Test, Learn and Grow with Nick Kimber

At Camden we were always expected as chief officers to hold two things in our heads at the same time, so ensuring that the bins are collected on time, that there are basic services that provide value for money, but also to think about the future of the welfare state. And I think that's an obligation. I think there's something that's quite exciting about that. I think you need to understand the sort of currency of politics and the pressure that elected representatives are under, otherwise there is always going to be a friction. It's a programme that aims to transform how government makes decisions and deliver services, so it's about the how, and the how being the way that you get to the what, so of course it's about people getting better outcomes that respond to their real needs, but the hypothesis that we have is that it's only through changing the way that government actually operates, that you can do that in a sustainable way. Principally around closing the gap between policy intent and delivery, better policy with less risk by working in ways which are multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, where you start small, you test in the real world before you invest more effort and money, and you're constantly indexing for learning. I would obviously say, get in my conversation, see yourself as part of the movement. Who do you pass the balls to, who's in the best position to make change? Sometimes it's you and yours and sometimes it's someone else, but to make the big change. We need to work in that collaborative network with low ego way. Welcome to the Radical Reformers podcast. I'm Andrew Lerard. That was Nick Kembert describing the Test Learn and Group Program. Nick is the Director of Public Service Reform at Cabinet Office, having been circumded across from Camden Council. In this conversation we get into what it's been like for Nick, transferring from a Council environment into the heart of Whitehall. We talk, as you would imagine, a lot about the Test Learn and Group Program, what that is, importantly what it isn't, and also how Nick hopes that this will be the start of a movement, not just a program with a start and an end. So before we start, I just want to say a quick word about mutual ventures, the consultancy that I'm really proud to have co-founded. You may have seen that right now we are talking a lot about what we call radical place leadership, so too often services are organized around institutional and professional boundaries rather than people. And people have to repeatedly tell their stories to different parts of the system, different organizations, and they really struggle to get the support that will make a real difference to their lives. The traditional new public management way of working allows so much money to fall into the gaps between siloed services, as people are passed from pillar to post and constantly assessed by an ever-increasing number of specialists. But there is a different way, an or radical place leadership approach supports local leaders to try and create an enabling environment so that genuine place-based working that's properly focused on the needs of people can be sustained. And we're working with places, so that's consoles their partners in the NHS, police, DWP, and local third sector organizations to design and implement this new type of collaborative working. And that's based around integrated neighborhood teams and a methodology for identifying the people who need the most help and are costing the system the most. So we're really keen to hear from you if this sounds like something your area, your place might be interested in exploring and actually what we're finding is that this approach is a pretty good answer to how areas here going through local government reorganization can retain connection to their localities and neighborhoods. So let's hear from Nick. Nick, a very warm welcome onto the radical reformers podcast. I have been looking forward to this conversation a lot. Many of our listeners will know exactly who you are but for those who don't, would you mind just saying hello and introducing yourself? Yeah, of course, and thanks very much for having me on today. Big fan of the pot. So yeah, I'm Nick. I am the director of Public Service Reform in Cabinet Office. I lead something called Test Learn and Grow programme. And my background is primarily in local government and place-based working. So 15 years in local government, all in London and 15 months in Cabinet Office and the civil service. Fantastic. And I think I first heard of you through the work you'd been doing in Camden, which is obviously a lot of the bird. Can you say a little bit about that and maybe pick out a few of the things there that you're most prudent? Yes, sure. So I've worked at Camden since 2012. So it's been the majority of my career and really the the thing that's sort of formed and forged me. The last sort of seven or eight years of Camden has been a journey which we'd sort of described as moving from a bureaucratic organisation to a relational one. So a high performing but traditional local authority embracing a journey to relationalism. So our kind of internal narrative was that movement was from an organisation which is about transactions, thresholds, you know, arguably organised around institutional convenience to one which was organised around trust, agency sort of recognising people's lives across multiple systems. I mean I didn't do all of that. It was a kind of whole organisation, an important sort of starting point for that was really work in primarily