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. 

My voice, your voice

Voices matter.  Everyone's voice matters.

Co-production matters.  It's not just morally good. It's pragmatically good too.

But, for all the talk, sometimes we struggle to get our heads round what it looks like.

I wonder what life would be like in public service land if we were writing letters like this...

Dear Citizen

Sorry for the terrible title, but I can’t think of a better one at the moment. You aren’t just someone who uses our services but a person in your own right – same as I’m not just a service provider but a person in my own right. Isn’t it hard to find good titles for each other?

In the pre-coproduction world, I sat in my space and you sat in yours. Sometimes I came into your space to consult you. I only had a voice in your space if you chose to let me, but once in your space I admit I assumed I had a right to speak. And I guess I held most of the power because whether you liked me or not, the only way you got a voice was by letting me use my voice.

In the coproduction world, I need to learn a new way to use my voice. I need to remember I have no more right to speak than you. I need to learn to use my voice within a conversation of equals, and not to broadcast information.

Please bear with me as I learn to use my voice differently, and as I learn it is as important to hear your voice as to hear my own.

Best wishes

Jo Bloggs

Dear Professional

In the pre-coproduction world, I sat in my space and you sat in yours. Sometimes I came into your space because you invited me to a partnership board or service development group. I only had a voice there if you chose to let me have it. Sometimes I bulldozed my way in to lobby for something. I used my voice whether you liked it or not.

In the coproduction world, I need to learn a new way to use my voice. I no longer need your permission. And I do not need to fight to be heard.

Please bear with me as I learn to use my voice differently, and as I learn it is as important to hear your voice as to hear my own.

Best wishes

Joe Bloggs

Getting excited

I’m really excited to have been at the first DRILL NAG last Friday.

In English, that means I went to the first National Advisory Group for the Disability Research on Independent Livingand Learning Big Lottery Funded project. The five year project is run disabled people’s organisations from each of the four UK countries, and roughly next April there will be the first call for research proposals.

I’m not usually so excited to travel long distances to give my time for free. But some things are just worth it. Being on the Wales National Advisory Group means I am part of something that, hopefully, will challenge and push the boundaries of coproductive research. And it’s even more exciting to feel that I can contribute to the conceptual thinking about coproduction and research.

What we now need are people across Wales to come to one of the three roadshows that explain DRILL, coproduction and how people can get involved.

The coproduction bit goes something like this:

• Disabled people can be academics. But usually they aren’t. We need a shedload of disabled people who aren’t academics to come along to the roadshows and find out about the project. We also need some academics to come along, preferably ones who can ‘speak human’ or who are at least aware that accademicese is a language that most people in Wales don’t understand!
• We need non-academic disabled people and academics (disabled or not) at the roadshows who get the message that society-changing research needs both groups to work together on an equal basis.
• Everyone needs to be forgiving, willing to be honest and willing to tolerate a bit of discomfort. Whenever we try something new we are going to make mistakes. That doesn’t mean we are deliberately annoying people, ignoring them or discriminating against them. It means we are trying to do something we aren’t used to doing. In this case, DRILL is trying to get non-academic disabled people and academics to learn how to work together as equals. 

The National Advisory Group has already led the way. We’ve managed to have a productive first meeting of non-academic disabled people/carers, academic disabled people and academics who aren’t (yet!) disabled.  Our hope is that if we can manage to communicate and push boundaries, then maybe the roadshows can. And maybe the research proposals will. And maybe the research itself will. And…. just maybe, we are at the start of a journey that will transform Welsh society.

And if that’s not worth getting excited about, I don’t know what is!

The joy of trains

My life is stupidly busy. I’m a mum, wife, PhD student, company director, Crossfitter, community activist, active Christian, friend, thinker, NCIS-lover, cook, schmoozer.

If I have down time at home, I’m asleep (or watching NCIS).

If I’m in a fixed place – like the office or home – or simply out and about, I almost always have a fixed purpose. Even relaxation is timetabled and I have the pressure to ‘achieve’ relaxation.

And that’s why I like trains. It’s almost like stolen time. You budget the time for travelling. But unlike driving, you then have glorious me-time where you are shut away from the outside world – or at least you are when you travel North South in Wales with no wifi and only intermittent 3G or mobile signal.

One day I may use the journey for that mythical beast – relaxing over a good book. But until then, I enjoy the freedom to download my brain onto the computer. 

