Welcome to the Experts in Sport Podcast, brought to you by the School of Sport, exercise and health sciences at Lovebury University. Today I'm with Dr Luke Roberts and we're here to discuss systems change. If you've been involved in sport, physical activity, health, education, business or any sector, you'll have heard people talk about systems change. You may have seen people attempt to make change but more often than not the results don't seem to be what was anticipated. In today's podcast we discuss systems change. We get started by understanding what systems change is and the difficulties people often face when trying to create change using real-world examples. We then focus on what needs to be done to create and sustain systems change. We hope the podcast can help to inspire anyone wanting to have an impact on the world and become systems change leaders of the future. Hi Luke, thanks for joining me on the Experts in Sport Podcast. Hello. Before we begin we often like to start with a brief introduction from our guests. Can you let our audience know a little bit about yourself and your work? Sure, I'm Dr Luke Roberts. I run a company called Resolve Consultants Limited and probably for about 20 odd years I've worked in the conflict resolution in space looking at how organisations resolve conflict and then about 10 years ago I started to become really interested in what's it take to sustain the innovation because conflict and innovation aren't as far apart as they might sound actually and I became increasingly concerned particularly when looking at innovative programs. Are these programs actually going to last beyond me supporting that particular team at that particular moment and what does it take to really sustain the innovation? So I'm really interested in different management models and kind of landed on complex systems as I think was the ideas and the concepts that gave me the best answers to sustainability so I really shifted the way I think about organisational change through systems lenses and particularly complexity and I think kind of on a personal level I've really wanted to make sure that when we're you know energy is finite and how we use it is really important and so that those people who are part of the change don't even get change fatigue or end up losing hope that things just won't be different and it's how in the model that I think helps you understand sustainability rather than implementation that's really exciting for me so I think my work has kind of covered prisons healthcare commercial sector lots of different organisations which is part the richness of the work I do but what's really exciting is that this model seems to hold up in all those different contexts as well so very excited to be here thank you Martin. Thanks Luke I love it and obviously we've spoken prior to being on here and introduced by Carol Mason and some of the work and we've had numerous chats offline so those listening this could go anywhere because Luke is so interesting I can ask him lots of questions but you know to get us started so you know I've been working in around sport for the 20 plus years in PE and sport and physical activity and have forever heard you know we need to improve performance we need to increase physical activity or participation or reduce obesity and these are all things that people will be aware of yet we've not really seen you know that that much change happening so hopefully during the podcast we can we're not specifically going to tell everyone how we can increase physical activity and all those kind of things what we're going to be doing is looking more at what the system is and how we might want to look at the system differently to kind of try and influence change in the future so can you look at getting us started by telling us what systems change is. Okay and I think my usual pushback is what do you mean by systems so I kind of have a typology of four so there's simple systems complicated systems chaotic systems and complex systems so looking at kind of the literature in this area you I stop this typography kind of came up in terms of understanding when people say they want to change a system well what is the system you want to change so in a simple system if we take it something is a bike as a motor transport a bike doesn't become a motor transport until the rider and the bike interconnect and so that simple interconnection means you have a motor transport now you can try and take certain parts of that system away and you'll still have a motor transport so can you take the seat away can you take the brakes away can you take the pedals away and can you still have it as a motor transport because the overarching feature remains the mode of transport is the system we're interested in so that's kind of a simple system and I think the second one that is complicated systems which like a bike you can say something like an aeroplane another motor transport the difference is this has multiple parts rather than the two the rider and the bike that needs to come together in sequence when parallel to produce a particular type of benefits I really like it when planes take off a land love the regularity of that type of complicated system but we're both the simple and the complicated what we've got is an aeroplane that's one directional we need that sequence to happen in that particular way to produce that kind of systems benefit and I think in response to what you're saying already martin if we think of projects pilots and interventions as simple or complicated what we want to know is what happened at the start what happened at the end and we track the sequence in between to say like did it produce this type of benefit yes or no when I think the risk is that that then doesn't under that may not reveal that other two types of system so chaotic systems comes from a lot of competitive computational science and the manorbrook curve around the butterfly effect so we have regularity without predictability so weather systems are chaotic like we can say that something's going to we know it's going to rain at some point we just can't go to one to the second one it's going to happen so chaotic systems are very sensitive to their initial conditions and then they get locked in to a pattern of behavior and I kind of I take that idea and go right how does that apply within social context and what's been really interesting and it came out actually talking to healthcare providers which was if you stay in a system long enough like health care you will see the regularity of the patterns that occur over time and so people then you know if you've got like 25 years you'll go like well I've seen it all before because you have this ebb and flow of change that occurs over that period of time so it can feel like in my language that feels like a chaotic system and so the challenge is then how do you get people up for systems change when they're used there to go like well can I wait