but not exclusively children's social work. So really rich tradition of early help and kid in relational social work practice. So how do we take some of that brilliant work and make it the general way of working of the organisation? It's sort of ethos and practice. So my job was to work with a corporate management team to do that. The chief executive leader both strongly committed to it. So required an act of articulation, storytelling and work with senior colleagues and colleagues across the organisation to push the boulder up the hill really. And there are a couple of things that sort of strike me which I was kind of more closely involved in more directly leading. During that period I was head of economic development at Camden. So I led a initiative called Goodwap Camden which is essentially about trying to introduce some of those early help approaches into employment support. So a culture of regeneration and planning to which relationalism was news a concept. But we embedded within those services a sort of practice of how you support a person into work which recognised the complexity of that process, recognised that they were involved in multiple systems. The traditional approach to activating people into the labour market of CVs, skills training, often it doesn't work. So doing that work in that place was part of that journey of making the practice and the way of working more general across the organisation. Since then we've tried to make it mainstream in the way that we deliver our housing services as one for instance. And probably the last thing I'd say is about Camden's mission's based approach. So it's sort of the lead officer for kind of designing and implementing an approach, very strong relationship with the Institute for Relation and Public Purpose, Marianne and Mizzacate Institute which is based in Camden. Coming out of the pandemic we developed these four community-led missions which we now kind of anchor the whole organisation strategy in. And missions were a way of saying well we want to work across the organisation boundaries, we want to work across institutional boundaries and it allowed us to do some really interesting things. So one of the things I was involved in doing was setting up something called the Community Well Fund which was in you in you leave or in you policy instrument if you like but a way of investing in some of those missions. Fundamentally sort of participative investment vehicle designed with our community, with community involvement in the decision making about that investment. And it's now matured to the point where it's making low investment repayable loans and taking equity shares in initiatives that are doing things like supporting diverse founders who otherwise really struggled to get financing. So just a sort of a snapshot of like the organisation's journey and some of my involvement. So a lot of councils, elected members, leaders, chief execs, executive directors will get that this is the right way to go. that public services need to be more relational. The people you need most help are engaging, as you said, with multiple agencies. None of whom can solve the problem of their own. What do you think was the key or some of the key ingredients that enabled you to actually act on that? Because I know a lot of places that want to, but then they look at the budget they need to deliver for next year. And they are almost dragged kicking and screaming back into just looking for efficiencies within silos. And then that's the root to know where that's the root to managing the decline of the council, to just being a provider of last resort. What do you think the key ingredients were that enabled you to actually shift the dial on this and not just talk about it? Probably the key thing was leadership and different types of leadership. So we had during that period a level of sort of managerial and political ambition, which was very bright and very closely married. So a brilliant and creative leader, a similarly brilliant and creative chief executive, who drove the vision, created a permission, or were prepared to take personal risk. But then I think one of the key things was actually some of the statutory roles. So I think about John Rowney, who was my boss for a decent chunk of that time, is the Section 151. He was fully brought into that as an agenda. Sometimes you do get a friction between that ambition and the business needs of the organisation and the financial pressure it's on. So having a chief financial officer who is able to kind of hold risk across multiple cycles. He can genuinely invest in the organisation's capability. So I think those things are the things that kind of make a difference. And in this job, the best thing about it really is that I get an opportunity to go to different parts of the country and see other places. So when you work in a London barrett, sometimes a bit counterculture to go over the border to his length. But I spent a lot of time on trains and seeing similar things to the things that I lived and breathed at Camden. Wiggen would be a really good example. The authority I visited a couple of months ago in Alison and her team. So as sort of the mirroring, I think, of that chief executive leader, a corporate management team who were aligned and kind of committed and demonstrated to their audience and the brilliant staff that they had, that they were serious about this work and people could take risks and they would be backed. