The Wales We Want

I was party to a discussion recently that made me so angry. It made me realise the Wales we have is one where:

• If you have enough money to buy equipment for yourself, you aren't so disabled, but if you have to wait for the State to sort it out then you are stuffed
• If you have a parent who listens to you and has the ability to fight with you for what you want, you get the kind of support you need to lead the life you want. Otherwise, you get what you are given - and that's not much of a life, certainly not a life of independent living where you have choice, voice and at least some control over your own life.
• If you are dying, you can have extravagant wishes that people will help you fulfil, but otherwise wanting anything more than support to stay clean and alive is greedy.
• If you have a learning difficulty, you are expected to be grateful for 20 years of unpaid work experience; if you don't have a learning difficulty, then it's controversial enough to have to do the short term Work Programme of unpaid work experience.
• If you use a wheelchair part time and get out of it when you're out and about, it's ok for those who see you to vilify you for being a fake-disabled person either at the time to your face or in online forums & on social media later.

That is NOT the Wales I want.

This is not the Wales wanted in the SocialServices and Well-being Wales Act either.

If the Act is going to work, we don't just need The Services I Want - we are going to need The Wales I Want.
Is The Wales We Have really what the people of Wales want?

Come on Wales, let's get real about what disables people. It's not people's "disabilities" that disable them, it's The Wales We Have.

If you want to find out more about how we can have The Wales We Want - check out the new disabled people led research programme, DRILL UK.

Evidence and influence

If, as someone outside the policy bubble, you want to policy to change, I reckon you need both evidence and influence.  And you need to produce both on the terms valued by policy makers.

This blog started with thinking about ‘evidence-based policy making’, and wondering what people class as ‘evidence’. It was amazing to see people switch from talking about the importance of real experiences and hearing people’s stories to talking about statistics as soon as the word ‘evidence’ was introduced. In research terms, quantitative research findings = evidence.

For all my theorising, I can be extremely pragmatic. I might not equate ‘evidence’ with ‘statistics’ – but life is too short and the policy issues are too urgent to try to persuade people who make policy that ‘evidence’ has other meanings.

As someone outside the policy bubble, evidence in the form of statistics is a fantastic tool to have up your sleeve. It is easier to just accept that, by and large, evidence (statistics) plays at least a partial role in policy making. Depending on the civil servant, Minister and policy area, statistics will play a greater or lesser role in their decisions. Your ideas will be taken far more seriously when backed by evidence (statistics), if only because the person you talk to can wave your evidence under other people’s noses to justify their interest in and support of your idea. 

I’m genuinely not sure how far statistics drive the policy-making process, and how much they are used to justify pre-existing beliefs (what is often called ‘policy-based evidence’.  Either way, statistics are important to us outsiders for at least as long as policy makers equate evidence with statistics.

What I do know is that changing policies relies on both evidence and influence. 

So how do you  get influence? You tell stories. You explain impacts on real people’s real lives. In social research terms, you use qualitative research findings.  You use theories of culture and power to work out how to present those stories most effectively.

So – evidence and influence, numbers and stories, yin and yang. If you want to turn your ideas into ideas that will be adopted by policy makers, learn to use both. 

As researchers interested in social change, I’d argue we need to make sure we value both kinds of research and learn how to use them together for maximum policy impact.

As disabled activists, I’d argue we need to be canny and remember who we need to influence, how they make decisions and what will make it easiest for them to adopt our ideas.

As citizens of Wales, I'd argue we need to know how policy gets made in Wales - after all policy decisions in Cardiff effect everyone's everday lives. 

Why I’m not cut out to be an academic

Yesterday I created a short and ultra-basic presentation on “What is Research?”. Really, it was about the difference between ‘finding out’ and ‘doing research’.

Today I have been blogging, tweeting and thinking.

The penny has dropped.

I love finding out. I love ideas. I love listening to people who believe completely different things to me. I love picking up facts, information, ideas from spheres of live and academia that are brand new to me, and then I love playing around with them to see what patterns and new ideas they create.

And I really love wrestling with concepts and theories, then holding up lived experiences in one hand and concepts in the other. The fun is seeing what that does to the theory and what I make of (re-) interpreting the lived experience in the light of theory.

