Learn about the transformative role played by ‘Systems Conveners’ – with Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner
The authors of 'Systems Convening – a crucial form of leadership for the 21st century' will be leading a Zoom about Systems Convening on Tuesday.
The authors of Systems Convening – a crucial form of leadership for the 21st century will be leading a Zoom about ‘Systems Convening’ next week (6th Feb, 12.30). (Free PDF of their book is here).
You can register for the Zoom here – come along, all welcome!
Here's a description of what a Systems Convener does, from their website:
Social learning across complex landscapes requires a certain kind of leadership, which we have called systems convening. Many people do this kind of work without any label, often unrecognized, and sometimes not even particularly aware that they are doing it.
A systems convener or systems convening team sets up spaces for new types of conversations between people who often live on different sides of a boundary. For example, a geographic, cultural, disciplinary, political, class, social boundary.
These conveners see a social landscape with all its separate and related practices through a wide-angle lens: they spot opportunities for creating new learning spaces and partnership that will bring different and often unlikely people together to engage in learning across boundaries.
A systems convener takes a “landscape view” of wherever they are and what they need to do to increase the learning capability of that entire landscape – rather than simply the capability of the space they are standing in. Importantly, a systems convener is someone who has enough legitimacy in different worlds to be able to convene people in those different worlds into a joint conversation.
Are you a Systems Convener yourself? Do you know one?
Since the 2021 publication of the little book (which I’m, needless to say, rather proud of having invited them to write) we’ve begun to see a few Systems Convener roles being created round the UK, usually working across parts of local authority and NHS services. There are even small Systems Convener teams too now, in Surrey and Hackney, with interest growing elsewhere.
Systems Convening ‘is a key skill in the future of public services’
- comment at meeting of Systems Convener teams
When those two teams met to compare notes (and share some trials and tribulations!) it was clear that ‘we can’t keep doing what we’re doing’ and that Systems Convening ‘is a key skill in the future of public services’.
‘The impact is so powerful, but to be able to attribute it is so difficult’, one participant shared during their meeting, which used the Liberating Structure ‘What, So What, Now What?’ to help both teams reflect and learn together.
Systems conveners are ready to take on difficult challenges, bet on people, face the resulting uncertainty, and recover from setbacks, often without much consideration for the cost to themselves. They are prepared to forge ahead, ignored, dismissed, thwarted, or even scorned by established powers. They set their sight on having their work, in the end, valued by those affected by the difference it has made. There is a kind of unspoken courage to what they do.
- from ‘Systems Convening’ (p. 108)
Overall, these Systems Convener roles – working across the usual boundaries and silos, through relationships – feel like a very positive development.
Of course, they’re not alone in doing such work: at the more local level there are roles spreading - such as Local Area Coordinators, Community Connectors and Social Prescribing Link Workers - that work with a similar ethos.
The Hackney and Surrey Systems Convener teams are, I think, working at the larger ‘Place’ and ‘System’ levels, to use the current local authority/NHS lingo. (Please let me know if you’ve spotted other Systems Convener-like roles at any of these levels. And at the even wider regional or national levels, where I’m not sure any named Systems Convener roles exist, even if some leaders choose to work in a convening manner, with the unusual mix of boldness and humbleness that Systems Conveners often exhibit. I’d be delighted to hear otherwise!).
Elsewhere, the emergence of the ‘Liberated Method’ (good overview here) in public services feels like a kindred development. Great to see that their March ‘Liberating Public Services’ conference (with Donna Hall, the Wigan Council Chief Executive who developed the ‘Wigan Deal’, Wellbeing Teams’ founder Helen Sanderson and Hilary Cottam, author of Radical Help - How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state) sold out so very quickly. Another conference on liberating services - aimed at academics and practitioners - is coming in June.
Donna has even dubbed all those who are starting to do public services in a more cross-silo, more relational way, the ‘rebel alliance’
Donna has even dubbed all those who are starting to do public services in a more cross-silo, more relational way, the ‘rebel alliance’ - with the developments taking place in Gateshead and Plymouth probably most developed.
Though she may primarily be thinking in terms of UK local authorities, what was striking and unexpected - when a launch event for the book was organised - was how wide and diverse the interest in Systems Convening turned out to be: 1,000+ people registered for the book launch from 63 different countries… (Results from our recent survey of 80+ Systems Conveners are here).
I know it would’ve been helpful to have shared these events sooner; to be honest, I’d tended to think that Substack is supposed to be all about sharing long, thoughtful articles. I’ve only just shifted my thinking on this (NB I have mostly completed part 2 of my first Substack piece ‘The possibility of autonomous Buurtzorg care teams across the UK: tantalising hope vs organisational rigidity’; great to have positive feedback like Helen Bevan kindly calling it a ‘beautifully researched and written piece’ in a tweet a couple of weeks back. I also have another piece already written which explores whether we can take Systems Convening into one particular novel domain, and which will appear even sooner!).
Others things you can do
As well as reading the book and joining the Zoom, there other ways to get involved.
Follow Systems Convening on Twitter/X: @SysConvening
Would you like to join the team leading an emerging community of practice for Systems Conveners? (If so, please message me on Twitter here).
And there’s also a sub-group of this Systems Convening community of practice forming around how to evaluate the impact of systems conveners – always a challenge with such cross-system, relational, long-term work. Let me know if you’d like to join this sub-group.