Reflecting on the health of a system
A case study on Lankelly Chase Foundation’s system behaviours framework.
The case study below looks at Lankelly Chase Foundation’s development and use of a System Behaviours Framework in the United Kingdom. The case provides insights into the rationale and design process for the approach, how the organization co-created the framework with local partners, the types of data and reflection methods used, and the results and learning generated in the process.
Illustrations: Ivana Čobejová
The approach deployed by Lankelly Chase has a number of distinguishing features:
1
The System Behaviours framework provides a reflection tool to help improve the relationships between actors in a complex system and can in principle be used in any context in which sets of people and organisations need to work together around a particular purpose.
2
The Framework is intended solely as a reflection tool to help Lankelly Chase staff and stakeholders reflect on relationships and behaviours in a system and to act based on this. It was not used as a tool for ensuring accountability between grantees and a funder.
3
It is an explicitly normative tool. It identifies what Lankelly Chase believes are the characteristics of a well-functioning system that serves people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantages and is intended to support actors within that system to develop those characteristics. As such, the behaviours in the framework serve as evaluation rubrics against which the ‘quality’ of a system can be assessed.
4
The Framework is also purely perception based, with stakeholders being asked to reflect on the extent to which each of the System Behaviours are manifest within their context and to give a score from 1 to 10 about the extent to which each behaviour was present. This was not done to produce an ‘objective’ view of the health of the system, but instead to create content which could be used by actors within that system for further discussion, sensemaking and action-planning.
The Centre for Public Impact has helped produce these studies and we thank them for their insights and excellent collaboration. We also extend a great thanks to Lankelly Chase and their partners for sharing their journey and learning with us. We hope you find this first case study interesting and useful, and we hope that you’ll stay tuned for the next pieces in this series.
Introduction
How can we work to make complex systems best serve people who experience severe and multiple disadvantages? How can we understand and reflect on change in complex systems? How do we do this given the difficulty of isolating the impact of any single actor? How can funders strategically allocate resources to foster meaningful change in such an environment? These types of questions guided the Lankelly Chase Foundation in developing a System Behaviours framework. Lankelly Chase, an independent charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom, shifted their focus in 2015 to systems change for those experiencing severe and multiple disadvantages. In this connection, staff needed a new way to reflect on systems and how to change these.
What is the Systems Behaviours Framework?
The framework was co-created by Lankelly Chase staff and a wide range of people working on the ground to create systems change in various locations across the UK: including people with lived experience of the challenges of the multiple disadvantages, and those working to support them. The foundation initiated a series of “action inquiries” to explore how to undertake this work, in this connection the effort was conceptualized as action-research rather than a conventional programme.
The System Behaviours Framework identifies what Lankelly Chase sees as the characteristics of a healthy, functioning system that serves people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantages. It is assumed that if a system behaves in a similar fashion as many of the Systems Behaviours it is likely a healthy and well-functioning system. As such, these behaviours serve as a sort of evaluation rubrics.
The Framework is intended to be used as a “reflection tool”, to help actors in a system to notice whether certain behaviours are present in the relationships between actors in a system and to take action based on this. It is an explicitly normative tool. It identifies what Lankelly Chase believes are the characteristics of a well-functioning system and is intended to support actors within that system to develop those characteristics.
The framework was explicitly created as a learning and reflection tool for different actors in the action inquiries. Because the whole framing of the programme of system change work was exploratory, the System Behaviours were used as a way of supporting reflection on what was being learnt. It was purposefully not used as a way of seeking to create accountability for grantees.
How is the Systems Behaviour Framework structured?
The Framework is built around three core “pillars”: Perspective, Participation, and Power, each encompassing a set of behaviours for a healthy system. These are presented below.
1 Lankelly Chase. Systems Behaviours: 3 Pillars. (n.d.). Available at: https://lankellychase.org.uk/system-behaviours/ (accessed on 17 November 2023)
“Perspective: The views that people have of ‘a system’
With the following three behaviours:
1. We are part of an interconnected whole
We are all connected in a web of life. Our individual actions are part of a hive of activity that is made up of the contributions of many people.
2. People share a vision
People gather around a shared vision and appreciate each other’s views. We all want the whole system to work, even if we know we can’t control it.
