tokenistic or window dressing.

  • We must understand our own bias, experiences and values as that will be informing our beliefs and approach.

  • When we are in roles that have perceived power, we must recognise that and be mindful of it.

  • Our systems need a mix of generalists and specialists.

  • What does representative leadership look like and how do we build greater representation – that should be a core function of leadership.

  • We can’t forget that leaders are human too – it’s important we understand the fears and vulnerabilities of people in power.

  • Leadership is often about helping groups build a shared understanding.

  • Beware when people are taking concepts and “doing” them without any care or respect for the underpinning methodology or philosophy of the approach – if you take away or ignore too many pieces.

2. How can we unlock our humanity and imagination?

 In our meetings over the last year, we’ve identified that:

• Our humanity can build bridges and move us to change.

• Collective imagination can make a different future possible.

• There are ways to make a different kind of space to listen deeply to each other, share our stories, and tell new ones.

But some people may feel this is a distraction or are uncomfortable with opening up. How can we overcome that hesitancy and mainstream these approaches?

Phoebe Tickell

Phoebe Tickell from Moral Imaginations explained that through Moral Imaginations she was working with civil society organisations, local authorities and communities to embed imagination into place.

Imagination is an extremely powerful force for change, she said, and humanity can build bridges and power us to change. Imagining allows us not just to see a different future but to feel it. The problem is not that we lack imagination, but that we have often block it.

Children are naturally imaginative as we can see when they play, but ‘imagination gets colonised’ in the pursuit of ‘one right answer’ and we end up with ‘cookie-cutter’ brains. As a consequence, imagination is sidelined into entertainment and is often only reserved for some people in our society who work in the arts, for example. But we all need imagination, so ‘we need to de-colonise and re-wild our imaginations’.

To do this, we require:

• Dedicated time and space as adults to imagine.

• Permission (which is often withheld in a performance culture, where people may fear humiliation or being laughed at if they exercise imagination).

• Help through portals and exercises, which unlocks not just the brain but also feeling.

In the subsequent discussion, these were some of the points made:

• Story-telling is a powerful technique to unlock imagination and humanity. It can be much more effective than simply trying ‘to fight policy with policy’.

• ‘We share more in common than appears…we need to start dreaming again. Martin Luther King din’t have a plan, he had a dream.’

• ‘When I was working as a theatre director often the most important thoughts and breakthroughs came as we had a pint outside of the rehearsal room exactly because one's brains work differently when out of the very instrumental work environment and we were being more ruminative. As Pheobe says our brains really do have different ways of working and it is important to tap in all its ways.’

  ‘There was agreement about the importance of time and space, and also permission to get into that space.

• We should get people to try, and win over hearts and minds that way. These shifts need day-in-day-out practice.

• Good faith is important in helping people who disagree with each other to find common ground.

• ‘This is really hard for people who simply feel they cannot imagine a different life. Creativity is necessarily about being open to change – it takes time and tending to – sometimes also being held. It’s also about conflict… of the individual grappling with their own story, of organisations trying to change, of creating more empathy and tolerance. Collective imagination can help to centre equity into contexts through story-telling and deep understanding.’

• One breakout group talked about the difference between different people and their ability to access imagination and creativity - and how that does differ naturally between people. We also talked about the journey of realising over 10 or 20 years that your imagination and creativity are important and to believe in them. We also touched on the importance of collective intelligence and imagination in teams.

3. How can we remove the roadblocks?

In the course of the last year, we’ve heard that many people at every level can play a part in driving change by:

• Challenging and changing whatever stands in the way, including the deep-seated assumptions that can prevent us from being our best selves.

• Calling out inequalities and abuses of power, and making sure everyone can participate on their own terms.

• Assuming the best in others and seeing difference, conflict and division as an opportunity to pause, seek to understand, and find a fresh way.

But resistance to change is widespread, whether through culture, systems or practices. So how can we get better at overcoming the resistance and removing the roadblocks?

Kristian Tomblin

Kristian Tomblin from Devon County Council explained that he had worked for 15 years in a commissioning role for services for people with complex needs, including the victims of sexual violence. Five years ago he had started a listening exercise and concluded that he was complicit in a service architecture that causes harm. He and others were heavily invested in managerialism and target cultures, and found it hard to imagine beyond what we already practised and thought. The focus was on service optimisation.

Reflecting on how to break down this culture, he said change starts with us, echoing the final Better Way principle. ‘We change the system by changing ourselves’, he explained.

It is important to listen, and not just to make that an add on. This is the real work, not a distraction from it. You need to make time for it, go out and ‘make stories visible’ and don’t just talk to people who agree with you. The currency of achieving is learning, he said. The only rules should be ‘don’t break the law and do no harm’. He tells people he works with to experiment, test and learn, build community and show more empathy.

Change goes viral when empathy is deployed, he concluded, quoting Andy Brogan:

‘Trust is the outcome. Empathy is the practice.

Since behaviour is reciprocal . ..

If we want more change then we should show more empathy.

Change goes viral when empathy is the vector.’

Here are some of the points made in the following discussion:

• Recognising we are part of the problem is a good starting point, and empathy must start with ourselves in order to find genuine authenticity.

• It’s important to listen to people’s stories and develop an ‘empathetic ear’.

• "Be the change" - Ghandi.

• Time-wasting can be a major block to change - it is a well-known technique for those who resist change to string things out in order to dissipate energy.

• You need to go where the energy is, rather than butting your head against a wall. Seek out the people who want to do things differently and work with them. But don’t avoid the difficult issues, or conflict.

• Crises, like the pandemic, can help to unblock the road blocks.

• ‘One of the benefits of the pandemic for those of us privileged to be in roles that allow it, is the opportunity to think differently about our life balance (I don't like the juxtaposition of "work/life balance"). We can use our time to make ourselves as effective as possible as leaders. For me, exercise is essential to this: meditative cycling and climbing which is a complete distraction.’

• Take time to tune in and understand the true dynamics and develop a map of the blocks and enablers, visible and invisible.

• You need to give real permission to create a learning culture, as making mistakes can often end up being punished.

• ‘Positive dissenters are our friends..’

• We need accountability frameworks to ensure change happens and that those with power cannot restrict the pace or extent of change.

• Values matter but the practices we actually follow matter more in making change happen.

• ‘The importance of trust and reaching out, building bridges and being organisations comfortable with bringing together unusual suspects to make change happen and to bridge points of different for common benefit.’

• ‘The voluntary sector can be good at challenging others but less itself and when seeking common ground it can sometimes find a superficial place of agreement’.

Where next?

Steve Wyler, the national co-convenor of A Better Way, explained that we want to build on what we’ve learnt in 2021 and take our work to an even higher level, adapting and changing as we have all along, in order to build a Bigger We. We’ve heard how much our members value the opportunity in our network to share and inspire each other, he said.

The experience of Covid-19 has shown the potential to do things differently and challenges such as global warming and growing poverty demonstrate that we must, explained. We want to grasp the opportunity to widen the conversation, increase our impact and promote systems change. So, subject to the views of the Gathering, Steve said that we plan to:

• Continue with our existing four cells based on the Better Way model, and support regional or local groups where there is appetite for this.

• Set up discussions on the three big cross-cutting questions set out above and also where people tell us they want to work together to tackle common issues and, if there’s an appetite, run a series.

• Building on our roundtable in October 2021 on social care, hold further roundtables on major services and systems and seek subsequent opportunities to influence wider change and bring new people into the network.

• Continue with discussions without formal agendas including our twice monthly drop-in meetings for new members and existing ones who want to touch base, and also look for other opportunities to deepen relationships between members..

• Experiment with different types of meetings – including collective imagination spaces.

 In a poll, 85% of participants said this work programme was about right. Here are some comments left in the chat bar:

• ‘I really like the programme for next year. However, I would also like to have discussions within Better Way about how our principles and behaviours can be applied to some of the specific cultural and societal challenges that threaten to undermine the achievement of the Better Way. These are wider than the systems and structures we directly work in.’

• ‘Yes I agree. Some that I see include: healthy use of social media for young people, the belief that owning expensive stuff/brands (cars, trainers, etc) makes you happier, how do we help young people have healthier attitudes towards body image, etc.’

• ‘Whilst I appreciate that being online has helped Better Way widen and reach out, nonetheless it would be really good to have the face-to-face meetings back please.’

• ‘Is it time for "thought leadership' to become very practical and start running issue-processing sessions for members?’

We then talked about how to increase our influence, with Steve and Caroline outlining their initial thoughts. As our network grows, so do the opportunities for distributed leadership. We hope to discover even more ways for members to play a part in widening and diversifying the network, strengthening its influence and helping it become a catalyst for wider change, they said. For example, we hope to:

• Publish a book of essays and articles by our members early next year.

• Identify thought leaders for new cells.

• Encourage members to spread the word and bring new people into the network, including across the UK.

• Establish a new role of Better Way ‘connectors’ for this purpose, and some may even establish new cells in their areas.

• Create twitter campaigns encouraging our members to take part.

• Explore the idea of ‘buddying’ for members who want to more actively support each other.

We will also be investigating new ways to secure the future of the network, including options for longer term funding, putting the network on a more sustainable footing while also maintaining a light touch and responsive way of working.

Some points made by members in response included:

• ‘Strengthening each other to do better may be a sufficient role and is an important purpose.’

• ‘Over the longer term, be ambitious. This is not a quick fix.’

• ‘We are wondering about, how we connect with other similar networks, if we could produce some "so what" pieces, and if we should attempt to engage with those who disagree.’

• ‘I would be happy to help grow the influence of the network including joining Twitter conversations and coming to small meetings to explain the Better Way’s work to influential people.’

• ‘Today's society is dictated by media and politics. Tomorrow's society could be very different. Connected deeply to itself at every level and in open conversation with itself. Storytelling/networks/culture and independent media are part of this networked society, they help to enable it. Better Way could be part of a larger conversation around this society in transition.’

• ‘A campaign of letters to all our MPs about Better Way work and principles and inviting conversations with them and leading to roundtables hosted by them.’

• ‘A Better Way “training camp”.’

• ‘The mix of people who contribute to Better Way is really helpful. I still think the role of Better Way as a safe, yet challenging place for discussion is good - “re-wilding the conversation”.’

• ‘We do have to target the politicians … we also need to draw in more younger leaders so that they can draw strength and challenge as we do from the Network.”

• ‘It would be great to encourage links between Better Way members around practical challenges - that helps roots our discussions, which sometimes can get a little bit high level and esoteric in the real world challenges we are all facing. The essays can be a start to this.’

• ‘We should also perhaps acknowledge more that there are other networks and sources of insight and expertise that have overlap and with whom we could forge common cause around our principles and concerns.’

In an online poll, 70% said the network should continue beyond the end of 2022 , 30% said they didn’t know, and nobody said it should not continue.

Concluding remarks

Sufina Ahmad

Sufina Ahmad, the Director of the John Ellerman Foundation which supports a Better Way, made some concluding remarks. She said she had personally valued the space created by the network even before the Foundation became involved, and this was her third annual Gathering. Three points particularly struck her from this year:

• Language really matters, it can make things worse, be taken out of context, and can lead to culture wars. She was heartened to take part in a deep and thoughtful conversation today about language, e.g. the language of beneficiaries and grantees, looking at the ancestry of language, what it really means, avoiding practices like greenwashing.

• Resilience had emerged as a key issue - people had always been stretched paper thin, but now vulnerability was being pushed to new levels, particularly as a result of the pandemic. Sharing power and leadership can help sustain us and help us challenge notions of leadership and support new forms.

• Earlier in her life, she had focused on her personal independence, but building a ‘Bigger We’ really resonated with her now. We need to build a better form of ‘interdependence’ and find the right relationships to pursue the good life. But are we doing enough to build this inter-dependence? The network has a wide membership, but it is still missing huge swathes - for example, campaigners. As we build a Bigger We, we need to bring them into the conversation.
  

What people value about a Better Way: quotes from the event

During one break in the Gathering we asked people what they valued about A Better Way, and here are some of the things they said:

• ‘Meeting new people from diverse sectors with similar values, hopes and fears.’

• ‘The opportunity to learn from others which means that my own ideas evolve and improve. I've learned a massive amount from Better Way meetings.’

• ‘I’m a new to the Better Way Network, and tripped over you. But it’s been brilliant to discover a whole swathe of people across the country who are chewing through and finding their way through this dichotomy between service-led solutions and community-empowerment.’