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned his LinkedIn there. We're doing some work with his LinkedIn and their thriving places program. And it's really exciting and the leadership there really get it. So yeah, I think it's definitely worth you risking going across the border. So now you're working in cabinet office as the director of public service reform, which I mean, I guess for many people listening, I'm not a sound like a dream job, the central government, real influence that focus on public service reform. What has that transition been like from working in local government to central government? And what would you say the biggest differences have been? Yeah, it has been a big change. So it's almost a process of learning a second language, I think. So the rate of learning has been huge. And I think I came in with a huge amount of assumptions and probably a few prejudices. Most of which were set aside within a week or two because the first thing you realize about the civil service is that it is brilliant civil servants who are passionate and has purposeful of the people that have worked alongside in local government. I think there's two things that struck me. One is about scale and one is about risk. So well, the sector and the civil service is a single organization. And I think I probably need that intellectually going in, but it's taken some time to sort of feel that in my body, I guess. And to know it's true. So working across boundaries between departments does not feel like working between direct, drips and services in a local authority. Yeah, it feels a little bit more about how you might collaborate with local health partners or businesses. Yeah. And there's probably a difference sort of tactics and approaches to kind of influencing in that context about those take time to learn, I think. It's like Nick that it's as well, apologies for interrupting, but you can well imagine that because the council teams might even be in the same building. There is a single kind of group of leaders, whereas each of those institutions and central government has its own power structure and they're quite often geographically quite far apart. You can't just walk around the corner of someone's desk. So there's a cultural thing that emerges from that, you know, geographical separation as well. And then I think that's the way without doubt in being able to walk two floors down and have a word with someone to solve a problem with that. And then the second thing on risk. I think the reputational and political risk in central government, I think, is more heightened. You know, it was not that those things do not exist locally. They absolutely do. The scrutiny of parliament, the scrutiny of the media means that it is sort of qualitatively different pressures that politicians and senior officials are exposed to. And then people think in terms of structural risks about things like sustainability of funding, you know, on a different scale to the ones that you're dealing with in a local authority. In a council, I think you have many of those same things, but you have them, which feel kind of unique and like they're not present in central government in quite the same way, which is the risk of a child or a vulnerable adult coming to harm. And then the really sort of present moral injury with which a social work or a housing officer has to contend every day when they aren't able to support a person in the way that they would like because of lack of resources or some of the kind of friction. A reflection is that I think those sorts of pressures that colleagues in a local authority are under. They're really intense, but I often think there is in the best local authorities are better sort of scaffolding in place to support people through that. And when you think about the most challenging things that a social worker has to do, you know, potentially remove the child from their family and take it into the care of the state. And that's a way to responsibility and the ways that you can cope with that are brilliant peer support, brilliant supervision, a focus on your practice. And I think that's scaffolding is incredibly important. The similarities are probably striking as anything, like I was saying at the beginning, the commitment, the sense of purpose. I think we're quite blessed actually in terms of public administrators in the UK. I think we have a brilliant tradition. And I think we're very lucky. I think there is more to do. I think to create connections and thicken networks between the civil service and those outside. It's a common, like minor, a really good example of how you can do that. There's a brilliant sort of chief exec colleagues who have civil service experience who are now in local government, a real kind of cluster in Western South York. So I was talking to a GDNK Southampton earlier in the week. You've had 25 years in the civil service before going out into service in local government. And I think we need more of that. Yeah. And working in central government and in local government in you already, and did it this requires working closely with elected representatives. And from certainly my experience, the best public service reforming officers have managed to establish great working relationships with the politicians that they that they work alongside. And from what I can see, you've managed to do that both at a local level and in central government. So can you say something about that? And if you have any hints or tips for people who want to get good things done, it would be really helpful because what I see sometimes are officers with great reforming zeal. And that they're not quite sure how and when to engage with their elected representatives. And I think sometimes they're