the system out long enough and I'll see it all come around again. That's Luke that's really interesting I'm as you know I'm doing research for a PhD around kind of physical activity in children and the amount of people that I speak to who say you know this was different 20 years ago this is happening now or there's been no change long term in the outputs but the inputs have been different and then from researching my my supervisor and I have found evidence around facilities over a hundred years ago talking about facilities and sport and physical activity and yet nothing's really changed so that cycle seems to be apparent certainly in the work I've been looking at sorry to jump in there just seems so so relevant to the work I do but yeah totally totally can see that and agree so what about complex adaptive systems okay so that's my passion point there that's where I kind of landed so me complex adaptive systems are different to chaotic systems because time is experienced in a different way so rather than the circular repeating pattern of time that happens in chaotic systems or the error of time being linear in simple and complicated in complex systems time is relative to whatever else is happening in that system so the beauty of complex adaptive systems by being adaptive it means that within their environment they have to change they have to learn to be able to adapt and so when we're thinking about complex adaptive systems I think there's lots of creativity and innovation when we look it through that lens and the ways in which if we treat organizations such as schools organizations communities as complex adaptive how do they hold memory and how does that memory help them to adapt to the changes that they're facing even within their environments or within their internal structures so in terms of that it's there's all these different systems going off and using your bike analogy there's different cogs moving at different times that then creating different changes to different pieces all over the system I so I would make the distinction so I would say kind of like simple and complicated systems have this illusion of mechanistic you know almost like you said like clockwork universe Newtonian kind of physics whereas as we start to get to the chaotic in the complex I draw a lot on nature and the ways in which energy flows through systems and the ways in which systems either are nurtured or are violent or are benign and saying how do we how does this system survive in these types of environments what does it need to do to change so one of my big pushes it is often helping organizations go thinking a more organic way because complexity will lead you there anyway as you start to look at interconnections and interdependencies
What is it that's happening in that system that allows energy to flow? And importantly, what is happening in that system that is the absence of action, which means parts of it retain itself, even when we desperately desire the change? Well, getting, yeah, already kind of in my head I'm thinking about things and like that, just getting so complicated and complex in terms of what we're thinking about with that. So hopefully we can bring it to life with some example shortly. One of the things in your book, you say that the purpose of the system is what it does. Can you explain what you mean by that? And then I think after that we might then provide an example potentially from your criminal justice system. Yeah, so I didn't come up with that. That's down for a bit as work. And it's really helpful because the chance with the purpose of the system is what it does is not what people say or not even necessarily what people do. It's about looking at what are the behaviors and actions and potential benefits that the system is producing and benefits is a really strange word to use sometimes because we tend to go, well, if that system's not working well, you know, no one benefits and that might be the case, but it's still behaving that way. So if I kind of link that to the criminal justice system on a really superficial level, what is the purpose of, you know, prisons? And so is it to prevent people from causing harm to society? Okay, that might be one thing that's exposed in the system. But then if we say the purpose of the system is to hold people with certain amount of time, release them and then they reoffend again and then they're back in prison. So is the purpose of the system to create a revolving door of crime and incarceration as opposed to meaningful change in the lives of the people who are in custody for a particular period of time? So what, you know, one of the things that the government would say is, well, you know, the role of prisons is to keep the public safe. But if you've got really high levels of recidivism, I repeat offending, particularly in the first three months on release. Well, what you say your system is doing and what your system is actually doing are now incompatible. Yeah, which makes, which makes a lot of sense. But I suppose within that, you've got almost a closed system of the prison and then what it does, although it's impacted by the wider society and environment and many, many other pieces. Well, so I, when I first started working in prisons, I thought they were closed systems. If you take like the COVID pandemic really exposed how open they are, as systems, because in fear, if it was a closed system, no one in prison would have got COVID because there wouldn't be an interface with the external environment. And yet we had really high rates of COVID in custody as the pandemic kind of spread. And then there were the responses to that as well. So one of the things that I found really interesting was the prison service hadn't used things like Zoom or Teams, kind of been very resistant to it. Even though that technology had been about for at least 10 years, but the pandemic actually became a moment of how can I put it, of opportunity to say rather than making families move around the country to see their loved ones, why can't they do it through a Zoom or Teams call? And so the system had to open up in response to the challenges within its environment. The problem that I think is occurring is that the creativity that the challenge in the environment produced is now being lost as the system goes back to its default behaviors again because the threat in the environment is no longer there. And I think that's often the risk with innovation that you needed that innovation for that moment in time. But then actually as things move on, it gets lost again because it's like, well, we did that, but now the memory and the opportunity don't combine to create something sustainable. Interesting. You're talking about Zoom and Teams and things. When COVID hit, I was the only person in the university allowed to use Teams. I'd gotten innovation award for teaching, but the support system for the IT network in the background was that this is just changing