Feedback on the UK government Test Learn and Grow guide

This write up describes feedback to the UK government test, learn and grow guide. Based on over 20 years of research and experience undertaking this approach that includes relational public service design, and incorporating agile principles to transformation. The reason to publish this here is to share learning and invite further thoughts.

Much of the guide as published assists people and teams to incorporate a series of methods and concepts. So much so that it would not be helpful for me to highlighting them. What would be more helpful would be to highlight areas where we might see gaps, a lack of detail, or suggestions for more depth and competence in transformation and change, that has been learned from test, learn and grow elsewhere. The points below are based on research undertaken over 20 years, exploring these approaches, and based on my experience and those of colleagues I have worked with in the private and public sector, undertaking transformation using innovative agile centric approaches. I personally have been involved or led in over 34 such initiatives over more than 20 years. Whilst there are successes, many of these failed in all sorts of ways. The failures have become great opportunities to learn and develop subsequent robust methods and flexibility in approaching such work.

The notes below highlight the areas of interest only, as the detail and methods I allude to will require a more in depth engagement. Much of this described below has been documents in various case studies and resources that are freely available.

The Agile approach

Agile is a subset of what was developed at Toyota and elsewhere, and was born from the power of the original principles of agile. It is very good that you focus on this in your programme as it takes us away from the traditional project management concepts that are quite inappropriate to such types of transformation we are looking at currently in the work you are doing.

Agile was designed primarily to apply to digital product and digital service development. As such, it both retains, and has some of its original concepts that relate to whole service and complex services and organisational design stripped out of it. Those concepts that have been left in are fundamental but may not be enough to deal with the complexity, humanity, culture, and decision-makers behaviours that the other concepts do deal with. To get the most benefit from agile, it might be worth investigating the concepts and tools that were stripped out, as the areas that TLG is focused on are far more than those that develop digital products.

Can I suggest that, we need to recognise that innovation, knowledge, and experience of innovative approaches to transformation in the public sector in the UK has fallen far short of that which is currently recognised in the wider field of transformation worldwide. Can I suggest that research is applied to understand what methods, approaches and experience can teach TLG so that this programme does not have to reinvent the wheel, but can move far more rapidly to maturity.

Leadership

You describe that TLG should be backed by leaders. Every initiative that has failed to grow has been backed by leadership. There are several aspects to the learning behind why pilots fail that are important to consider. One of them that has been shown to be essential involves the role of leaders in such transformation which has to be quite specific and central to the shift. This is based on the fact that the system of an organisation is created and sustained by leaders, the way they think, act and behave. So to prevent organisational antibodies, and to develop the new approaches, leadership have to be directly engaged and central to this in a way that I have not found described int he guide.

The depth of change

The three horizons model highlights one of the most important reasons why pilots have not sustained, in both the private and public sectors. It helps to surface the fact that, if we intend to move to our intended outcomes, we need to release and move away from the current system that we are all wedded to. This is difficult, and cannot be achieved through enthusiasm, good presentations and stories, and encouragement. Whilst the guide mentions this, it may be helpful to add in specific methods that help this to occur.

- We might define change as modifying what we already do, to improve it.

- We might define transformation as changing what we do, so that we do different things.

Both are very different, in that transformation addresses the triple loop learning of the underlying principles that we all hold, that define why we design, manage and behave in the way that an organisation does. If TLG is tackling transformation, then it needs to go to that depth, and overtly express this, together with the methods needed to make that shift. One key area that this will impact, is the shift in the collective paradigms or mindset we hold within ourselves. I would suggest that the guide, might benefit from going to this level if it hopes to achieve the goals of sustained change.

Theory of Change

This theory of change that you mention is core to any shift. It is not superficial, and should contains much that is based on the learning from such change in the public and private sectors from the 1960’s onwards. Those theories should then develop into methods of change that provide a framework for change together with concepts at various levels of depth. I suggest that as many people doing this will have mainly experienced the more traditional change methods, or those only associated with digital or product design, theories of change and their methods could be described and supported in more detail in the guide. Robust theories of change that align with this approach are available from those that have been doing this over many years.

Note: a theory of change and a toolkit are two very different things.

Principles and values

From what I have experienced as the most helpful way of guiding teams to innovate and breakaway from the current thinking and approaches, is a set of guiding principles and a set of guiding values. In the guide I have not seen a robust set of principles that would guide a team in the detail and clarity that I have used elsewhere. These principles can act as a framework that can pivot a team immediately and rapidly in new directions. Can I suggest that further exploring this is something that would significantly help teams.

Grow

The shift from pilot to sustained embedded change is the most challenging part of transformation. From reading the guide, it seems that the description in the guide regarding grow is particularly light. Rolling out pilots to a wider part of organisations has been shown to be particularly ineffective, and is a point of failure in so many transformation initiatives. This is because rolling out does not transfer the essential elements of the learning and new ways of working. Worse still, rolling out retains much of the current thinking, and elements of the current system that prevent the new way of working to become embedded. Perhaps one of the most effective learning we have got from evidence is that developed by John Seddon, that is based on intervention theory, systems thinking and psychology. His approach is to roll-in. Roll-in is a method where the test and learn team ask one of their colleagues from the current system to go through a route to unlearn their current concepts and then learn the new ones. This is then repeated, and is also extended to those in support functions. Roll in works very well and has created many sustained new ways of thinking and working across the UK over more than two decades. I suggest that this might be considered in your approach.