often a bit surprised when it works really well. And I'm not asking you to kind of comment on you part dynamics, but just some bits of advice on how and when to engage with elected representatives and to draw on the real part that they have an ability to get things done as well. Yeah. I mean, I guess I really like working with politicians and always have done. I think my voice would be to cultivate a deep sense of respect. The role of elected representatives. I think it's an incredibly hard job. When I think about the role of a elected counsellor in a place like London with its hyper complex governance, the many different hats that they need to wear, I've always been incredibly impressed by how people get through the day and the evening. I think there's definitely something about a sort of recognition of those pressures that they're under and avoiding an assumption that who revealed preferences, like the way that people behave when they're under pressure, cancel out stated preferences or there's a binary choice between the short term and the long term. At Camden, I think, we were always expected as chief officers to hold two things in our heads at the same time, so ensuring that the bins are collected on time, that there are basic services that provide value for money, but also to think about the future of the welfare state. I think. I've always seen the ways of working that I advocate for being deeply resonant with elected politicians. Certainly my experience of working in London, Camden has been, most of the time, politicians are really centered on humans and all of their complexity. They tend to not see the departmental silos or the professional lens because they're dealing with the human being in front of them every week in their surgeries and every evening at community meetings. They tend to have a really strong bias to action, which I love. And they tend to have a preference for showing rather than telling. So I think many of the kind of practices that you and I would advocate for are things that I think are really good ways of working with elected members and probably the more way, the more you can do that, kind of the better and the more the relationship improves. Fantastic. So I want to quickly now get into the main topic of our discussion. So one of the things that you're leading on is test, learn and grow. So really simple question to start with, at least, I hope it's a simple question. What is test, learn and grow? And I suppose equally important, what is it not? Yeah, really good question. It's a program that aims to transform how government makes decisions and deliver services. So it's about the how, how being the way that you get to the work. So of course, it's about people getting better outcomes that respond to their real needs. But the hypothesis that we have is that it's only through changing the way that government actually operates, that you can do that in a sustainable way. So principally around closing the gap between policy intent and delivery. So better policy with less risk by working in ways which are multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, where you start small, you test in the real world before you invest more effort and money, and you're constantly indexing for learning. The program has a basic architecture. So there's three pillars to it. The first is a series of test and learning initiatives across 10 places. And about half a dozen sort of public problems that we're working on. Where we test things, we learn rapidly, particularly about what gets in the way locally and centrally. And how the essence can be unlocked. Would you just give a couple of examples for listeners or one or two examples of what some of those problems are so that they can-- so it can be real in their minds? Yeah, sure. So a really good example is around work that we're doing with Manchester and Northumberland on integrated family support. And principally, the problem of how do you get these children and families who would most benefit from what's sometimes a really rich UK system of services and support in family hubs? Two-day services. So we have lots of RCT assured literacy programs, which are funded. And it's a struggle to get people through the doors and benefiting from those programs. But if we can do that, we know that people's lives will improve that children will enter the education system at good levels of development. So you go into a family hub system. You test different ways of engaging. You rapidly work, learn what works and what doesn't. You scale those things up quickly. You try and capture the learning about what's made that work, or made that more difficult in the local system. And that sort of takes you into our foundations pillar, which is about the systemic blockers and how you address those. So those are things based on what you learn from the work on the ground. That you can attack often at a national level. So that's things like data sharing. That's things like funding and the work that you're doing. That's things like funding and accountability and a good example of how we take that work forward are through things like our partnership with MHCLG and five, their strategic authorities on place-based budgets. So in the vernacular, a total place 2.0, I think, where we're thinking about how to integrate and align budgets so that we can better support people on the ground. And then the final pillar is movement. And this is really important because this is where you help to grow a community of public servants if you want to work in this way, where the learning that I've described can be shared. And