We all want change. But do we know what kind?

We all want change. But do we know what kind? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_we-all-want-change-but-do-we-know-what-kind-activity-7315277530020601856-YyER What would it take to stop starting over?

We all want change. But do we know what kind?

Is the opposite of top-down really arbitrariness?
Is the alternative to bureaucracy just hacking at everything randomly with a chainsaw?

I don’t think so.

Back in 2020, I sat in a meeting hosted by the Office for Civil Society and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. They were trying to do something different — bring together their funds, choose ten top ideas, and invite places (councils and local partnerships) to bid to become one of a few pilot areas. Each would pick from the menu where to spend the grant money.

It was a step forward from the usual: a dozen disconnected programmes, each run in parallel. This time, they’d brought together a strong, thoughtful group to test and shape the approach. I was proud to be there.

And we said things like:
•Why make it a bidding process? Why not open it up? Let every interested place join a learning community.
•Why not co-commission? Let the group itself decide where concentrated spend would have the most impact — but let all take part in the journey.
•Why pick ten ideas in advance? Why not develop the ideas with the places and people on the ground?
•And do we really know what we mean by a “place”? What if success lies in the connections — between communities, partners, local actors — not just in neat administrative boundaries? Why not invest in that?

The civil servants were smart. They listened, took notes. I wondered what would make it back through the institutional filters to the policy machine. I saw the possibility of a real shift — towards learning together, across boundaries.

And then COVID struck.

Since then, I’ve seen a sort of black mirror version of that effort.

Arbitrary groups of experts and interested parties are assembled, ideas spin through a vortex of political, financial, and organisational pressure. Projects emerge, effort is expended, and we move on before the dust has settled. A swirl of ‘big’ ideas, bottom-up radicals and rebels, new movements.

But no continuity. No memory. No system for embedding learning. A thousand shoots constantly budding, cut down before they’ve flowered. No accretion. No systematicity (never mind systems understanding. Never mind complexity).

No growth — except in cynicism, and fragile alternative sources of authority.

What if we started from a different question?
•How do we build policy that accumulates rather than resets?
•What would it look like to embed learning, not just generate activity?
•How do we avoid replacing one top-down with another — just one that shouts ‘bottom-up’ while behaving in the same way?
•What would continuity look like — not stasis, but genuine growth?

The learning is already there. Rich, hard-won, buried in practice. The role of governance isn’t to direct it. It’s to harvest it. Make it visible. Link it. Make it last.

Not another realignment. Not another forced clarity that obscures the real picture. But something coherent, embedded, and alive.

What would it take to stop starting over?