Unpicking the Barriers to Change – Changing Through Experience

Photo by Phillirose – Flickr https://flic.kr/p/nV5A1y

I was in a conversation with Sara Cretney (Organisational Change Manager) and some senior colleagues recently about change and the question came up about barriers and what is stopping the people who are thinking differently from doing different?

I’m not entirely sure there is a single answer to this but one of the reasons I believe this is the case here is that given the climate we are in and the context and scale of change we have to embark upon the actual practical act of changing (not just yourself, but services) is really hard, especially if you haven’t experienced radical or transformation change before and lets face it most of us haven’t.

I’m not making excuses just highlighting a fact, so the conversation got into what we could do to resolve those barriers.

Sara and I used some personal experiences of attending practical events like XJamGov where the intense nature of the process challenges you within a very short time frame and introduces you to a range of tools and techniques which you can explore in practical situations and not in abstract and also test and develop new tools.

The more people we can encourage and nudge to attend and participate in these types of things to help them gain practical exposure and experience of new thinking and the doing of that new thinking the better in my opinion.

So what can we do about that?

Well it just so happens that Sara and I had already being doing some thinking around this with colleagues internally and externally – people like Martin Howitt, Lucy Knight, Dave Briggs, Andrea Siodmok and colleagues from Cornwall Council, Devon & Cornwall Police and a few others. We have also looked at work already done by others around this such as the work by Cornwall, Monmouthshire and the Policy Lab.

The idea is to create something which helps individuals discover and explore through experience. Actually shifting people from Thinking Different to Doing Different.

Sounds easier said than done of course – but we thought that there was almost an emerging range of experiences which could be built upon and developed further so it doesn’t feel like we would be starting from a blank piece of paper.

The early thinking is to look at how we can create a Change Academy – this would provide and facilitate an engaging experience around the following headings and themes to develop and grow people’s talents.

The Change Academy

Focus on Need
Key message: User Needs, not (Local) government needs
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Service Design
• Service Blueprinting
• User Journey Mapping
• Personas
• Ethnography
• User Research
• Service Jams

Whole Person, Whole Place, Whole System
Key Message: Focus on what matters
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Understanding and mapping demand
• Tackling system conditions
• Identify value and eliminate waste
• Impact and measurement
• Measures VS targets

Agile Projects
Key Message: Doing and Showing
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Rapid prototyping
• Minimum Viable Product
• Doing not Talking
• User testing
• Lean Start-up

Data and Experience Driven
Key Message: Solving the Right Problems
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Data Stories
• User Stories
• Storyboarding
• First hand Experience
• Hackathons

Reflective Practice
Key Message: Coaching, mentoring and reflection
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Reflective practice framework (satori lab)
• Coaching
• Strengths and impact on others
• Giving and receiving feedback

Enterprise
Key Message: Making change sustainable
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Social Investment
• Crowdfunding
• Co-opetition
• Business models / business model canvas
• Law, Finance, HR – Navigating through, not compliance to
• Negotiating and selling
• Marketing and Communications

Networked and Collaborative
Key Message: Better Together
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Digital Skills
• Co-opetition
• Relationships
• Understanding networks and channels
• Online and offline
• Unconferences

Open by Default
Key Message: Open is better
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Data skills / literacy
• Transparency
• Data Frame
• Privacy and Confidentiality
• Reputation

Digital by Design
Key Message: This will happen / this is happening
Skills, development, learning and hands on experience of:

• Digital Skills
• Digital Infrastructure
• Market Awareness
• Opportunity
• Prototyping
• Experience

Now as I mentioned this is early thinking and we would welcome views and comments.

One of the aspirations I have is to link the Change Academy to the LocalGov Digital skills development workstream and this become a natural part of what we do and support through LocalGov Digital.

Filed under: Local Government Tagged: change, change academy, design, digital, do different, need, open, service design, think different, xjamgov Original post