CHAPTER SIX: Achieving social systems change in New Zealand

Introduction

In this final chapter I relate the findings of my research to policy making and service delivery in New Zealand for at-risk children, young people and families. Before proceeding, however, I want to acknowledge that a number of public agencies in New Zealand, including the ones I quote in chapter one, are working to improve outcomes for at-risk children, young people and families. For example the Department of Child, Youth and Family responded to the Brown report in March 2002 with a publication entitled "New Direction - a way forward for Child, Youth and Family." This paper is thus intended to complement work by departments and agencies in New Zealand. It is not intended to critique existing policies or services but to add to the body of knowledge and research on the overall topic.

The table I presented at the end of chapter five lists examples of approaches, tools and competencies that may be transferable or adaptable to New Zealand. How this might occur is a topic for further work and beyond the scope of this paper. This research does demonstrate, however, that tools like outcomes planning and performance measurement are essential to achieving better social outcomes. It also shows that particular methodologies like peacemaking circles are an especially powerful means of transformation. I would be interested to see peacemaking circles adapted for the New Zealand setting. It seems to me, as a non-Maori, that there are some parallels with Maori beliefs and values, including the emphasis on spirituality. This is an important area for future exploration.

What I particularly want to consider in this chapter is what changes at a deeper level may be needed in public management practice to achieve social systems change. It is useful to start with the three lessons listed at the end of chapter five, namely: governments are not in this alone; ways need to be found to encourage and foster informal systems because of what they can offer; and the right mix of cross-cutting strategies is essential for holistic and supportive project and programs. On the basis of these lessons I have identified five areas for future attention (which is not to say there are not more - just that these are the ones that are the most obvious to me). These areas are: power sharing and joint accountability; role of government as enabler; creating incentives for collaboration; longer term, relational contracting; and distributed leadership. The last three areas should be seen as means to reinforce the first two areas.

Power sharing and joint accountability

Power sharing and joint accountability are critical to the success of any collaborative venture. As we have seen in chapter two, the conceptual framework combines two important ideas in collaboration and learning strategy: shifting control away from the top and the center of Public Service organizations; and learning to see the world differently and understanding the systems that control events. In effect, if this strategy is to work, it is about power sharing.

This is not an easy concept to put into practice because no one likes to give up power, whether that power is explicit or implicit. Organizations, which are collections of individuals, are probably more resistant than individuals in giving up power. In New Zealand, top down contracting mechanisms have reinforced "power at the top" because the purchase paradigm requires the top to be the place where the decision making occurs about how much and what services to purchase. It is also important to recognize that accountability of the Public Service manager is one of the basic tenets of the 1980s public sector reform in New Zealand and will not be easily transformed into joint accountability.

Judge Mick Brown, in his report to the NZ Government, pointed to the difficulty of shifting power away from the top:

We need to educate the public at large as to what are the desirable objectives and the respective roles all participants can play. One of the jargon phrases which are now thrown about whenever we talk of transferring this control is, "the empowerment of the families/community." I found that empowering exercise to be both stimulating and frustrating in about equal proportions. By definition the exercise is one involving a transfer of power requiring those who previously held that power to let it go. My own observation has been that while there may be some enthusiasm to hand over responsibility this is not accompanied by any great desire to hand over control. That I suggest is a matter requiring a high level of integrity and commitment by those who previously held the power, otherwise it simply becomes empty rhetoric.¹²⁹

When collaboration does work, he says, the results demonstrate that it was worthwhile: "But on a more positive note where empowering takes place, where organizations do co-operate, and where a philosophy is shared, the results at times were outstanding."¹³⁰

The negative aspect that Brown is referring to is a phenomenon that, I believe, has caused a high degree of skepticism, if not cynicism, in the New Zealand context. This is because experiments in community empowerment or community consultation have not usually resulted in actual power being handed over to a community group. Sometimes consultation has resulted in a community group feeling less empowered because an invitation to dialogue that does not include active listening is violating a first principle of genuine dialogue.

Holding genuine dialogue within the community means building sound relationships and finding ways to agree joint outcomes. In the field of mediation and negotiation, a technique known as interest-based problem solving is used to reach joint outcomes. Parties hold dialogue, make trade-offs and agree on joint outcomes. Each party stands to gain more than it stands to lose because joint outcomes have greater overall value for the joint parties. Peacemaking circles offer a means of constructive dialogue between people who come from diverse places and backgrounds State agency support for Roca stems largely from participation in peacemaking circles, as I discussed in chapters three and five.

