Diversifying evidence and value
7 everyday patterns for systems change
This piece is part of exploratory work we have been doing into everyday patterns, and the role and power of re-patterning in systems change. In our introduction we shared seven patterns we have identified across our work and that of others that go some way to making visible active re-patterning for equity and powersharing. Here we examine the third one: Diversifying evidence and value.
This piece was written across 2022/2023 and reflects our thinking at this time.
Public and human services are increasingly using evidence and measurement to determine how to act, what to resource, and how to assess the effectiveness of interventions.
Which on the face of it is a great thing.
Perhaps not always.
Evidence and measurements are very often considered to be objective and neutral — however, this is not the case.
All measures, all evidence, all valuations of success are built on values and assumptions about what matters, and worldviews that determine what ‘good’ or ‘success’ looks like.
Too often indicators and measures of success or outcomes used by organisations and teams have been externally developed. Further, very often these indicators stem from specific or narrow evidence bases and worldviews that embody a particular form of values.
This pattern is about engaging with evidence and measures more carefully, critically and actively, recognising their role in both change processes and/or in holding the status quo in place.
Critiquing and resetting indicators makes explicit the basis and worldview of existing indicators, and creates room for indicators and measures of success developed through different cultural, social and economic lenses and alongside communities and whānau.
This pattern surfaces how dominant values are embedded implicitly inside our indicators. And encourages a stronger, more transparent connection between the values that underpin the work and the way that success is defined collectively with those impacted or being served.
It helps us to remember and recognise that communities and whānau have a crucial role in defining and determining their own success. This in turn creates the foundations for a more equal exploration of different forms and methods of determining what evidence is. And opens different conversations with whānau and communities about what matters for and to them.
Further, the way we monitor and measure progress towards such success can frame the sort of data we collect, and then determines what we are looking for — whether it is framed in terms of needs and deficits, or strengths and aspirations.
This pattern can be challenging in the context of systems that are built on assumptions where measures of success are considered to be universal.
It opens up a perspective that data, measurement and evidence can actually reinforce inequity and the status quo, rather than shifting it or seeking to transform it.
This in turn challenges ideas that ‘more’ data and evidence automatically creates opportunities for transformational change.
What this pattern highlights is a need to diversify, challenge, change the sorts of data we are collecting, the indicators we are using and the evidence we are building in the process of moving towards transformation.
Four key systems shifts to move towards diversifying evidence and value
Read the full breakdown to find:
- What mindsets, behaviours, practices, structures, values and spaces it may take to embed new patterns
- Two examples of diversifying evidence and value in context