• ‘I value having my brain expanded by Better Way and discussing ideas and concepts above the day to day. I also value the wide variety of experiences from across the country (mostly England I think, we could benefit from some more pan-UK experiences) and the relentless optimism that people have!’

• ‘l always value from Better Way the embrace of thinking, passionate people, and the evolution of the ideas here that keep on being able to provoke as well as nurture my own.’

• ‘I enjoy encountering a variety of different people and diverse range of views. And it would be good to go beyond platitudes. I have in mind hearing from others about how they've overcome problems like listening to people they don't typically speak to, or clarifying what collaboration means in practice, or saying what a culture is and what it's not, or saying how trust was rebuilt, or describing how they reached innovative breakthroughs and so on. Powerful stories like these provide a rich source of learning me thinks.’

• ‘I have benefited from the wonderful relationships that I have built, that have helped me believe in myself. I am a very different person from who I was 4 years ago. My ideas and beliefs are ever changing - surfacing new issues/ideas, making sense of them, embedding them into my practice, then believing them. Better Way is a key contributor to my evolving thinking.’

• ‘Better Way is like jumping into a wild hot spring in winter with the fascination of new depths and a reassuring temperature of thinking that connects you to find purpose with others.’

• ‘Solidarity with challenge. Leadership without ego.’

• ‘I really value being in a safe space and place. Being able to listen to different perspectives. seeing ‘old familiar’ places but also new ad different ones. National perspectives. Thoughtful contributions. Brain food.’

• ‘I love Better Way Network spaces and events - always leave with great brain food.’

• ‘Always great energy and lots to reflect on.’

• ‘For me personally one of the benefits I have taken and continue today to take from A Better Way is that it is the one of the key (and few) places where I have been able to learn, have my skills upgraded and, found support and fellow feeling as a leader. I think that should be an acknowledged purpose of the Network.”

And a challenge:

• ‘This is my first time to the “Better Way” network event - Just want to understand if Better Way is one of the many power systems that may be contributing or maintaining current structural divisions or equip within it culture to embrace those voices to make shared and meaningful change. How many in this space want to give up some of that power that make your lifestyle comfortable!’

Before the Gathering, we also circulated a survey to members and reported back on the results at the Gathering. Everyone who responded said they like the Better Way principles, with 83% saying 'very much'. 94% of respondents also told us they like the model of change which sets out our four behaviours for helping to realise those principles. Comments include: ‘incredibly useful’, ‘I use this regularly in my work’, ‘meaningful no matter what sector you are from’, ‘very much about how as well as what.’ When asked whether the network should continue, 89% said that they believed it should and nobody said it should not.

Roundtable on a Better Way and Adult Social Care

Summary of key points

• There needs to be ‘a rebirth of humanity’, leading to more connection and community. The aim should be to create a new eco-system of mutual support for people within their communities - ‘local people caring for local people with local people’ - as well as more personalised services.

• Change cannot be achieved without listening to people and hearing their stories in a way that focuses on strengths. There need to be a new kind of conversations, in which stories are exchanged and strengths are celebrated. Trusting relationships between residents, communities and professionals also need to be established, in which ‘lanyards are left at the door.’

• Individuals, families, communities, the voluntary sector and businesses as well as services are all part of the system and need to join forces and work together.

• Local authorities must move from being a ‘gatekeeper of public money’ to a partner for residents and voluntary and community groups.

• Resistance within bureaucracies is enormous and requires change at many levels, from services and systems, to culture and mindsets.

• Investment needs to be made in helping communities to connect up people and make sure they are inclusive.

In more detail

The roundtable considered how the Better Way principles and in particular our model of the behaviours required to achieve change might help create better support for adults in future.

The first speaker was Neil Crowther from Social Care Futures, who argued that we all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us. Social Care Futures is seeking to imagine, communicate and create a future where what we currently call social care makes a major contribution to everyone’s wellbeing and which, as a result, will enjoy high levels of public – and hence political – support; and it uses story-telling and imagine to help it do so.

Neil outlined what he called the ‘framing challenge’ at present, moving to a more positive story, for example, from ‘looking after our most vulnerable’ to ‘caring about and supporting each other’.

When organised well, he said, partnerships between local councils and others would weave a web of relationships, an eco-system of support, that primarily supports people in their communities. In this world, people would be the heroes in their own story, rather than being portrayed as vulnerable and passive as they too often are now.

The second speaker was Stephan Liebrecht, the Operational Director of Adult Social Care at Barking & Dagenham council in London. He explained that, when he joined the council, social workers had been largely reactive and their communications were full of jargon. They were undertaking 35 page assessments of need. To help shift from this model, he introduced active listening techniques. In the autumn of 2018, practitioners were asked to focus on the residents’ stories and then to retell these stories, focusing on the positives not deficits - a task which proved hugely difficult for them, initially, because of the cultural shift required. This process gave residents the space to speak about themselves, rather than answering questions from a drop down menu, and allowed practitioners to understand them and assess needs in a much more personalised way. Barking & Dagenham held a celebratory event in which three of these residents told their story, and some of their stories were made into songs. Social workers were then asked to spent time with a voluntary sector provider, a faith or neighbourhood group to explore what they might be able to offer.

These steps have moved them toward a Community Led Adult Social Care System, where social workers become a link between the resident and voluntary sector, and where residents are empowered to improve their lives with the support of the community. This requires the social workers to switch from being gatekeepers of state funding to a partner for residents and community groups. The council’s role has also moved more toward advising and supporting other professionals and community groups in partnership, seeking to promote prevention and early intervention, though still stepping when people need active care.

The final opening speaker was Clare Wightman, the CEO of Grapevine Coventry and Warwickshire, who told us about their work on a Healthy Communities Together project funded by the Kings Fund and the National Lottery Community Fund. Although it was still early days, she wanted to share their insights with us.

Clare stressed the importance of ‘person, place and first hand experience’. It is vital, she said, not to start from the existing institutions but from the people - forming strong relationships, listening to people with lived experience, sharing and building power and joining forces with everyone in the system, which includes not just services but families and businesses. Otherwise it is just ‘reorganising the deckchairs’. Resistance to change is enormous and there are lots of layers at which change is needed, from the services currently visible to everyone, to mindsets.

Their project is based in a particular community in Coventry and started by deep listening with an individual here called ‘Sam’, who has serious mental health issues and who was willing to join their team to help them deeply understand his and others experience of social care. The team also immersed themselves in the local community so that they became ‘part of the local furniture’, which led up to three big conversations with local people in a church, to which more and more people came as word spread. Sam’s story, not of victimhood but of his strengths, was at the centre and the events involved sharing stories and the professionals involved ‘parking their power, and taking their lanyard off’.

They are now at the stage where they want to create a plan for a healthy community, and to grow horizontal power. Six ongoing partnerships have been established and they want to create more across Coventry.

Points made in the subsequent breakout groups and plenary discussion included:

• A revolution is required with a new settlement between the state and communities and a different role for professionals. Trust needs to be built up between the parties.

• The vision should be ‘local people caring for local people for local people’.

• Starting from people’s life stories can lead to a very different perception of needs, and can even save money in some cases, although it is also the case that social care is under-resourced.

• Bureaucratic silos need to be broken down, and co-production must become intrinsic and should also take care not to exclude any groups.

The roundtable ended by inviting three respondents to give their reactions to what they had heard.

Olivier Tsemo from SADACCA, an Afro-Caribbean Community-based Association in Sheffield which has won awards for its services, said that what was required was nothing less than a rebirth of humanity, a ‘good society’, with a blended approach of community, connection and services.

Audrey Thompson from Doncaster, now in her eighties, commented at her surpise on being portrayed as a ‘vulnerable person’ in Covid. She talked about the importance of community social educators and training to help build community connection, which she had been involved in actively in her life. ‘If you cut the roots, you kill the tree’.

Khatija Patel from Ideal for All in Birmingham, a user-led charity and social enterprise working to make life better for disabled, elderly and vulnerable people and their carers, said she agreed with the points made by the previous speakers. It was important not just to join up people and services but also to empower people. And she asked, what next? Would the group continue…

Summing up, Caroline Slocock, the national co-convenor for a Better Way, highlighted the importance of humanity, community and connection in looking at the future of social care, rather than just focusing on discrete services. Thinking radically about social care requires new kinds of conversations between residents and everyone involved to find out what’s not working and what will; forging deeper, trusting relationships within the community, across services and sectors and in the way services are given, as Grapevine’s work vividly illustrated. This is partly about building the power of connection and community to enable people to live the kind of life they want, as set out by Social Care Futures, and also about local authorities, professionals and others sharing their power, as Stephan Liebrecht had described, so that everyone could join forces to create a better system of mutual support and care. What was also clear, from the discussion, she concluded, was how great the barriers to change are and how important it is to share knowledge and insights amongst ourselves, going forward.

Sharing and building power: challenging abuses of power

The topic discussed was how to challenge abuses of power.

The first opening speaker was Jill Baker from the Lloyds Bank Foundation, who spoke about her experience in a range of public and voluntary sector roles across her career. You can listen to what she said here.

The second speaker was Kristian Tomblin who works as Principal Commissioning Manager in a local authority, who told us about his experience in relation to domestic violence services, which he writes about here.

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• we need to understand power, which is often complex, to challenge it.

• Faced with the enormity of change in a sector or system it can all seem too big, but we can try to do what we can. Everyone has power and it is their responsibility to give it away, practising ‘servant leadership’ in which you see your power as underpinning of other people.

• You should start with the assumption that most people want to make a positive difference. Everyone in the public sector, for example, wants to do a good job but too often services aren’t working for the people served and, even though the professionals know this, they keep on with the current system, partly because of fear, inertia, of being blamed if something went wrong.  You have to work hard to create a sense of power to do things differently.

• We need to call it out when you see something wrong and sometimes humility and humour work best.

• We need to move away from old to new forms of power, for example moving from managerialism and specialism to networked governance and radical transparency and listening deeply to people to understand what is really needed. Power begets more power and often in the public sector the symbols of power can themselves be very offputting, from the grand buildings to the fixed policies.

• It can be incredibly hard to ‘turn the ship around’ even with the best will in the world. Just having the right policies is not enough because so many structures and policies and regulations stand in the way.

• Networks of practitioners who support and learn from each other is one way to strengthen the forces of change and exercise new forms of power. A Better Way is itself an example.

• There are very few models of this form of power. It helps to make change real to show that it is possible.

• Those with power need to learn to listen deeply and create space and time to do so. Empathy is important.

• Giving away power in itself won’t always work. You need to equip people, and build relationships with them. ‘Power sharing’ is in danger of becoming a buzz word.

• We really need to up our game with people experiencing distress. Things can easily fall into a negative spiral, with those with power stamping down and consolidating their power over people who are perceived not to be behaving properly eg behaviour management of ‘disruptive’ children in schools. This relates to deep-seated social norms. We need to be able to sit comfortably with people in distress.

• Creating this new form of power takes time, it’s a long journey, and the model is not suited to modern Britain where the corporate model is uppermost.

Putting relationships first: leadership

The topic discussed was: the qualities of leadership that build strong relationships and how to promote them. The opening speakers were Nick Sinclair, who told us about what he had learnt from the New Social Leaders programme he is running at Community Catalysts, and Sophie Kendall from the Oxford Hub who has taken part in that programme.

Key points from the speakers and in the subsequent discussion included:

• We are still in ‘the thick of’ the pandemic, even though we appear to have gone back to normal, and this is still a moment in which relational skills are most important.  The greater use of online meetings has been a leveller and opened up new possibilities, as well as reducing physical connection.

• We can all be leaders, not just managers, and need to find our own style, not be constrained by cultural norms around leadership.

• To be a good leader you need to be able to build good relationships.  The qualities most prized in other leaders in Community Catalyst’s New Social Leaders programme include warmth, selflessness, honesty, kindness, openness, passion, determination, and the ability to build and inspire trust. 

• These kinds of empathetic leaders find the courage to ‘be themselves’, discover strength in their own vulnerability, step out of the way and create space for the new to emerge, rather than trying to specify outcomes in advance.  They realise power in others  and use this for good.

• Command and control leadership and hierarchies can undermine these qualities – the difference between the centralised NHS Volunteer scheme, which didn’t work, and neighbours helping out neighbours during Covid, which did.

• This kind of leadership is not just about qualities but also about behaviours and refining new tools – listening, creating new kinds of spaces, getting out of people’s way, sharing and giving up power.