even more importantly, I like the learning experimentation that goes on day in and day out across the country. That isn't very visible, certainly not to the centre, where we can learn collectively. And I think your point about what's not is really important, really important. So what it's not is a process cult. What it's not is a digital transformation methodology, although it's really respectful, I think, of brilliant digital transformation. It's fundamentally syncretic, which is a bit of a mouthful, but a blending and emerging of different cultures and approaches into a new thing to create a unified whole. That's the ambition. So it takes things like human sense to design, often applied in a digital product context, and puts it together with relational practice and puts it together with relational leadership and puts it together with human learning systems. That's the ambition to build on what's gone before, but to create something new that is sort of unifying of different disciplines and practices. And also say it's not everything. It's also a pillar of a public service reform approach, not the whole of it. Sometimes I think people can see it as being claiming that this way of working is everything, but what we're talking about here is whole system prevention, for instance, we're not talking about the entirety of the digital journey that we need to go on in the public sector. Yeah. So you've mentioned a couple of things that I'm going to come back to later. Plist-based budgets and some of the other reform ideas, which are circulating at the minute, and then also this idea of it being a movement. But before I do, I just want to get into a couple of the characteristics of test learning and grew as an approach. So this is definitely not a traditional business case-led pilot approach. The traditional way of doing things-- and I've been a consultant for a long time, so I've done a lot of these. So I take my share of responsibility. But you do a business case that looks robust. And everything is for sure and for certain. It will deliver you this and then you do a pilot, and that takes years, and then you'll rule it out everywhere. This feels like almost the exact opposite of that, without prefer. I don't have to think so. I mean, we'll prove it in the pudding, I think. But yeah, it would be a massive failure. If what this ended up being was a series of cute pilots, we've done these before. The fundamental difference, I think, is the concept of grow. So it was a very deliberate. choice of word, I mean, wanted to object the word scale, although absolutely, we want to do more of good things and create national impact. But scale, I think, immediately takes you into a pilot and roll out mindset. The standardization, yeah, absolutely. It's an industrial metaphor. So if nothing kills, we wanted an organic metaphor. Yes. And I think there's lots about this, which is not new. But what we don't know is how to take some of the things that have worked really effectively at a small scale or in particular context and really embed them, the general condition for how we work in the public sector. So success for me is a changing of mindset, practice and ways of working. And for it to be successful, I would look back in 10 or 15 years time and say that Test Learning Grow has made a big contribution to that transition. That's why the foundations work stream is so important. That's why the movement building work stream is so important. I think like in defence of pilots, I think if a government is doing them at aggregate and learning at aggregate from a series of small scale experiments then I think that is a government that's learning. I think it's when they are done within a particular silo or boundary and that learning is not properly socialised or there isn't a theory of change between I've spent £5 million learning a thing and improving a thing in this one setting, this one part of the country. But I know how to get it to support and improve things happening in another system and another part of the country. Because if you do have a compelling theory of change for doing that then both the financial and economic case for investing in learning is really quite killer. I think it's because we lack that across the public sector that were a bit resistant to investing in learning for its own sake. And then we do get into the territory that you were describing at the beginning and your question of business cases which assume things that can't be true that you can know everything at the beginning. And the other really interesting feature of this programme, although I think we will come on to talk about how I think your wish is that it moves beyond just being a programme which tends to be something with a start and a finish. But the other bit which is really interesting is the collaboration between White Hall and Places. So I've worked on a number of innovation programmes in central government and they've been generally really successful where the government is funding experimentation at a local level. But I think what you're doing here takes the level and quality of the ongoing constant collaboration between the centre and Places to a new level. Can you say something about that? Yeah, I think it's fundamental to the work. I think test learning great but also other programmes which are being eliminated from the centre and I think are successful like changing futures. Partly are about working in a more equal way and the spillover effects of that beyond the particular kind of policy domain or outcome that they're trying to improve are really significant. So each of