No, I’m not a cyborg, at least I don’t think I am! But I do have so much floating in my head that blogging, or diarising, or mind-mapping are essential tools for staying sane. And that isn’t something I can timetable into my daily life.

Somehow, being on a train is like a cocoon of other worldliness. I’m nowhere – not here, and not there. I have hours of time which I don’t need to account for to anyone because on the timesheet they are ‘travelling’. Being me, I can’t just switch off and ‘not exist’, so I turn my hand to whatever I fancy. Bits of jobs and paperwork get conquered. Today, my laptop’s desktop was finally cleaned up and my expenses claims got ready for posting.

So now, it’s blog time. Some I drafted on the last train journey have been refined. Some have been drafted. And, thanks to the wonders of Indycubing, I will be able to roll off the train, into a luxurious coffee-drenched, wifi rich haven and get these blogs scheduled. Bliss!

Trend-bucking in Wales

A week or so ago, there was a twitter exchange between @dylanjonesevans and @markjhooper about a Wales Online story.  In a nutshell, Wales is going to the States to find answers on how to build the Welsh economy. Some feel we could find the answers closer to home. The exchange made me think of Barod’s experiences of the industry that has built up around purporting to create or find jobs for people with learning disabilities. And I felt a blog coming on…

So - What do these have in common?

• Schemes to kick-start the Welsh economy
• Schemes to find paid work for people with learning difficulties/disabilities

The slightly cynical answer is “we spend shed loads of public money on it, with very little success”

The more biting answer is “it is a way for people to create work for themselves, while failing to achieve what they are funded to do”.

There are a few trend-buckers who don’t fit with either of those answers, but perhaps we are too busy throwing good money after bad to have the time or inclination to look at them. If we did, I think we would see that the trend-buckers share some characteristics.

You see, if I wanted to kick start the Welsh economy or see more people with learning difficulties in paid work, I’d start by finding our own examples of what  works and try to work out why. I’m about to give my best-guesses about the trend-buckers. But I wouldn’t want to stake my life, Wales’ prosperity or the lives of people with learning disabilities on my best-guesses. 

We need evidence and answers about what makes the trend-buckers succeed where so many larger, better funded projects are failing. Instead of this, what do we get? We get another chunk of public money chucked at another programme for economic regeneration, this time bringing in expertise from the United States.  And at the same time, we get more funding chucked at maintaining day services, training opportunities and supported employment agencies that, by and large, DON’T WORK.

I’m not arguing for no public funding. And I’m not arguing that there haven’t been occasions where public funding has delivered cost-effective benefit. I am arguing that we need  to stop doing the same things and dressing them up as innovative projects. We need  to start thinking differently and doing different things. And to do that, we need to examine examples where people are already doing different things, and learn from them ways to use public funding more effectively.

Welsh trend-buckers support wealth creation. This may be social wealth (like Carmarthenshire People First Job Club) or financial wealth (like Indycube). And perhaps a characteristic of trendbuckers is that they don’t actually separate the goals of social and financial wealth. 

The bad news is that we could’t round up Carmarthenshire People First Job Club to see how it works even if we wanted to. They scraped enough money for a short term project and haven’t found a new backer - yet. But they achieved more success on a shoestring than the multimillion pound publicly funded industry for job-finding for people with learning difficulties/disabilities. If anyone reading this fancies investing in social good (you will lose your financial investment - but your money will transform lives & benefit the Welsh economy) then I’d be delighted to put you in touch with the people who can make that happen. 

Let’s have a quick look at what I think Welsh trend-buckers seem to have in common.

• Different expectations of what counts as ‘normal’
• Driven by a commitment to changing the status quo
• Less ‘Let’s think outside of the box’ and more ‘Box? There’s a box?’
• Connecting  - ideas, people, organisations, infrastructure, technology
• Finding others who will look with them for solutions when the trend-buckers get stuck

Different expectations of normal

We will always tend to work towards whatever we think is normal.

If you are used to a 9 to 5 with a regular salary, sick pay and holidays, that  will be your normal. You are unlikely to recognise, understand or support what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.

If you are used to people with learning disabilities relying on benefits, that will be your normal. If you think they need protecting and sheltering, then that’s what  you will recreate even if you are paid to help them find real jobs.