• We need to challenge existing cultural norms of leadership by creating a new idea of what leadership is for – leaders as ‘community builders’ who create communities of interest, practice and place and build  community inside as well as outside organisations; and we need to explain why this is more likely to create value than command and control and new public management.

 After the meeting, James Dixon wrote this blog about leadership styles.

Sharing and building power: the power of imagination

The topic discussed was how to unlock the power of imagination in order to share and build power. The first opening speaker was Phoebe Tickell who spoke about her work at Moral Imaginations and the use of metaphors and storytelling to stimulate the collective imagination of a different future, including the Impossible Train story which she narrates here.

The second speaker was Athol Halle who talked about what he had learnt when he was CEO of Groundswell, and subsequently, including Groundswell’s use of forum theatre, where homeless people work with the audience to imagine different stragegies for their life, as explained here.

Key points made by the speakers and participants included:

• Techniques to unlock the imagination may to some feel a step too far from the current emphasis on the art of possible, evidence based policy-making and the rational rather than emotional, though everyone in the discussion was positive about the possibilities. 

• Indeed this could be seen as the only way forward: the wrong place to start, given the scale of challenges we face, is from existing bureaucracies and systems and incremental change.  Many of the people who have stimulated widescale changes have been motivated by a ‘dream’.  Hope, fear, hate and love are powerful drivers of change, not just rational forces.

• There is a systematic lack of imagination in society, and it is too often suppressed in our children through the educational system.  We need to recover our ‘inner child’ and use playful techniques to unlock the imagination.

• We need to create new spaces and activities, which allow us to collectively imagine a better future, including retreats and awaydays.

• It’s important this is not just seen as an elite activity and that power imbalances are addressed.  Many people feel disempowered and feel unable or unwilling to engage in imagining change.  Creating enjoyable activities, eg walking, or fishing, in which people can meet and forge new relationships and shift power, though this is often a long process.

• Civil society is itself a strong resource for imagining, dreaming and for visionaries but its skill in innovation and disruption needs to be better understood and valued.

Listening to Each Other: Citizens’ Assemblies

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘Citizens Assemblies: are these a good way to generate better solutions to tough problems? ‘

The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• If our political system cannot embrace methods, such as Citizens’ Assemblies, that widen democratic participation, then that system will be seen as increasingly moribund.

• It’s no good trying to run a Citizens’ Assembly on the cheap.

• It’s critically important who frames the agenda. Combining community organising with Citizen’s Assemblies could be a good way of both framing the agenda and building momentum for change.

• Done well, Citizens’ Assemblies can generate fresh and often bolder responses to entrenched and complex problems.  And at the same time make a contribution to tackling the democratic deficit.

• But they are not the only method, and fundamental change often requires the practice of radical listening, for which smaller more intimate conversations rather than Citizens’ Assemblies may be better suited.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.

In this cell we are exploring the ‘listening to each other’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time is ‘Citizens Assemblies’.

Karin Woodley, thought-leader for this Better Way cell, said that we need to dismantle the filters that we set up when we set out to listen to people, and offer new types of spaces that allow people to tell their own stories, without interruption.

Andy Mycock from the University of Huddersfield spoke of the drivers that have led to the creation of Citizens’ Assemblies. These include the decline in participation in local democracy, and in the national democratic process as well. Some advocates of Citizens Assemblies see them not only as a way to achieve greater participation in public decision making, but also as a means to build voice and agency, and to exercise scrutiny over the formal political process.  It is certainly the case that those who participate do experience a steep learning curve, although the ability to exercise scrutiny is often less obvious.

There are various questions which are difficult to resolve. Should Citizens Assemblies been seen as a complement or a challenge to existing democratic structures? Sometimes indeed they are seen as a threat, by local councillors or MPs for example. But if they therefore have a disruptive effect, could that be regarded in itself as a positive outcome?  Do Citizens Assemblies actually improve the quality of decision making, or not?  And are they addressing the symptoms or the causes of the democratic deficit?

The cost and complexity of Citizens’ Assembles can be considerable, and this presents a barrier to their more widespread adoption.  There are also inherent difficulties about bias and prejudice – they can become vehicles for the projection and perpetuation of established views. And ultimately, because they do not have executive powers, their findings can be rejected or ignored. However, the evidence to date does suggest that in some cases at least they are capable of generating well-informed and well-considered solutions where other methods have made little progress.

Rich Wilson, from OSCA, previously co-founder of Involve, and currently helping to run the Global Citizens Assembly for COP26 spoke next.  

The big innovation of Citizens’ Assemblies, he believes, is sortition, in others words, the selection of people by lot (as is also found in the jury system).  The benefit of this is not only that Citizens’ Assemblies are by definition more inclusive, but also that they often produce more ambitious policy.

Citizens’ Assemblies have potential to generate change, either because they have been established by politicians who are willing to act on the outcomes, or because they serve as a platform for citizen activism. In the former case they risk a debilitating parent-child relationship, and remain within an ‘old power’ framework centralised on governments. In the latter case, the Citizens Assembly itself can constitute a political chamber, and can become a manifestation of a ‘new power’ framework where the political process is more widely distributed across communities.

Looking ahead, the challenges are to design a form of Citizens’ Assembly which involve larger numbers (beyond the upper limit of 100 or so at present) and which can evolve into a permanent institution.

Discussion

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: Can Citizens Assemblies generate better solutions to tough problems? In the feedback and further discussion participants offered the following responses:

We need to encourage politicians to embrace this way of doing things, or if they won’t, the political system itself will need to change

• It was pointed out that politicians tend not to like Citizens’ Assemblies as they are seen as challenging their power.

• However, this is not always the case and in Newham the elected Mayor has established the first permanent Citizens’ Assembly, using the principle of sortition.  

• We asked ourselves whether we should we be trying to persuade the existing political parties to adopt more distributed democratic processes such as Citizens’ Assemblies, or whether we need to establish a new political party with a primary aim of giving away power?

Citizens’ Assemblies only add value when they are designed and run to the highest standards

• Citizens’ Assemblies run on the cheap can lead to poor processes and undermine the concept.

• There is a need for quality assurance, and protocols, to ensure that Citizens’ Assemblies operate well.

Community organising can be a good way to frame the agenda for a Citizen’s Assembly

• There is a fundamental different between a Citizens’ Assembly which is set up to inform and guide an existing power holder, and one that is set up to challenge a prevailing system.

• It was felt that a prior exercise in community organising, or something equivalent, is needed, to frame questions which are meaningful for the people who participate, and which can also build momentum for action to follow.

What really matters is radical listening

• Citizens’ Assemblies function in a political and academic context, and they don’t necessarily lend themselves to a process of listening without a predetermined agenda, especially where the scope of the inquiry is limited by powerful institutions.  

• Citizens’ Assemblies can have a place in developing solutions to complex problems, especially those where there are not already sharp party political dividing lines.

• However, they should not be seen as a substitute for other types of listening exercise, especially small-scale more intimate discussions, which can create spaces for fresh and creative ideas to emerge, and those, some felt, may prove the more powerful means to accomplish a deeper change.

More information

To find out more, see the following articles which were circulated to participants before the event:

• https://newint.org/features/2021/02/08/defibrillating-democracy

• https://carnegieeurope.eu/2020/11/05/getting-climate-citizens-assemblies-right-pub-83133 

Joining forces across sectors, including with the private sector

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘joining forces across sectors, including with the private sector’.

The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• The business sector has resources at its disposal that are far greater than anything the charity sector could ever hope to deploy.

• It is therefore potentially a huge force for positive change, especially if companies can make a shift to discover their core social purpose.

• The charity and wider social sector can encourage that to happen, but that means going well beyond asking for money.

• It means finding better ways to build alliances and join forces across sectors, inviting companies to help discover the solutions, and help to design new approaches.

• On both sides we need to recognise and respect the ‘different worlds’.

• There will be misunderstanding, disappointments, and bad experiences. But we shouldn’t allow that to become the barrier to trying again. 

• Social sector organisations will achieve most when they approach businesses with positive intent, and assume the same positive intent in them as well.

• It is important to generate small wins, to keep the momentum. And to build on that with creativity and ambition.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change, which some have called the Better Way ‘beachball’: 

In this cell we are exploring the ‘joining forces’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time was Joining Forces across sectors, including with the private sector: How can we build alliances not just between the voluntary and public sectors but also with the business sector?  

As Cate Newnes Smith, thought-leader for this cell, pointed out, collaborations with businesses often work best where there is one clear theme where a difference can be made in people’s lives, rather than spreading efforts too thinly, and where the charities are not simply approaching companies with a begging bowl.

Presentations

We first heard from Tom Levitt, former MP and author of the Company Citizen.

He started by saying that Corporate Social Responsibility is insufficient. It is optional, short term, input led, and usually about fundraising and team-building rather than about making change. 

Rather the focus should be on ‘purpose’, a reason for being which goes beyond, or even comes in front of, making money for a company’s owners. The very term company derives from the Latin meaning to ‘break bread with’ – a social not just economic purpose. Over a century ago the Lever brothers, W.H. Smith, Jessie Boot, and others founded companies which had a real social purpose.  

The potential for businesses to make a difference is huge. The turnover of Oxfam is about £1m a day. This is equivalent to a single large Tesco store. If just 1% of the business sector’s revenue were to be applied to doing good that would dwarf what charities can achieve.

In recent years the funding provided to charities from private businesses has reduced. But in some cases this is because the businesses are taking on social projects themselves. For example the Wates company is training prisoners so that on release they can take up jobs in the construction industry. This is good for the business too, helping to create a skilled and potentially loyal workforce.

Tom pointed out that more companies are now addressing climate change, especially the FTSE 100 companies. 40% of all investment is now ‘climate sensitive’, according to the World Economic Forum.

Tom set up Fair4You as anti-poverty private company, to provide an alternative to high cost lenders. Capitalism, said Tom, is a toolbox, and the tools can be used to maximise profit, or to maximise good, or somewhere in between.  It is in the interests of business to put things right. For example poverty is not good for business, if people can’t afford to buy their products. Climate change is not good for business, because it raises far too many unpredictable risks. 

The social sector has its own unique role, Tom acknowledged. But in partnering with business, and acting as advocate, in raising the gaze of business from the short term to the long term, and in raising the moral and practical issues, it is possible to establish a win-win situation for business, the planet and society, and that he believes is the way to go.

We then heard from Mel Smith, Deputy CEO at Grapevine Coventry & Worcestershire.

Mel explained that Grapevine’s work is all about creating deeper relationships between people, sometimes by being playful, introducing the unusual, with elements of hope and joy and music.

During the pandemic Grapevine hosted a series of ‘Summits’ and learned a great deal about the process of gathering people together to bring about change. For example, who should be there, how should the discussion be framed to achieve the best possible outcome, how can the energy from the event be harnessed?

A Public Sector Summit came first, involving national as well as local contributors, and this addressed three questions:

• How can we keep shared humanity as a motivator?

• How can we model and normalise new ways of working around permission, risk, and shared purpose?

• How can we continue to collaborate together on end goals and outcomes that meet everyone’s needs?

This was followed by a public sector ‘thinkers and doers’ group, which continues to meet.

The Business Summit built on this learning. Grapevine was able to draw on relationships which had been formed over time, before the pandemic, with businesses which had connection and belonging at their heart, and which seemed to be well placed to support the Grapevine mission to end marginalisation and isolation.

For example Grapevine had started to build a relationship with Drapers, a café/bar, and Drapers agreed to host Grapevine social living rooms. The management were willing to say ‘Yes’ to Simon who asked if he could buy a coke and blackcurrant cordial for the same price as their cheapest drink and sit there as long as he wanted. And as the relationship deepened, Drapers provided a Christmas meal for a group of people Grapevine was working with, and discussed their staff induction with Grapevine. They decided that they should position themselves as a community-facing business.  

It was becoming clear, said Mel, that town centres need to be destinations that are more than just about shopping. They also need to develop as places for sociability and belonging. So the Business Summit explored two big questions:

• How can we improve our recovery prospects by making sure that behind our shop fronts the door opens to a range of experiences for socialising and belonging?

• How can we make sure that connection, sociability and belonging are hard-wired into re-imagining the future of our high streets, and suburban core?

It felt important to have many voices around the table, including for example speakers from local and national companies, and the Business Improvement District leads. 