our projects is designed so that teams are working on the ground and testing and learning in a team that is fully integrated. So alongside colleagues from the cabinet office you have colleagues on the ground with this sort of under their finger now the real sense of the place, those sort of deep operational instincts. So the teams are integrated but we've also tried to ensure that alongside policy skills and public design skills in the cabinet office team, the cabinet office contribution to those integrated teams we also have operational voice as well. So a good example would be in my management team at least until today actually. Sadly Neil's got a new job which is great for him but sad for me. We've had a guy in Neil Thomas OBE who is a prison government by background. He's been in the program from from the beginning and brings a leadership and a set of experiences which just changes the dynamic. Why don't you think about this? Why don't we think about this? Why are we doing it that way? And that's not as a you know a subject matter expert and a consultee a sounding board when you're at that point. Someone who's in the work from the beginning the middle to the end. I think you can spend a lot of time thinking about the composition of the civil service or making it kind of more porous. But I think the thing that test done in grow, changing futures and other programs like it is forging those relationships through doing. So all of them are about like a shared endeavoring people working alongside each other and I think that is the way that relationships are forged ultimately. So that's something we've advocated for in the design of our work and I think can be replicated elsewhere. Yeah. So the test run grew program as an agenda item doesn't sit in isolation. You've already mentioned some other things like place-based budgeting. There's obviously the continuation of the changing futures program but there's also things like the evolution of the government reorganization and then relational practice and human learning systems more generally. There's a lot of things going on there. I certainly picture them as quite a complicated vent diagram that in my mind where each of the different elements supports and can work with each other. How are you thinking about all of those different bits of public service reform which you're going on? Yeah, I think we might have the same diagram in our minds. So I see and talk about them sometime as a portfolio of both policies and programs and I think there's value in thinking about both of those things. The kind of through line for me is the public service reform principles that were published in last years, spending of you which might quite seem worked on with others but those are around. The integration of services around the person, the focus on prevention and a focus on place and devolution. I'm quite believe in emergence. So I think there is sometimes value in strategic statement, a document, a white paper, what have you but I also think that patterns are often revealed and I do see a lot of strategic alignment between the big structural reforms around LGR, devolution, funding and the programs and initiatives like the ones that you've described. I think there are times when you need to step back and codify and ensure that that signal is strong and I think that's something to consider. But I'm pretty comfortable with emergence and I think in those terms of portfolio. I think the work of reform is really happening outside a lot of those programs. I'm like every day out there, public sector reform isn't led from a tiny office in 70 white hall. So I think you'll always be careful to remember that and the role those programs and policies play is supporting unlocking and the thing that we need to guard against sometimes is the complexity. So story and framework that help us make sense of all of that are important and the many people would advocate for more of that. Yeah and you're absolutely right that a lot of the reforming energy and ideas will come at that local authority and then community level blue that are not blue that sorry above that let's put new communities above everything. But you're I think you're absolutely right to identify the role that central government can play as the enabler and the encourager and the unblocker and I know that you're working hard across white hall you and your team to engage with those different different departments. But one of the most exciting things that you've referenced here is the idea of a movement that endures on a longer term horizon and would be something that would go beyond any political change hopefully. So you're doing a number of really interesting things which encourage that there's a very active test learn group community on LinkedIn which is which is great and a number of that I would advise anybody interested in this conversation to get involved and you've also recruited for high profile conveners who can help spread the word. and encourage people from positions of real authority. So can you say a bit more about the movement that you're playing a part in building and some of those key building blocks off it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing says, there's obviously already a movement. You know, we recently didn't invent it. There's brilliant convening and brilliant conveners who've been doing this type of work for years. I think about, you know, list kick-on, but people like the better way network. I mean, face like yourself, I mean, this podcast is an active movement building. The contribution of the government animated programme, I