Learning from others. What works for you?
Learning from others – what works for you?
For those of us who work in public service, change is ever-constant. Since austerity began around 13 years ago, the scale of change in public service has been phenomenal and yet, we still haven’t managed to make change happen transformationally, at scale. That is not to say there aren’t loads of examples of brilliant things happening that weren’t happening before. Nor is it a lack of trying. Who doesn’t know people working in public service who aren’t knackered from juggling the constant demands and trying to deliver great services with ever reducing resources. My point is more that where we find examples of really great stuff happening, as a rule, it doesn’t spread widely to other places. Yes of course, different places require local solutions so there may be nuances to take account of, but what stops the great stuff spreading?
What helps you learn?
How do we take time to learn from the experiences of others to fast track our learning?
I’m interested to hear from people working in public service about what gets in the way of us learning from others who have experimented with doing things differently and are finding they are getting great results.
Is it time? Do we simply not have time to engage because we are so stretched with juggling everything else?
Is it that we aren’t hearing about the stuff we really want to understand? So for me that would mean not just the steps someone took but the messy, human stuff like:
o What relationships were important to build? With who? And how did they do this in a way that built trust?
o What made them confident enough to stick their necks out and do something that went against the status quo?
o What rules did they have to break?
o What bureaucracy did they have to break through?
o What went wrong and what did they learn from it?
o How did others react when something went wrong? Did they feel supported to learn or pressured to put it right?
o What was guiding their thinking?
o What methods or models or theories did they draw on?
o How did they talk about change in a way that engaged others and got them onside?
o What governance were they working within and how did that help or hinder progress?
o What enabled them to stay resilient and see change through to implementation when things felt really tough?
Or is it there something about how the learning is captured and shared that isn’t working for us? We all have different preferences when it comes to learning. Some of us like to read and digest and reflect and will quite happily devour long documents that capture the fine detail. Some of us respond better to visuals – diagrams, flow charts, pictures that bring change to life. Some of us prefer watching videos or listening to audio and others still like to learn through doing so will roll their sleeves, get stuck in and maybe access some coaching or a community of practice to support them along the way.
Learning that works for you
How do we make learning fun, easily accessible and available in a way that fits around people’s busy lives?
I’m currently working with the LGA and ADASS to capture learning from different places about making workforce change and collaboration happen. I want to make sure that whatever learning I capture I can share in ways that people want to engage with – this could be guidance, top tips, podcasts, talking head videos, reflective learning sessions, communities of practice - or any other number of methods. I recognise how busy people are and that learning can drop off the to do list as competing pressures have to be attended to.
I’d love to hear from you about how you like to access learning. What would make you take time out to engage in learning about what others have done? What would you like to know? And how would you like the learning to be shared?
Please DM me or feel free to drop me an email kath@kathsmythecollective.co.uk