too much. We can't push it out, but because you've got this, you can keep using it. And then all of a sudden COVID hit and it was like, ah, we're going to have to get this system going and we're going to have to look at this in more detail and come and help teach people how to use this and things like that. And now, you know, it's, interestingly, actually we used it loads and I think now some people are using some art, so it fits in exactly with what you're saying. And I suppose with that, with me, you know, mentioned, it's closed, although actually it's in the environment, people would say the same thing with lots of this. So, you know, the education system, for example, you know, the purpose of the system is what it does. If I look at the education system from my narrow viewpoint and I look at it from a PPE perspective and a sport and physical activity, well, you'd therefore suggest that the education system is creating inactive people and increasing obesity. But it's not, you know, who takes accountability for that? Oh, the school should make them be fitter and stronger and healthier, but that's just such a simple view because there's such a bigger, wider societal piece around that. And the same for the NHS and the healthcare system. So we could say the NHS is not a healthcare system, you know, it's actually causing problems. But again, it's wider, much more complex, it's much more things to look at around that complex adaptive system piece that you've just talked about. To give people a kind of deeper understanding, could you talk as to how you've used your kind of complex adaptive systems theory to make change? Well, I know you've done some work with young people with care experience and they're journey through the criminal justice system. Did you talk us through that? Yeah, sure. So I think I'll give an example of failure before I give an example of success. So years ago, I built a network of schools that were all coming together on a quarterly basis to look at things like bullying, youth violence. And I thought we had a really great network. We did. It was really positive, very enthusiastic leaders across the local authority. And then I changed jobs left to work in another local authority many years ago. And I thought the network is safe and secure. The vibrancy was brilliant. And about a year later, I got a phone call from one of the schools saying, "It's all fallen apart." And I was like, really shocked because I knew that a lot of the people who like to come in together and we had some really good conversations about how we could support young people, families and communities. What I realized was that the network that I had built was too dependent on me as the hub for all of these connections and what I hadn't done was empowered the school to start operating and engaging with each other without me to create a more robust network of change. So that's kind of when I really start to think through when things are going to change, what are the ways in which networks and network shapes interact. And so I kind of took that learning with me always, which is like, look at the interdependencies and look at where the dependencies are in the system and how that makes a difference. So I was really excited when the care leader covenant run by the charity spectra said, "Look, we've got a bit of a challenge for you. Could you map out the journey of young people with care experience through the primal justice system?" And I was like, "Wow, okay, so you don't want me to look at one organisation. You want me to look at multiple organisations and how these young people move through this system." And they were like, "Yes, but on. Go for it kind of thing." So I ended up interviewing like probably about, I think, around 30 professionals, whether that was like custody sergeants in police suite, defence solicitors, Crown Prosecution Service, lots of charities, local authorities. And from kind of a systems perspective, it was really interesting because a lot of the people said, "We are doing really great work." And yet the purpose of the system is to produce these inequalities for young people who care, often leading to entry into prisons and then out of prisons into homelessness, drug taking and suicide ideation. So the outcomes of the system or the consequences of being in that system are really detrimental. And yet what came out was a really powerful metaphor from a lot of professionals, which is there's a cliff edge at 18 between being 17 and 364 days old and being 18. And that transition from young person to adult meant that the lack of support and the lack of opportunity was really just so striking and so difficult for young people to navigate. And yet lots of professionals knew about it and yet they didn't have any preventative measures. And I go like, "Well, why don't you stop them going off the cliff edge?" And people go, "Well, my service isn't designed to do that." And so you have the components of the system creating a interconnection that is less than the sum of their parts. Usually we say that the system is more than the sum of its parts. But the detrimental effects that these young people will experience in men that you can have really good, you know, lovely custody sergeants saying, "I really want to make a difference for this cohort." But then the next part of the system created high dependency low empathy that meant that these young people didn't get the support they made.
needed. So you had a siloed system which was very good at doing some things but not very good at creating a journey of change for these young people and it was really it was difficult research to do because I remember speaking to one young person who said, you know, look, I can blend into any meeting. You know, I can just he called it the chameleon effects and I loved his his concept and he said, I can blend in so well. Just to get out of that room because he recognized that no one was actually interested in him. They just wanted to fill their boxes their tick boxes. To then say that I've done my part within this system and I asked him probably one of the most difficult questions I've ever asked in a research piece around systems engagement, which was like, if you're so busy blending, how do you know who you are and his response was really honestly what I don't. And I thought that's the failure of the system right there that we're not giving these young people the support aspiration and sense of self to be able to navigate the system even though everyone was really well intention. Everyone saw it as an issue and the clearly recovering that were really good and said, you know, we'll take this to ministerial level when they did and I ended up speaking to the minister of prisons, the home office of DFE saying like, we need to have much more collaborative indicators. Of how the system interacts rather than what the system produces. I think that's again really interesting when you start getting to