Starting a transformative change process: A birdseye view of IIED's journey to embed systems innovation

In spite of IIED’s fantastic reputation and long serving team, the 50 year old organisation is not achieving the impact in the world it dreams of.?

As in most NGOs, funding is largely tied to unreliable, donor driven grants which limits innovation. A recent race audit shook the boat (and staff). The teams are siloed, stressed and overworked.

Against this backdrop, a new Executive Director has arrived to spark change. Systemic change.

After 100 days observing, understanding and reflecting, Tom Mitchell kicked off a strategy process to put systems innovation at centre of IIED.?

The strategy process is, at heart, a change process.?

Here’s a little about what we are hoping for, trying and learning - and some of the challenges, so far.

The intent

• Adopt systems innovation at multiple scales: To create systemic change in the world, the strategy process will also look at the systemic changes needed inside the organisation?
• Align with internal needs: Use the strategy update process to stimulate a change process
• Be appreciative: Build on the strengths of the organisation, celebrate what works
• Co-create change: Involve the whole organisation in the identification of areas for change and how to change
• Act into a new way of being: Create opportunities for people in the organisation to experience working in a new way (cross-functional teams, build connections across teams, work in time bound, iterative cycles)
• Build organisational ownership: Involve people in decision making about the changes that will affect the future of the organisation
• Build relationships: Living systems emerge from relationships. Change the quality of relationships to change the system

The process so far (phase 1, February - May 2023)

The first round of the strategy process has involved:

• All organisation kick-off: A hybrid, multi-day workshop for 120 people, to start co-creating change
• Cross-functional design teams, working in sprints on elements of organisational change: A facilitated process for five cross-functional teams to design prototypes of components of organisational redesign
• The Design Teams explored: focus, values, governance and decision making, task teams, business and operating model
• Whole organisation advice moments to interact with and make decisions on prototypes and next steps
• - ‘Yes, and’ sessions (using ideas taken from improv!) to give people a chance to build on prototypes
• - Open Space two day in person workshop, to connect, explore, iterate and chart a path forwards
• Moments for connection and conversation:?
• - Ask Me Anything sessions to create space for people in the organisation to ask questions of the Executive Director (and people in the Design Teams), and keep lines of communication flowing
• - Change Network to bring together people who are interested in/ passionate/ cynical about the change process to informally explore what’s alive for them
• - SMT reflections to explore change with the existing leaders, whose roles and teams will be impacted?

There’s much more to share about the detail of how this process has worked so far, and what we’ve learned.

Working on organisational change from the bottom up (with the whole organisation choosing important leverage points, then cross-functional teams designing solutions) is unusual, intense, messy and incredibly impactful.?

Early experiences?

Act into a new way of working

The Design Team participants (30 people) were the first to deeply experience a new way of working. They emerged exhausted and elated after their 10 week sprint. They shared:

• Surprise they could move so fast?
• Pride they could achieve so much, and contribute meaningfully to change?
• Joy and delight at working deeply with people from across the organisation

As well as challenges around:

• Bringing others on the organisation along on the journey: In moving fast, some worried they’d left others behind
• Wellbeing and time: It was hard to balance the demands of responsibility of the Design Teams task on top of ordinary work
• - The five teams met for two hours each week, to share stories about their sprint (to build synergies between teams), set up for the next sprint and work in their Design Teams. On top of this, teams ‘sprinted’ independently
• An emergent process: We’d mapped out the process from the start, but in a bid to get going, not everything was super clear. And, as we tried things and learned, the process changed (for example, the format - or even whether we should have - the long weekly session). For some, this worked well, while others found the change and lack of certainty stressful
• Unequal contributions: Teams were diverse, with different schedules and workloads, which sometimes made it hard to find time to work together. In a small team, uneven time and commitment is felt acutely
• Pressure from others in the organisation: Some teams were ‘lobbied’ (a word used internally, to describe this) quite hard, in the hope their inputs would shape the prototypes
• - The teams lobbied hardest were those whose? prototypes would have most personal effect on people: ‘focus’ (that looked at what IIED’s portfolio could look like) and ‘task teams’ (exploring cross-functional ways of working)?
• - Often, the lobbying came from those who wanted to maintain the status quo, or their position within in

Build organisational ownership

At Open Space (the in-person gathering), Design Teams shared their prototypes and the people in the organisation flocked around them, discussing, deliberating, iterating and deciding. By the end of two days, decisions were made and next steps agreed.?

As ever, the magic will be in making sure that these decisions are moved forward, quickly. There’s an opportunity to showcase the reality of change, that we do not want to miss.?