3. People are resourceful with many strengths
We make up an intelligent network of people who have both strengths and weaknesses, and continually learn and grow with each other.
Participation: The way that people engage with ‘a system’
With the following three behaviours:
4. Open, trusting relationships enable effective dialogue
People feel safe to ask the difficult questions, voice agreements and disagreements and deal with the conflicts and uncomfortable emotions that may surface.
5. Leadership is collaborative and promoted at every level
There are different styles of leadership which call on a variety of skills and strengths. Everyone has the potential to be a leader wherever we are in a system.
6. Feedback and collective learning inform adaptation
The understanding of a ‘problem’, actions taken to ‘change it’ and what we learn from this interaction continuously inform each other. A culture of experimentation exists where we embrace failure for what it will teach us.
Power: The power dynamics of ‘a system’
With the following three behaviours:
7. Power is shared, and equality of voice actively promoted
We can all play our fullest role in creating an effective system. Unequal distribution of power, including structural inequality, is continually challenged.
8. Decision-making is devolved
People closest to a complex situation are free to use their initiative to engage and take responsibility for their own change.
9. Accountability is mutual
People are encouraged to be accountable to each other and our actions without fear of failure and judgement. (System improvements are driven by accountability to the people being ‘served’.)”
How was the System Behaviours framework created?
The System Behaviours framework was developed through a process of co-design. Co-design refers to the process of working with the people closest to the solutions, prioritizing relationships, being honest, making sure people feel welcome, using creative tools, balancing idealism and realism, building and sharing skills. Co-design employs an inclusive approach that embraces and collaborates with diverse perspectives, understandings, and approaches.
Over 200 people from organizations that Lankelly Chase were funding in their work on severe and multiple disadvantages, plus a range of other people working on the ground, took part in workshops to identify and refine the behaviours.
Starting from the position of Complex Adaptive Systems, in which the “connectivity” of actors is crucial, they focused on “system health” as this perspective suggests thatit is the quality of relationships between actors in a complex system - particularly their capacity to collaborate and learn together - that will determine whether that system produces desirable outcomes. As one person involved in the effort noted: “This collaborative approach is the only way things are going to change in a system.”
💬 How was the System Behaviours Framework used?
The System Behaviours Framework was used by Lankelly Chase in their Place Inquiry, their Governance Inquiry and as a staff appraisal tool. In this case study, we focus on the Place Inquiry.
The Lankelly Chase ‘Place’ Inquiry
The Place Inquiry worked across five locations in the UK: York, Barking & Dagenham, Gateshead, Oxford, Greater Manchester. Its purpose was to explore “how to support places to work better as systems, from the perspective of those who are most marginalized.”
A number of different actors played different roles within the Place Inquiry:
- Lankelly Chase as funder
- An “Associate” (a system convenor)
- A Learning Partner - supporting Lankelly Chase to reflect at Inquiry (Programme) level and supporting the Associate
- Actors within the five places - made up of organisations and activists seeking “system change” for people experiencing Severe and Multiple Disadvantage
The inquiry was guided by four sub questions:
- “Is the Lankelly Chase approach helpful?2
- What are the skills, methodologies and processes required to support areas to develop the desired system behaviours?
- Are the system behaviours the most useful ones, and what would it take for them to flourish?
- How are the ‘narratives of place’ changing?”
2 By ‘approach’ Lankelly Chase means the inquiry approach - in which actors were funded to learn together, with support from system convenors and learning partners, as well as with support from Lankelly Chase staff.
In each place, they worked to identify the ‘actors’ who are part of ‘the system’. These ‘actors’ are people and organizations who play a role in the lives of people who experience disadvantage and marginalization. They included (crucially) the people who experience disadvantage (individually, and as peer support networks), public services, and voluntary organizations who offer support.
The actors used the System Behaviours framework to reflect together on how well those systems were serving people - and through that shared reflection - to create change. Again, this follows the logic that it is the quality of relationships between actors in a system which shapes whether that system will produce desirable results.