that government level and you know I'll often bring it back to pee and sport physical activity. And at the moment you look at, well, is it DCMS? Is it Department for Health and Social Care? Is it Department for Education? Who's responsible for kind of these things and Department for Transport? They're so much so many more and where are those interconnected pieces? They do exist, but you know in my experience at the moment, it's very much they do exist, but no one's necessarily taking full responsibility for these gaps and there's lots of bits that are kind of just missing. And then you take it that step further down to kind of delivery and partnerships and it just gets even more disconnected. And I think so there's two parts to that for me, which is mechanistic systems often have problems with transition because they're designed to deliver that thing and not to think about what happens after that. And that's why I think complex adaptive systems when we talk about interconnection and interdependency, it allows people to think in a different frame of reference to what do I produce, what's my outcome, what's my impact, what's my output. It's more than what are the connections that I need to have next. And I think the second part of that Martin is that often there is very little discussion about what are the system indicators themselves. That we need to change so everyone wants to talk about targets and goals. And I think goals are really interesting from a systems perspective because that tells you where you want the system to move towards. But what I often see is people talk about avoidance targets. So like what do we want to reduce obesity, for example, okay, that's a target within the system. The problem is that doesn't that's the absence of something in the system rather than where do you want to move the system to. So an alternative way to frame that and often this is what I do when working with clients and organizations is well, what's the positive strength based version of that goal. So, you know, is it rather than talking about obesity reduction is about improving health activity and well being and framing it in that way means like, okay, how does the system at various points. It's for those indicators to be met and those state the focus, but it's often a is often a desire would be management to go like how do we avoid bad things rather than how do we improve good things. And that's where that complex systems lens really becomes quite powerful. Well, again, going back to schools and I'm not going to keep bagging on schools, I worked in them and it's very difficult. So please don't take this the wrong way. But again, you know behavior becomes the kind of key driver in many schools to make sure people behave and the risk that's involved in sport physical activity. So in primary schools, for example, football gets banned all the time because you know, people are going into tackles and causing arguments and causing injuries. So they just ban it. It's like, well, you know, kids just sit there and do nothing. Behaviour is great, but actually physical activity. So coming from my bias perspective is just hugely limited because of those control mechanisms that are put in place. So that's a really great example because if we say that behavior is a feature of the system, what is the purpose of the system then. So is it to create compliance or is it about how do we help young people learn how their behavior affects themselves and their community. So again, depending on which lens you put on it, you will produce very different system results. So like the fact that we have increases in like what is it low level disruptive behavior seems to be a catch all for any form of behavior that doesn't meet with like the idea of compliance. This is why you don't get you know a sub system, which is the alternative provision system because with enough young people not being seen as being compliant. So where do we put them? We put them in different places within the system, which creates a detrimental effect to the overall education of our student population year on year because we're happy to exclude certain amount of people rather than going well, if we looked at from that perspective, which is how do you take behavior as a means of saying this young person needs to pour reform the community. What would be a different response that schools would be doing at that point? I know we could go all over the place with this discussion because I could go into education was the point of the education system and the word compliance. You know, all right, just speaks to me so much that if we're trying to create compliance, which is probably what is happening in many schools, then we're just killing innovation, which is also possibly something that is happening. I'm not, you know, any, any teachers out there listening, I'm not kind of having to go at teachers and education, I understand it, but it may well be that compliance is what we're doing. I think there are some, I always say this, I have enough information to be dangerous in too many spaces. So I'll say stupid things that I might be totally wrong. But let's go with it. There is some research out there that talks about the education system and what it was built upon and it was built upon people going into the system to go and work in factories or going basically go become employees and do what they were told going back to your comment about compliance. It seems like that is the system. And then when I'm trying to say be innovative and go and create your own business, you know, most schools aren't set up for that. So they've had by the time they get to was at university, they've had 13 years of being compliant and then we're going be critical, you know, challenge what I'm saying and it's quite difficult. I think so you're spot on so looking chapter two of my book, I really critique management theory and track it back and it goes back to Frederick Taylor and kind of the late 19th century with this kind of the rise of the production line and what's the workforce you need and he was quite quite nasty towards the workforce, you know, basically people are stupid. They need to give the minimum amount of instruction to read, you know, the way which machine works, but that's all they need to know kind of thing. So they need to be able to so this idea of compliance at a management theory level is still present present in lots of ways and I find the ideas around complexity as an antidote to that mechanistic form of management leadership and like I hear people kind of, you know, they say like, you know, we want to be a trauma in form school or we want mental health in the workplace, but when you look at the management structure, they're putting in the management theory, they're using to do it is really really component orientated and likely not to succeed within a kind of a life cycle of about three years because they don't necessarily understand that that