If we really want systems change, we need transformation

In the first of our Strategy Spotlight series, Felicity Green looks at the five key lessons learned by industry leader Alex Hannant in effecting industry change.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the first edition of Strategy Spotlight, a rotating column looking at best practice in for purpose strategy and case studies both from Australia and across the world.

We are now well into the so-called “decade of action” yet remain far from achieving our 2030 Sustainable Development Goal targets. Something clearly has to change and the time for strategies that tinker at the edges has long passed. We need transformational shifts, different thinking, and it is essential that our strategic focus is directed to the entrenched systems that cause disadvantage.

It’s no secret that systems change is hard. The interconnectivity and complexity of wicked problems and the long timelines often required for change (in a very quickly changing world) can make this work paralyzingly unapproachable. At the root of the problem is the fact that we haven’t designed the foundations to enable systems change. Our methods of investment, governance and experimentation for social innovation are still based on traditional models focussed on profit and risk and are not fit for purpose. We need to reimagine the very infrastructure of systems change to a help build fairer, safer and more sustainable future.

Alex Hannant is the former chief executive of the Akina Foundation, current Co-Chair of B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and professor of practice and co-director of the Yunus Centre at Griffith University. Hannant knows a thing or two about shaking things up.

He’s currently working upstream on the innovation infrastructure to support ideas, investment and experimentation to help create a better future. He’s contributing to critical sector building by serving on the board of the Social Enterprise National Strategy Initiative, which promotes self-organising in tandem with traditional advocacy. And he’s one of the architects behind a new governance system for B Corps in this region, the B Council and the Horizon Council, which weave in with the existing board and are currently in their design year.

Acknowledging that transformational innovation needs to become our biggest imperative for the future of people and the planet, Hannant’s work with colleagues at the Yunus Centre is focussed on exploring the conditions and practice that can foster the unprecedented experimentation that will be required ahead. He’s taking the long-term view and hoping to lay the groundwork for when capital and power aligns with this innovation imperative.

Part of this ambitious agenda of creating next horizon innovation infrastructures is Shaping Innovation Futures. This initiative seeks to engage influencers and innovators across Australia and invite them to reimagine their individual and collective roles in shaping regenerative and distributive futures.

Beyond specific solutions, the project is focused on the underpinning conditions that enable people to organise, create, and act systemically. It first focuses on building the case for systemic innovation, then, through convening a ‘discovery cohort’ of thinkers and doers, will explore the enablers and constraints experienced by initiatives employing such approaches to pursue transformational goals. It will then seek to use these insights to inform the design and development of infrastructures that can support the next generation of innovation at scale. The centre has also recently released an exploration of the Design Foundations for Systems Capital.

Hannant has five key insights from his professional journey, which underpin systems infrastructure work, but can also be applied generally across for-purpose strategy:

1. The power of networks: bringing people together, mapping assets, investigating what can be leveraged, and developing coherent strategies for common goals is much more powerful than going it alone. Everything is relational.
2. Narrative matters: gathering examples and learnings from across the globe and localising them for context can be a powerful way to influence and shape the markets, capital and policies that underpin emerging ecosystems.
3. Pluralism is OK: there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution for every situation. Embracing and holding the diversity of the quilted patchwork of approaches, such as conscious capitalism, shared value, etc. is more helpful than a lens of uniformity and competition.
4. We need to do the thinking for 20 years from now, embrace emerging technologies, and create new governance frameworks. We need think about the cultural and technology shifts that will propel us forward for generations to come. Web3 and other disruptive infrastructures may seem fringe and difficult to comprehend now, but think how innovations such as the internet were received at inception. The way such technologies are opening up new possibilities in respect to cooperation, information flows, value exchange, and governance is unprecedented. And while technology is only a tool, these emerging tools have the potential to be highly enabling of systemic, dynamic, and relational ways of organising and acting.
5. Big shifts are largely cultural: What are the stories we’re telling ourselves, what are the cultural shifts that need to happen, and how do we create those shifts? If we look back in history, be it civil rights, marriage equality or primary health care, each fundamental shift was underpinned by a cultural one. How do we now then look to the next shifts needed, and imagine the changes that can speed their arrival?

Just as without the right soil, water and sunshine, a garden cannot grow; without the right mindsets, relationships, resourcing and governance, systems change will remain an uphill battle. Case studies like Shaping Innovation Futures show us there’s a better way.