Building culture for co-production - Chapter 5. Learning from nature

Here are 2 lessons from nature:

Generosity

“One day, I was picking delicious, sweet-smelling raspberries from our raspberry canes, when I was struck by the huge number of fruits all around me. I was picking plenty of juicy, bright red raspberries myself, but the blackbirds and our chickens were also taking their share of the crop. It occurred to me that nature doesn’t decide how much to supply and then produce exactly that much; it simply produces as much as it possibly can with whatever energy it has got!”

Patience

“I walk to work most days; 2½ miles each way, up and down a big hill. One month, there was some work going on to replace the water pipes that run under the field at the very top of the hill. To allow the work to commence, the water board fenced off the area that they needed to use, so that the horses and sheep could not enter. As I passed each day, I noticed not only the progress of the work, but also a change in what was growing around the work. In the field that had been temporarily cut off from being grazed a fabulous display of yellow iris and pink orchids has suddenly appeared. When I asked a colleague, I was told that the seeds could have been lying dormant for years!”

How can you weave these lessons from nature - patience and generosity - into your daily work?

An exercise to try as a team

1. Someone tells their own story about a real-life example of something they noticed or appreciated in nature and are attempting to incorporate into their daily life. (Or use one of the stories above.)
2. The question is posed: what have you learnt from nature? What have you noticed in nature that might inform your work? (no need for answers yet, just a pause for reflection.)
3. Then participants are asked to pair up with someone they know less well or haven’t yet spoken to today.
4. Pair discussion: tell each other of a time when you noticed or learnt something from the natural world.
5. Moving through a pyramid (for example, pairs to fours to eights) or into a plenary session; share your thoughts and/or begin to consider what you might do differently, now you’ve re-called or re-noticed these things.

How can we best support organisations, individuals, departments, or communities to deliver the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act? Let’s take a systems approach!

• Stop trying to design the solution and instead design for the conditions that enable the emergence of many solutions.
• Fostering more quality and trusted relationships is a critical enabler of that emergence.
• For the catalysers of complex system change (including government) that means starting to value relationships as a central outcome.

Adapted from The new zeitgeist: relationships and emergence by Bill Bannear).

What is a systems approach?

Making use of this free systems thinking mini course.

Applying User Centred Design for example, with the User Centred Design Laboratory.

Proactively choose methods of involvement that:

• focus on creating a network of relationships NOT a collection of things, activities, services
• decrease dependency
• increase enthusiasm and collaborative effort
• embody the 5 ways of working
• show confidence in being creative
• strengthen relationships
• encourage new connections
• use minimum effort to achieve maximum effect
• provide fishing rods (or develop community-based fishing rod manufacturing) instead of providing a fish
• change processes and interdependent relationships NOT structures or outputs

Applying these 3 important learnings from Welsh Government:

• continuously re-prototype or re-design our offering based on deep and rapid feedback
• step back; delegate by facilitating facilitators instead of task-by-task
• establish a variety of support (for ourselves and others) so that people can choose how to engage with and enable change

Focusing your development on these areas identified in research on the key skills for public health leaders:

1. seeing the bigger picture and choosing suitable approaches
2. effective collaboration and boundary spanning
3. empowering others to lead, building on the concept of distributed leadership
4. maintaining strong underlying motivations and values, including the need for humility and a learning mindset

See full details here.

What is not a systems approach?

• Thinking that one person, team or organisation has the answer
• Thinking we are part of the solution but not part of the problem (we are all part of both)
• Imagining that we are outside the system that we are discussing
• Appointing consultants, instead of meeting people directly ourselves

In these increasingly turbulent, uncertain, novel, and ambiguous (TUNA) times, we need to take care not to repeat the mistakes that got us into this situation.

TUNA is Tim Benton’s term.

Here are some top tips from a systems perspective.

Applying models

All models are an approximation of the real world.

No model is ever complete or completely accurate.

This includes:

• the models that we hold in our own minds of how the world works
• the collective models that we create together through conversation
• all the computer models we ever use

Use your model to make the best guess you can but always seek real world evidence by prototyping your solution to find out more.

Using population-wide data

Population-wide data is also a model, so it only approximates the real world.

Population-wide probabilities tell you what the big picture might look like.

Population data cannot tell you what is impossible at a local level.

It cannot tell you what to do in a specific place.

It can tell you some of the questions to ask about that place.

It can only tell you about what might be likely or unlikely. Local factors will have an impact on these probabilities. The unlikely will still occur.

So, stay alert to all possibilities.

Population wide data cannot make predictions: it will not tell you what your experience will actually be.

Our relationship with knowledge

What has not changed is that we are still interested in evidence!

But…

The types of evidence we are interested in have broadened. It is no longer okay to over-rely on a particular source of evidence. Lived human experience is particularly important. Some sources of evidence are useful in many instances but can also be a limit on our perspectives for example, random control trials creating false dichotomies.

The way we interpret the data has changed. For example, in the past we might have said ‘oh that’s just the placebo effect’ but the effect of placebo can be quite large, so we might investigate how we can use it ethically and safely to get results.

Our understanding of what it means when someone asks for more evidence has changed. All decisions are based on an emotion. (Yes, really – you cannot make a decision without an emotion!) But sometimes our emotions get the better of us and we demand extra proof to avoid our own difficult emotions or to delay making a decision. Previously we would have accepted such a request. Now we would want to help with the underlying emotional challenges, as well as generate useful (probably new) data on the topic.

Our relationships with each other

Everything we do should always be informed by collaborative application of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

Questions to focus our observations might include:

• how are we understanding and applying the 5 ways of working?
• are we rushing? What are we avoiding?
• how are we assessing risk? Which risks feel small or large just now?
• are we using the basic tool kit for better meetings?
• how can we work with ourselves and others in ways that increase reassurance and comprehension?

Project design

Many of our responses to the world around us are far more reasonable than they seem at first glance. Always apply the social model (not only a medical or therapeutic model) to the challenges you face:

How is the system itself unwell or unhelpful?

Everyone is unique and has their own logic to their responses and decisions. Other people’s logic may be similar but will rarely be identical to yours.

Very few things are linear. Most of the systems you are dealing with will be complex webs. Instead of thinking about pathways (through which you can channel multiple people, places, or activities etc) think about relationships between the aspects or individuals in the system or envisage circles or spirals.

• Can you create a menu of options from which people can choose?
  (Do not overstress people; 3 options are plenty!)
• Can you increase opportunities to walk with me – where a trusted other helps you through to a solution that suits you and sticks with you till you have someone to work with and something practical to try?

Evaluation and review

When evaluating progress, you want to know what happened, but your mind model (our predictive mind) has already limited the sorts of data and possibilities that you are likely to see.

Can you find ways to free yourself from this dilemma?

• Ask different people: talk to people you would not normally hear from and explore what happened together.
• Ask bigger questions: ask some deepening questions and pause over these for longer.