Actions Speak Louder Than Words
The Hamilton Commission was set up in June 2020 to “improve the representation of Black people in UK motorsport.” A year later, to coincide with the British F1 Grand Prix, the commission’s report, Accelerating Change: Improving Representation of Black People in UK Motorsport, was published.
The report called for fundamental, industry-wide change and issued 10 recommendations under the headings ‘support and empowerment’, ‘inspiration and engagement’ and ‘accountability and measurement’. The urgency for change was laid bare in the most high-profile way possible.
At about the same time, the innovation agency Social Finance published a report too. The agency uses economic analysis, social research, behavioural science and service design to tackle social problems. The report titled Changing Lives, Changing Systems: Building routes to scale shared learning “from a decade of seeking to make change at scale”.
Comparing the two leads to interesting questions, observations and even odd insights. The Hamilton Commission spawned two new organisations seeking change. Mission 44 and Mercedes Ignite.
The Social Finance paper starts by reviewing Bridgespan’s 2017 report on philanthropic change, observing that initiatives that achieved impact:
90% of the efforts took more than 20 years to achieve (the median was 45 years)
80% required changes to government funding, policies or action
75% required coordination of actors across sectors
66% required one or more philanthropic “big bets” of more than $10m
Apart from the depressing statistic regarding the time taken, the stand out for me is the requirement for coordination of actors across sectors - sector speak for real collaboration towards a common goal. The report went on to conclude its own analysis on three essential foundations for change in their 10 years of practice:
Strong partnership: For years, stories of social change have focused on a singular hero who rights social injustices. The reality is that change is a long journey involving many people. Change demands collective effort, scaling new ways of thinking about how to address change.
Consistent funding: Scaling impact is a long journey that takes sticking power and focus and requires the continuous generation of momentum. The pressure of pursuing short-term, piecemeal operating funding can distract from focusing on impact at scale and undermine the ability of a collective to pursue the long-term goal.
A clear story: Those of us doing the work are often so focused on ‘what’ needs to change that we sometimes forget the criticality of explaining ‘why’ and ‘how’. A straightforward story explains what is wrong with the status quo, sets a vision for change and provides a clear, practical first step. These elements help to overcome resistance and bring others along in a broader movement for change.
What can we learn from observing what happened in the year since ‘Accelerating Change’ from, arguably, one of the more successful agencies’ reflections and conclusions from their own efforts briefly summarised above?
The good news is funding. The observation that change requires significant funding would be a problem without Hamilton’s philanthropy. That doesn’t necessarily mean the funds will be available in the ways described, but they are available. And that’s significant.
Thanks to the Hamilton report and the parallel work of other organisations, including the government, regarding diversity in STEM, we have a solid backbone for the story of what needs to change. But, why and how are other questions that mutually reframe each other when you consider them. And, leads to more challenging questions regarding partnership.
The combination of the Hamilton Commission, Mission 44, and Mercedes Ignite have exciting potential. But, does the potential match the scale of the problem? The landscape is full of foreboding. Wealth inequality, child poverty, climate change and looming environmental collapse. Populism and polarised extremism are ever-present and resistance to change is strong. The change will not happen incrementally. It’s going to get messy.
Partnership is an overused word. In truth, I nowadays most associate the word with procurement. At a basic level, a partnership is a ‘sharing’ of risk and reward in equal measure. Or at least an agreeable measure. This is based on some basics of human nature - that is, a desire for security. Feeling secure about future expectations is a prerequisite to co-operation. In that context, one can see why procurement professionals use the concept so much - as a conduit to clarifying expectations and aligning interests.
When faced with the need to drive change in complex issues, this can lead to the management and organisational problem of optimism bias - our need for security and certainty misleading us to our cost by believing the world is more benign than it really is. When you add the tendency to believe our own attributes are more favourable than they truly are. The goals we adopt are more achievable than they're likely to be. This encourages us to persist, but it also causes a widespread error and incredible frustration.
As the Hamilton report clearly demonstrated, inequity in STEM and motorsports is a highly complex problem. Profound issues from racism, gender stereotyping, demography, the economy, sporting governance, and interdependent factors are never-ending.
In public policy terms, we are facing a “wicked problem”. The phrase was coined by design theorist Horst Rittel to describe problems that are so complex they seem impossible to solve. Rittel defined ten characteristics of wicked problems: describes ten characteristics of wicked problems:
There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule, as there’s no way to know your solution is final.
Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false; they can only be good or bad.
There is no rapid test of a solution to a wicked problem.
Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; every attempt counts significantly because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error.
Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions.
Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
There are explanations for a wicked problem because the causes vary greatly depending on the individual perspective.
Actors have no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.
Social Finance alludes to wicked problems in their report, warning against the fallacy of ‘death star thinking’. The idea is that every challenge has one solution that must be found, pursued by a lone actor with an unquestioning belief in the power of one truth. So use the force, Luke. The trouble in reality, as Rittel might say, is there isn’t one truth, there’s no set number of death stars, and every missed shot strengthens the Empire.
What are the implications for partnerships in social change where disruption and uncertainty are not only likely but prerequisites? What do partnerships look like where the power in the ecosystem is unevenly distributed, centred on funders’ ideas and theories, and grant-giving can sometimes feel like procurement?
And where is this conversation happening in this space?