What I don’t like is the discipline of paperwork, the discipline of systematically finding out what others have already written on a topic, the discipline of focusing on a topic. In other words, I don’t like the things that turn ‘finding out’ into ‘academic research’.

Don’t get me wrong. I value research. I value disciplined and focused work. I just prefer to let others do it …

I much prefer to use my butterfly brain to visit all their pieces of high quality academic research, alight briefly, pick up ideas and move on to the next high quality blossom. As I do this, I tend to leave behind a little bit of the last few researchers’ pollen – so like to think I contribute to the cross-fertilization of ideas across academic silos.

Here’s the rub. I’m doing a PhD.  it was an MA by Research. You can get away with quite a bit of butterfly brain and avoid staring discipline straight in the eyes too often with an MA. But you can’t for a PhD.

Today I realise I am facing 22 months where I need to learn to be highly disciplined for 39 hours a week and stop ‘playing with ideas’. In some ways, it is just what I need - to give my brain a bit of a rest from fluttering around, cross-pollinating and creating ideas.  In other ways, I’m not sure how I feel about sticking to one thing just when I’ve been having so much fun playing with ideas.

So, 22 months of disciplined research to go. I wonder if I can allow the butterfly out for Gov Camps though ;) 

What *is* trust?

Last week was the first Bara Brith Camp. We had a great opener from Dyfrig about trust within organisations, based on the work of Professor Searle.  I love a good bit of dialectic because it makes me think, and I've certainly been thinking far more about trust since Dyfrig blogged about it and I blogged back.

I'll be honest, I lost track of Dyfrig's talk for a while when he said we "trust people like ourselves". That stopped me in my tracks because my instinct was to say that's not true. I may warm more towards people like myself. But trust?

Maybe my instinct just reveals a worrying distrust of myself and therefore anyone like me! But I think it runs deeper than that.

You see, in Barod, we are about as different from each other as you can imagine. We look different, we talk differently, we have different life experiences, different ways of thinking, different working styles, different priorities - and radically different beliefs about fundamental things like the meaning of life.

And yet these are the guys I've set up in business with. We've gone through a lot together. We trust each other at a profound level. We've had to trust each other deeply and riskily.

So I'm left pondering about who we trust and why. And rather than wait to come to a nice neat conclusion, I thought I'd inflict my ramblings on you.

• How much of what we commonly call 'trust' is more about being in a comfort zone of the familiar? That warm feeling towards people we like? I never trust comfort zones - at least not when the world needs changing. If trust is based on this, then it's not what we need for radical transformation.

• If we conflate 'trust' and 'people like ourselves' we end up with the Old Boys Network. After all, if we accept that we need trust in order to run organisations and countries, then if we trust those like ourselves of course we will preferentially recruit from people with the same backgrounds and life experiences. Bye-bye social mobility and social justice.

• What if trust wasn't about 'people like ourselves' but about 'sharing a vision'. We trust because we share a vision for a different Wales - and we've all put in enough and taken enough risks that we know, we trust, each of us is serious in sharing that vision. The basis for our trusting each other is that we have all regularly acted against our self-interest for the sake of the shared vision.

• What if we trust precisely because we are different, and our diversity is essential to achieving the shared vision? I think that's where our trust comes from in Barod. We believe each of us brings unique value precisely because we are so different from each other. And I get to exercise trust every time I accept I cannot understand or do something, but another worker in Barod can. A bit like muscles, trust grows as it is used.

So - two versions of trust.

• Trust because we are similar.
• Trust because we share a vision, and know we need each other's differentness to achieve the vision.

The 'similar/diversity' got me thinking about Agile and Traditional. Bear with me, as I haven't fully thought this out yet.

• Agile relies on small diverse teams.
• Traditional relies on silos of similarity with a tier of (similar) managers joining the silos together.
• Public services regularly talk about the need to break down silos.
• Any well-functioning organisation relies on trust.
• Organisational research on trust thinks about people trusting each other "because we similar'.

I wonder, I just wonder, whether it is so hard for public services to break out of silo thinking because people within them "trust people like ourselves".

If so, and I appreciate it is a big "if", might this mean we can break out of silos by redefining trust? Can we teach and encourage people to trust each other on the basis of a shared vision and acceptance that we need each other's differences to achieve the vision?

Back to you, Dyfrig!

Painting a policy

A painting requires a canvas, paint and a painter. Only when the three come together do you have a great painting.



