How to Shift a System
In Glasgow, Karyn McCluskey, then a senior police officer, led a city wide coalition of the police, other public services and community actors to shift the whole criminal justice system’s approach to knife crime which dramatically lowered knife crime across the city by preventing it rather than responding to it.
In Costa Rica Alvaro Salas led a team which over many years created a highly effective, community-based health care system built around communities and their needs, rather than around doctors and hospitals.
In Canada, Al Etmanski, the writer, campaigner and innovator has been central to a decades-long struggle to shift the systems supporting young people with disabilities to enable independent living.
In the Indian state of Kerala, Suresh Kumar has created a universal palliative care system for people at the end of life with the help of thousands of trained community volunteers who have created a highly effective system because of, as well as despite, an extreme shortage of doctors. That has become a model for other community based approaches to care, for example in mental health.
In British Columbia, Rod Allen, a former teacher turned civil servant, led a shift across the education system, involving teachers, unions, principals, policy makers and politicians to make developing students’ creative capabilities the chief focus, rather than scores in standardised tests.
All these are examples of people shifting systems at scale to create better outcomes for society. When fundamental systems like education and policing, health and care, food and energy, shift to adopt new goals and ways of working, different, better ways of life become possible across society. System shifting innovators help propel change at scale not just by scaling the service they offer but by shifting the wider system of which it is a part. It is the combination that counts. One without the other is rarely as effective as these two strategies in combination.
Scaling innovative solutions, within existing systems, has proven to be the elusive holy grail of social entrepreneurship and innovation. Very few social innovations, despite evidence of their effectiveness, achieve the scale their innovators hope for. Most remain trapped on location, unable to grow beyond the specific conditions where they initially emerged. Few gain traction over the larger systems in which they work. When they do manage to scale that often comes at a price: the innovation has to conform to the system, finding a slot within it rather than changing the way it works. The troubled history of how difficult it is to scale a social innovation that is the work of a single organisation is one reason we want to shift systems to achieve impact at scale. We are exploring whether it's more effective to achieve scale of impact by shifting the dynamics of wider systems. Small organisations can have a huge impact by acting as the pivot to shift a much larger system. That shift will involve catalysing a transformational coalition of actors who come together to undertake the different tasks involved. Shifting systems is never the work of a single organisation, however visionary; it’s always the work of a coalition which creates the bare bones of a minimum viable system.
Over 5 days our Making the System Shift Learning Festival will explore a set of linked challenges involved in shifting a system encapsulated in these three questions:
Why should shifting a system be the goal of social innovation?
What shifts within a system to generate change at scale?
How does it happen? Who does what when a system shifts? Who invests in systems change and how do we evaluate whether progress is being made?
Let's briefly, take each of these three questions in turn.
Why should shifting a system be the goal of social innovators?
Systems create big outcomes for society; not standalone products, single organisations or particular interventions. All contribute to social change but they count for much more when they are part of a complementary effort to shift the dynamics of an entire system. The extraordinary good health of Costa Ricans is partly a product of better drugs and doctors but even more so on a systematic web of community-based health care which melds the formal support from specially trained community health care technicians with the informal care from families and communities organised around the inclusive ideal of community wellbeing. Traditional secondary health care systems treat individuals who present themselves with a problem to be diagnosed and treated. The Costa Rica system focuses on improving the health of entire communities by preventing and managing critical conditions which might otherwise send people to hospital.
Many of the systems that we rely upon to support our way of life are under intense strain, as inequality deepens, the climate crisis accelerates, competition over resources intensifies and international order seems increasingly fragile. And this is all happening just as we need to come together to tackle the big, shared challenge of charting just transitions to a more equitable, sustainable future. Seen in that light few of the systems we have – whether for food and energy, care and health, work and education – seem fit for purpose. They seem designed for a different era. The case for why we need to shift systems is the focus for Day One of our conference.
Scaling a new more effective service is an obvious, laudable goal for the organisation which comes up with the innovation. But it will not, on its own, shift a system. That is why many of the most impressive social entrepreneurs who have scaled solutions to reach millions of people are going beyond strategies for achieving organisational scale. To complement, amplify and deepen their efforts at scaling they are seeking to shift the flows of resources in the public, private and community systems in which they operate. System shifters are trying to go deeper, to shift the underlying principles, mental models, culture and assumptions on which systems are built, something that scaling services can skate over.