Using the System Behaviours
The most common way in which the Behaviours were used within the Place Inquiry was:
➖ 1. The Learning Partner interviewed actors within each of the places
The Learning Partner interviewed actors in three of the places in which the inquiry was operating, encouraging them to reflect on the extent to which each of the System Behaviours was manifest within their system. Interview subjects were asked to give a score out of 10 for the extent to which each behaviour was present, together with an explanation for why they had given the score. This was not done to produce an ‘objective’ view of the health of the system, but instead to create content which could be used by actors within that system for further discussion, sensemaking and action-planning.
➖ 2. The Learning Partner presented back the results of these interviews as snapshots of “the health of the system”
The Learning Partner aggregated the results of the interviews, and presented them to actors within the place-system, using radar diagrams (Figure 1) supplemented by quotes. The radar diagram captured scores aggregated from two categories of actors within the place-system: those who were explicitly part of the Lankelly Chase system change action inquiry in that place, and other stakeholders in that place.
Figure 1: A radar diagram showing a snapshot of the ‘health’ of a place as a system, from the perspective of those involved in the Lankelly Chase intervention, and a wider group of actors in the place.
➖ 3. The Associate and Learning Partner supported the actors to have a sensemaking conversation, to explore what this data meant, and what actions they should create as a result.
The sensemaking conversation enabled actors to explore the meaning of the data from multiple perspectives, and to develop shared actions to address the challenges that they identified.
Crucially, the Foundation did not use the data as a performance-management mechanism for grantees. The purpose of this tool was to enable reflection for actors in the system to make change, rather than as a way for the funder to assess the ‘performance’ of the grantees.Lankelly Chase Foundation made a deliberate choice not to use the System Behaviours for grant monitoring purposes because they recognized the evidence of the distorting effect of performance management on the work to create real change on the ground.
Lankelly Chase also experimented with using the System Behaviours framework as part of their staff’s annual appraisal process. This was less successful, as staff felt that a tool designed to reflect relationships between actors in a system was not appropriate to appraise individual staff behaviour.
Results and learning: what did the framework help Lankelly Chase and partners to achieve?
✔️ Creating purposeful change
Lankelly Chase staff described the System Behaviours framework as useful in enabling actors in place-based systems to create purposeful change. A notable example was observed in one of the inquiry locations, where the actors utilized the System Behaviours' sensemaking process to pinpoint a significant issue in their “mutual accountability” relationships. They reflected that scores and text seemed to indicate that existing accountability relationships were hierarchical and paternalistic rather than mutual. This was particularly true of accountability relationships between funders (such as the city Council) and the organizations they funded. As a result of this shared sensemaking, they established an accountability working group, which changed the accountability arrangements between funders and fundees in the city.
✔️ Supporting adaptation and change
The tool and the sensemaking processes which accompanied it, enabled adaptation and change within a complex system by helping stakeholders to do various things. First, to notice different things that they had previously missed such as enabling actors in a system to understand the quality of relationships. Second, it helped Lankelly Chase staff to spot patterns in the data and provide more appropriate support to places. For example, they found a significant pattern of low scores around the behaviours associated with “power” and offered capacity building support for power inequity issues. Third, it allowed stakeholders to use data differently. For instance, by enabling actors in a system to use data for the purpose of learning and adaptation, rather than capturing data for monitoring and reporting to other people.
✔️ Rethinking how systems change work is funded
Lankelly Chase staff also drew learnings from the use of the System Behaviours in other contexts, such as the Governance Inquiry. A critical learning point was the interplay between the use of the System Behaviours as a reflective framework and Lankelly Chase's approach to resource distribution and accountability. By analysing patterns of reflections related to the “accountability is mutual” behaviour, they concluded that mutual accountability between funder and grantee was incompatible with forms of governance which demanded that grantees account for achieving predetermined outcomes or results. Consequently, Lankelly Chase proceeded to fund organizations for learning and adaptation. In this connection the foundation funds “so as to take [the issue of] money off the table”.
✔️ Using the System Behaviours in other contexts
Lankelly Chase staff were keen to emphasise that the System Behaviours is a framework which is free for anyone to use. They are supportive of organizations and programmes to try out the framework in other contexts. The System Behaviours framework provides a reflection tool to help improve the relationships between actors in a complex systems and can in principle be used in any context in which sets of people and organisations need to work together around a particular purpose.