Grapevine had never before really thought about the business sector in such depth.  Mel said, ‘It is hard, we are trying to understand each other’s world, and what change we can make together’.

A cross-sector working group, including Grapevine, the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Chamber of Commerce, has been formed. The Summit has led to a discussion with the Coventry Building Society, and they have decided to fund a community organiser post to work specifically with the business sector, able to connect with those at grass roots levels but also speak to those who hold power and make decisions in Coventry. Grapevine is also working with an artist to design resting spaces, and is in discussions to establish them with companies across the City.

It really feels like entering a different world, said Mel. It is important, she said, to gain a really deep understanding of each other, developing the local contacts and relationships, sharing tangible examples including local stories as well as things that are happening elsewhere in the country, which show the potential of what can be done together and which demonstrate the aspiration and inspiration for change. And also small wins that can keep the momentum and appetite for change going.

Discussion

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: ‘How can we build better alliances with the business sector?’  In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:

We need to understand better what is likely to attract a business into an alliance

• We are likely to achieve most if we can discover the shared value, the mutual benefit. For example,  the common ground might be the well-being of people in the community where the business operates, and where its employees and customers come from. 

• It is usually a good idea to approach the business as a prospective partner not just as a prospective funder. It is attractive for businesses to be positioned as leaders or pioneers, and ideally as a major part of the solution. Businesses can offer leverage, not just money or volunteering days

• We need to remember that many businesses will need to be persuaded of a business case, and need to believe that there is potential for financial or reputational benefit, even if that is likely to come about indirectly.

• Social sector organisations may be able to offer routes to customers or influence or funding.  They may also have specific products such as disability awareness training which the company can benefit from.

• It is helpful, some felt, to think about alliances and joining forces rather than partnerships.

Suspicion and prejudice exist on both sides and must be recognised and overcome

• It is not easy to build good relationships across sectors. There are likely to be differences in motivation, in culture, even in world views. There are likely to be many misunderstandings and disappointment on both sides. 

• Charities can sometimes be viewed as a soft touch by unscrupulous businesses, and treated badly, especially if they are seen simply as a route to attracting public funds, or establishing a better public image. Equally, unscrupulous charities can treat businesses as a soft touch, telling them whatever they want to hear to attract money, and delivering very little in return.  

• It is not surprising then that the voluntary sector often has a prejudiced view of the business sector. But it is useful to remember that any large company can often be experienced as positive or negative by different charities at different times. And while a bad experience with a single company can easily generate a psychological barrier to future relationships with the business sector as a whole, that is not a sufficient reason to give up on the attempt. Keep trying, it was said.

• Equally, it is not surprising that the business sector often has a jaundiced view of the ‘begging-bowl’ charity, and often underestimates or undervalues the skills in the social sector. But charities and other social sector organisations are experts in their field, and there is a more respect in the relationship if they can establish that from the start. And moreover many of the people working in the social sector have highly developed business skills – some, for example, are highly entrepreneurial and have expertise in managing complexity. The more contact businesses have with social sector organisations, the more likely they are to realise that.

Welcoming spaces to meet and positive intent are often the keys to success

• It was felt that, to start with, we simply need to create better opportunities for the two sectors to meet, so that there are more opportunities to overcome misconceptions on both sides, and build relationships.

• But the interactions need to be positive from the outset. Social sector organisations should offer a warm and welcoming space for businesses, to reach hearts and not just minds.  

• It is essential to set out with positive intent and assume that this positive intent is shared by others. When those in the social sector approach businesses with suspicion, and mistrust their motives, it is much less likely that something worthwhile will happen.

Future meetings

• 19th October, 3.00pm-4.30.  Joining forces to inspire, rather than to control: If, in our collaborations, we seek to control the actions of others we may be preventing the growth of something bigger, a wider social movement. So, can we ‘let go’ when we collaborate, without losing our way?

Putting relationships first: building good relationships in adversity and conflict

The topic discussed was how to build and sustain good relationships in adversity and conflict and how we can manage stress and conflict creatively.

The opening speakers were Neil Denton, the co-founder of the After Disasters network at Durham University who has also been working with the Relationships Project on the Bridge Builder’s Handbook; and Roger Martin from the Mindset Difference, which works with people and organisations to help them find innovative new answers when disagreements inhibit progress.

Key points made by the speakers and participants included:

• Bridging capital (ie relationships between different communities), unlike bonding capital (relationships between people), has been weakened by Covid if anything. There has been a growth of tribalism, for example over Brexit and in the culture wars, and some differences have become toxic.

• Conflict can lead to innovation and if we can manage it well it could be an enormous game-changer.

• It helps to find the shared objective and create a common objective – the ‘we not the me’.

• Relationship building is critical to breaking down barriers between people.

• Disagreements are inevitable but can be dealt with in healthy ways.

• Listening is a critical skill - listening with ears and eyes and heart. Humans have a deep need to be heard but this is hard: everyone has their own filters and triggers and there can be pent up emotions and fears.  Assuming good intentions on all sides helps as does curiosity and compassion. Hearing is not the same as agreeing.

• Knowing oneself and understanding one’s triggers is helpful– we need to listen deeply to our own thoughts as well as to other people.

• It’s important to create safe, courageous spaces to provide the creative conditions to find a way forward and where people are not phased by disagreements and difference. It’s the process and the journey that matter not the destination.

Here are the 5 principles from the Bridgebuilder’s Handbook drawn up by Neil Denton for the Relationships Project.

Putting relationships first: Seeing people as the solution not the problem

The topic discussed was: seeing people as the solution, not the problem, acting as enablers, seeing people not as consumers or beneficiaries or vulnerable but as citizens who help create the changes they need and can often lead the way, and present those we help as having agency and potential, rather than problems.

The first opening speaker was Edel Harris, the CEO of Mencap, who spoke about her own experience as a mother of her disabled son, and told us about the steps Mencap is taking to be genuinely led by people with learning disabilities and how they are engaged in co-production and personalisation of services.

The second speaker was Alison Navarro who drew on her wide experience, including as CEO of Community Action Sutton, to emphasise the importance of asset-based community development and community organisation and power, with the use of emergent thinking and storytelling and the sharing of lived experience. She stressed that you need to focus on the change we want to see, not the problem and talked about the particular value of safe spaces for people with lived experience to open up, facilitated by people who can help use their experience as a catalyst for wider change.

Key points made in discussion were:

• We need to focus on the change we want, not the problem, start looking at what’s strong, not what’s wrong.

• But we are driven by a deficit culture. People with learning disabilities, for example, are as diverse as the rest of us and have many different assets but are too often defined by their condition and in order to campaign for Covid vaccinations for them campaigners had to define them as vulnerable.

• Teams that are part of the community and include community members in them can be powerful.

• Asset-based community development is one way forward, using techniques like emergent thinking, story-telling, the sharing of lived experience, training local people to be community led researchers, creating safe spaces, community power and organising.

• ‘Leading from behind’, carrying out a facilitator role, putting the beneficiary in a position of power, starting at grass roots and working upwards, is part of this. Emergent thinking means sharing learning together.

• Relationships are key to this new model – we need to create new ‘relational spaces’ – and assume that everyone starts from a position of good intent.  These need to be places of safety.  As you open up new spaces, you open up new needs.

• Buurtzog is one model of empowered teams enabled to empower those they work with.  Large organisations can do this too – eg Mencap – if broken down to lots of individual human relationships. 

• This approach needs lots of attention to detail and small things, building relationships one to one. You need to take one chunk at a time.

Roundtable - doing things differently in the North

This event, held online on 14th July 2021, was hosted by Laura Seebohm, Better Way Convenor in the North, and brought together many people - public and voluntary sector, community businesses and private sector, including individuals and organisations who are connecting institutions and individuals - who are doing things differently in the North.

Introducing the topic, Laura explained that over the last year there has been much interest and some cynicism about the Government’s commitment to ‘levelling up’ and what this might mean for people in the North and Midlands.  At the same time, there are many places across the North and Midlands where people and communities are already doing ground-breaking things.  This is patchy and diverse, but momentum is building to do things in a very different way.  Several people had suggested that the Better Way model in Time for a Change captures the practices that will deliver real change, she explained, and the purpose of the event was to try and tease out if there were common threads from what is already happening in the north and midlands that could be applied elsewhere.

As well as lively discussion among the participants, there were four opening presentations and also two respondents , and you can watch these below.

Opening presentations:

Mark Smith, Director of Public Service Reform for Gateshead Council

Charlotte Carpenter, Executive Director Growth and Business Development, Karbon Homes

Sommer Springer, Trauma and Wellbeing Co-ordinator, Changing Lives, Wolverhampton

Samantha Abram, Asset Coach from The Brick, Wigan

Respondents

Rosie Lewis, Head of Policy for Imkaan

Sue Pearson, Chief Executive of Heeley City Farm, Sheffield

Concluding the discussion, Caroline Slocock, the national co-convenor for a Better Way, remarked on how each of the speakers in different ways had emphasised the importance of principles and process to delivering change. Their contribution and the input from participants had shown that it was possible to identify common threads from which others could learn. She grouped these under the four dimensions of the Better Way model, as these provided one framework for doing so:

• Listening to each other, with many of the speakers talking about the importance of listening to those least heard now, because that is the only way to find out what’s not working and what will.

• Sharing and building power, with the examples described vividly demonstrating that we have more power than we think to make change happen and we can also empower others to bring about change in their lives.

• Joining forces, across organisations, because very often we need to change the system not the person, the speakers had said, and we can’t do that alone.

• Putting relationships first, creating relationships as the norm in organisations, both with those who seek help and amongst ourselves and across organistions.

The speakers had also demonstrated the importance of the learning journey, sharing and learning as you go along with generosity of spirit, which underlined the value of events and networks like these.

Sharing and building power: building inclusive and equitable communities

The topic discussed was how to create inclusive and equitable communities of place and interest.

The opening speaker was Sonya Ruparel from Turn2Us, who talked about her experience at Action Aid setting up a new international feminist network, with 70% of women from the global south; and, at Turn2 US, of building a new accountability framework and, most recently an alliance of grant-makers.

Some key points made by the speaker and participants were:

• Many existing communities are not inclusive or equitable and it’s important to recognise that ‘who we are’ may be the problem. Actively seeking to diversify and change who is involved to make sure that no group or vested interest dominates and to rectify power imbalances is part of the answer.

• Building inclusive and equitable communities takes time, because you have to identify a common problem and build a common cause, genuinely listening to and learning from each other.

• It’s important to be able to surface conflict, be able to feel comfortable with it and recognise that it’s ok to disagree.  But it is often hard, particularly for those with least power in a community, to do this.

• Techniques and clear ground rules to create equity of voices can be really valuable, as some voices will otherwise dominate and, in the context of organisational alliances, it is often those with most money and other resources who do.  Online meetings have helped to reduce these power imbalances, as they have an equalising effect.  Other techniques include: talking to each other during a walk, rather than holding a formal meeting, enforcing ‘equality of speaking’, and genuine shared decision-making eg through voting.

• Being accountable to each other is important.

• Division is being created through the culture wars, especially on trans issues, which is tearing people who might otherwise find common cause apart.

Joining Forces: imbalances and inequalities

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘Imbalances and inequalities: How can we recognise the imbalances and inequalities that exist in collaborations and agree standards for behaviour that enable participation by all?’

The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• Organisations operate in a highly competitive funding environment and this can exacerbate imbalances and inequalities within partnerships. 

• Dominant partners can sometimes abuse their power, and in the worst cases this needs to be called out more, and mobilised against.

• On the other hand it is possible to recognise and embrace disagreement and conflict, in ways that allow this to become a stimulant to innovation.

• And things often work best when we start by assuming the best, rather than the worst, in others.

• Furthermore, there are techniques and tactics which can be used to help everyone appreciate better what each partner brings, and skilled connectors can also play a useful role.

• Above all, establishing a common purpose, and seeing the bigger picture, especially when this is done together with those who are beneficiaries, and those working at the front line, can encourage more generous and less self-interested behaviours.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change, which some have called the Better Way ‘beachball’:

In this cell we are exploring the ‘joining forces’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time was ‘How can we recognise the imbalances and inequalities that exist in collaborations and agree standards for behaviour that enable participation by all’.

As Cate Newnes Smith, thought-leader for this cell, pointed out, lives are complex, and public services generally try to compartmentalise needs, but this leaves may gaps, and that’s one of the main reasons we need to join forces. ‘Joining forces’ is a helpful concept she felt, because it implies combining the power of organisations, rather than them doing their own things.

