Ian Burbidge

In my last post I explored an alternative to the standard approach to problem-solving, the linear and reductionist approach I termed ‘Decide and Deliver’. It involves following a process that enables you to whittle down your options to a single solution to a particular problem, whether through procurement, commissioning, recruitment, investment or other processes. I them offered an alternative approach, what I called Explore and Experiment. 

If the Decide and Deliver approach is about managing a linear process that selects and implements one solution for a given problem, the Explore and Experiment approach is about managing an iterative, cyclical process that manages a portfolio of experiments around a given problem or scenario. The emphasis on the first, born as it is of our capitalist paradigm, is on single winners offering value for money (VfM), on the efficacy of the solution, and with any failures are seen as failures of implementation not of prescription. The explore-and-experiment approach is anathema to the capitalist world view. The emphasis here is on collaboration over competition, generating insights and learning, managing risk through multiple interventions and drawing together the best of what works. 

A live example might help bring this to life. My organisation is working to establish a series of country-based hubs (partnerships) to co-ordinate local humanitarian action in those countries and collectively help accelerate the drive towards a more locally-led system. We are doing it largely through the design-and-deliver approach. This means that our hubs are being asked to follow a pathway from initiation (where we help them to become established) to independence (where they are no longer reliant on support from my organisation). It’s been co-designed with them to a certain degree but we are still asking all hubs to follow the same pathway regardless of context and purpose. The catalyst for their establishment will be different in each case, the history and culture of collaboration different, the way the system shows up in their countries different… you get the idea. 

The reductionist, value-for-money-driven, capitalist mindset views the whole Hub idea as one big bet, an experiment that will either succeed or fail. Already people are getting twitchy about which way the spinning coin will fall. It’s an inevitable result of the underlying principles of the competition and VfM mindset that sees any solution as pass/fail. How can we sell the idea to funders if we can’t prove value? If we can’t show that it is a safe bet and that you won’t be risking your investment? We can’t allow any of them to fail, to decide to fold, that this isn’t for them right now. 

So we employ other tools from the capitalist playbook: we standardise processes, wrap policies around them, establish compliance procedures to handle the outliers who can’t comply with protocols, establish support mechanisms, peer reviews and training to help them improve, all the while with the unsurfaced intention of helping them all on their linear progression towards independence and effective working. Herein lies another assumption of this mindset: the notion that things can be solved, a destination reached (a mature hub that is operating effectively) and that anyone or any hub not achieving this hallowed, sunlit upland is in someway a failure, in need of special measures or attention.

What’s the alternative? A systems-informed mindset will view the whole hub idea as a portfolio of experiments: each hub is in itself an experiment around what might work for a country-based partnership given the culture and context in which it operates. This Explore and Experiment approach will seek to maximise and share the learning from each one, recognising that there are as many paths to success as there are hubs. Here we might find that there are a number of broad paths that are helpful for new hubs coming on board, or common challenges that we can support them to overcome based on the learning of those further head on their journey. 

In this approach we don’t seek standardisation through policy and compliance procedures, we seek flexibility and learning through open and transparent support and light-touch, appropriate governance. We seek to nurture, not to control. We recognise that for some hubs, the timing may not be right or they may simply decide for whatever reason that this isn’t for them, and in my mind that’s not only ok but also to be expected. So long as we are learning along the way there is no such thing as failure in a complex setting because – to emphasise the point – there is no single solution that exists to be uncovered and implemented. This idea is at the heart of a system-view of life and runs counter to the capitalist paradigm of competition and, therefore, of winners and losers. In a complex system there can only be experiments and learning to explore the system as we go. For the system will constantly change and adapt, not only to our movements and interventions but also to those of others acting within it. 

The crucial question therefore remains this: do you know the context in which you are working and are you using the most appropriate approach at any given time?