Scaling and shifting are most effective when they work in tandem, the one feeding the other. Shifting systems is a way to achieve impact at scale and it creates new markets for innovative solutions. Scaling innovations are critical to shifting systems, when those innovations contain within them the kernel of a different system. Social change is most effective when scaling and shifting work together.
As the Schwab Centre for Social Entrepreneurship put it in a recent report:
“For a sector that has long been obsessed with the holy grail of organisational scale, the social entrepreneurship sector is now coming to terms with the limits of incremental growth. The needs are just too large and urgent; the models for scaling we have developed thus far remain too narrow and take too long. Conventional scaling models borrowed from the private sector, such as branch replication, social franchising and open-source dissemination seem woefully inadequate when aiming to create meaningful social change for entire populations.”
The challenge is: how can relatively small organisations – at least compared with the systems in which they operate – have a catalytic effect, shifting the way that larger systems work?
Vicky Colbert, the founder of Escuela Nueva in Colombia, which has spread through the country’s education system and beyond, promoting a collaborative, problem solving approach to learning, in which children take responsibility for leading learning in groups enabled by teachers, likens it to a new software to power the people, materials and buildings of the school system. Mitch Besser, the founder of Mothers2Mothers, the self-help network of HIV positive mothers in Africa, likens it to a catalyst which has brought to life otherwise dysfunctional, disconnected and so inert health services with women’s networks in communities.
These system shifting initiatives are seeking to have a catalytic effect on the wider system, which commands much greater resources and have a much wider reach than they ever can. To shift such a system they are changing the underlying principles, norms and values on which the system rests. That is why they contain within them the kernel of a different kind of system.
We need system shifts because we need change at scale, to address the urgent, deep seated challenges of our time. But what exactly shifts when a system shifts?
What shifts when a system shifts?
Systems are interconnected and complex. Shifting an existing system or creating a new one is a protracted, emergent processes which involve many contributions: new products and complementary services; new infrastructures to connect them; policy frameworks to regulate them; new consumer behaviours and social norms which bring them to daily life; investment to get them set up and demand to sustain them once they are. What we have noticed about system shifts is:
System shifts involve change at all levels. A system shift involves change across at least three levels, from the macro level of social norms, values and goals; the meso level of public policy frameworks, institutions, infrastructure and technology and the micro level of new patterns of daily life, where innovative ideas emerge in often overlooked niches.
Systemic change shifts the focus from symptoms to causes. It has to go deep, to address the root causes of challenges such as racial injustice and economic inequality, not just their symptoms. The underlying assumptions which the system takes for granted as its common sense and which holds it in place have to shift: from the presumption that young people with disabilities cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves, to the conviction that young people should be participants in deciding what the good life consists of; from health care needs diagnosed by doctors who cure people to health care as communities learning to live well together. Systems shift when the common sense on which they depend shifts.
Systemic innovation shifts the boundaries of the system. System shifters often shift the boundaries of the system, how it defines its domain. Suresh Kumar, created his groundbreaking community care systems in Kerala, by shifting health care from out of hospitals into the community, making the home the centre of health rather than the hospital. Shifting the system’s boundaries opens up new resources, from within the community, but it can also challenge the identity of people deeply invested in the current system’s institutions and hierarchies.
A system shift creates a new workforce and new demand for what they produce. Karyn McCluskey realised that preventing knife crime in Glasgow could not be achieved by the police acting alone but by assembling a coalition across the city which included other public services, churches, colleges and employers. Costa Rica’s health care system turned on the creation at scale of a new kind of role: an ATAP, a community health care technician. They work in teams of six to support about 4,000 citizens. There are now hundreds of these teams across the country serving virtually every community. A new workforce has brought about a different outcome.
In our experience there are four ‘keys’ that work together to determine how a system operates. System shifters use these four keys to unlock shifts that lead to fundamental change:
A shift in the purpose and goals, what the system is for, the way of life it seeks to support, the principles it stands for. Karyn McCluskey shifted the system in Glasgow from seeing crime as an incident to be dealt with by police and the courts, to seeing crime as akin to a disease, something that spreads and which needs to be presented at source.
A shift in power, to those who can use power more effectively, in new ways to make good on the new purpose, to bring it into being. Al Etmanski and his collaborators are shifting power from professionals, towards young people with disabilities, their families and friends, to determine the kind of support they want.