mechanistic thinking was designed for a different century and a different way of being but it's still spoken about as if it's kind of like the gospel of management leadership at the moment and you see derivatives of this all the time. And so for me, I think complexity brings the ability to be creative to be an innovative because if you're complex adaptive system, learning into the property of the system, and so you have to embrace it, which I think a lot of the spaces I've been in giving people to be creative is one of the signs that there is still energy in the system and an effect of change, but that appetite is often suppressed because it's driven by targets and performance, rather than how can we do things in a more innovative more creative more exciting way and that language isn't used very often. I like it you brought it back from me potentially going off in a tangent here very nicely and the bit that I think, you know, the compliance element to complexity element being that, you know, many of the people who are, you know, attempting to make the systems change are coming from some from compliance and they might be working in places where they've been compliant and this system does this you do this I do this and that's that simple it's easy this limited risk involved with that. Whereas to embrace complexity is is really to go against the norm and to to try and embrace changes is quite a difficult thing to do. Now I've seen a lot in the last 10 20 years within within sport physical activity around around systems mapping. So is many systems map is a very famous the four site obesity systems map and I think if you ever see this map it's incredible it's got about 300 cause all links that is connecting to 108 variables with seven thematic clusters. So. just showing how complex that system is. It's very complex with the environment and psychology and physiology. There's so many different elements to it that you've got to try and bring together to change obesity, which again, we're not doing that well with. There's others within physical activity. So, when I've Scotland, I've got one for systems, changing physical activity that's got about six different kind of thematic areas. So, we're kind of getting there an understanding that there's a lot of complexity in that system. But what do we have to do once we've mapped that system to go, okay, what do we do now to change it? So, I think I step back for a second and say what I think you'll talk about marketing is causal loop mapping, which is a form of systems mapping, but it's not the only one. Yeah, sorry, you're right. It's important to recognize, again, complexity is often in that I have the beholder. So, even if you've got all of those variables, one of the things that I'm more interested in is where does emergence happen in the system? So, emergence is the creative element and it can be good and it can be bad. So, for example, within those causal maps, they talk about food production, for example, but we've seen with what's the ultra-process food. That is something that has emerged over time in the system that probably has a higher weight of interaction on other parts of the system. Like it's more likely to increase your calorie intake, less nutritional kind of thing. But then there may be an emergent property that isn't in that system at the moment, those causal loops, which is like social media. How much are people spending on their phones watching, binge watching Netflix? That's sedatory lifestyle caused by technology. And the fact that the psychology of attention means they want to keep you on your phone for longer and that has an influence on all those other parts. So, like there is a real, this is when my emergence is so interesting to me because the causal map says what is, not well, the trajectories could be of the system. And that's why I go back to the complexity adaptive lens because the system will always be adapting in some way. It's never static. And it doesn't mean it's always going to be in our best interests. Yeah, so I think again, the mapping is really important. And the bit that, and I think the other bit is like I really like mapping narratives, like what are the stories professionals are telling. So like if we take PE teachers, like what's their narrative of inactivity because they will have their insight and you overlay that with sports clubs, what's their narrative and those narratives are complex and adaptive as well. But there are different sorts of information rather than this guy. Here's all the variables and here's how they're drawn out together. Interesting. I'm going to be doing a podcast on, I've done one on PE and models based practice recently. And we've got another one coming up around sports clubs as well. So I will do my best to try and connect those systems in that podcast, but probably do a very bad job of it. I know you talking your book around is the systems ready. So thanks for kind of pointing out the kind of the systems loop that we were talking about there. But yeah, how do we make the system ready or what is it that we need to understand of the system to then be able to potentially influence change? Okay, I think that's a great question. I think systems that are complex and adaptive have history. And so it's important to understand how the system got to that moment. So a lot of my work with clients is often people go like, here's the problem, Luke. And I'm like, okay, tell me how we got there. And it really shocks them, I think, because they expect me to go, well, here's the solution to the problem you just articulated. And actually, by understanding the history, you can start to see the patterns and the decisions that have occurred to get people to that point. So understanding the history of the system tells you how ready it is for the adaption that people would like to happen is one part. And I think the second thing is often people tend to think that the change is out there. You know, it's like, it doesn't involve me, whereas actually, we are all part of system. So what needs to change in us, that also helps get the system ready. And that may be, I gave a talk last week about school change and the use of AI. And it was really interesting that the models have changed that the senior leaders were talking about was back to mechanistic, it was the outcome, what's the the output. And I was saying, but like that just doesn't work. You've got a technology that is not going to conform to old ways of thinking about change. So you're going to need to embrace the interconnection and dependencies that occur with something like AI rather than going, well, how do we make sure that we've got this particular output at this particular time? It's here to stay, you know, so it means it's going to be a feature of your system going forward and it's probably going to get smarter. So how do we adapt and how do we make sure the students have benefited from that, rather than having students