Starting Differently
Everyday patterns to shift systems towards equity
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 second one: Starting Differently.
This piece was written across 2022 and reflects our thinking at this time.
How we start matters.
The beginning of something (a collaboration, a change process, a policy project or innovation initiative) is the most important point for modelling a different approach.
If we are trying to achieve different kinds of outcomes, or bolder still, create change in a system, we need to start differently.
If our starting point looks like same as always, it’s not going to take us to a different place.
How we start models what we care about, our values, and is a critical opportunity to set a new trajectory. We can use the start point to set a different intent and signal not only new beginnings, but a view to generating different outcomes over time.
This is especially true when countering patterns of how we respond to people experiencing crisis. Too often the need to appear to be addressing a crisis actually prevents us from ensuring the action has sustained outcomes for wellbeing.
Starting differently is about looking at all the ways we ‘normally’ approach project management, investment, business cases, recruitment, budget bids, service and policy design or commissioning practices in human and public services, and questioning whether those are really the first steps that will get us where we want to go.
Starting differently is an opportunity to:
- put different voices, cultures, worldviews, values first;
- start with a strengths rather than deficits perspective;
- start in place, with people, and in a specific context rather than at a national, universal or population level;
- start with questions rather than problem definitions; and/or
- start with whānau, people and relationships rather than planning and prescription or pre-determined outcomes.
Starting differently is about acknowledging how embedded dominant norms are, and checking ourselves critically before we even put our first step forward. This pattern asks us to really question our starting points: Are we inadvertently reinforcing inequity in our approach? Or Saying we are addressing inequity but continuing to use tools and approaches that reflect the values of the dominant management paradigm?
In this breakdown we explore this pattern through:
- four key systems shifts it represents;
- what it might take to embed the pattern; and
- three examples of the pattern in action including — Starting with Learning, Starting with Values and Culture, and Starting with Healing.