In Oregon, a comprehensive strategic planning exercise means that all major stakeholders have bought into outcomes before the real work of identifying who is responsible for what activities begins. Oregon started this work more than a decade ago. The more recent initiatives through Senate Bill 555 and the Oregon Children's Plan, have brought focus to Oregon Benchmarks for children, young people and families. It would be a huge challenge for New Zealand to do something similar, but not to take action, using bottom up as well as top down techniques, will cause continued frustration, as expressed in Brown's report, and worse, continuing poor outcomes. It is important that New Zealand develops its own way forward on these issues, drawing on international experience and expertise as much as possible.

I am not advocating across-the-board abdication of Public Service accountability. But I am advocating that in order to deal with at-risk members of the community, negotiated, joint power sharing and accountability arrangements need to be put in place. I envisage that the main parties who need to engage in dialogue and discussion will include central and local government, community leaders, and leaders from non-profit organizations who have knowledge to address specific problems. It would be essential for Cabinet ministers to be involved or at least to agree to joint processes. Useful questions for deciding whether power sharing might be appropriate include the following: Does a community group or existing non-profit organization have expertise or knowledge worth sharing in this area? Have various strategies been unsuccessfully tried but the problem is persisting or becoming worse? Does each party have the capability to fulfill its roles and responsibilities in relation to each joint outcome goal? Who has the most to gain by improving outcomes?

Government as enabler

This notion acknowledges that organizations and groups outside government may be better placed to undertake projects and activities that will achieve better social outcomes and that government has a role in facilitating this. Traditionally the role of government has been that of regulator, which has meant a heavy focus on monitoring and compliance activities. Of course government must maintain essential regulatory activities like collecting taxes, ensuring law and order, public health safety and so on because these activities contribute to good government, which is an important part of civil society. Effective government systems are also an important condition for good economic performance.

If government wants to achieve better social outcomes, it will, as the research shows, need to learn to work from a systems thinking perspective. I believe the most effective role government can play is an enabler of social systems change. Collecting data on social problems and analyzing their many interrelated causes is an important task. Being able to take constructive steps to transform the lives of individuals and communities who are at-risk is another separate task for which public organizations are often ill-equipped, as we have seen in the case of Roca and in Oregon. Investing in grassroots, non-profit organizations or community initiatives that will bring about innovative and transformative change in the social arena is a positive action government can take.

Experience in Oregon shows that building capacity at the local level is fundamental to change and transformation in the community. Oregon has used its "seed" funding to help local organizations build capacity for innovative projects and programs. The experience of Roca demonstrates that grassroots organizations can be greatly assisted in building their internal capacity to help deliver better outcomes for the community. Grassroots organizations like Roca have the advantage of being highly flexible in the way they can grow and respond to opportunities for change at a more rapid pace. This contrasts with slower moving bureaucracy. They are also more likely to lead radical as opposed to incremental change, as discussed in chapter five.

The initiatives at the state and local levels in Oregon to partner with universities are good examples of government as enabler. I would like to see New Zealand adopt active "global and local strategies" for knowledge in the social field that reach all the way to the local level. A global knowledge strategy, for example, would enable practitioners and communities to tap into recognized international sources of research and knowledge, using appropriate technology. It would also ensure that people from central and local government as well as communities are continually engaged in external knowledge acquisition through either virtual or real time research and study.

A local knowledge strategy would ensure that the "no one size fits all" maxim is understood and applied. By comprehensively mapping our communities as Oregon has done, we could learn - before trying particular projects - what the local problems and concerns are, what resources and priorities exist for tackling them, and what special characteristics belong to each community that might affect outcomes.. Mapping would also help identify where government could best invest in local capacity building. It is possible that communities would need knowledge of planning, accounting, governance, ethical conduct or other expertise which would help them to perform better. Roca was funded (by a foundation grant) to develop internal capability with outstanding results.

As enabler, I believe government would be able to focus more easily on outcomes and would be less preoccupied with outputs. Focusing on the end result or outcome goal has to become second nature to public officials in New Zealand. Government as enabler also accommodates better the notion of formal and informal systems which are fundamentally different, yet needing to work together. The fact that values, language, mental models and ways of "doing business" are very different between government agencies and communities need not stand in the way of collaboration if both modes of operation - bottom up and top down - are valued and outcome goals are joint.

Creating incentives for collaboration

This is largely about aligning budgets to a collaborative way of doing public business. The current budgetary pressures in the health, welfare and education areas are likely to continue for the foreseeable future and possibly worsen as the population ages. We need therefore to think about changing the current paradigm related to setting budgets and funding. Instead of rewarding for failure (as Osborne and Plastrik have pointed out, the worse the social problem the more money is made available to try and deal with it), we should think about rewarding public organizations and communities for solving problems and achieving outcome goals. This could mean rewarding them for community building, as well as collaborative or innovative projects.