that are left behind? Yeah, the the the piece that really hit me there is that people talk about the systems as in it's them out there and it's not me. And I think that's that's a really clear thing that I've seen a lot in my time. And you know, everybody who is trying to make change are often saying it's the system. And then it's like, well, what is the system? And like you just said, you are part of the system. So if you say it's the system, it's also you. And again, there's no blame game here. This is just kind of trying to understand the complexities within this. So for and you may you may have examples of this, you just give an example around around AI. But what is it? What is it that specifically organizations need to do so that you're talking firstly there that, you know, well, this is the problem. And here, give us a solution, please, Luke. But no, what you're saying is you need to take a step back and look at how we've got to this this situation before we can then influence change. Are we talking developing kind of system maps as well? Are we talking about a leadership thing? Are we talking about visions and mission statements? What kind of things are we talking about? The five questions in one. Sorry, Luke. Okay, so I think I think the app there was a lot of questions that they've asked it. So from my perspective, in terms of getting the system ready for change, understanding how you got to this situation because often there's the risk that we ignore time. So history is part of time. But where are we presently? And I think it goes back to this, the Fred that's been happening throughout this conversation is what is the purpose of the system right now? So what is it doing that we recognize and having the kind of the ability to really scrutinize that because we could say like taking our eye out of the system like the purpose of the system is to reduce obesity by how much like do you want it reduced by 50%, 75%, 100%, okay? So like even within that statement that looks like it's, you know, it makes perfect logical sense. If the purpose of the system is to reduce obesity, we don't know like what indicators we would understand that reduction. So is that the purpose of the system? If we were to reimagine that purpose of the system as we want the system to create healthy, happy, aspirational lives. Now there's a different system purpose there and we can start to work out what would need to change within the system to allow that to happen or sometimes we can say like that system will never be able to make that change. So do we need to actually kill the system and have a different one entirely? And that's quite that can sound like radical as a proposition because often people like incremental change, but if you think about having like zombie projects, pilots, initiatives that exist, they're really just suck up energy in the system. But no one's got the heart to go like just this doesn't work. It's outdated and yet it still gets funding, it still gets people doing stuff. At what point do we need to go right? That is part of the system creating the purpose we don't want right now. That's a very interesting and challenging question. You know, in and regards to funding and people getting funding because they've always got funding and they continue to do what they do. That's a yeah, it's a very interesting and challenging question and whether well two things there, the goal of going back to obesity, physical activity, those kind of things, sports participation. What is the specific goal? And what one thing, I love sport, I love physical activity, but I don't know what the goal is in terms of participation rates. Like everyone active is a statement you're here or everybody does everybody need to be involved in sport? I think it's a challenging question. I love the benefits of it, but not everybody wants to be. So where are we? And then you get down to definitions of sport and physical activity and all those kind of things. So yeah, it's a big and long job to take that step back and go, well, if this system didn't exist, what should the system be? It's probably a reasonable question to ask. And I think the follow on for me is then who's involved in that conversation? Because complex adaptive systems from my perspective love diversity, so the more diverse the range of views. And so this is why when I'm putting on events in organisations, I like have people who come from a very different perspective. So I might have like AMI strategists come in or I might have someone who's come from health, doing a education conversation just to go like if you ultimately figure out the system,
this person brings a different perspective that you mean that you're basically avoiding groupthink. Yeah. Because if you create groupthink, it means that everyone thinks they know the system and they're right from their perspective, but not from the perspective of others. So even when you're talking about it, I was thinking like, well, how many people play on like Nintendo Switch to get their physical activity? And is that ever put in as a factor when we're talking about physical activity, like the way in which they use games, like, you know, what's it, Mario Olympic, so something made my daughter play during the pandemic. But it got her running and got her moving indoors. So again, it's, you know, you might have people from the games company be part of that conversation because you're getting different perspectives and those different perspectives are more likely to lead to innovation than having the same, you've been in the same room all known the same things, creating the same types of projects in the programs again and again and again. That's such an interesting and challenging one because, you know, many of those people in the rooms around physical activity and sport and everything are potentially the same people who've been in the rooms for years. And if we're trying to change the system, do we need to challenge ourselves? You know, I've been around sport for 20 years and I've certainly got biases in what I think's right, but nothing's changing. So, you know, I'm probably wrong. Maybe I don't need to be in these rooms and it needs to be other people. It's just a really interesting, challenging thing around it. If we want change to happen, you know, we need to potentially change ourselves, change the people, change the system. There's so many things that we need to look at. So I think many, much of this podcast hopefully is very thought-provoking for many people. You mentioned at the start a few things. You mentioned about maintaining and sustaining. So, you know, we've probably all seen implementation of things that have made a difference. And again, we know this. It goes from a pilot project and it works well there and it works for a certain amount of time. And then we try and put it somewhere else and it just doesn't work. Or maybe it does work, but again, it doesn't work for very long. And