Navigating Complexity in Nottingham — Sensing out our systems
This blog is part of a series documenting learning on the Navigating Complexity Community of Practice (CoP) happening in Nottingham, funded by The Lankelly Chase Foundation. We refer to the Community of Practice as a group of individuals working together to build permission and trust and to act as a ‘un-blocker’ towards systems that are inhibiting change.
Our first Community of Practice (CoP) took place at the end of January (2021) and oh wow! We were so happy with the energy in that virtual room! Keeping up the momentum from our last post, here’s our learning about setting up the CoP and what went down in meeting no.1:
Setting up the Community of Practice
Since September 2020, between the many lockdowns, our partnership met regularly to design our CoP together. Pauline Roberts, an experienced systems practitioner, supported us in these planning sessions.
Our key reflections on this initial phase are:
- Systems coaching helped us connect with each other and shape our learning together.
- Our feelings swing between Bamboozled vs Optimistic — we’ve learned it’s important not to overcomplicate things before we have begun. Instead, let’s meet up (online) and let the lessons unravel naturally.
- This journey so far feels open and transparent. People are asking lots of questions and they’re being proactive by taking actions already.
- Our group needs to be accessible and that includes the language we use. For example, we know not everyone we seek to serve responds to language of ‘disadvantage’ or sees themselves as disadvantaged.
- Facilitation of the CoP needs to be done with care and we’ll aim to work with the chair and presenters to ensure membership energy is positive.
- The ‘care’ we refer to includes being mindful of the language used, the pace and facilitation style. Seeking to be inclusive and mindful of each individual in the group. Working to bring people together so they can effectively collaborate.
- Show don’t tell; start the community and eventually, when the energy is there, the community will grow.
- Stay focused. Try not to get de-railed or side tracked; CoP energy is precious, don’t let this become a project group or over taken by one organisation, those involved need to be conscious of the energy they bring to each meeting.
- The CoP will be open for voluntary input however will stick close to our principles. Ensuring the CoP is a safe collaborative space — not a competitive place.
We need to keep asking ourselves ‘is the Community of Practice the correct vehicle for change?’ We will need to evolve and flex with the needs of those in Nottingham.
A shared aim has been agreed for the Community of Practice: ‘Improve the System Response to those facing disadvantage by navigating the blockages that are put before them’.
We said we will work together to achieve this aim by using our:
- head (influencing policy)
- hands (challenging practice)
- and heart (openly sharing our learning)
Gabriel Hall, The Children’s Society lead in the CoP, reflects:
“We have had to take time to understand systems thinking and the approach we want to take. The Community of Practice will bring us together to do that…A reflection I had [Dec 2020] is about who’s involved and the language we are using. Which can often sound complex — we want to reach everyone be accessible and understandable…We (the Change Nottingham Partnership) are evolving as a group — working together across our common purpose.”
The first CoP — How did it go!?
The first ‘Navigating Complexity Community of Practice’ was held on 28th January 2021 and hosted by our colleagues at Nottingham’s Practice Development Unit (PDU). It was a great turn out with positive and productive energy overflowing. Facilitated by Pauline over a couple of hours, the Community of Practice explored what a CoP is and could become, and started to help members take a look at the systems surrounding them — reflecting back how the CoP could help challenge and shape those systems in the months to come. Here is a snapshot of what happened in form of a rich picture:
What did we cover?
Together as a steering group, Change Nottingham decided on some key starting points for the first CoP to focus and progress on. These were shared with our Systems Change Practitioner (Pauline) who helped shape the points into the following activities:
- Kicking off with a ‘share your passions intro’ allowed everyone to leave lanyards out of the room and really expand on what brought them to attend as people and peers. The group seemed to like this approach as it encouraged us to try and leave traditional power dynamics and hierarchies outside too — it might be useful tool to come back to in future meetings if we find ourselves slipping into old habits and need to refresh the dynamics again.
- Conversations around effective leadership brought up reflections on how the CoP may be able to quietly influence outside of traditional forms of authority — to do so will require a joint effort from all participants in bringing about change.
- Drawing our own rich pictures provoked conversations around the ‘what’ in the system that links all of the parts together (children, young people, adults, activity). Most members seemed to really like this activity — giving them permission to be a bit creative and freer in a working environment, and literally joining up the dots between otherwise hard to describe issues. We’ll aim to use rich pictures throughout the CoP to help people think and share in different ways.
- Rounding it all off with a systems change case study about childhood obesity — the primary lesson being that in order for this to work ‘control’ must be handed over to those expert citizens whose lives we’re hoping to improve.
- The homework for participants was to consider: ‘what is it I can commit to right now?’ Prompting people to reflect on what energy and action they able to offer to the CoP if they want real systemic change to take place in Nottingham. During the session check-out, energy was high with momentum to keep the conversations flowing.
We’ll keep reviewing the activities we try out in the CoP sessions, reusing the practices we liked (especially leaving our lanyards out of the room, and rich pictures), and parking or adapting the ones that feel less useful.
Where next?
With that positive energy, the right people in the room, and leadership mindsets activated, the group agreed they would definitely meet again. The next Community of Practice commenced at the end of February and began to explore:
- The reflections from the end of the first meeting
- What shared problems we/the people we’re supporting face?
- Where there might be places/opportunities to act together?
- What we can then commit to preparing the groundwork in our system to shift this energy into action
Building on Systems Changers
One of the motivators to progress the work in Nottingham was to test and develop the Systems Changers approaches previously adopted within The Children’s Society, from the Systems Changers programme . The learning from the systems changers programme included identifying key enabling factors to support change. We have identified the seeds of these enabling factors in the learning from the Community of Practice already, these include:
- Multi-disciplinary teams: organise around problems rather than functions. The ‘friction’ of different perspectives is important. The Change Nottingham partnership is made up of different teams within five organisations/partnerships working together in Nottingham. This partnership is already generating ‘collective insight’ about shared problems that we wouldn’t be able to know individually. We’re starting to work closely to understand the problems in our local area, communicating and listening to each other to agree a shared approach and the priority next steps that are needed.
- Giving permission to frontline professionals to map and make sense of the complex societal problems and the multi-layered systems that frame people’s lives. The CoP offers space and permission for professionals who make up the partnership and CoP members to understand the complexity within the communities they wish to create change. It gives them a formal environment to think ‘big’ in, and bring their everyday frontline experience to bear on wider decisions they might not otherwise have input into.
After our next CoP we’ll blog about the other emerging connections between Systems Changers and this CoP. We’re really looking forward to testing these out and developing them with our colleagues in Nottingham.
Are you in Nottingham and want to join? Head over to the PDU to sign up!
Have a question or reflection on this blog? Talk to us! Drop either myself or Gabriel an email and we’d be happy to pick up!
