From services to building movements: what if we reinvented the way we build teams around issues?

This post is written by Noel Hatch, Head of Policy & Research, Newham Council and Facilitator, London Policy & Strategy Network

• The problem: Hierarchy is good but can instil groupthink.
• Why it matters: Radical solutions are often the most impactful.
• The solution: Non-traditional team-building methods can produce results.

As public services, we know that to tackle the complex challenges we face, one organisation alone let alone a single service is sufficient to develop the solutions to these — be it to tackle structural causes of poverty, issues of social isolation and exclusion or the climate emergency.

The pandemic has shown solutions have come from unexpected places, from communities quickly scaling up support to their neighbourhoods, businesses repurposing their tools to help protect people from the virus or public services developing new services with charities in a matter of hours.

What does that then mean for teams? The way many public service teams have been developed is within hierarchical and functional ways. But what if we could develop ways that learn from the pandemic, where you could bring together people around an issue and tackle it?

From Fuck Up Nights to Impact Accelerators via Systems Changers, here are exciting approaches to how people have done that.

1. From one-off hacks to designing for the distance

I remember when everyone who wanted to be innovative came up with events that promised to solve all our problems in a day. Often borrowing metaphors from either the digital world (like hack days), the running world (designathons), or the hiking world (like local gov camps or gov jams).

These types of events are excellent for creating momentum around an issue, concentrating the energy of people to make stuff happen and showing what could be developed further.

Where they don’t work so well is when they promise that what’s developed on the day will solve the world. Where they work is either they provide a space to mobilise a community of people around an issue or where they’re part of a wider programme of co-design. One-off events that have blown me away include Fuck Up Nights, City Camp and Global Gov Jam.

__If you’re going to run one-off events that mobilise people around an issue in a creative way that provides visible & tangible outputs to start a movement, why not look at other disciplines, like urban games, flash mobs or a community crowdfunding supper?

There are other approaches that focus more on the sustainability of the ideas and the relationships built to embed change. The focus there is on curating the journey to build a movement of people who can mobilise for change. Programmes like these that have blown me away include Schools for Systems Change, Hub Launchpad and U Lab.

If you’re going to run programmes that build the capabilities for change that mobilise people around an issue in a creative way that provides visible & tangible outputs to start a movement, why not look at other disciplines, like art residencies, group therapy or yoga retreats?

2. From growing ideas to building teams

Within these programmes, there are those which help people develop their own ideas and scale them and others that help bring people together to develop collaborative ideas. Often the former will have pre-existing teams join the programme to develop their idea, like Wayra or Fair by Design.

The latter will usually be aimed at people who have either very early-stage ideas or none, but who want to develop projects with others to tackle an issue, like Civic Foundry, Challenge Prizes and Alt Camden. People will learn different skills whether they’re developing a new project or growing an existing one.

Some programmes, like Design Council Design for the Public Sector, NESTA’s Upstream Collaborative or Bloomberg Cities Bloomberg Cities Programme will blend a mixture of the two. All of these programmes will have a blended approach to learning, with a mixture of workshops, coaching, fieldwork, online development and… home work.

If you’re going to run programmes that focus on standalone ideas, why not look at other disciplines, like 100 design projects, coding clubs, creative writing or poetry jams?

If you’re going to run programmes that focus on people developing collaborative outputs together, why not look at other disciplines, like community gardening, collaborative self builds or co-designing a festival.

3. From output-first to relationships-first

The majority of the approaches I’ve mentioned have as their ultimate focus the development of projects that have a tangible impact on people’s lives. The people developing the programme will think about the infrastructure that’s needed to support these people grow their idea or project — whether that’s routes to investment, space and environments to test, people to mentor or coach, or programmes like the RSA Economic Security Impact Accelerator that can help them take their idea to the next stage.

There are other types of programmes that focus more on developing a community around the issue — on field or movement building. These programmes help us challenge what we know about the world, what our future roles might be, how we work in a way that is open and how we shape the place around us. Examples of programmes include System Changers by @lankellychase and @pointpeople, Year Here and @enrolyourself, or Newham’s Social Welfare Alliance.

If you’re going to run programmes that focus on relationships first, why not look at other disciplines, like relationship counselling, co-operatives or teal organisations?

All of these methods show there is no magic solution to bringing people together to tackle issues. You need to root how you organise in the context you’re working in, the urgency to tackle the issue, the relationships you want to build, what you want to focus on – achieving visible impact quickly or putting in the building blocks to make change stick.

The next time you need to develop a project team to tackle an issue, why not take a look at these stories and see what methods you could adapt?

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(Picture credit: Unsplash)