Framing risk and rights for innovation
I recently worked on a great RiPfA webinar on mental health law with Alex Ruck-Keene from 39 Essex Chambers. It was thought provoking stuff that focused on outcomes just as much as the legislation. It was challenging in the best way — Alex started the webinar by sharing how people with poor mental health are far more at risk from the wider population than the other way round.
Alex discussed the Mental Capacity Act, which was where he shared the concept of positive and negative rights. Negative rights are where people have the right to be left alone, or the freedom not to be detained. Framing law in this way can safeguard individual freedom, but can also lead to the abandonment of people to their fates. Alex contrasted this with positive rights, which people are entitled to. They are enforceable rights that can enable people to access services.
This is an interesting concept that is helpful to consider in a couple of senses. Strengths based approaches help organisations to build an individual’s personal capability. Negative rights enable people to have freedom to act, whilst positive rights can ensure that they have proper support. This is all helpful when considering how organisations think about the formal and informal rules that govern their work.
On another level, how can organisations safeguard staff to encourage innovation when failure is often punished? How do we frame support for staff whilst giving them freedom to try new small scale approaches? Neil Tamplin shared a useful tweet on systems thinking from a conference that framed failure as a positive learning experience:
Language and how we frame things are very important. Which actions do we want to support and reward, and which do we want to guard against? Ben Proctor’s post on analysing culture poses some useful questions on cultural norms:
“Are you trying to replace one set of behaviours with another to meet the same purpose or are you trying to change the fundamental purpose underpinning the norms? For example are you trying to find a different way to exercise power or are you trying to remove the need to exercise power?”
If you ever doubt that language is important…..