Shifts in power and purpose go together. One without the other rarely makes sense. One reason systems are so hard to shift is that people do not want to give up their power to set the system’s overarching purpose.
That is why shifts in power and purpose usually depend on creating a new architecture of relationships in the system that can animate a new purpose and make it possible to distribute power and resources differently. Mothers2Mothers puts peer-to-peer relationships between mothers at the heart of preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children. Al Etmanski helped to create new relationships between young people with disabilities, families, support and social workers, which put the relationship between the family and the young person at the heart of the solution.
All of that needs to be made real in a shift in resources available to the system and the way those resources flow through it. Karyn McCluskey created new relationships between the police, other public services, victims, perpetrators, community groups, dentists, vets, employers, churches, training providers who could then bring their own resources to bear. By shifting the purpose to one of making the community safe by preventing knife crime McCluskey provided the focal point for a much wider range of contributions to the shared cause.
When an entrepreneur, campaigner, innovator, designer or investor contributes to shifting a system it is because they have used four keys: purpose and power, resource flows and relationships. When they use these keys effectively they enable a system to transform itself, to take on new goals, values, ways of working, organisational forms. So who does that work and how, given that no one has “system shifter” as their job title?
Who does what when a system shifts?
System shifters come in many shapes and sizes, from many different sources, bringing to bear different assets, skills and resources. Strategies for shifting systems is the focus for discussion on Day Two of our festival.
The cast list of system shifters includes:
Imaginative, entrepreneurial system shifting ventures which contain within them the kernel for a different kind of system. System shifting ventures act as visible attractors for other entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers and other innovators. They make the possibilities of the future visible today. And all system shifting organisations got started somewhere. Escuela Nueva started in a single room schoolhouse in rural Colombia. Alvaro Salas started his community based health system in one village. Small can be big when the prototype is telling a larger story, illuminating what is deficient in the current system and pointing to an alternative. System shifting entrepreneurs point to possibilities that they themselves cannot fully exploit; it takes others following in their wake to provide the complementary products and services to do so. That’s why system assemblers are so important.
System assemblers who pull together the different ingredients needed for a core, minimum viable system to emerge. System assemblers are not usually pioneers. They are more often followers, who see the potential of a radical idea if it can be complemented with supporting innovation. Madhav Chavan did not originate the Pratham model for super low-cost pre-school groups run by women from their homes. He did spot its potential to transform the Indian education system if women could be supported by an infrastructure that would allow the model to spread.
Insider-outsiders, who help systems open up to new ideas from the outside. They are adept at working within systems; can see the potential for radical new ideas that emerge outside them and crucially find a way to bridge the two. Rod Allen is the consummate insider-outsider, a former teacher and union activist who became the key architect of a system-wide change across British Columbia’s education system.
Social movements which change the way society applies its values, propose new goals and shift mindsets. Movements shift systems by spreading new norms of what is acceptable. Spreading change in this way, through networks and movements, is as potent as scaling services and solutions. Movements mobilise power and influence, outside systems by bringing people together to advocate and press for change but also within systems by lobbying power holders to change laws and policies. Effective social movements can create the conditions in which new services – once regarded as radical and risky – can come to be seen as common sense. That is what people with disabilities have achieved with the movement for independent living: it shifted mindsets, changed policy and funding flows and so created a new market for innovative independent support services. Effective social movements make a journey from opposition and critique to proposition and creativity. The two feed one another: opposition to the failings of the current system drive the search for new solutions, based on a different social philosophy.
Convenors play a critical role in helping to bring together these components of change, so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. As Robin Hacke from the Centre for Community Investing puts it: resources follow coherence. If investors – of all kinds – can see a coherent story of collective commitment to change emerging they are more likely to back a cause. Convenors do not merely bring people together, they help create shared narratives of system change.
This is not an exhaustive list. There are critical roles beyond that set of five, for example system shifting investors, who bring together the different kinds of capital needed to propel a fundamental shift (which will be the focus on Day Four of our festival) and evaluators to help systems innovators learn in real time about how complex systems are changing and whether progress is being made (which will be the focus of Day Three of our festival).
Making the Shift in Practice
The Making the System Shift Learning Festival aims to showcase practical approaches to shifting systems which can serve also as an inspiration and call to action.
We start on Day One, with a discussion of why we need fundamental systems to shift, focussing on health and care, education, and learning.