think, is about bridging between central government and those doing work in communities, whether in a local authority, the CCS, the health sector. So I think our USPs that we can act as that bridge. And so we've tried to embody that through this device of conveners, so basically brilliant people who get this way of working and have a profile across the public sector, you can bring people together. So we're very lucky in the people who've said yes. So I'll sort of say a little bit about each of them. So Catherine Howard used the Chief Executive of Dorset County Council, brilliant, inspirational, post-conventional human being. I hope she does. Like a really good thought leading Chief Executive as well. Not just the functional Chief Executive, it was just really trying to push the boundaries. Yeah, and I think probably the first genuine technologist leading a local authority. So she really understands the digital world in a deep way, not just the technology, but the way it's interacting with society and how it's changing. So great to have Catherine. Well, great for it to be a Chief Executive who's not one of those TLG places we're working with directly. Because I think that makes the point that the programme is in support of everyone who is interested in place, not just those partners that we're fortunate enough to work with directly. Paul Morrison, who's a Director General in the Home Office, but was the Chief Executive of the Planning Inspector. I think he's been on the podcast. He has former podcast guests. Yes, he's been on a couple of times. Once I filled up the suit for him and then he did a clip for me at a conference. I was at as well. So Paul, absolutely, knew Paul well. Yeah. And then Beth Russell, who's the second permanent Secretary of Treasury, who is based at the Darlington Economic Campus. So it's brilliant to have a Treasury representative. Beth leads the Places for Growth Program, which is the programme essentially seeking to move civil servants out of London, build up the regional civil service presence, and really importantly figure out how that presence can engage the local community and work with local and regional government in service of the place, but also national policymaking. And there's been some brilliant work over the last three or four months with Darlington Economic Campus and the local council, the Lead City Council, and the Mathetic Health Campus, the Sheffield and colleagues at the Sheffield Civil Service Campus, which has got a really big concentration of DFE and DWP's. Yeah. So I think that's a brilliant example of change and different ways of working. And Beth is sponsored quite a lot of that. And just on Beth, I think it's fantastic to have such a senior Treasury official there. The Treasury being the kind of come department of the traditional Greek book business case and that per enthusiasm and involvement for this is going to be really, really critical. Because I think if we, if as a movement, if we can't engage effectively and collaboratively with the Treasury, it's going to make it a lot more difficult. Yeah, I understand. I agree. And there's a lot of unhelpful mythology about the Treasury and Treasury civil servants. The final convener that we are in the process of kind of bringing into the fold is Emma DeCloser, who's the chief executive UK Community Foundation. So Emma is the representative who's going to support our thinking and convening around civic society. And as well as being in that position, she's also a former senior civil servant. So I think she's someone who, you know, bodies the bridging of these different worlds. I am super excited about the network. I'm super excited about our conveners. It's sort of the first module of the network in our contribution to the movement. So we'll grow ahead of the next year. We'll start to bring people together in real life as well as online. And I think we, we say our role is sort of nested within a network of networks and want to end as much time contributing to the work of others as doing the convening ourselves. I think it will strengthen the approach. And the reason why I like the language of movement is that it's, it is polycentric. And like any UK system, it's the diversity and the distribution that makes it healthier. It's the thing that will make it endure in the end. Yeah, and I like the idea of a movement as well because the facts are that local areas can do a lot of this stuff. Yeah. They have permission. They have the tools to do a lot of this stuff already. So the fact that it's a movement and the word is getting out there is fantastic. Just before, before wrapping up, I've got a couple of questions. So this, this idea of a movement, could this be something international as well? Yeah, in my view, without doubt. And I think one of the benefits of the shift to hybrid ways of working has been the grace and a little bit of a culture of sharing transnational. It's just some of the barriers perceived will really have been taken away. So I thought that in my work at Camden, where I've spent a lot of time talking to colleagues in different parts of the country. You can see colleagues in places like Latvia, and Estonia, exploring what does humble governance mean in their-- Ooh, their context. I think moments in time, a particular place where there is an opportunity to create change, because the conditions are right. Things line up for whatever reason. And change can happen in a place spreading and diffusing it, I think, is really important. I mean, a good example of that in a UK context is something like government digital service, which has