this, every time I see funding bids, it's kind of, by the end of this three years, you've got to create sustainable practice that can be maintained. And you spoke about this before around when you left an organisation and within 12 months, it had all gone wrong. So, you know, talking about like the myth of the hero innovator. And, you know, I don't think you would have placed yourself as the hero in that story. But again, that potentially was what you became and then you disappearing. It all disappears. Can you talk to me about that about what you've seen around trying to maintain and sustain whole systems, change through these adaptive systems and where we might want to look if we're going to try and drive long-term change? Yeah, definitely. I just be careful about using the word "whole". I'd be lovely to put a caveat on the straight off the back, but I think I think there's a paradox which is we want you to be sustainable, but we're not going to provide the energy transition. Remember what I said, mechanistic systems are very bad at transition. So, we treat like commissioning models as mechanistic. We fund you for this amount of time, then survive on your own. So, there's a really abrupt transition point which makes it very hard for continuity and planning. So, in my own PhD research, I looked at initiatives in schools and the average life cycle was about three years before two things happened. Even the initiative dies or it gets co-opted and becomes something else in the school. And so, again, when I worked in prison service, this is exactly what I saw. Everyone likes to shiny and new initiative because they think it's going to answer their present pain. Because everyone gets excited about that. The problem then becomes once the present pain has been relieved, how do we make sure that other people in that system receive the benefits to five, ten years down the road? So, there is a real, the timescales and complexity. I remember I said about being relative rather than being linear. It's about how do we ensure that the benefits are sustained through time? And for me, there's a real paradox in what you say there, which is, and this is the unintended consequences of the system swing of the system, which is we want you to be sustainable, but we're going to fund the next new thing rather than work out what continuity funding looks like for you to truly be integrated into that system. So, if you ask commissioners, are you prepared to put like 50% of your budget over the next 10 years towards things you've already funded, what you're going to help them integrate into those systems, which means you're going to have to have a different mindset means you're going to have to have a different strategy and you're going to have to have different ways of measuring and everything you've done around implementation because the system is so geared towards implementation. It creates these fads and fashions that create change fatigue over time, and particularly if we bring this back into communities in the obesity bit, if you think about a community like London, Birmingham, Manchester, how many physical activities initiatives have they seen over the last 10 years? How many of them have sustained themselves over the last 10 years that you could go actually that's a touchstone in this community because otherwise, like why do I want to stand up for something that, you know, my seven year old might get but my four year old might not? Does that make sense? 100% makes sense. The evaluation I'm doing for my PhD, guess what, it's a three year funded project which is just ended basically at the end of March. So, everything you're saying totally makes sense to me. And I'm glad you points out the whole comment that I made around the whole systems because I think in your book you talk about the veneer, the icing on the cake without changing the whole cake. Could you just speak to us about that around the ecosystem and what that means? I probably got an example from within sport and school sport with that. Okay, so I was really interested at one point in anti-bullying initiatives in schools. And what started to occur to me was that schools are, they're, their default system is punitive. So, what that's attention, suspension, exclusion, internal exclusion. And so, when schools were saying like we're going to be a restorative school, we're going to be a trauma-informed school, we're going to be an anti-racist school. Whatever it is, those things became like in my metaphor, the icing on the cake of the punitive system. So, you can have these things that give the veneer of change but actually the fundamental structure either cake still remains the cake. And so, my critique of the whole school approach or whole organisation approach was like, well, a) what do we mean by whole? Because who's excluded, who's included in the change? And then secondly, even if we're saying that this is a change model, it is an implementation model at best. It is not a change model because it doesn't fundamentally change the structures underneath the implementation. It makes sense. You mentioned whole school approach there and I'm sure there are many for different initiatives but there's been sort of been Bradford, there's lots of work been done around whole school approach in terms of physical activity and sport. There's looks like some good work coming out of it. I've also seen that more recently they've looked at a whole systems approach again to increase physical activity within the area. But it's interesting to see again with that phrase that you mentioned there about whole, who's included, who's excluded, is a really, really interesting question because how can you change anything if you're only changing potentially a few bit with some of the ingredients within the cake? Is it possible? That's a deeper question. Is it possible and how might it be possible to actually change the cake? I think, okay, this is where the metaphor breaks down. If it's a complex adaptive system, it's going to become something else. So I think the problem with the whole is it's a boundary issue, like where's the boundary of the whole? That's why that change management process didn't work for me. And so going back to, if a school is a complex adaptive system, what are the networks within that system that can change, that can be receptive to more people joining and in what way? So what's the whole of Bradford, for example? Are we talking on the map? Are we talking on social? Are we talking on the earth? Suddenly you've got all these different perspectives coming in to try and find the hope, which I would say is the futile activity. Whereas what we're really saying is within the networks of people, spaces and places, what do we want to do differently that creates a benefit that is not dependent on any one part for the system to achieve that change? So I think ultimately that's when we're starting to move into the idea of culture. What is the