Cate has found it difficult to find instances where inequalities in partnerships have truly been successfully addressed. She shared an example of a service ‘alliance’ between an NHS Trust and 12 charities where the NHS England commissioners of the service made deliberate attempts to address inherent inequalities in the partnership, e.g. by requiring that £4.5m of the £24m available needed to be distributed to the charities. But despite this, the standard top-down contract management model which NHS England has applied has not been helpful for alliance building and sharing of power.

We also had a presentation from Arvinda Gohil, CEO of Central YMCA.  She pointed out that in partnerships between organisations there is often an inherent inequality, where one is dominant, adopts the leadership role and is the gateway to the money. This can be aggravated by funders and commissioners who want the reach that comes from partnerships but prefer to deal with just one organisation, because this keeps things simple for themselves.

Contractual relationships can be constructed to create an ‘upper hand’ for a larger, more powerful partner, over a smaller, less experienced organisation. Arvinda spoke of her experience when she ran a housing association in the North, newly set up to improve access to housing for the Black community, and partnered with another much larger asset-rich housing association, to be the developer of new housing. The contract stipulated that the developer would retain profits over an agreed pricing level and in the event the scheme was highly profitable. In this case Arvinda was eventually able, but only with the help of a third party, to negotiate a profit-share agreement.

More recently, Arvinda was leading a smaller organisation which merged with a larger one because it was not financially viable on its own, in order to safeguard services for a poor community in London. However, following the merger, the dominant partner asserted its authority and ability to overrule, repeatedly saying ‘we own you’. This led to a difficult relationship, one that Arvinda eventually felt she had no option but to leave.

More positively, Arvinda has now found herself in the role of running a larger organisation which has offered its sports and exercise facilities as well as staffing support to a small youth club working with young Black and Asian men, in exchange for a small affiliation fee. This is working well, said Arvinda, and she believes that it is indeed possible to live the positive values of collaboration, but this requires determination and commitment from those in leadership roles, especially where they are the stronger partner.

Steve shared a further example, where some years ago Groundswell, a small homelessness charity, which was struggling financially at the time, was transferred into the ownership of Thames Reach, a much larger charity, to ensure its survival. Groundswell subsequently thrived, and when it reached the point where it could once again operate independently, Thames Reach allowed this to happen, without requiring anything in return. This, Steve felt, was an outstanding example of selfless behaviour by a larger organisation, but one that is unfortunately uncommon.

Discussion

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: ’What standards of behaviour in collaborations would enable participation by all?’ In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:

What gets in the way

• Many organisations operate in a highly competitive environment and leaders are programmed to protect their own organisation first and foremost. Unless we can change this, and encourage leaders to think less about their own organisation and more about the shared impact they can achieve with others, the harmful inequalities and imbalances will persist.

• We cannot assume that positive and generous motivations will always be present, and some people and organisations are driven by a need to dominate. 

• Even when people are willing to work together for a common aim, their own behaviour can get in the way, for example, if someone asserts that their favoured solution is the only one that will work, and is unwilling to make space for other possibilities to emerge.

• Where funding depends on the partnership, and one partner holds the purse strings, there is an inevitable inequality and imbalance.

• In service delivery partnerships, the imposition of predetermined targets can become a means of control and this can reinforce power imbalances.

How to generate positive behaviours

• A shared common aim, where shared investment leads to shared success, is more likely to drive positive behaviour than a set of standards.

• A focus on what can be done that actually makes a difference to people’s lives, with co-production as a guiding principle, including involvement of recipients of a service and of people at the front line of delivery, developing priorities together, can generate a shift away from organisations positioning themselves for their own advantage.

• In the best partnerships everyone is respected for whatever they bring, whether that is resources, or connections, or expertise, regardless of the size or strength of the organisation. 

• A state of mind that starts with assuming the best of everyone else in the partnership can help a great deal to bring out good behaviours in the group.

• There are techniques and tactics which can be deployed where there are imbalances, for example different forms of meetings that enable greater participation and encouraged shared solutions.

• Restorative practice can help to shift organisational culture in favour of better collaboration, for example being non-judgmental, person-centred, and empathic. Appreciative inquiry can help people understand what everyone wants to achieve and what everyone can bring to the shared task.

• Leadership needs to be flexible, agile, and adaptive, using evaluation to learn and improve impacts, which can help to build a culture of collaboration, rather than seeking to prove impact, which can make collaboration more difficult.

Collaboration in a competitive environment

• In the commercial world, companies which are engaging in fierce competition for customers can nevertheless sometimes find themselves able to collaborate, for example by sharing best practice, or by establishing buying clubs, to get better deals.

• Organisations tackling complex and wicked social problems will need to collaborate, to achieve any worthwhile impact, even though they are at the same time in competition for funds. This is a tension that they need to understand and manage.

• It is sometime possible to push back against commissioners in a concerted way, and encourage them to adopt commissioning models that will lead to more collaborative and less competitive practices.

The role of connectors

• Connectors (trusted people who are skilled in identifying common interests, and can make introductions and encourage co-operation) can play a big part in establishing and maintaining productive and well-balanced partnerships, and investing in the connector role can be very worthwhile.

Embracing conflict

• Positive collaborations need to be willing to recognise and embrace disagreement and conflict, not least where there are complex ‘wicked’ problems that don’t lend themselves to simple solutions. 

• If something is not working well it is better to address this openly and have the difficult conversation, rather than allowing things to fester. Conflict should, it was suggested, become normalised, making it a stimulant to innovation rather than a stimulant to divisiveness.

• It can be helpful to make potential disagreements and conflicts explicit at the outset of any collaboration.

Shifting power

• Sticking together in a partnership requires team work and discipline, but when that is achieved and sustained through thick and thin, it is possible to shift power imbalances.

• The most powerful thing is the truth, it was said. Those who have small amounts of money or other resources, but have the truth (especially when connected to a social injustice) can find themselves able to influence others and win allies.  

The need to call out abuses of power

• Sharing power is really hard for many individuals and institutions, including local government and the civil service, who have a tendency to accumulate and hoard and sometimes abuse power.

• There is a need sometimes to call this out, mobilise to challenge abuses of power, and stand by those who are treated unfairly.  

And finally…

• In partnerships there is a need to make a deliberate effort to stand back and appreciate the whole in order to ‘see the elephant’, otherwise people are likely to have very different and narrow perspectives, and fail to appreciate the wider task:

Future meetings

• 21st September, 3.00pm-4.30. Joining forces across sectors, including with the private sector: How can we build alliances not just between the voluntary and public sectors but also with the business sector? 

• 19th October, 3.00pm-4.30.  Joining forces to inspire, rather than to control: If, in our collaborations, we seek to control the actions of others we may be preventing the growth of something bigger, a wider social movement. So, can we ‘let go’ when we collaborate, without losing our way?

Listening to Each Other: How can we listen together?

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘How can we listen together? Where leaders from different organisations come together to listen to those they serve, and work with them in a positive and motivating way to bring about change.’

The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• Collective listening can be a powerful tool. Especially when partnerships are formed first and foremost to build and share knowledge, in ways that can produce social change, rather than simply to design and deliver a set of services.

• Listening well is difficult. It matters who is in the room, who is included, as well as who is absent.

• It also matters how the listening is practiced. Operating at a level of intimacy, allowing people to enter into each other’s lives and build trust, can produce the best results.

• We need to remember that listening only brings about change when it is acted upon. ‘Voices need to have consequence in the context of now’, it was said.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.

In this cell we are exploring the ‘listening to each other’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time is ‘How can we listen together.’

Karin Woodley, thought-leader for this Better Way cell, pointed out that listening is hard. To drive people-powered innovation we need to step into our service users’ experiences and understand the limitations of our own biases, experiences, knowledge and judgements, and create safe spaces for people to share their own experiences and desires.

In the current economic and political climate, when organisations are struggling for their own survival, it is a challenge to lead change through partnership. But as leaders we can come together, listen better, and allow the knowledge and lived experience of our service users to be shared. In this way we can gain a holistic view of what is happening in service users’ lives and so better understand drivers of exclusion and poverty.

Some years ago, when Karin was CEO of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, she worked with Imperial College, Oxford University, and local schools in South London. The starting point was listening to Black parents, and it quickly became clear that the parents were highly aspirational for their children, but that their children were being characterised and limited within the school system. As a result of this partnership undertook research to understand the cognitive skills required for different roles in the built environment, from architecture to engineering. This shifted the practice in the participating schools regarding the teaching of STEM subjects (science, tech, engineering, maths), and also led to fresh approaches to work with excluded young Black people, for example opportunities to travel to the United States to take part in Nasa-sponsored competitions.

The challenges we face as society are so much bigger than any one of our organisations, said Karin. We need a new era of working together, deploying tools like radical listening, to create systemic responses to match the scale of the challenges we face.

Sally Young spoke from her long experience in the health service and the voluntary sector in the North East on England. She has realised, she said, that she has not always been a good listener. And that it is wrong for those who work in the charity sector to assume they are necessarily superior at listening, compared to those from other sectors.  

About ten years ago, she said, Newcastle reviewed its contracts for children and young people’s services with local organisations, and decided it would save money to move to a single contract. A large national organisation won the contract, and local agencies were de-funded.  In response, Sally helped to establish a consortium, to encourage local organisations to work together, and this led to some shared contracts, and improved connectivity across agencies. But it was not easy to maintain solidarity. As people changed the values also changed, and organisations under pressure were sometimes less willing to share.

Sally pointed out that beliefs, values and principles, and relationships and trust between people, are needed to bring about change.  There is no point in just listening and gathering information if we do nothing with it to challenge structural problems, not just the superficial ones, she said.

Lawrence Walker, from A New Direction spoke next. Listening, done well, is an art form, he said. It is personal and provocative; it disrupts power and inspires new action. It takes years to be a skilful listener. Most organisations listen for their then own ends, and while this can be useful, it limits the potential for change is limited, because no single organisation can account for the complexity of people’s lives, or can have the influence to bring about wider change. We need to open up the process and have more shared endeavours, he said.

Orientation is fundamental to successful collaboration. People need to understand what they are signing up to, and the nature and level of investment required, and they need to be prepared for the nuances and politics of relationships.

Risk-taking, generosity, and giving away power is easier said than done. The process needs to be held by someone, and that person needs to be willing to be accountable to the group.

Collective listening processes can be genuinely exciting. People will bring their wisdom and specialisms, but at a deeper level it is the interplay of cultures – language, filters, frames – which produces appreciation and engagement. ’Be ready to be surprised and have one’s organisational bias challenged,’ said Lawrence.

He described a recent collaboration about young people in the pandemic which involved five organisations. This, he suggested, might be about the limit – collaboration becomes more complicated the larger the number. This particular collaboration was hard, but worthwhile. One of the insights was that allowing voices to be heard is important, but it is not enough. ‘Voices need to have consequence in the context of now’, he said.

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: What does good collective listening look like?  In the feedback and further discussion participants offered the following responses:

We need a shift in organisational culture and practice

• Collective listening needs to be much more integral to how organisations work together, and become part of the prevailing culture, it was suggested.

• This requires a big shift in our practice, moving beyond the efforts by individual organisations to gather feedback about their own work or their own plans. It needs to start with an ambition to discover people’s experiences of a system or within a place.

• The purpose of collaboration should best emerge not simply from a pooling of organisational interests but rather first and foremost from listening to the people the organisations exist to serve.

• Listening can lead to fundamental changes in the practice of an organisation. We heard how Shelter was approached by tenants on an estate in the North of England. They wanted to take legal action to prevent social and private landlords increasing their rents (by 60%). Legal action wasn’t possible (the landlords were operating within the law) but rather than simply saying, sorry we can’t help, the charity then worked with the residents to develop a campaign, using community organising principles, and this led to the landlords backing down. This would not have happened without listening. 

• This outcome was not simply due to a local community organiser. It also required a different mind-set across the whole Shelter team, with staff in different parts of the organisation being willing to listen and act accordingly, going beyond the confines of their traditional service.

Methods for collective listening

• Collective listening needs preparation and structure. When there is a clear reason for listening the exercise is likely to be more productive. 

• It is important to take account of both the different views of those who want to be listened to, and also the different agendas of those who are doing the listening.

• It matters who is present and who is absent. If those who control funding and have ability to make decisions are absent, it will be much harder for collective listening to produce the changes that are needed.

