What we do > our systemic approach


While we do not offer a simple set of solutions to the development of leaders and leadership for multi-sector partnerships, we are guided by a number of principles in devising and enlivening the ‘dance’ of development we co-create with our clients. In this section we offer for interested readers a more extended explanation of the eight principles identified earlier.


1. We do not provide expert consulting, teaching, or training, and instead offer a form of facilitation and coaching to individuals, groups, and communities that both provokes and supports learning for action.
 

A major influence in our approach to developing effective leadership within partnerships is the recognition that this has to be a collaborative process. Though we do make use of models and case learning to illuminate, prompt, or challenge, we strive to tap into, focus, and guide the wealth of experience, knowledge, energy, and motivation partnership members bring to the process
 

2. We focus on resolving live and significant challenges in the local context, and ideally in a ‘here and now’ manner, rather than on relying on less relevant ‘there and then’ theories, models, cases, and lists of good practice developed elsewhere
 
Working in ‘real time’ but within an agreed direction, means focusing on the challenges the partnership faces at that time. These challenges stem not just from central issues of e.g. conflicting policies and funding streams, but also from the engagement of the partners in delivery management within their own organisations and constituencies – a much more emotional and political context.

 
3. We use close learning principles to help people improve performance and at the same time enhance their capabilities. In this, people learn to appreciate, build on, and improve what they do well, and in a parallel process, develop their abilities to perform at higher levels in the future. In lively sessions where the best ideas of the Academy and the practical experience and tacit knowledge of participants come together, participants form the new situated knowledge they need to improve local practice.


Much of the power of a local partnership is that all members provide insight and together generate the innovation that is needed to find new solutions to old problems. ‘Building on what they do well’ presents a critical and significant challenge to many as they struggle to behave creatively within the bureaucratic culture of investing and administering public monies.
 

4. In addition to working on both improving performing and developing capability, our usual agenda addresses the critical connections between e.g. strategy and organisation, change and continuity, as well as high level questions to do with ‘context setting’, ‘way-finding’ and ‘place-making’, and the more nitty gritty aspects involved in ‘project delivery’ and ‘communications’.


Maintaining the common purpose and core values that really forge the partnership as an engine for change requires work not just within the group but also leadership within constituencies. ‘Way finding’ and ‘place making’ are e.g. accessible ways of simplifying complex bureaucratic processes which provide the leadership with mechanisms for stimulating further debate and innovation beyond the confines of formal meetings.


5. We believe creative dialogue offers the key to informal learning. We look therefore to disciplined processes of conversation and interchange as the primary means of fostering and stimulating the mutual influencing and educating process that takes place between participants. We make little use of more conventional and formal presentation-based approaches that rely on expert input/discussion


This informal approach encourages many more people with valuable insights to offer, to work with partnership groups in leadership development activities. Freed from being ‘experts’, guests and fellow travellers in our workshops are empowered to share expertise and insight. Many sessions develop into truly creative co-consulting activities that in turn add to the leadership capabilities of the partnership.


6. Significant change requires mutually supporting shifts in both individual behaviour and the local context/culture that supports and gives meaning to these initially fragmentary and isolated individual changes. Such change is likely to be experienced as convincing, develop momentum, and take hold when both are happening at the same time.
 

The lower profile everyday changes that this depends on are most likely to happen outside the confines of formal partnership meetings, when the leadership seek to solicit, guide or implement change within their own constituency, or in relations with another. An important part of our offer is to be available to assist individuals to prepare for and follow up such work; to be present if required at such events to facilitate in real time; and to help bring the learning back to the larger group
 

7. Lasting change requires systemic adjustments and cultural legitimation, and these subtle processes take time. Accordingly we seek to help clients learn and develop from taking action over a number of cycles of action and reflection. This action inquiry process involves: taking action to improve practice, learning from reflecting on the effects of these actions (ideally in the present), experimenting with improved approaches – both in terms of ‘what works’, and ‘what supports what works’, and embodying the learning in improved practices.
 

Individuals respond differently to change and development due to a whole range of factors involving preferences, learned behaviour, intentions and levels of interest, their unit’s culture, and so on. We therefore do not advocate any single approach as ‘best practice’. Our role is to help the partnership and individuals within it learn and develop at their own pace and in ways that build on strength. Working out together what works best and supporting such shifts until they become embodied and embedded, cannot be achieved in short term ‘one size fits all’ results-oriented activities
 

8. An emergent approach that evolves over time in line with changing needs, demands an investment in ‘relationship time’ to give continuity and meaning to our work together. We therefore devote considerable time and effort ‘offline’ to helping clients identify, make, and maintain the threads of the process. As an integral part of this open-ended approach, we regularly address the question how best can we go on together? to ensure that the quality of our work is rigorously assessed and re-aligned to take advantage of the learning which is emerging.


Responding to this question involves developing a narrative that assesses and makes sense of what has been, and conjures up a convincing picture of where to go next. This practice of ‘telling the story’ and then ‘re-telling’ it many times - both to bring it up to date and tailor it convincingly for the many different interested parties in a partnership - is a deceptively difficult skill. Maintaining the key threads which confer legitimacy while adapting to the ebb and flow of central and local community politics, requires reflection on and demonstrated commitment to the core values of the enterprise. The time devoted to bringing these qualities out in the relationship, evaluating real progress, and ‘re-storying’ helps keep the development process and everyone involved, on course.