On Day Two we will examine how systems shift, exploring the different strategies of insider outsiders, entrepreneurs, movement builders and designers in opening up the possible future.
Day Three, is devoted to evaluation and how we can make sense of system shifts, the direction they are taking, what is propelling them and whether progress is being made.
Day Four will focus on how we invest in whole systems shifts by bringing together coalitions of capital to bring about change.
We want to help funders and investors to find new ways to back system-shifting ventures; evaluators to reshape their practice to support system-shifting innovation; insiders to see how they can work more creatively with outsiders; designers to see how they can work more effectively with social movements for change, social entrepreneurs to see themselves as system entrepreneurs. Across the field we see people working within current systems, the status quo, to transform them; using the tools of the current system to create a radically different alternative. It’s an uncomfortable position to find yourself in but where tensions can also lead to creativity.
We hope our Making the System Shift conference will help people see routes through all of this. The stories told by the system shifting innovators we have brought together involve many common ingredients. Take the story of Al Etmanski and his team’s effort to shift the Canadian care system to support independent living for young people with disabilities.
Be guided by possibility
The shift was led by a profound, shared sense of possibility, that young people with disabilities could live quite different lives. Start with a sense of possibility, rather than with the problem that needs “fixing”.
Engage the system
In Etmanski’s case that engagement took a fairly radical form: the movement dismantled the worst of the old system, the residential facilities which they argued held young people captive. Clearing away the old is a vital companion to creating space for the new. Engagement with the system does not always have to be so confrontational, however. Some system shifters, insider-outsiders like Rod Allen, work from within, building the case and capacity for change. Others find spaces, often overlooked, outside the system’s sphere of interest where there is greater freedom of manoeuvre. The strategies to engage the system include: confront, dismantle, evade, influence, reprogramme, infiltrate. Whichever is the right strategy for you, the point is you will need to have one.
Combine innovations to create new systems.
System shifts are only made real by concrete innovations, new services and products, which come together to create an alternative minimum viable system. That always involves more than one innovation. System shifts need a flow of connected, coherent, investable propositions which when they come together create a new system. To make good on young people living independently required innovations in support services, housing and finance.
Shift the wider context
Etmanski and his team could only scale their innovative solutions if they shifted the legal and regulatory framework which governed the system they were changing. In their case this meant legislative change so that the relationships young people have with their families and support networks had a legal status alongside the individuals. That meant lobbying and pressing for legislative change. Running a tidy, innovative service organisation was not enough.
Change the way resources flow
That new framework and the solutions it fostered would count for nothing, however, without resources to make them work: people and money. So to enable young people to commission their own support services Etmanski and his team designed a public fund, modelled on an existing retirement savings fund, which families could put money into, and young people could draw down upon to organise the support they wanted.
Shift mindsets and culture
The most difficult shift was the deepest and least visible. They had to shift the hidden norms and values which shaped how young people were seen, especially by caring professionals. That involved leading a new public conversation about attitudes to disability, drawing out the assumptions on which the system was built and questioning them in public. Shifting a system usually means shifting a culture and that takes lots of conversation and emulation of emerging practices. It’s the slow, deep change that has to start before and continue long after the visible changes to laws, regulations, funding and policy.
And all of that involved a shift in: purpose to independent living; power to young people and families; relationships between social work professionals, carers, families and young people; resources to the young people who could commission support from within the communities where they live.
It’s not easy to shift a system. But we think it is entirely possible and we’ve brought together people who are doing so in practice to share their learning, insight and wisdom. On the final Day 5 of the learning festival we cast ourselves forward with a group of system shifting visionaries from all over the world to imagine the systems of the future, systems that will be more circular, inclusive, equitable, regenerative, relational, intelligent, adaptive and flexible, mixing bold radicalism and indigenous values, married to the goals of sustainability and equity to help people lead flourishing lives.
Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister famously once said: “There is no alternative” to explain her determination to press on with radical market based reforms. Well, these days there are more alternatives, more routes to more possible futures than ever. The future is a vast repository of possibility. We hope The Making the System Shift Learning Festival will help to show how we can find the most promising paths to our preferable futures. The future is vast, it awaits you.
Making The System Shift runs 28 Nov - Dec 2022
Sign up to claim your free place here
This free Learning Festival is hosted by the System Innovation Initiative at the ROCKWOOL Foundation Interventions Unit
