Kickboxing governmental challenges

This article is written by Aneta Skubida, Systems Innovation Manager, Councillor in City of Warsaw (Wola District).

• The problem: The biggest challenges that national, regional and local governments face, such as climate change, the environmental crisis and the need for a just transition, are extremely complex issues which are difficult to govern.

• Why it matters: To successfully cope with these challenges we need a new, robust, approach and tools for governance.

• The solution: Kickboxing the challenges – embracing the rationale behind a radical co-creation to strengthen and speed up the actions.

What is the kickboxer doing here?

Working in the field of regions’ and municipalities’ transitions towards sustainability, as well as a local councillor in my city (part of legislative power), I have witnessed how unappreciated the power of collaboration between governments and stakeholders – including the citizens - is. For many of us, the collaboration with the stakeholders is valuable in itself. And of course it is but there is much more to it! Let me share with you why and how we need to leverage radical co-creation to succeed as government officials.

The grave global challenges bring more and more declarations of ambitious goals by cities, regions and national governments. Some examples of these goals are: achieving climate neutrality, circular economy or phasing out coal production by a particular date. Mission-oriented innovation is one of the popular approaches supporting the achievement of these goals.

The biggest challenges that governments try to answer are extremely complex.

To achieve ambitious goals, often exceeding what is currently possible, governments should model their actions to resemble the kickboxers technique. A kickboxer who wants to kick the bag with full power cannot stop the hit at the point where the bag is at the moment – she has to focus on where the bag is going to be. To do this a rotation of the whole body is necessary. This means that the foot remaining on the ground has to change its direction – it has to pull the hips and this way determines the direction of the body. Only the full body rotation (not just a part of the leg) can translate into the strength and effect of the impact. Similarly, embracing the ambitious goals with engagement of the whole society, including the part “touching the ground” (i.e. communities) can allow for much better actions.

Figure 1: Kickboxer’s metaphor

Dealing with big, complex challenges: Why does government need to focus on ‘the foot’?

The biggest challenges that governments try to answer are extremely complex. Let’s have a look at the example of Just Transition, which can be understood as transition to a climate neutral economy in a fair way, leaving no one behind (the definition used by the European Union). Changing the sources and technology for energy production entails substantial changes in multiple other areas, such as the economy (employment, incomes), society (culture, tradition, customs), policy and governance. These areas are also influencing each other, for example, social perceptions influence political decisions, and political decisions have economic and social consequences. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to precisely assess the impacts of introduced solutions upfront, and “domino” or “cascading” effects can occur. For instance, 1000 miners losing their jobs in Eastern Greater Poland was assessed by the chairman of the board of the Agency of Development Konin to entail approximately 22.5 million dollars in loss in the local economy. Supporting the miners in finding similarly paid jobs in the same location is difficult (not enough alternatives) and even if successful, it will not be enough to avoid problems as the work of these 1000 miners was also creating a market for the mines’ suppliers.

The Just Transition challenge, similar to other grave challenges of our times, is a problem of a very different nature than changing a lightbulb or fixing a street (so-called tame problems). The complexity makes it a wicked challenge.

Figure 2: Visualisation of the difference between tame problems and complex challenges. This drawing is adapted from the Systems Innovation Network materials.

Sources of strength of actions

Simple issues – like tying up a shoe or changing a lightbulb can be easily solved by one person. Nevertheless, in case of complex challenges, such as the Just Transition and achieving climate neutrality, collective intelligence is crucial to understand them better.

Figure 3: While for resolving tame, simple problems intelligence is enough, complex challenges require activation of the collective intelligence. This drawing is adapted from the Systems Innovation Network materials.

The skilful process facilitation can harvest key ingredients for successful action to manage the big, complex challenges:

1. information that the stakeholders possess,
2. implementation support (acceptance and even additional resources) from their side, and
3. joint learning on what works and what doesn’t – and why.

The** existence of this radical co-creation** determines the strength and success of the actions taken by government, which is similar to engaging the whole body, starting from the feet, to decide on the impact of a kickboxer’s kick.

To become a champion

The City of Bilbao, in addition to Gipuzkoa province with its collaborative governance model, the Municipality of Leuven (European Capital of Innovation 2020, and Leuven2030 platform facilitating transformation to climate neutrality), are just a few examples of successful deployment of the kickboxing technique. Those places are champions of transformation towards a sustainable, inclusive future. Additional examples can be found in the report: “How to break down the barriers to transformation?” which I co-authored. The kickboxing of challenges consists of co-developing a common vision of the future, shared by the government and stakeholders, consistent narratives, permanent collaboration facilitated by proper structures and mechanisms, as well as coordinated portfolios of actions. All of these elements allow the unleashing of bottom-up energy and the potential to accelerate transformation in the desired direction.

Participation is often seen as a value in itself. And of course, it is. But understanding why co-creation is a crucial mechanism to face the “big hairy” challenges of our times and embedding it in the design, implementation and evaluation of strategies, policies and programmes can decide whether they will succeed or not. Nowadays kickboxing the challenges with force brought by stakeholders' involvement stands for robust — not “a nice to have”.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)