• Listening is, however, not just about getting people from different agencies into the room to listen. The process needs to be inclusive. There needs to be human-to-human empathy.  Speaking kindly to each other goes a long way.

• It can help if listeners and those listened to can mirror each other, and so can more easily relate to each other.

• Putting people at ease, paying attention to the layout of the room, can also matter a great deal.

• Listening without an agenda is important. Well-meaning organisations often start with a stance, their idea of what might help people.  Whereas it is best to start with discovering the skills in the room, recognising the experience and gifts that people themselves have, allowing their insights to inform decision-making. 

• It was also suggested that citizens’ assemblies can be a useful model for collective listening, particularly in respect of complex challenges, where there are opposing views on how to proceed.

Should we be listening better to voices from the past?

• In China, it was explained, there is a different culture, where people are much more likely than in the West often look to historical precedents to find solutions to modern challenges. It was suggested that appeals to historical wisdom can help to overcome short term organisational self-interest. 

• On the other hand, it was also pointed out that a reliance on historical precedent can perpetuate and reinforce embedded inequalities.

We need to understand when listening is useful (and when not)

• We need to develop our understanding of when listening is most useful, and when not. The idea that the voices of lived experience should inform decision-making has become much more prominent in recent years in some parts of the charity and public sectors. But in fact, the value of such voices is far higher for some types of decision-making than for others, it was said.

• Failing to recognise this can produce a reductive box-ticking set of behaviours, rather than one that really drives social change.

Final comments

Karin Woodley, in reflecting on the discussion, suggested that a key challenge is how to create strategic partnerships or collaborations that are not just about developing or delivering a service, but more fundamentally about building our collective knowledge, in a way that allows unheard voices to drive decision-making and bring about change.

She also said that in her experience, the best listening results from efforts to make conversations intimate, allowing people to build trust by entering into each other’s lives.   

Putting Relationships First: Turning organisations into communities

The topic discussed was how to turn organisations into communities, not machines, following on from the topic considered in February of how to make relationship-building the purpose of organisations. We started the meeting by asking everyone to give examples of this, good and bad, from their experience.

In the discussion, four main ways emerged to unlock humanity at work:

• Creating new activities that bring staff together in informal ways, eg over cakes and coffee without a formal agenda, or engaging everyone in a common task where new relationships could form.

• Sharing our whole selves in every aspect of what we do at work, often through intentional one-to-one conversations.

• Finding the right ‘touch points to demonstrate a different, more human way of doing things, for example, understanding that some forms of communication may be impersonal or even threatening and using more personal approaches.

• Creating structures and formal practices which create a sense of community.  This is not about dismantling hierarchies or pretending that everyone in an organisation has equal power.  What seems to work much better is creating ways in which people genuinely get to know each other and look out for each other eg shared work lunches and making sure people who need a bit of extra support get it.

Sharing and Building power: authentic voices

The topic under discussion was:

Authentic voices: looking in more depth at how to create inclusive platforms and encourage unheard voices.

Jude Habib from Sound Delivery, which has a spokesperson network of people with lived experience, explained how they mentor people with lived experience and cultivate journalists in order to create opportunities. She introduced two people in their network who spoke about their experiences, Brenda Birungi, the Creative Director of Poets Unchained, who had founded National Prison Radio while she was in prison, and Amanda Hailes, who is part of a Hull Based colllective called Untold Story which has written a book by the same name that tells the story of women working in prostitution in Hull, using their own words and images.

They both stressed the importance of Sound Delivery’s network and support in helping them to speak to a wider audience. ‘It was an eye-opener to find other people like me and not to be embarrassed', Brenda said, adding ‘We don’t shut up anymore because we realise there are so many people in that position. I’m now proud of where I’ve come from’.

‘Our voices need to be heard before anything can change’, said Amanda, explaining that experiences can get trapped in ‘layer after layer of truama’ caused by multiple disadvantage and by speaking up people like her were trying to get others to understand. With Sound Delivery’s help, she had learnt to ‘stand proud’. She had learnt that you need to ‘keep going, keep going, because you are the expert - an expert in surviving’.

Brenda emphasised that the support provided by bodies like Sound Delivery needed to be from ‘beginning to end’, which was what Jude Habib and Sound Delivery do. Brenda said that through the network she was not just being given platforms herself but was ‘passing the mike to the person behind me.’

The critical thing when working with charities, Amanda stressed, was for people with lived experience to be treated as ‘part of the team’ and be really incorporated into their work, rather than just being seen a tick box exercise and paying lip service. She had experienced both approaches and there were a world apart. Brenda said it was very important to go to formal places the Houses of Parliament and Broadcasting House and speak in person. They needed not just to have the opportunity to tell their stories, but direct access to the people who have power to make the changes.

Here are some of the other points made in discussion in the group:

• We need to build greater awareness of the power of authentic voices and make much greater use of that power.

• The purpose of enabling authentic voices to access platforms and be heard is ultimately to share power and enable them to become leaders, not you.

• We must genuinely empower authentic voices, but people in bodies working with people with lived experience can also feel protective and deeply responsible and this may be an inhibiting force. Safeguarding can sometimes turn into gatekeeping. It’s important to work through this and ensure that people have the training and support they require, to make decisions with the people themselves rather than taking them for them, and make sure that everyone is comfortable with the degree of risk sometimes involved. One person recalled a person with lived experience being told: ‘We’ll tell your story for you at our booklaunch’. It was probably intended to be protective but it was not right.

• This is emotional work in which human support is critical. Many are new to this and would benefit from more sharing of learning. There are a lot of practical things to consider - for example the use of real names or not.

• People with lived experience should be paid properly, as consultants.

Sue Tibballs from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, who is the ‘thought leader’ for the Sharing and Building Power cell, reflected that empowering authentic voices was a really important and radical step which was ‘shaking the foundations of how charity works’, requiring charities ‘to get out of the way’ and build genuine solidarity with people with lived experience. Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of a Better Way, concluded by saying that the group had heard not just about the power of authentic voices but also about the power of their leadership role and their potential to be role models to others.

Joining Forces: building systems leadership into job roles at all levels

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘Systems leadership: How can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels, and help people to do this from a perceived position of no organisational power?’ The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• Systems leadership is capable of being exercised far more widely, and at many more levels, including at the frontline of services, than is often assumed.

• But for this to happen, we need to build a different culture and set of expectations about what good leadership looks like.

• And we need to create psychological safety, especially for those in front line roles. So that they feel they have a role to play, believe that their voice will be equally heard and thought about, and are confident that they can contribute their own ideas and perspectives. 

• We also need to pay attention to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion so that participation in systems leadership activities can be truly inclusive rather than simply the preserve of a relatively privileged minority.

• The leadership models associated with New Public Management are a very real barrier to progress, and these are deeply embedded. So this is not an easy journey, and the changes are especially difficult for large national organisations, where claiming credit is fundamental to maintaining income and profile.

• But, it was suggested, the conditions to make progress are perhaps more favourable now than they were before, because during the pandemic it became obvious that many things worked better when more responsibility was devolved to the front line, and that operating at a greater level of trust was more viable than many had expected.

• Most progress will be made when there is a clear understanding that, first and foremost,  everyone should be working for what the community needs rather than what the organisation needs.  

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change, which some have called the Better Way ‘beachball’: 

In this cell we are exploring the ‘joining forces’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time was ‘How can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels’. As Cate Newnes Smith, thought-leader for this cell, pointed out, we need everyone to be playing a part in bringing about systems change. It is not enough to have a group of senior leaders in a room somewhere trying to change a system. The richness often comes from the front line. 

We started with two presentations:

Nadine Smith described the challenges that face systems leaders. It takes a long time to unlearn the models and behaviours of New Public Management.  Nadine spoke of her experience in Whitehall, where everyone wants to be the best, to have the answers, to be the hero.

One reason why New Public Management hasn’t died is because we lack an alternative that is clear. But the conversations on how to build a different kind of leadership are nevertheless developing in a healthy experimental way in many parts of government, and are promoted by public sector reform networks such as One Team Gov. 

Systems leadership training tells leaders that their role is not to control, but rather to create the right conditions for good things to happen. But this is very daunting in the civil service, where performance management reviews insist on answers to questions such as ‘What did you do, what was your role?’ and pay rises and promotions are awarded accordingly.

Systems leaders know that they need to take account of complexity, and the Human Learning Systems model pioneered by Toby Lowe provides helpful guidance on what leaders can do when faced with complexity. The Centre for Public Impact has a forthcoming report which will catalogue a wide variety of approaches, from across the world, which embody the spirit of systems leadership and Human Learning Systems.

One big challenge is how to measure and evaluate in a system that is complex and messy. This, suggested Nadine, requires new methods to capture different types of information, including stories, emotions, and relationships. And it is necessary to ask whose voice is missing, to consider how untested assumptions obscure the truth.

It is also useful to adopt methods that can evaluate programmes in real time, and which can provide a running commentary on them. Measuring for control can create perverse incentives in the system, and it is better to use measurement for learning, not control.

Systems leaders can easily become burnt out. In part this is because they are worried about the whole system, and about accountability and responsibility. Systems leaders need a really good team around them. If they don’t sleep well at night it might be because there aren’t people around them they can trust.

The Human Learning Systems Approach uses VEST as a guide for systems leaders:

·       Variety – respond to the variety of human need and experience

·       Empathy – use empathy to understand the lives of others

·       Strength – view people from a strengths-based perspective

·       Trust – trust people with decision-making

It is also important to remain open to that which is unexpected. Nadine quoted the words of a senior civil servant Clare Moriarty, who said: ‘I came across happy accidents. Things that changed my view of the world without me planning for it. It led to enlightenment and deep learning.’

Polly Neate

Everything on the Better Way ‘beachball’ is really difficult for a national organisation like Shelter, said Polly. But we cannot ignore the importance of large national organisations, where so much resource and capacity is concentrated.

At Shelter, work is in progress to do things differently, with a new approach to local services, working within communities to provide a base for systems change.

Shelter has appointed three community development workers, with the aim of bringing people who have lived experience of homelessness to the centre of local decision making. This is not about placing Shelter at the centre. If no-one recognised Shelter’s role, that really doesn’t matter, says Polly.

For example, in Bournemouth, over the last six months, the community development worker has established links with a variety of local partners to achieve more input of people with lived experience into a consultation about the local authority homelessness strategy, and their recommendations were included in the strategy. She hosted a consultation on a women-only centre in Dorset, to establish a housing case for this centre. She set up a partnership with a Gypsy and Traveller forum, to consider how the new trespass Bill could lead to homelessness and loss of property, and Shelter was able to take up these issues in its national lobbying. While carrying out this work, it became clear that there are widespread problems with mould in Gypsy and Traveller caravans, and the Shelter DIY skills adviser, funded through a B&Q partnership, was able to offer support to address this. The community development worker also formed relationships with the Dorset Race Equality Council and other organisations working with minoritised communities, and one result of this has been that Shelter has provided free training on housing rights, benefits, and debt advice to these small grass roots organisations, so that they themselves can provide advice to their community members in future. 

These are examples of activities which, as a large national charity, Shelter would not traditionally have undertaken. But the locally based community development workers have already been able to expand the charity’s reach, and bring national resources to bear to support local efforts, without having to be worried about branding everything as a Shelter project.

The biggest challenge for Shelter, as it localises more and more, is how to align the local and national operations. At national level, Shelter has effective and well-resourced media, campaigns and policy and research teams, but has had to scale back some national campaign activities in order to redirect resources to local activities, and this hasn’t been easy for everyone to understand.

The whole exercise has raised big questions about how to make the most impact, and what is counted as impact. Working at a national level, and trying to persuade the current government to do things differently, is resource intensive and difficult. Sometimes the impact that can happen locally is just as important, and indeed sometimes achieves a greater level of change. 

But a shift from national campaigning to local influencing is very hard for a national charity like Shelter. Particularly when Shelter’s own role in bringing about change needs to be prominent in order to attract the funding and recognition which is necessary to remain a strong national charity, and without which it would not have the resources to support local community-based systems leadership of the type Polly has described.

Discussion

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: how can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels, not just at the apex of the organisation? In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:

A different culture of leadership

• A shift from the Me to the We requires that that leaders have to be present at all levels of an organisation, not just at the top.

• But this cannot happen without a different culture of leadership. Not expecting leaders to have all the answers, challenging them to think differently, allowing them to fail in the pursuit of change.