A policy is like a painting. The community and individuals affected by the policy are like the canvas. The policy ideas, research evidence and examples from other contexts are like the paint. And the policy maker takes on the role of painter.



If you want a great painting, the painter needs to know his canvas and his paint intimately and possess the skills to work with both to create something that works.



If you want a great policy, the policy maker needs to know the community/individuals and the policy ideas/research evidence/examples intimately, and possess the skills to combine both into a policy that delivers. Just because the paint has worked on one kind of canvas, it does not mean that the paint will work on another.



Evidence-based policy making places great emphasis on the importance of the paint. Within evidence-based policy making, there has been little emphasis on the importance of the canvas. There has been even less emphasis on the importance of the painter other than as someone to administer the paint.



Coffee Conversations* assume the choice of canvas is fixed – that there is a context in which the policy will be implemented. Coffee Conversations aim to provide the painter with a feel for the canvas – the textures and ways the canvas will react with the paint. As well as the canvas, the painter needs to understand the nature of the paint available to him. What kind of evidence exists? Why is a new policy needed? What has happened in other contexts?


Only then is it safe to start to imagine the painting. And that’s where the individual painter’s skills come to the fore. However scientific, analytic and statistical the painter’s approach, however robust the research evidence, the finished painting will reflect the painter’s unique individual flair.


Barod does not pretend to provide a good understanding of the paint, and we don’t claim to be painters. But we do believe we are good at helping painters to understand canvases.


And one of our main tools for doing this is Coffee Conversations.


*Be patient - the research findings describing Coffee Conversations is almost ready for public release...

Trust

We need trust – and to be generally disposed to think positively about the other person – if we are going to take risks, innovate and act without needing to know every fine detail first.

Stop right there. Actually, that statement only applies to one kind of trust. Trust means we can rely on predicting someone's behaviour in a given situation. I can trust some really horrible people - because I know they will always be horrible in a certain type of situation. I can act on that belief with a high degree of certainty. And that kind of person is much easier to deal with than the person whose behaviour I cannot predict.

However, as we carry on, I'm going to assume we're talking about the positive kind of trust.

Well placed trust means risk-taking is a really positive experience, and when things go wrong (as they always will at some point when we take risks), we don’t immediately shift into ‘shift-the-blame’ or ‘told you so’ modes.

 

Misplaced trust is dangerous. Risk-taking based on that trust is a reckless act. I've done it. It hurt. It still hurts 10 years on.

 

How do I know in advance whether my trust is well placed or misplaced?

• Look at the past. Has the person or organisation been transparent, reliable and competent? Do they steal ideas, pass the blame buck or talk better than they deliver? Or do they have a track record that makes me believe I can trust them?

• Look at the present. Do others trust them? Sometimes we need to trust against other people’s opinions. But crowdsourcing trust is always a good idea.

• Look to the future. Are there outside pressures that are going to compromise a trustworthy person/organisation's ability to be trustworthy in the future?

 

Trust isn’t about trusting someone’s position in a hierarchy, their status, training or job title.

Trust isn’t about the wealth or power of an organisation.

Well placed trust is built on track record and careful observation of behaviour.

So look out, I’m watching you!

Why I refuse to be an asset...

I’ve been trying to think why I dislike the word “asset” when it is used  in the context  of what human beings bring to the table in terms of their community, public life and self-help.

I got some of the answers by asking people what “asset” meant to them. For some it meant being seen as valuable – “you’re such an asset”. For others, it was a term used in books and films to describe dehumanised and expendable people – like “CIA assets”. For many, particularly more middle class, it was about owning things and “looking after your assets”.

I don’t think I like any of those meanings. Whenever I’ve been told I’m an asset, it’s either the prelude to exploiting my good will or a justification for having just done that. It goes hand in hand with being patted  on the head for being a good girl. I definitely don’t like the idea of being expendable. And I don’t have much time for materialism and guarding stuff that I’ve accumulated.

So I guess it’s not surprising that I get uncomfortable with the current fashion for insisting that we talk about people’s assets or reminding ourselves that people are assets. 

My association of asset with exploitation  is increased because for all the talk of being assets and coproducing/co-working, it is exceedingly rare for anyone on the “you’re an asset” side of the table to get paid, whereas everyone on the “we’re the trend-setting public service” side is paid to be there.