Learning Towards Zero: A Context for Learning about Systems Innovation
Picture a world where homelessness is not something that is ‘managed’ but where we actively strive to reduce, prevent and ultimately move towards ending homelessness. Sound ambitious? Yes, absolutely. But it’s also something that many places around the world are taking seriously and acting towards using innovative methodologies like ‘Advance to Zero’. Over the past three years we have had the privilege of working with the Brisbane and Logan Zero initiatives as their Learning Partners (see Brisbane Zero and Logan Zero). We supported insight development and project iteration throughout the initiative. Now, we have zoomed out to reflect on the big themes which emerged across this dynamic phase. One of the outputs is what we’ve called a ‘Learnbook’ — a way to share the learnings from this work in ways that start in the messiness of context, and draw out questions, insights and opportunities for systems innovation.
The Learnbook is not a ‘recipe’ book that can be applied in any context or all systems-shifting initiatives. As always, working to shift complex, human initiatives requires a lens that gives primacy to context, culture and contextual knowledges. We seek to build on and share insights from practice in specific contexts to develop deeper possibilities for learning forward towards addressing the challenges we are facing locally and globally. Below we share a taste of the four major insights from our first Learnbook — and how the Brisbane and Logan Zero initiatives have put these into practice. The full booklet is available for download if you are interested in reading more about the insights generated through this work.
Embrace Complexity and ‘Learning Forward’
Human and social systems are inherently messy. They’re shaped by power structures, dynamic conditions, and countless interconnected and entangled influencing factors. For instance, the issue of homelessness itself is entwined with everything from population growth to labour markets to access to effective health services.
Whilst it may be possible to map aspects of the ‘systems’ that influence homelessness, the reality is much more nuanced, entangled and dynamic than what could be represented on a map. Rather than the typical approach of “understand the system first, then act”, in the Zero initiatives we leaned into an approach of “learning forward.” When we are grappling with shifting complex human ‘systems’ (even at the level of teams, families, organisations — let alone at the level of society) starting with small actions as learning probes, helps us to ‘learn forward’. ‘Learning’ here refers not to absorption of knowledge, but rather to action and reflection in practice, so that we can take better next steps forward.
Collaboration is Dynamic and Contextual
It is easy to call any initiative that includes multiple organisations coming together “collaborative”. However real collaboration goes deeper — it requires trust, structures for collective decision-making, and opportunities to demonstrate shared benefit. A clear learning from the Zero initiatives in Brisbane and Logan is that the ‘organising’ of collaboration (how we structure the practices, processes and structures of collaboration) lies at the heart of any contribution this can make to systemic change.
In the Brisbane and Logan Zero initiatives, collaboration was underpinned by something tangible: a commitment to building and using a shared, open data set. This helped participating organisations see the immediate value of joining the partnership, because they had direct access to up-to-date information on who needed help most urgently, — how many people were homeless, what was contributing to people becoming homeless, how many people were transitioning to being homed, and how things were changing over time.
Of course, the collaboration wasn’t always smooth sailing. For example, in the Learnbook we delve into the tension between competition and collaboration, especially when partners are tied to competitive government funding frameworks. We need to recognise the reality of competition and how it interacts with collaboration. The key is finding where these two impulses meet productively — where the particular strengths of specific organisations can be recognised while also celebrating the collective success of reducing homelessness numbers over time. Importantly, collaboration is dynamic: it ebbs and flows across systems and organisations. Understanding conditions that enable and support collaboration across different parts and stages of a process is important.
Shared Leading Moves Us Beyond Traditional Governance
Projects of this scale often rely on formal governance structures, such as multiple committees, and top-down leadership. But the Brisbane and Logan Zero initiatives found a different recipe for success: shared leading. As one of the original leaders in this initiative argued:
“Governance is code for committee meetings — we end up in loads of meetings and nothing moves forward. We want to create shared leading, not overburden everyone with more governance”
The structure of collaboration can generate opportunities for collective leading. Many frameworks that explore how we could shift systems propose setting a goal, and then coordinating actors so that they set a collective course towards achieving that goal. This approach focuses on aligning actions, then tracking progress towards a common goal (which is usually framed as a destination). From this perspective the core of systemic change work centres on coordination of collective action — which has to be managed, usually by an intermediary, often referred to as a ‘backbone organisation’. This approach represents a theory of action that is ‘structured’. This structured approach works well in contexts where most strategies and actions are well tested and the ‘knowns’ of how to generate change outweigh the ‘unknowns’. However, when the context is complex and there is less alignment and more ‘unknowns’ around how to generate change, this sort of approach is less effective.
What is needed in complex contexts of change is an approach that is less structured and more networked, where leadership is more distributed, and the focus is on creating coherence around learning forward in the direction of the goal. The work of shifting systems requires many different ‘roles’ and small ‘actions’ across sectors, communities, organisations and teams to generate momentum towards systemic goals. The spreading of energy and action across a network requires developing a sense of shared ownership and distributed leadership across an initiative. This doesn’t often happen through top down ‘design’ or decrees. It can, however be achieved through the cumulative effects of micropractices — as tiny as asking a partner organisation to co-chair a steering committee or another organisation offering to host a subgroup for specific action.
The Right Kind of Data is Critical: We Need Human-Centred and Lead Data to Change Human and Social Systems
One of the challenges often faced by those grappling with how data can help nudge, shift or transform systems centres on the nature of the data that is needed.
Too often the data that is presented is zoomed out population-level data, ‘big’ data aggregated from across data sets, or service data that looks back to what has shifted over time to make forward facing decisions. Most data that is presented in the name of systemic change is ‘lag’ data — that is, it’s retrospective and historical. It is also de-humanised, de-contextualised and aggregated to such a point that human experiences become lost in population statistics and the nuances of context or points of potential change are lost.
One of the clear learnings from working alongside the Brisbane and Logan Zero initiatives is that we need to foster a different kind of data if we are to create both systemic (and structural) and human changes. We need less data that generates ‘noise’ (lag data that fosters deficit thinking, hopelessness about the scale of problems, says nothing about contexts and focuses on aggregation over actionable insights). We need to grow more lead data — which is current and relevant, that sits at a level which enables action, is contextual and can foster the integration of narrative and numbers.
The collective interpretation of data is also increasingly important as relying on external or ‘expert’ analysis too often forces abstraction or allows disconnection from practice and limits what action is thought to be possible. Relying less on ‘experts’ and more on diverse ‘expertise’ (that is, people who have expertise in a context, in relation to an issue, who are close to the frontline of data collection) in the interpretation enables data and action to be drawn closer together. This lies at the heart of building ‘practice-based evidence’ — that is, evidence that is drawn out of practice, and can generate more effective feedback loops into improving practice. To build this type of evidence it is important to collect the right kinds of data that enable us generate actionable insights and help us detect strong and weak signals about what is happening (and therefore what could change) at points as close to the action as possible.
— — — — — — — — — — -
So much can be learnt from on-the-ground initiatives such as Brisbane and Logan Zero that could help others seeking to create multi-sector and multi-organisation alliances for systemic change.
The Learnbook draws together the learnings from these initiative and explores how they contribute to a broader understanding of systems innovation. We share learnings not to suggest that this is ‘the’ way to undertake systems innovation, but to share one way that is showing promise in a particular context. You can find the full Learnbook here.
If you’d like to learn more about the initiatives, check out their websites, or the Learning Report we produced for them in 2024 (in our previous incarnation as the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation) (https://tinyurl.com/5axdrw4m ). You can also read more about the Advance to Zero approach here: https://aaeh.org.au/atoz