• We all need to unlearn the engrained top-down assumptions about leadership.  Education is a problem. From early childhood most people are kept in their box, they are not encouraged to develop their leadership qualities, or play their part in shared leadership, or as followers as well. Furthermore, schools don’t encourage systems thinking.

• Those that are able to exercise a systems leadership role are in a relatively privileged position. There is a responsibility on them to model a shift in culture and behaviour in their own practices, to be credible and authentic.

Establishing inclusive psychological safety

• Systems change requires the contribution of multiple top-down and bottom-up perspectives, with spaces that can accommodate conflict and collision, and a willingness to listen, and without this depth of inclusion, meaningful and lasting change will not happen.

• People at every level therefore need to feel confident that they will be allowed to exercise systems leadership. For example to feel they have a role to play, to believe that their voice will be equally heard and thought about, and that they can contribute their own ideas and perspectives. 

• It is necessary to examine this through an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lens, addressing race, gender, and disability, because without this it will not be possible to establish psychological safety in a truly inclusive way, and some groups of people will once again be left on the margins.

Recognising the opportunities and the barriers

• Leadership is situational, it was suggested. Everyone has the potential opportunity to be a leader in their own situation, and we need to consciously and persistently push for ever more agency and accountability in every role, from trustees, to staff, to co-production partners, to volunteers, to partners. 

• Barriers to this can be systemic (the annual appraisal cycle, the operational plan, the strategic plan, all of which tend to be top down) and cultural (the unspoken and unwritten rules and behaviours). 

The role of Boards and the senior leadership

• For those at the operational level who want to work differently it can be difficult to manage upwards and it is hard to bring about change without people at senior levels who are believers and proponents. So change needs to happen from the outset at the level of Chairs of Boards, CEOs, and Directors. 

• Social sector structures are governed by voluntary Board members who often come from a commercial and senior professional background, and the behaviours they exhibit can set a pattern for the whole organisation. For example if they see their role as inspecting and directing the CEO, this will make it much harder to build agency and systems leadership throughout the team, including at lower levels.

The role of funders

• Funders can sometimes make it harder for organisations to build agency among the people they work with, by imposing controls that have a waterfall effect right down to the service front line and to beneficiaries.

• We heard about one organisation which wanted to provide small grants to individuals struggling with poverty, and to give them full agency and control over how they used the money, but had to turn down funding for this, because the funder insisted that all the grants had to be fully approved and tracked, with a paper trail of receipts.

• Funders can however also help, for example by giving funding priority to partnerships which are seeking to encourage systems change and which are promoting leadership among those in operational roles.

Bringing about change is difficult, especially in large organisations

• The change we are trying to bring about is a big one, and the journey to get there will be uncertain and iterative. 

• It is difficult to move to a new system while needing to operate an old one. As one person said, it is hard to jump off the New Public Management carousel.   

• In a larger organisation it can be just too difficult to tackle everything all at once.  It is usually better to start small and build out, it was suggested.

The conditions for change may – perhaps – be shifting in our favour

• During the pandemic many people realised that it was possible to trust others, including those in undervalued front-line roles, much more than they had expected.

• The model of New Public Management came about, it was suggested, because of an assumption that mistrust is necessary in public life. Once it is widely accepted that this assumption is flawed, the momentum to find better ways to operate is more likely to gather pace.

Establishing purpose

• Progress will perhaps best be driven by a clear understanding that everyone should be working for what the community needs rather than what the organisation needs.

Listening to Each Other: recruiting the right people, those best placed to listen and act on what they hear

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘How can organisations recruit the right people, those best placed to listen and act on what they hear?’  The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• It is possible for organisations to recruit extensively from within the communities served, and so become mirror images of their communities.

• But recruitment is only a first step. Organisations need to enable people who are appointed as staff or volunteers to be comfortable, creative, and accepted. 

• Flexible working practices, and a working environment that supports well-being, can make a big difference, as well as enhancing levels of team commitment.

• It is possible to go further, to establish teams with a high level of autonomy which are of the community, rather than of the organisation.

• Organisations constantly ‘other’ those who come from the communities served, thereby marginalising them. Overcoming this, and establishing a ‘team of us’ requires a profound power and culture shift.

• By that mustn’t mean patronising these who have lived experience.  And we need to establish teams that are truly diverse, even (and especially) when that feels uncomfortable.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.

In this cell we are exploring the ‘listening to each other’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time is ‘How do we recruit the right people?  The people best placed to listen and act on what they hear are most likely to come from the very communities the organisations serve.’

We started with two presentations:

Arvinda Gohil, CEO of Central YMCA

Arvinda explained that we need to start with listening, as the first rung on a ladder, then move to dialogue, to engagement, to involvement, to empowerment, and then to passing on power. But as a sector we have failed at the first step.  We haven’t made our organisations mirror images of the communities in which we operate.

When people say, ‘You are not the right fit for us’, what does that mean? It means essentially that those leading organisations are only comfortable with people who are the same as themselves.

Good leaders have to challenge this, all the time. Questioning who we who we work with, who we entice into the organisation. This requires great tenacity, said Arvinda.

Opening the door is not enough.  The organisation needs to enable people who enter to be comfortable, creative, and accepted.

The strategies we have tried on the past have failed, and we need to try new things. We have to take risks and be willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and evolve. 

For example, leaders can seek out the ‘hidden gems’ within their team, those who are often unrecognised, and invest in them as bridge-builders, giving them time, empowering them to link to the community and to make changes in the ways things are done.

And it is better to ask people ‘What are the terms that would work for you?’ rather than ‘Can you work within the terms we offer?’

Nasim Qureshi, CEO of Inspired Neighbourhoods

Nasim described how Inspired Neighbourhoods started just eight years ago, and now provides a range of services, across four different communities within or close to Bradford. This includes, for example, mental health and physical health support, domiciliary care, employment advice, enterprise advice, and a library.

For each of its locations, the organisation drew a two-mile radius and sought to understand all the networks and communities within that area.

Before any project is started, there is a period of co-design with the community. This makes it harder to apply for grant funding, which usually requires that what will be delivered is already pre-determined.  For this reason, earned income is preferable, because this allows the organisation to operate more flexibly.

Each centre has a community advisory Board, and the Chair of each advisory Board sits on the main Board. So community voice travels continually up and down, and this achieves a level of intelligence that could not be obtained from any number of surveys.  There is no need to spend money on marketing and promotion to the community, said Nasim, because the connections are already in place.

The process is not just about co-design, it is also about co-delivery. People from within the various communities become volunteers, and they have written roles and responsibilities, and training opportunities. Most of the paid employees started off that way. There are now 60 employees and 42 volunteers. The library service is entirely run by community volunteers.

Staff are employed on a competency basis. 95% of the workforce is peripatetic. Nasim has a simple principle: ‘If we are sitting in a room, we are not working with the community.’

The organisation does not use time sheets, and employees work the flexible hours that are needed to deliver services, often outside standard hours, responding to emergencies, while balancing their own childcare or other family needs.  Nearly all staff give more than their 37 contracted hours, and turnover is very low.

Many employees have lived experience of the difficulties the organisation is seeking to address. It is a disability-friendly organisation, and a lot of attention is paid to mental well-being within the team.

The Board composition in 90-95% local.The organisation is responsive to its communities because of the people in it, the informal conversations that happen all the time.

Inspired Neighbourhoods decided to establish a summer school service, to gain greater insights into how lives of children and young people have been changing in recent years.  In the area selected for this service, the organisation partnered with a large number of local community organisations, building on their strengths, and reaching people they were not otherwise in contact with. They also involved the police, schools and statutory bodies, and were able to influence the City-wide strategy, inviting the Council Chief Executive and others into discussions with the young people, letting them speak for themselves.

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: How can we build teams that mirror our communities and as a result are better at listening and following through? In the feedback and further discussion participants offered the following responses to the question:

Establish teams which ‘are the community’

• In the past some organisations have taken a community development approach (employing people with specialist community development skills to enter a community and work with local people), or they have taken a partnership approach (forming partnerships with local community organisations to reach more people). 

• A more radical approach is to build local teams which are the community, in other words entirely or predominantly made up from the local community, who may be actual or potential service users, and who will be able to act as authentic community connectors. The challenge of an organisation supporting such a team is to provide it with genuine autonomy, so that it is able to operate as the community’s team, rather than the organisation’s team.

• To do this well can take considerable time, and it is not easy, especially where organisations already have a deeply embedded way of operating, and it is made even more difficult when funders don’t allow sufficient flexibility.

• But it can be surprising and encouraging to discover that quite a few organisations are now going in this direction. (And some funders too.  For example the National Lottery Community Fund in Wales has introduced a funding stream to encourage more co-production.)

• And it is always important, it was felt, to go where the energy is, building on what is already there.

Reduce ‘othering’

• Organisations struggle to reduce the distinctions between those who are staff and those who are service users.  How can we genuinely become a “team of us”, rather than professionals on the one hand and lived experts on the other?

• We ‘other’ all the time in our language, our service models, our business planning, and the moment we do so we create a power imbalance.

• For example a local community organisation run by Asian women immediately becomes ‘othered’ and then marginalised, because they are seen as niche and not mainstream.

• We need to shift our perception of value, it was suggested, towards people and organisations which are from the communities served, instead of seeing them as niche and therefore as of less value.

Avoid patronising those with lived experience.

• Designating people as lived experience experts, or as co-production partners, can lead to patronising behaviours, where those people are not challenged in the same way as other colleagues would be. 

• Those with lived experience are often more ready to tell their own story than to listen to others. It is important to recognise that listening is a distinctive skill, which needs to be nurtured. 

• Sometimes people with lived experience can become gatekeepers, and end up becoming a barrier for others, including those who have lived experience but different interpretations of their experience.

• There is a difference between lived experience and lived expertise.  Reflecting only on one’s own experience is different from possessing sufficient emotional and mental distance to critically assess what you are offering as an insight.

Build diversity even when that is uncomfortable

• The recruitment processes matter, for example establishing balanced panels, not asking for qualifications that are not required, considering where best to advertise the roles.

• Mirroring the community must not just become a tick-box exercise in representation.

• There is a danger of focusing only on protected characteristics, instead of remembering the importance of diversity of thinking and approach. We need to be more willing to work with people whose political or social views we find difficult. And to establish safe spaces where people can test each other and learn from each other.

• We mustn’t be afraid of diversity in our teams.

Shift and share power

• We cannot share power, we reminded each other, without leaving our egos behind.

• One suggestion was that leaders should always take on a direct delivery project, however small, so that they understand the system, and gain experience at first hand. Rather than simply telling others what to do they will find themselves entering into real conversations.

• Now is a good time to shift our practices, it was suggested. Not least because many organisations have recognised that many things went better during the pandemic, when those at the front-line of services were making independent decisions, while office-based staff were on furlough or sitting at home.

• It was felt that people from the communities served, who are playing advisory roles, should be given real power to review and shape services. 

• There might also be something to learn from the retail world, where consumers play a role in determining the success or otherwise of the stores they shop in. In the social sector (bearing in mind that relationships rather than transactions are usually what matter most) can we arrange things so that the success of our organisation is in the hands of our customers/service  users?

Listen and engage better

• There are challenges of personality – some people find it easier to be present, others have to work hard at this. Nancy Kline’s ‘Time to Think’ describes a practice of listening which fosters an environment where people can do their best thinking together as equals.

• Does a flatter organisation produce better engagement?  Not necessarily, it is culture rather than structure that matters most, it was felt.

• We need to find better ways to engage with people without designating them as a class of people who need to be engaged with. Technology might help, it was suggested, for example by delivering constant feedback in the course of everyday activities.

Sharing and Building Power: understanding how power works and the tools that are needed

Summary of main points

• In order to share and build power we need to understand how it works. There are many forms of power, from individual, collective, social and societal, and these interact with each other.

• The Sheila McKechnie’s draft Framework for the Accountable Use of Power encourages us to take a hard look at access to resources and formal rules and policies and also to deepen our own consciousness of power and capabilities, as well as our culture and connections, leading to reflective practice and a conscious shift in exclusionary cultures, narratives and practices.

• Taking power starts with oneself, including challenging self-limiting beliefs and practices. There is a dangerous narrative of finite power which can be self-constricting for individuals and organisations.  Being reflective about the different types of power, whether power over, power within, power for, or power to, helps create a greater consciousness and can be enabling.

