The Learning Lab for Systems Changers
Running throughout the Systems Changers programme we had a Learning Lab, where the focus was on surfacing insights from the frontline workers, looking for patterns in their insights, and understanding how to use the insights as a way to influence change.
Each frontline worker had a learning partner to support them and work with them to draw out and articulate their insights. The learning partner set up monthly calls and the Learning Lab team met monthly.
Here is a run through of some of the tools and frameworks we experimented with in the Learning Lab.
The first was the framework we used for gathering data. These were the main questions we set out to answer in terms of the frontline workers and their role in influencing change.
Each month Anne or Anna (the learning partners in the team) set up a call with each of the frontline workers they were supporting. The call was distinctly about surfacing and generating insights, rather than emotional support (they had Hannah for this – the Coach on the team). Each month the frontline workers had left the monthly session with their cohort with an experiment to try out. The learning partners used the tool below to prompt the frontline worker to articulate what they’d learnt from the experiment. We always used these 3 different lenses throughout the programme to encourage plurality in how the frontline workers perceived change.
The learning partners also documented what they were hearing and perceiving about the frontline worker. They used the tool below on each call as a way to record that information.
Using this data we started to map how the frontline workers were building or could build, capability as Systems Changers.
Alongside the learning partners collecting data through calls each month, the Learning Lab team (Jennie & I) met monthly to look across all the data and insights coming from the cohort. This was where we sorted insights into themes, grouped them into the types of influence they could have and also experimented with whether collective intelligence was coming into play at all. Were there insights that the collective cohort was forming that each of them as individuals couldn’t know alone?
In the next post I’ll write more about what didn’t work and what we learnt about our approach.
