Try, test and grow: the smell of new paradigms  

I wrote a short piece recently based on James Plunkett’s ‘governing human’ observation about the energy for reform and even transformation in how we govern, including the work of the public sector, emanating from an energetic edge. And I noted that aspects of James’ work are being picked up in some strands of work within the UK public sector reform program.

This note picks up a recent example of that work which struck me as well timed for similar reform instincts and programs of work in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

New paradigm hunting

There’s a fair bit of talk at the moment about what comes after New Public Management as a dominant pattern or set of ideas and assumptions about government and the work of the public sector.  The search for a new paradigm, no less.

There’s plenty of work done over many years in different contexts about paradigms – what they are, what they do and how they change.  Check here and here and here for example.

I think Charlie Leadbeater’s work with colleagues on “system shift”, drawing threads from 20 years of thinking, research, practice and stories from all over the world, is a window into the how.  Check out the work on the #fourkeys – power, purpose, relationships and resources.

In the world of governing and the public sector, the work and writing from people like Geoff Mulgan, Beth Noveck, James Plunkett and Jennifer Pahlka is some of the most interesting and provocative.  Plenty of others too.  Try out this work on “positive” public administration for example, including influential input from Janine O’Flynn and Paul ‘t Hart, as a major contribution about the discipline’s shifting tectonic plates.

UK Cabinet Office principles

Another piece of intrepid new paradigm hunting (although I’m sure that’s not how they’d describe it) is work from within the UK’s public sector reform program.  In this case, it’s work recently surfaced from within The Cabinet Office by Nick Kimber.

Nick recently published a set of “test, learn and grow” principles which have been released into the wild with an invitation for further work – “challenge them, make them better, do it kindly” – in a classic display of the “work in the open” ethic of “launch to learn”.  Eating their own dogfood, as my friends at Cisco would say.  Here’s one of their own principles, for example:

We aren’t afraid of our mistakes; we invite challenge and share our work-in-progress. We write and talk openly about our work because it makes the work better. People cannot learn if we don’t tell them what we’re up to. And our mistakes will persist if we don’t expose them. We also work openly because we’re a movement, and movements run on motivation and participation.

The team (aided and abetted by James Plunkett) has gathered together 13 principles (a suitably random work-in-progress number) as a starting point:

1. We’re here to change the centre because that’s where the rules of the game are set
2. We value hands on experience
3. Participation improves things
4. Relationships, not transactions
5. We deliver in teams
6. We keep learning, always
7. Networks, not hierarchies
8. Outcomes, not technologies
9. We strengthen localities
10. We build for scale and to grow this way of working
11. We improve things quickly
12. We work in the open
13. Solving complex problems needs diverse perspectives

To give you a flavour of what’s behind the principles, here are a few.  You can read the full set here and  go online to send Nick and the team ideas to improve and refine (don’t forget to be kind).  But these examples will give you a sense of the direction of travel (and like all writing that aims to be crisp, there’s a slight tendency to epigrammatic brevity). There’s plenty of scope to argue and explore, but each of them, and the full collection, seems to me to carry a considerable payload of insight and challenge.

For example:

We improve this quickly  We aim to make things better by next Friday. This doesn’t mean we rush things. It means we start small, learn deeply, and fail as small as possible. We learn by making contact with reality, early. When we see something broken, we get on with fixing it. And when something’s not working, we stop and pivot. We’re running a marathon in little steps.

“A marathon in little steps” feels like a helpful way to characterise the work of effective public innovation.  Small steps, pragmatic but serving a bigger purpose.

Here’s another, this time focused on relationships (I have an rising sense of “relations” and “relational” as somewhere close to the nub of the emerging new paradigm, if that’s indeed what is going on).

Relationships, not transactions We don’t like silos. We mix policy and delivery, local and national, operational and digital. This makes our work less transactional. We don’t pass instructions back and forth or engage by consulting. We collaborate. This shares ownership and reduces buck-passing. And it reduces dependencies, making the work less risky. You don’t fly a plane by sending letters to ground control, waiting for instructions. So that’s not how we work either.

A third example, treating with the persistent dilemma of scale, speed and learning in public work and innovation.

We build for scale and to grow this way of working Wedesign for adoption. We learn as hungrily when we’re growing a service as when we’re designing it in the first place. We work locally, with everywhere in mind. We grow the reach of services, we don’t replicate them. We understand local nuance and don’t think scaling is an industrial process (which is why we prefer the word grow).

It’s worth asking, in passing, how well some elements of the current “operating model” for public sector work and leadership align with these aspirations.  I guess that’s part of the point.  It’s not hard to discern beneath the 13 principles an imperative for business model innovation, as the consultants would say. We need to contemplate deep shifts in the conditions and incentives with which we surround politicians and bureaucrats, and others engaged in public work, that so often lean unhelpfully in directions that feel pretty much the opposite of these thirteen principles.

I take these to be clues from the realm of ‘reflective practice’ that help to give shape and momentum to new approaches can grow.  It’s exciting work.  To channel Colonel Kilgore, “I love the small new paradigms in the morning”.