Navigating Complexity — Unpicking the problem

This blog is part of a series exploring Systems Change through a Community of Practice in Nottingham. This piece of work has been funded by The Lankelly Chase Foundation and you can catch on our previous posts here and here

Where are we up to?

The second meeting of the Community of Practice (CoP) has taken place and it was a delight to see so many participants returning with great energy and enthusiasm. The meeting kicked off reflecting on the CoP being an ‘informal open door’. Meaning the CoP is a positive place which allows conversation to flow organically, is open to others who want to join and a space to enthusiastically unpick motivations for creating change.

In our first blog, we delved into detail about the teams behind the scene, setting up the Community of Practice. We’ve continued to meet (virtually) to reflect and plan future sessions, ensuring we are conscious of the energies of the group. Which means we do not rigidly plan sessions in advance or are limited by sticking to a script. The partnership (Change Nottingham) is happy and optimistic about the potential of the CoP — the energy is committed and serious. Seeing people return from CoP session 1 was fantastic — it means people want to be involved to help change and challenge the system.

Prior to the second meeting, participants had been asked to submit ‘problems’ where they could see ‘blockages’ in their ‘systems’. Commitment to this task was clear and 7 in-depth problems were submitted. The problems alone were really insightful, highlighting how individual members perceive the possibilities and remit of the CoP as a place of change. There were tangible frontline issues raised. Some of the issues were those that centered on how the system of professionals (many of whom are represented in the CoP) work together in the community and for the community.

Problem picked:

After a quick round up of reflections from our first meeting, the group voted for the problem they wanted to discuss. Pauline Roberts, our Systems Practitioner and session facilitator, read out the questions and some in-depth context from the problem proposer. Using Slido, participants had a few minutes to digest those submitted (see below) and vote on the one that they wanted to explore.

It was a tough call to make, all these problems are real and important to all members. To help with the choice, we concentrated on what we were able to discuss in the now, and parked the others to possibly explore together in the future. The problem picked was:

We all then broke into groups to further explore the problem. The process allowed us to bring our individual perspectives and build collective insight, resulting in a multi-faceted picture.

These smaller group reflections had a common theme — participants highlighted frontline work, even when it involves people with lived experience, often feels very ‘top down’. ‘Top down’ was referred to as the process whereby issues or discussion points were often raised by those wanting to deliver the work as opposed to the communities or individuals themselves, posing the question, ‘whose problem is this?’

Discussions also brought up the following points (see the diagram below for an example of points raised in one of the groups):

• ‘Truer partnerships’ (this was how the participants described it) are needed in order to build those relationships with local communities — meaning more trust and open conversations should be built on prior to any work taking place.
• Truer sharing of information — both transparent information (what is needed from the community?) and transparency to how this makes an impact (where does it end up?).
• Definition of hard to reach — often communities are blamed for being hard to reach when sometimes it is the case that we (the professionals) don’t know enough about them in the first place in order to reach them appropriately.
• Is it a priority to get this right? — are the communities invested into the idea of ‘holding power’?, do they have the capacity and resources to hold or make any decisions for change to occur?

Digging into the problem

Facilitation from the Systems Practitioner enabled the group to agree they needed to start with a grassroots approach. More questions need to be raised directly with local communities to help build relationships. Communities should be asked how they see themselves to understand how they feel involved in local systems.

Pauline (the Systems Practitioner) introduced the group to the concepts of ‘Reflective vs Reflexive’ and how this was the difference between ‘saying something could or should happen’ to ‘acting on the reflection, implementing the action or the change in that moment too’. A crucial consideration when discussing how to ensure change is led by communities themselves.

Exploring problems in our system was really useful. We acknowledged that it’s tempting to want to immediately jump to solutions, but the group fed back that taking time to stop and be supported to unpick an issue together, and in some depth, was quite rare and really valuable. It’s fair to say that between CoP meetings 1 and 2, some of us felt that strong and familiar desire to crack on with action plans, but after the activities in the second CoP there was appetite for sitting in that unknowing exploration space.

Using tools to support systems thinking

The CoP was moving at pace and there was a keenness to learn more about mapping and unpicking the system together. Pauline introduced the group to a few tools that may be used to dig into the problem. It was stressed that tools shouldn’t be seen as a ‘one size fits all’ magic wand and we should be careful choosing our tools, asking ourselves what is the change we are genuinely trying to make. The three tools that were introduced in the meeting were:

• Critical Systems Heuristics (boundaries, the challenge, who benefits and who holds the power)

• Soft Systems Methodology (views, ideas and emotions — can be done via a rich picture, looking at who is responsible and who owns the system?)

• Causal Loop Diagrams (looking at what impacts on what, the positive and negative influences and where impact actually happens)

Whilst discussing these tools, the chat box was busy with examples from participants of how and where these tools have been used in other parts of work to answer system questions. It was great to see the shared passion and energy for this, ideas sparking and participants actively shaping what they and the rest of the group were learning. Sharing these experiences and examples was eye-opening because it showed the group how we could teach and learn from each other as peers — illustrating that we already hold a lot of knowledge within our system.

What does this mean now for the CoP to move forward?

In just 2 hours, CoP number two was wrapping up! Energy was once again heightened and the group agreed the CoP IS an inspiring place to be where we can just ‘take the lid off’ our thinking. We reminded ourselves that the next CoP is the last session we have booked in and it would be good to discuss the future of the CoP at the next meeting. Opening up the question, will this take off — where do our passions lie?

To wrap up, a member from the Change Nottingham partnership reflected that our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will look different for all of us. Reminding us that right now we are nudging and not leading change.

In our next blog post, we will share learning from the third CoP and what the plans for the future hold. As always if you want to chat further with us about this work, drop us an email at either:

Chloe.dennis-green@childrenssociety.org.uk

Gabriel.Hall@childrenssociety.org.uk