Exploring Change
A guided tour of the thinking on my website.
Over the years I’ve written a lot about change — why it’s hard, why it fails, and what it takes to create the change organisations know is possible for the impact they know is necessary. Much of it is born in practice: working with teams in local government, the NHS, central government, think tanks and charities, watching what happens when good ideas meet the challenges of reality.
The trouble with a lot of content is that nobody tells you where to begin. So here’s my attempt to fix that for my own writing. Below are the five threads that run through almost everything I write, with one recommended starting point for each. Begin anywhere — but if it were me, I’d begin here.
1. Thinking like a system, acting like an entrepreneur.
Our biggest social challenges arise in the intersections between systems — and systems don’t respond to plans, however well intentioned. My response is a way of working I call being a “systems entrepreneur”: seeing the wider context while seizing opportunities to experiment within it.
→ Start with: On being a systems entrepreneur. It’s the idea underneath nearly everything else here.
Then try: On going against the grain — what Bogotá teaches us about equipping every public servant to create change.
2. Strategy, governance and the long term.
Strategic plans are comforting — which is precisely the problem. How do organisations steer with direction and purpose in complex systems, where outcomes can’t be engineered and the most important investments pay off long after the plan expires?
→ Start with: On a systems-informed strategy. It bridges the systems thinking and the strategy thinking in a single argument.
Then try: On the comfort of strategic plans — a shorter, punchier take on the theme.
3. Collaboration, teams and networks.
No one creates change alone — but collaboration is harder, and stranger, than the brochures suggest. These posts are about bringing people together across sectors, silos and hierarchies, especially when nobody is formally in charge.
→ Start with: On convening across systems. It’s the most practical of the posts on what it really takes to convene people around shared challenges.
Then try: On systems change in the third sector (part 1) — written with charities and infrastructure organisations in mind.
4. Behaviour, incentives and why change fails.
Most change programmes fail for human reasons, not technical ones. Targets that crowd out teamwork, incentives that reward exactly the wrong thing, goals that become tyrants. These posts collect stories from the frontline — including some of my own.
→ Start with: On four perspectives of change. Picture the scene: a performance-related pay scheme, announced to a purpose-driven organisation. It begins with a story, and so do most of the posts it opens onto.
Then try: On conflicting incentives (stories from the frontline)
5. Local government, place and devolution.
I spent three years of my working life inside local government reorganisation — and it seems we’re doing it all again. These posts ask the questions reorganisation exercises too often skip: what is local government actually for, and who decides where the lines fall?
→ Start with: On reorganising local government (why should we care?) — part 1. It’s the doorway into my five-part series, and probably the deepest dive I’ve taken into any single question. Isn’t a restructure simply an excuse for a more fundamental change?
Then try: On the devolution white paper: diamonds in the rough or fool’s gold?
And if you’d rather browse…
Each of these threads corresponds to a theme page (and a blog category or three) deeper in the site — you’ll find them in the menu above. There’s also a growing set of Policy + Practice Papers, where I’ve drawn some threads together into single, longer reads, downloadable for offline reading.
Or perhaps you’re facing a complex challenge of your own, and would rather just chat. In which case — do reach out!
Ian Burbidge. 