North East Together 19: Learning together for a better future (June 2020)
North East Together’s second 2020 whole network event focused on how we can learn from what we are experiencing now and how we can use what we’re learning to imagine and create a new future together. Last year we took North East Together on tour¹; this year we’re taking North East Together online. Around 50 social leaders gathered on 25 June 2020 to think about rapid learning environments together. The event’s advance information pack and slides tells you more about the event, and you can watch the event below.
Since February’s event all our worlds have changed more than we could have imagined. We’ve seen illness, death, damage, and fear brought about by COVID-19 for us in the UK and for our fellow global citizens. We’ve also seen daily demonstrations of the generosity, love and care we amazing human beings show each other. And in our organisations, structures and systems — VCSE, public, private, large, small — we’ve seen how what once would have felt too hard or big to change happen almost overnight. We’ve seen organisations adapt at speed to continue to be able to support people and communities.
Because of the speed of change and the uncertainty our new, constantly-shifting ‘normal’ brings, it can be hard to cope and to make sense of what is happening. It can also be hard to remember to note what we are learning from such a rapid pace of change. We believe finding ways to notice, record and gather insights from living and working in a complex, dynamic environment is important for us all now and for our future together.
Our questions and our reading
The questions rattling around our heads when creating this event were
- How is the coronavirus pandemic changing the way we live, work and volunteer for social change in the north east?
- What are we learning from this, collectively? What do we notice? What patterns do we see?
- What do we do with what we are learning? How do we make sure these learning processes become embedded in the ways we work over the long term?
And here’s some of what we read on this theme
- Is anyone deploying ‘innovation and learning’ people alongside COVID-19 ‘response teams’? WhatsthePONT blog post
- Collective sense-making in this new world, Lankelly Chase (with links to weekly team reflection notes)
- A whole new world: public service in the time of coronavirus, Next Stage Radicals
- Six enablers of emergent learning, Sahana Chattopadhyay
Learning in a COVID world
We were thrilled North East Together co-founder, Dr Toby Lowe, returned to share how rapid learning environments help us to cope with the present and begin to imagine the future. Toby is currently visiting professor in public management at the Centre for Public Impact, on secondment from Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University.
He spoke about the complexity and uncertainty brought about by COVID-19 and how, from early on in the pandemic response, the instruments of new public management were switched off. No targets. No inspection regimes. And instead some organisations have shifted to rapid learning environments to understand and get better at what they do.
A rapid learning environment looks like…
- daily recording of change
- weekly collective reflection and collective sense making from the daily observations
- documenting and sharing learning with others both inside and outside of organisations
The articles linked to in his slides are
- How we are learning during our response to the Coronavirus outbreak, The Children’s Society
- Collective sense-making in this new world, Lankelly Chase
- Deutero-learning, Organisational Learning
- Please stop capturing crisis lessons, Easier Inc
Group reflection: What do we think? Applying the rapid learning environment method in our organisation
In small, facilitated groups we explored how we can apply the rapid learning environment method to our organisations by looking at what has changed since the lockdown, how we’ve felt and what we’ve learnt. Each group was asked to look for patterns and share their reflections with the whole event. Here’s some of the group feedback…
“We are able to change, pivot and refocus — perhaps we’ll all be more open to change. It is very important that we take the time to reflect and learn through this time individually and with peers inside and outside of our organisations, so that we can make the most out of the opportunity of rapid changed.”
“My hope for our recovery from this pandemic is that we do not immediately forget. It is understandable to focus on the devastation it has caused but it has also revealed a greater community spirit in many areas, resilience and flexibility in our organisations and workforce, an ability to learn — and learn quickly and also that we can solve many environmental issues by continuing to work more flexibly using our new found IT skills.”
“I hope that the connection that we weaved and the trust that we have built will stay after C-19 and that we can further build on it.”
“The appearance of normality when it’s not really normal. The impact that this has on our mental wellbeing. The importance of trusting people to use their own initiative and trust ourselves to make the right decisions.”
North East Together COVID-19 recovery programme
Our COVID-19 recovery response uses on the best of our strengths — connecting people to grow relationships and giving people time and space to think — and we’ve collaborated with others to do this. We’re grateful for the solidarity and generosity shown by our fellow North East Together members. The response includes
- Supporting our sector through COVID-19 free coaching starting in July, and booking now
- Your time to think action learning sets: four sets giving space for 20 people to learn, reflect, take action and support each other. The sets started in June and July
- Randomised coffee trials or paired networking
Who came along
We took advantage of Zoom’s poll function to ask a couple of questions to learn more about the attendees. As usual we asked who had been to a NET event before — around 60% had, 40% hadn’t. We also asked what sector people worked in and the results are: 63% VCSE; 17% education/university; 13% private sector; 7% other; 0 public sector.
In-person v online
This was our 19th event and our first online. We knew it would be hard to recreate an in-person event online. It’s tricky to replicate the feeling of being in a room with 50, 60, 70 other people; the serendipitous connections; the ease of one on one conversations over a cup of tea or a glass of wine; running playful guided, informal networking. We missed all these things. We didn’t miss our badge manufacturing production line or fretting about the air con settings. We did our best, aiming for a next best thing. We learnt a lot from the experience so our next one will be even better.
Our invitation to you…experimenting with rapid learning environments
We’d like to invite you to try out rapid learning environments in your organisations. We’ve pulled together a series of questions and a process to help you get started from Toby’s talk and what others have shared (see links above). We’d love to hear how you get on.
Thank you
Thanks to Toby for speaking at the event, to Dr Joanne James and Cissie Tsang from Newcastle University Business School for collaborating with us to create the event and hosting the speaker Q&A and lots of work and support during the event, to the North East Together members who volunteered to facilitate the break out groups, and to everyone who came and took part in the event. We’re deeply humbled by the generosity shown by network friends and members. Thank you.
Next event 22 October 2020
Our next event is on 22 October and we’ll be working out the topic in the coming weeks. It’s likely also to be online but we’ll confirm nearer the time. Please save the date in your diaries and watch this space for more details!
About North East Together
We believe that bringing leaders together to tackle social injustice will create positive change — in our communities, organisations and the social systems we live and work within. Our network inspires social leaders, enabling collaboration and mutual support. We offer a series of dynamic network events; self-organised collaborative working groups; pathways into coaching; and independent social change events. The whole network events hear from inspirational speakers who provide new insights into social change. They are a supportive space where leaders can meet one another, explore issues of social change, network and begin to collaborate. It’s for leaders from the voluntary, charity, social enterprise, education, public and private sectors. It’s for experienced, new and future leaders of organisations, work, and ideas.
¹ Only one date, admittedly, in Stirling, Scotland with our friends Volunteer Scotland, so the back of the t-shirt was a bit sparse, but ‘NET on tour’ made us smile
