Nesta found a path to lasting change: Build bridges, break silos
After seven years at Slotsholmen, Jesper Christiansen moved to London, where he worked for the British innovation fund and think tank Nesta. Here they worked with governments around the world. Especially in Canada, the civil service was changing. This is the second of two articles, read the first here.
From London, the view was global. They helped the governments of Colombia, Canada, Australia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the UN system, among others, implement what they call experimental problem solving.
Experimental problem solving is about using systematic experiments to accelerate learning and explore new solutions for complex problems.
The goal was to continue working in a citizen-centered and iterative way, as they did in MindLab. The new vision was based on two elements: (i) to concretize what a cultural change that makes public organizations better able to handle complex problems looks like, and (ii) to build and launch programs that supported selected governments and administrations' ambitions to achieve new ways of working.
Part of this work was done in collaboration with the OECD, where, among other things, a competency framework was to put words and images on what capacity should be developed, built and trained.
It describes the specific skills, approaches and behaviors required by public sector innovators to tackle wild problems and how to put them together to create the most optimal teams.
The framework became central to the strategic partnerships.
In the following section, the competency framework is introduced. Jesper Christiansen then explains how it was used to create a better dialog between the Canadian government and the country's natives.
Attitudes and capabilities
The illustration below explains the basic principles of the framework. It shows which attitudes and capabilities you need to activate to work in an experimental and innovation-oriented way in relation to complex problems.
"Based on a lot of experiences from innovation practitioners around the world, we tried to outline different types of behavior as a response to what is usually rewarded as good professional practice in public HR systems," says Jesper Christiansen and continues
"Initially, we needed a way to concretize the framework. It's a kind of dialogue tool between employees and managers about what the new types of behavior will look like for them," says Jesper Christiansen.
As shown in the illustration, the framework describes three categories that seem crucial for experimental problem solving.
Accelerate learning
Through exploration and experimentation, knowledge gaps are identified. This process creates new understanding and informs decision-making in new ways.
Collaboration
This is where you interact with citizens and multiple stakeholders to ensure co-creation and joint ownership of new solutions.
Leading change
Creating space for innovation and driving change processes to mobilize people, inspire action and ensure strategic outcomes.
The basic principles
In addition to the concrete categories for experimental problem solving, Nesta also created the following three content principles for the framework.
A broader innovation skillset: The approaches and skills described in the framework together increase the possibility of success in experimental problem solving.
Creating and maintaining the goal to innovate: The effort required to create space and legitimacy for innovation in government is often underestimated, so the framework also covers skills to create an environment that enables innovation to happen and ensure impact.
Team focus: Teams are central to successful problem solving. Therefore, the team takes precedence over the individual. The challenge (and opportunity) is to combine these skills and attitudes in ways that make the team bigger than its individual members.
Empathy for citizens' realities
The Government of Canada in particular invested in transforming the working methods of civil servants. They tried to organize themselves in new ways through an interdepartmental innovation team of policy entrepreneurs. This was supported by the Nesta program, which included the competency framework as a resource.
Here they learned from leading international innovation practitioners from the learning collective facilitated by Nesta as part of the supporting work.
The Canadian officials practiced and learned through action and testing, and Nesta helped the learning through inspiration, sparring and peer reflection.
They applied the citizen-centered approach to a number of issues. For example, they became involved in the reconciliation process with indigenous people and the handling of their rights, which was about their right to self-determination and self-government.
The problem that Nesta helped to address was that the national level did not sufficiently involve and collaborate with local and regional efforts responsible for indigenous rights.
"It was a very politically charged topic, so it was very much about building bridges and orchestrating many different initiatives," says Jesper Christiansen and continues:
"These were some of the competencies that we tried to activate and bring into play strategically. At the same time, it became a training ground for officials to take on more facilitative roles and, not least, to take a more learning-oriented and explorative approach. The Canadian officials knew that this was a topic that needed to be treated with empathy. But they weren't used to seeing it as a prominent part of their professionalism."
To achieve culture change, Nesta built a peer-to-peer community of civil servants working on other complex problems to practice behavior change, learn together, and mutually support new ways of working.
Lasting change
Investing in new ways of working doesn't mean they will last.
Often there are key people who are the bearers of the cultural change, and if they are replaced, the officials are more likely to fall back into their old habits. Therefore, it is essential to make a broad-based cultural change across the organization - as was done in Canada, for example, with the peer-to-peer strategy. The social and professional communities can be mutually reinforcing in maintaining the new workflows.
"If you want to change people's behavioral patterns, don't give them a one-week course in design thinking," says Jesper Christiansen and continues:
"It requires a big investment in making sense of the new practices. You need to create an experimental training ground where officials can learn in their daily work."
"There is no perfect intervention," says Jesper Christiansen. But he notes that you have to look at how institutional innovation actually takes place. It's more about mindset, where roles and core tasks are seen in a new light, than it is about new fashionable methods. And it involves an investment in a cultural learning journey.
Read more about it
The work continues under the name States of Change, which you can read more about here.
Read about Nesta's transition from framework to behavioral focus here