No matter what you are funded to do, you will do it in a way that tends to work towards that norm.

So the trend-buckers are those with different expectations of normal. Their normal is the insecure, exhausting, exhilarating, hard work of starting a business that will succeed and grow. Their normal is knowing that the real barriers to real paid work for people with learning disabilities are the knowledge, skills and assumptions of employers, backed up by the attitudes of agencies, not any inadequacies of people with learning disabilities – so no amount of training, work preparation, support or job coaching of people with learning disabilities will result in real paid jobs.

Driven by a commitment to change the status quo

The trend-buckers are not in it for an easy life. They aren’t limiting what they do to what they are paid to do or the hours in their job description. And they certainly aren’t doing things because they are paid to do them. They are driven by a commitment to something – a cause, a value, a belief they can change Wales. And that commitment is strong enough to work ridiculously hard, make themselves vulnerable, keep chipping away against the odds and focus on the long game.

Box? What box?

I guess this is another version of different expectations of normal.

When Barod was started, I was the only one with experience of running a business. The others had no idea what ‘should’ be possible or normal. I had to think outside my box; they just had to think.  We didn’t know what was supposed to be possible, so just got on with doing ‘the impossible’ without realising it was ‘impossible’.

Others (like me) know there is a box, but refuse to acknowledge it beyond being aware that other people choose to live in it. Even people who think ‘outside the box’ are defined by the box and whether their thoughts are inside or outside of it. And that’s why simply thinking ‘outside the box’ isn’t going to lead to radically new and effective solutions.

I think that’s also why I like Barod’s Coffee Conversations. They make the general public’s ‘Box? What box?’ thinking accessible to people who run aspects of public life and public services. Ignorance can be dangerous – but it can also be a huge blessing if you want to escape established ways of working.

Connecting

I’m not talking old boys networks here. Those involve connecting, but in a self-limiting way. I’m talking hearing an idea in one context and wondering ‘what if?’ in relation to other contexts. I’m talking expecting to find something or someone of interest wherever I travel and whoever I meet. That could be the person on the checkout, fellow passengers on the train, keeping an eye on twitter or deliberately going to a conference and working the room.  And, when I talk of ‘working the room’, I’m talking expecting to find people and information of interest, expecting to give and receive, working to promote connectedness in general rather than make myself the centre of the hub.

I know I connect ideas, people and organisations differently and highly effectively. It’s a legacy from a first degree where I was encouraged for three years to join up the dots ignoring the order of the numbers by the dots to get a different picture from the one I was ‘supposed’ to create. It’s also because my personal neurodiversity involves living with a committee of different aged, skilled and gendered ‘people’ in my head. That certainly helps with making unusual connections!

I love neurodiversity. I cannot be thankful enough that people have their brains wired differently and we don’t all think the same way. It can be a pain if we live in a world that assumes all brains are wired the same way. But if we want to create economic and social change, we need diversity.

.

Others

These are perhaps the unsung heroes of many stories. Barod would not exist if someone from with the multi-million pound industry hadn’t recognised what we were trying to do and found a way to bend the rules to help us. Every other door in the industry had closed on us because we weren’t doing things the normal way and we certainly didn’t want to compromise our vision for the sake of their checklist, tickbox rules.

This one person found a way round the barrier that might easily have defeated us – the then Catch 22 that to get help from Access to Work, you must already be trading and off benefits, but as a disabled entrepreneur you couldn’t get  off benefits until you were trading and you couldn’t get trading without the kind of support only available through Access to Work. We are delighted  that the Government has removed this Catch 22 and you can get Access to Work support in the pre-trading stage now. We will never know whether our loud protests helped, but we like to think it may have.

These should not be the unsung heroes. They may not be the people directly transforming economic regeneration or job prospects for people with learning disabilities. But they are the people with the vision and willingness to open the doors for the people who are. Without anyone there to unlock doors, us entrepreneurs would have very sore heads from beating them against closed doors.

So – do we continue chucking money at projects that see more self-serving than wealth creating? Do we use strategies  that add to the wealth of  the elite while failing to transform local economies? Do we continue to create paid work for people who don’t have learning difficulties/disabilities while creating bonded unpaid labour for people with learning difficulties/disabilities?

Or is Wales ready to go look at the exceptions, the wealth creators, the trend-buckers, and see what can be learned from them?