Lessons learned from human centred system change

At the Deloitte Social Impact Practice, we have been fortunate to work on some incredibly meaningful, complex and impactful changes lately, and thought we might share some learnings on applying a human centred approach in a system change context. We would love to hear yours!

Insight comes not from engagement but from analysis and reflection. Make the time for genuine, meaningful reflection - this cannot be rushed. The team who are doing this work need to marinate not only in the voice of experience work but also the voice of the expert. This allows them to synthesise and integrate the views. We have weekly "crunch" sessions throughout design and delivery phases that focus on content and intent.

Getting to system level shifts is necessary for transformation. The voice of intent ("what is the purpose of this system?") is critical in this, and keeping it top of mind. This defines the questions we will ask in the empathy work, and where we look for expertise. We need naive optimism in defining intent if we are really going to tackle the hard issues. This is not the time for constraints and cynicism.

 Understanding the current state is important, but focus on system dynamics. The current state will always encourage you to look at pain points for the current power holders or supplicants of the system - I.e. Organisational management or the staff. This doesn't mean those aren't real issues. But the current state work needs to uncover the levers within the system - what drives workload, what drives allocation of effort, what drives decision making. 

While staff may be the experts in the current system - they are not always accustomed to reimagine it. This is why we need to go right back to understand the motivations and drivers for the customer - and then to build a new system up from there. Bringing staff into this journey can start the hearts and minds changes needed for sustainable system change.

It's difficult to stay grounded in the future state. As the key shifts start to emerge, you need to have challenge sessions and challenge conversations to ensure you are staying grounded in the holistic future state. Too often bits of the current state will creep back into the discussion - it helps to have regular challenge sessions that focus on alignment with intent.

Maintaining a prevention mindset is really really hard. The system is configured for action in response to stimulus, not action to prevent stimulus from occurring. As a result, prevention activity is amorphous. Our natural tendency is to focus service design on the areas where majority of service currently occurs. As a result, service design of prevention is forgotten. 

Develop your theory of change at a programme level, not just interventions. It's really important to think about how you give effect to change in your system - what are the levers - and if you are tackling multiple levers, that these are planned together. What is the sequence of changes that will irreversibly shift the system?

 A bias to engagement and action is essential. Prototyping and agile delivery is quite counter to the traditional social services design and delivery approach. Because we fear failure and it's consequences for people's lives, we have a tendency to try to foresee and solve all of the problems up front. The bias must be to engagement AND action - get out and talk to the end users, and then take small actions and get feedback. Codesign and coproduction are continuous and ongoing.

Small initiatives easily stray from intent and scope. Once you have broken down changes into specific initiatives, it can be really hard for them to stay small. Everyone wants to go back up to solving root causes when they are in delivery phase! Resist. You should already have a view of root causes and the root fixes in the system design, so now you are delivering faithfully on the components. 

Develop blueprints. A blueprint is something everyone asks for and is yet incredibly difficult to produce in a format that is easily digestible and yet comprehensive! But blueprints that have an elegant visual representation and then a full set of requirements can be really important in keeping all those components aligned. They give you confidence that once you deliver on the little bits, they are linking back to a whole.

Community development is just as hard to hang on to as prevention work (because it is prevention work!). It's essential that the work of the design team is not in a national office but out in the community. You can achieve this by design hubs or by pop up design spaces. But you also need to decide if your theory of change is grounded in community development or service delivery. It's a tough one. Traditional government procurement and funding doesn't easily understand and fund community work.

You can't teach everyone service design - but many people can learn. Mindsets really matter but it's very hard to teach these. The best way is to have experienced coaches and team members doing the work and effectively "carrying" the team for one full cycle. Human centred design and system change are best learned through experience because you have to trust the process. After a full cycle you will know who has aptitude for this work and the second cycle can be more coached than carried. While a level of subject matter expertise is needed in the team – subject matter experts often make poor designers as they find it too difficult to remove themselves from current state ways of thinking.

Engaging at this end of the social service spectrum is hard. The right people and mindsets matter. Immersion matters. But most importantly, self care matters. Take the time to build the strength of the team, have access to personal support channels and make time for laughter even in the midst of heavy work.

At the end of the day, we are never far from remembering how much of a privilege it is for us to work in these spaces, even for a short time.