Ideology and place-based working

What if we stopped pretending the messy stuff isn’t political? In the UK, there’s now a strong current for real place-based working — and a stronger backwash for centralisation. We risk creating dangerous riptides if we can’t address and balance these dynamics. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_systems-complexity-leadership-activity-7317844311910330369-obgp

What if we stopped pretending the messy stuff isn’t political?

In the UK, there’s now a strong current for real place-based working — and a stronger backwash for centralisation.

Last week I asked ‘how we can stop starting over?’ in #placebased change (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_we-all-want-change-but-do-we-know-what-kind-activity-7315277530020601856-YyER), and Gemma Fraser asked for my prescription. This is a partial response.

We focus on outcomes, funding, accountability. But rarely on ideology.

Not necessarily party politics — I mean the worldview of the political leaders which is baked into what counts, who decides, and how we know.

The absence of declared ideology doesn’t mean neutrality — it means the implicit ideology of legible, central control wins by default.

Some potential first steps:

- transparency in policy-making — who’s in the room, who sets the frame?

- shifting from ‘what should we fund?’ or ‘who gets the money?’ toward ‘what are we learning?’ and ‘who’s been paying attention?’. Privileging continuity, presence, care, lived knowledge — over KPIs, audit, and formal authority.

- naming politics and interests as legitimate. If we don’t surface them, they just operate underground, unaccountable. Real discussion of ideology. Ironically might help us see the lack of it — and the assumptions that rush in to fill the vacuum.

Done wrong, all this can reinforce the informal authority and unspoken power that already distort outcomes and erode trust.

What we need is governance that builds trust through open, honest conversation — something like the five core practices I wrote about recently https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_systems-complexity-leadership-activity-7292464789518196737-QGM_

We need learning that functions like System 3* in the Viable System Model — a deep, maintained understanding across multiple different ‘worlds’ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_publicservices-systemschange-service-activity-6802480342948282368-WUJ-

That takes bravery — leaders who are willing to speak uncomfortable truths, including who’s excluded. And it takes consistency — people on the outside need to keep challenging, keep speaking up. We need to select and support leaders who can do that.

Human. Learning. Systems. offers a partial route. Some of the ‘rethinking philanthropy’ systems literature is helpful too. But we are far from done.

Last week I also wrote about the Control Dilemma https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_the-scio-organisational-matury-model-manager-activity-7315653950181965824-TpRB.

Disconnected leaders send down incoherent instructions that cause chaos on the frontline, then react by imposing more incoherent control. It all runs through KPIs and incentives.

We risk creating dangerous riptides if we can’t address and balance these dynamics.

So. What might shift if we made ideology visible — and treated it as a legitimate design variable?