Two different approaches might be adopted. One is a budget contingency fund each year to seed promising projects and provide rewards in real time to collaborative experiments that are working well. A second approach would be to shift existing funding to new projects. It is always difficult to move funding away from existing services and activities. Having a good performance measurement system in place, like the one Oregon is developing, which helps public officials and communities decide what activities to stop doing, is fundamental to freeing up resources to reward activities that are known to be linked to positive outcomes. A comprehensive database and good evaluation logic are both important ingredients of a good performance measurement system. It should be possible to set up criteria for both approaches based on the definitions for community building, collaboration and innovation in chapter two.

Another idea for creating incentives is to take a group of capable managers and advisors from central and local government off-line and have them work together to come up with new approaches to tackle disturbing issues in the community.

Moving to longer term, relational contracting

Relational contracting acknowledges that relationships between governments and communities are central to achieving better social outcomes. This builds on the idea that formal and informal systems need to move closer to each other. I have already mentioned the importance of relationship building in community empowerment. The objective of relational contracting would be to draw on the strengths of both formal and informal systems to achieve joint outcomes. The intangible characteristics of innovative organizations that I discussed in chapter two, such as building trust, honesty, rigor, and faith, could be made explicit, for example, through a shared values statement in a contract.

Moving from output to outcome contracting for longer periods of time than one or two years will be an important task of public organizations. The purpose is to ensure that the mixed strategies required for holistic and supportive projects and programs are continuous over several years. It does not mean that contracts could not be amended in a three to five year timeframe if there was good reason to do so. The contract should be seen as a shared undertaking to achieve joint outcomes, with individual responsibilities clearly spelled out. It needs to be as flexible as possible to allow for a systems approach to achieving the outcome goal. A "do whatever it takes," permissive approach within certain defined limits would be better suited to a collaborative model than the highly prescriptive approach that has been adopted as part of output contracting.

Distributed leadership

As discussed in chapter five, distributed leadership is about developing different kinds of leaders at all levels of the social system and facilitating decision-making at these levels, rather than keeping it only at the top. Two dimensions of leadership are important here. Senge's depiction of leader as designer, teacher and steward is fundamental to distributed leadership, as is the idea that leaders are not only to be found at the top of a system or an organization but at all levels. Government as enabler should provide the ability to recognize leaders at different levels and nurture them. By supporting Molly Baldwin at Roca, state officials have helped to develop, over the years, a visionary leader in the community. Baldwin would be the first to reminds us that one leader will not achieve her vision, however, and that there must be many leaders at all levels.

We have already seen that distributing decision-making into the community can be helpful for achieving social outcomes. Roca took on the responsibility for tackling the escalating high school drop out rate in Chelsea by proposing a different kind of school, and then asked state and city partners for support. The response was almost overwhelming. It would have been unthinkable for a state agency to put forward such a proposal because the community learning center or street school will be outside the public education system. That is, Roca will not seek accreditation in the public system because it believes that the public system is fundamentally flawed in the way it tries to teach the young people who come to Roca. This is a case of leadership in innovation coming from the bottom up, with state agencies being fully supportive or enabling in their response.

Roca's way of providing development opportunities for young people, no matter how damaged, to contribute and become leaders in their community is a fine example of distributed leadership and one worth emulating. In New Zealand, practicing distributed leadership could be as basic as identifying and working with local government and community leaders on a specific issue but allowing the decisions to be made in the community. It is important to give them real power and control over decision-making, as discussed under power sharing. It does not mean that all the decision-making power would go to communities. That would be to flip the current arrangements on their head and that would achieve little. What is required is modification of current arrangements on a common sense basis.

Conclusion

The kind of society we want for our country in the future is a question that many New Zealanders are concerned about. Poor economic performance is one concern, poor social indicators are another. They are linked. Poor social indicators not only place internal pressure on the economy and diminish potential productivity levels, but they fundamentally challenge the values and norms of our society. If the future is to include better social outcomes as well as improved economic growth, we must find ways to underpin core values such as human dignity and diversity, high standards of education, and employment opportunities for all. For those New Zealanders who are "falling out of the system" we need to find ways to transform the system.

In concluding I quote Mick Brown again: "Dramatic change in this whole field of child care and nurturing will only occur with major attitudinal and societal transformation."¹³¹ My research has shown that achieving transformation or social systems change is fundamental to improving social outcomes in New Zealand. Collaboration between government and the community is central to this change.

¹²⁹ Brown, Michael J, op.cit. p. 102.

¹³⁰ Ibid.

¹³¹ Ibid.