• Asking the question ‘why’ can help to build a strong ‘power for’ with a common purpose and shared values which in turn makes it easier to give staff more power and to be more powerful externally.  Radical listening, particularly with those who are effectively silenced now, helps unlock this power.

• Relatively hidden forces can be a significant block to sharing and building power and these need to be understood and addressed. Internal governance, systems and processes, including regulatory requirements, can be disempowering to both staff and communities.  Power imbalances, for example between professionals and those served, should be recognised and addressed. Culture can make cross sectoral alliances difficult, for example.

• The social sector needs to do more to share its own power and build power with others, while also calling out abuses of power in society.

In more detail

Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of a Better Way, introduced the meeting by talking about what the network had already learnt about power:

• Sharing power requires awareness and new tools
  Each of us can play a part, by understanding the sources of power and privilege, including our own, and identifying the blockages that prevent power from being shared. 

• Authentic voices can challenge existing sources of power
  Authentic voices stemming from personal experience can challenge existing sources of power, if they are not used in a tokenistic way. Storytelling ‘from the heart’ can be powerful.

• Connecting people creates power
  Connecting people – for example, through networks, coalitions and activities that link people together – creates new forms of power. Communities themselves also generate power, sometimes out of negative experiences, as Covid-19 has shown.

She explained that we were going to explore the first of these during this session, and introduced the thought leader for the cell, Sue Tibballs, the CEO of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK), which has been working on how to build and share power over the last few years. 

Sue Tibballs said that in order to build and challenge power, we need an understanding of how power works, which is why SMK have been producing various tools to help and she said it would be great to get the group’s input to these at this meeting.  These were still being finalised and would be published in an interim report in due course.  There have been previous attempts to understand power, she said, but these have often included binary assumptions when in reality power was more complex, and they had not taken hold.  Covid-19 had made it even more clear that we live in an unequal society.  The significant challenge for the social sector is to reform itself so that it shares power more equally while also exercising its own power externally.  This is all the more difficult when its power is currently being challenged by the Government.

Sarah Thomas from SMK then outlined the draft tools they are developing.  She said that they had mapped examples and had identified a nested system of power, as shown below.

These interacted with each other, rather like a dance.  Power is both an enabler and a constraint, and the draft Framework for the Accountable Use of Power SMK have developed allows us to understand better its nature and what we can do to share and build power ourselves.  This framework has four dimensions – consciousness and capabilities; culture and connections; resources; and formal rules and policies including governance.  This slide sets these out in more detail. 

The last two quadrants show the formal and arguably more familiar elements.  On resources, accountability is needed not just to ensure equitable access to money but also technology, information and networks.  Inside organisations, a review of formal rules and policies is important, including governance and procedures, because these can be a barrier to sharing power.  She also highlighted the top two quadrants.  There is often too much emphasis on building capacity of people with lived experience to take power, she said, and not enough on looking at ourselves. Reflective practice, and dialogue with those with less power, is vital too.  This new framework encourages us to look at shifting exclusionary cultures, including hidden codes and exclusionary networks and alliances.

In breakout groups, points made included:

• Taking power starts with oneself and one’s own organisation, including our own assumptions and beliefs, which can be self-limiting.  Perceived power is important. There is a dangerous narrative of finite power which can be self-restricting.  

• Being reflective about the different types of power, whether power over, power within, power for, or power to, helps create a greater consciousness and can be enabling.

• We need to ask the question ‘why’ rather than accept current assumptions; and listen deeply to those who are effectively silenced in society and act upon what is learnt.  We must make sure that the power we hold is genuinely working for, not against those we serve. Power ‘for’ is about creating a shared purpose and common values, and will have a really strong ‘why’. When it works well, it makes it easier to create self-organising teams within an organisation, as well as to provide a strong sense of external purpose and power.

• Governance, systems and processes, including regulatory requirements, can be disempowering to both staff and communities, for example by taking away autonomy for staff or placing restrictions on how communities naturally work.  

• Culture can be a significant bar to building social power within and across sectors, with an example given of a large company attempting to work with the social sector but with difficulties in both sectors in understanding each other’s culture and language. It can also lead to ‘group think’, with people gravitating to people like themselves rather than people who challenge their assumptions.

• Power imbalances, for example between professionals and those they work with, need to be recognised, and can get in the way of people realising their own power and agency because they defer to what they see as greater knowledge or are dependent on them to unlock further help. Professionals and organisations need to be aware of this and ‘gently hand the ball back’.  Sharing power takes trust on both sides, and is a continuous process which has to involve all levels of the organisation.

• Abuses of power are being used very effectively to bully certain groups, for example through racism, or attacks on the power of social sector, and need to be called out. 

• The social sector should be setting standards, being the best it can be internally, as well as making the best happen. It needs to challenge and call out the abuse of power in a way that is safe and effective while also getting our own house in order.

Overall, the reaction to SMK’s new tools was extremely positive and we thanked them for their contribution to the discussion.  SMK’s slides were circulated after the event and information about their social power project is available here.

The next meeting of the cell on 5 May will consider look at how to create inclusive platforms and encourage unheard voices through authentic voices. 

Joining Forces: developing a shared language to build collaboration

Summary of key points

The theme of the discussion was ‘developing a shared language to build collaboration’. The main points which emerged from the discussion were:

• Shared language matters, but must be simple and direct, and making time to develop shared language at an early stage of collaboration is usually time well spent;

• Language can be divisive, and it is a good idea to consider the language we use about the people we work with;

• We need to get past the jargon used within and across organisations and get to the person;

• Radical listening can help to generate a more empathic shared language, in favour of the individual;

• Shared understanding is what matters most.

In more detail

Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.

In this cell we are exploring the ‘joining forces’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.

Our focus this time is developing a shared language to build collaboration ’is how we can work on the shared language that engages and motivates people and underpins successful collaboration.’

We started with two presentations:

Cate Newnes-Smith, who has agreed to be thought leader for the cell, pointed out that joining forces really matters because, as set out in the Time for a Change document, we can’t solve complex problems alone.  She gave an example of efforts in a local authority to overcome silo working, and noted that this is really difficult. For instance, local authority staff are much happier to ask people what they think about specific council services, rather than find out about their lives, in case things come up that are outside their particular remit. It would be better, said Cate, if council staff were to join forces across departments and with others in such exercises, so the right people would be in the room, people could talk about things that really matter to them, and a system-wide response could be considered.  

Cate said she has been on a journey to understand the difference between collaboration and partnership, and likes the term ‘joining forces’, because it is harder to claim to be joining forces when it’s not happening. To join forces well there are many things that have to be got right, and we hope to explore these in the cell. On the question of language, Cate hasn’t come across instances where people have really been able to build shared language, and hopes to hear from others examples of this.

Steve pointed out that we are not looking for a single shared language that everyone can use in any circumstances.  Rather we are keen to understand the process whereby people seeking to work together can build an understanding among themselves and support that in the language they use.

Kevin Franks offered some provocations, as requested. He asked whether we really need a shared language, and whether if we had one it would be useful for improving services, outcomes, and communities?  And indeed, can a shared language really underpin successful collaboration?  To take one example, organisations have many ways of talking about engagement with those they serve. They might talk about involvement or participation, for example, and the engagement might take different forms, e.g. engagement in decision-making, or a sporting activity, or a training course.  There are as many different meanings as there are different organisations.  It would be very difficult to find a common term with a single meaning for everyone to agree with, and not necessarily useful to attempt to do so. 

Kevin agreed that a lot of the language we use can exclude – how many people understand co-production, for example?  But the real difficulties are not about language. Many of the things we seek to change are connected: unemployment and problems with mental health and isolation and loneliness and substance abuse and crime and poverty for example. None of these sit outside the others. Funding and projects often focus on one particular symptom, and don’t address causes. And furthermore beneficiaries are often excluded from design of solutions. These are complex issues which require complex and collaborative solutions, not a shared language.

We need to focus on shared values and shared power, in how we influence, learn from, and work with each other.  Kevin said he has moved away from talking about partnerships, and prefers to use the term collaboration, and likes the term joining forces. But actions speak louder than words and no amount of shared language will make any difference, unless it is backed by behaviours that result in meaningful change.

In response to Kevin, Cate pointed out that the lack of a shared language can sometimes get in the way of a collaborative effort. She gave an example where schools, concerned about the mental health of some of their children, were making referrals to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), but the referrals were rejected because the language the schools were using was different from that used by the CAMHS team. 

Discussion

Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: Can we develop a shared language to build collaboration?  In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:

Shared language matters, but must be simple and direct, and making time to develop shared language at an early stage of collaboration is usually time well spent

• For those working together on a project or a service it is often necessary for all of those involved to establish some shared language, with agreed definitions, for reasons of efficiency and to avoid misunderstandings. Spending some time early on doing this is usually worthwhile.

• The language used by service managers and frontline workers among themselves and the language they use with service users or members of the public is often very different.  Perhaps they need to be brought closer together.   

• From the perspective of a service user a shared language can be important. One person may have contact with many different services and if they are not using the same terms they won’t join up and understand each other, and the service user may find it difficult to understand them and engage with them.

• Shared language needs to be as simple as possible. If we want to make services accessible and intelligible we need to avoid jargon. 

• To attempt to bring everyone across society to the same language is another matter. Different sectors have very different ways of talking about things, academics, corporates, charities, for example. By way of illustrating the difficulty of this, some felt that the Better Way model for change is expressed in terms which are direct and simple, and are likely to be understood across all sectors, but some of the text in the full document may be less effective for some people from some sectors.

Language can be divisive, and it is a good idea to consider the language we use about the people we work with

• Language can be divisive, reinforcing an ‘us and them’ culture. For example, it is common in service delivery partnerships to talk about some people as ‘hard to reach’. Often they are not in fact hard to reach (they are likely to be in contact with someone, after all). ‘Seldom heard’ would probably be more accurate.

• When organisations are seeking to join forces, a discussion between them about the implication of terms such as ‘hard to reach, ‘vulnerable’, ‘disadvantaged communities’, ‘NEET’ etc. may help them reach a fresh understanding of what they really want to achieve and how to do that, moving beyond a deficit model which implies that the people they work with are the problem.

We need to get past the jargon used within and across organisations and get to the person

• Sometimes new terms are very necessary to define things well, to bring coherence and clarity to a complex situation, and convey meaning quickly.

• However, a lot of the language which is employed in any one sector doesn’t really serve this purpose. Instead it functions as a way of claiming distinctiveness or difference from other sectors. If we want to join forces we need to be willing to express ourselves in simpler more direct language.

• When we are attempting to do something new, and want to present it as such, is it really necessary to generate a new set of terms to reinforce this?  Or is it preferable to make us of existing and commonly-used terms, accepting that this might indicate that what we are trying to do may not be so new after all?

• Furthermore some terms used by service providers (‘crisis’, ‘acute’, etc.) can actually make it harder to join forces and can generate misunderstandings because they are used in very different ways by different organisations.

• Most significantly many of these terms fail to connect with the lives of the people the organisations are seeking to serve. We need to get past the jargon to get to the individual person.

Radical listening can help to generate a more empathic shared language, in favour of the individual

• If organisations are to serve people well, they need to find ways of establishing a shared language that is able to build a deeper and fuller understanding with the individuals they work with.

• This may require a reflective practice. For example, a playback technique sometimes used in radical listening (a topic which is being explored in another Better Way cell) can help to generate an empathic understanding between people, especially where there is a power imbalance. This is where the listener plays back what they have heard but speaks in the first person, thereby putting themselves in the shoes of the other as they speak.

• A listening session could be followed by a sense-making session, to consider what has been said from multiple viewpoints, not just from a single perspective.  We felt that such techniques (as sometimes practiced in appreciative inquiry) could be helpful in achieving better collaboration, not only between an organisation and its service users, but also between organisations.

• The New Systems Alliance, established by the Mayday Trust, has been exploring a PTS (person-led, transitional, strengths-based) model of coaching, working without referrals, to give more power to the person within the coaching relationship, using simple language, and allowing them to set the terms of the discussion.

• Building empathy needs to be undertaken with care when working with people with experience of trauma, to avoid re-traumatising them and sending them into a downward spiral.

Shared understanding is what matters most

• Shared understanding is what really matters when joining forces, it was felt. Shared goals and shared purpose and shared language can be important, but shared understanding is the foundation for the type of collaboration that leads to effective concerted action and makes the most difference.