been a huge reform over the last 15 years, and it's something which has radiated out across the world. And other places have learned from that experience. And I think the more we can do that, the better. There are some really brilliant examples of organizations that I've got to know, who's mission basically is that. So Demosos, well, Sinki, who are a kind of collaborator of ours, that's basically their theory of change. And they operate in Finland, Brazil, on the Silicon UK. And they're absolutely about how do you codify learnings, help things translate between different contexts? And the Blavatt-Litts School of Government, who are one of our partners in test learning, grow. They're very international. Faculty and student bodies, we're exploring what ways could we work with them. What can we share about test learning, grow, and the wider movement that's useful to colleagues across the world? We have learning, can we bring in? I think the UK is pretty insular in the way that it thinks about some of these things. So I'm kind of ambitious for how might we play a role in the movement being international? Fantastic. And as a final question, Nick, what bit of advice would you give to someone working in or around public services who wants to make an impact in the way that you did in Camden and the way that you are doing in cabinet office? There was something about the in-between spaces, I think, between different bits of organizations, different systems in the intersections, I think, where you can create an awful lot of value by bringing people together. I think that's one of the things that I did at Camden quite well was figure out. What does human-centered design mean to a busy director of adult social services? And we'll put time and energy into that piece of translation. Clearly, what I do now is quite a lot of translation in connection between place and central government. And I think that's a valuable one, I think, that I enjoy. So that would be one thing that I would offer up. I would obviously say in our conversation, see yourself as part of the movement and talk about who do you ask the balls who are the best position to make change? Sometimes it's you and yours and sometimes it's someone else, but to make the big change, we need to work in that collaborative and that works kind of low ego way. And then probably final thing, this is sort of about the teams that I've worked in, the teams that I try and build. The work is pretty hard. And the world, God knows. is a really volatile place. So I think you need to take joy in the work because there will be ups and downs and you need to create conditions in which the work feels good for the people that need. So I kind of almost always start with a health of teams, I can people feel safe, take risks, have a bit of fun, like never forget that, absolutely fundamental. I think that is a great place and the importance of preserving your personal energy and because it can be really exhausting for people who are really pushing for reform. And I also just would really emphasize the bit about if you're listening to this and you like this and you like some of the other conversations that are about this type of working, relational working, taking a test, learn a group approach, there's always something each individual can do that is above waiting for government to do something or your council to decide something. There are things that everybody in this movement can do to push the agenda forward and that feels like the really important element that will make this come to reality. So Nick, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed that conversation. Yes, thanks so much, Henry. So there was a lot in that conversation and there's actually just one big thing that I want to talk about and that is the idea of the how being the way to the what. Now that seems sensible when you think about it, it's almost a reversal of how decisions are normally made and how directions are normally set in public services. So a traditional business case is usually pretty exact about what will happen, what the end outcome is and exactly what the benefits will be. Test, learn and grow flips that. It makes you think about how things actually are in the real world and actually how a business case nicely presented, all the numbers adding up, it actually can't know a lot of the facts and a lot of the answers and a lot of the assumptions that it's making and in our lives we live much more in a test, learn and grow way where we start a process, we engage in an activity and we adjust as we go, we don't usually know exactly where we will end up and public services in the reform of public services is no different even though sometimes we pretend it is and I'll be honest with you, we sometimes struggle when we are speaking with councils and the leadership of councils to get this concept across because the the traditional way of doing things and the culture is to have a business case and for that to be able to be plugged into the medium term financial strategy to show how various savings will be made across the years and it will require quite a bit of effort and quite a bit more movement making as Nick talked about to get everybody more comfortable with the fact that yes you can have a direction of travel and some things that you want to achieve but being so precise about it at the start will only limit the ability of a test, learn and grow program to adjust and move as it develops. So that's everything for this episode, thank you as always for lending us your time and don't forget the follow us wherever you get your podcasts.