cultural change that allows humans to feel that they belong, but also to feel that they are part of something that could be different for them? I mean, you're touching on the culture right at the end of when we're talking. There's another podcast all again there. I think we'll start drawing to a conclusion shortly, but it's been really, really interesting. I hope this has really started to understand some of this in a bit more detail, in that we've talked about simple and complicated chaotic and complex systems. As we've dug into the complex systems, I just think it's really clear that for anybody to move any of this forward in terms of change for the future, they don't need to try and understand the complexities. Now systems, maps and causal loops and things like that are all really, really great. But I think what we're trying to get across is really having that deeper understanding of community involvement, everybody involvement, openness. I mean, we've not touched upon it, but you've mentioned cultural change. To impact change, it does need to be a cultural adaptation and change with an understanding
understanding of what the system is currently doing and where you want that system to go in the future. And I think we've not really said it, but I think from what we've discussed before, there's gonna be so many challenges and changes along the way. And you might do X, expecting it to cause Y, but it makes Z happen. And then you've gotta adapt to that and you've gotta change that. And you've all gotta be open to, you know, to take in risks and things might go wrong and not go where you want them, but you then gotta understand Y and what and adapt that. But I think a key thing here and you talk about is time. You know, we talk about these three year cycles or five year cycles. It's a long term change where everybody's gotta be on board to kind of understand the system, understand where you wanna go with it and understand that you all need to continuously adapt and evolve to potentially make change to these complex systems. Is that a reasonable summary from a lot of your work? Is there anything you add? Some of it. What I would push back on is it feels long term because we're still caught in a mechanistic time frame. I remember what I said, complex adaptive systems are relative to each other. So time doesn't move in the way of a straight line. So if the relationship changes, it might happen suddenly. But it's about understanding the interconnection as opposed to the arrow of time. So I think things can happen really fast relative to us wanting to do something at a local contextual level. But then the relative of us to policy makers feels like a really long term, as policy makes them, because the policy environment is changing really fast. So everyone thinks they're moving its speed in their own bubbles of time, if we call it that, rather than say how do we interrelate to each other? And that's where time can feel very different. That makes sense. I love that you've added that because one of the excuses people make is this takes time. And you're like, no, some of this can be really, really quick. But those bubble analogies is really, really good to have. Hopefully it still stands around the reflecting and adapting and changing ourselves as well as things and taking on feedback and all those kind of things. But no, really glad you added that little piece there to kind of add some clarity. Luke, it's been brilliant speaking to you. Probably final question, although I probably have more from whatever you say, is what's next for you? What's next with your work? What are you looking at to move forward with? - So several things really. My book, "Leading Schools and Sustaining Innovation" has been kind of a door open to places I didn't expect to go. So I was invited to go to Japan in January and talk to students around how to negotiate in complex systems, which was absolutely amazing experience. I've also recently just done an event in Cambridge University about how we use these ideas of complexity to reimagine education in a world where we think about belonging, inclusion and peace and how AI can be part of that. And then more strange kind of place for me to be is I've been talking to people within the kind of defense and security sector about how do we deal with some of the misinformation that could happen within communities. And what would it take to look at that through the lens of a complex perspective? So to some extent Martin, I'm not a content expert. I'm a context expert. And so the opportunity to work with the variety of organizations and companies that I do is really exciting because sometimes I don't need to know anything about them. I just need to be able to go right as you tell your story. I can see how the system is playing out at the moment, but also where are some of those challenges around change? So again, one of the things that I am looking for to is I'm starting to do a lot more work in ways in which AI can help us understand how to use complexity in a more applied and practical perspective. And so that I'm really starting to enjoy because again, that's challenging my own creativity and innovation in terms of the conversation I'm having with people, but also with different AI intelligences to say like how can we make a difference in the world? It sounds really interesting work. The diversity of it sounds really interesting, but your expert's team is being in complex systems and bringing that together to create change. I certainly would hope anybody listed in and obviously with Bexburg's in sport podcast. Many of the list is interested in sport and physical activity and health. It'd be great if anybody listed in does want to get in contact with Luke because we certainly need some systems change going on in many, many areas. So I know Luke, your business is called Resolve Consultants. So people can find you online and the book that you've just spoken about leading schools and sustaining innovation, how to think big and differently in complex systems. So anybody interested in things that Luke's been saying, then jump on his website, go have a look at his book. I'm sure if you're interested in working with him, go get in touch with him because hopefully you can understand that the depth of knowledge that Luke has around systems and creating opportunities for change I think is immense. And I've loved talking to you. Next time you on campus, Luke, definitely let me know. We'll go and have a coffee and we can chew the fat and go around in many circles to talk about this forever. So massively appreciate you coming on and hopefully I'll speak to you again soon. -Babby, thanks for having me, Martin. -Thanks for listening to the Experts in Sport podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, then please contact me, Martin Foster at
[email protected]. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
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