Pegs Bailey reflects on the value of learning and shares ‘two good things’ relevant to employability policy and co-production in Scotland.
Sharing a moment of celebration,
There is a saying that ‘bad luck comes in threes’. If two bad things happen in a row, I find myself on tenterhooks wondering what the third bad thing will be, and often enough it does.
But maybe good things can come in threes also? If so, I am in a good place this week as two projects dear to my heart; two ‘good things’, happened.
Firstly, as pictured, I graduated from my MSc in Mindfulness with Distinction at the University of Aberdeen (oooh!). This is the culmination of four years of hard graft on top of the day job and family life (thanks husband, kids and tolerant friends).
It has been epic and amazing to reconnect parts of my brain that had taken a nap since my degree in1998. I have learned so much about myself as well as this thing called ‘mindfulness’ and how it might help us in our day jobs: particularly in growing our capacity for co-production in public services and public policy design.
My work explored the experiences and impact of implementing Mindfulness training and practices for senior civil servants in Welsh Government between 2014-20. I look forward to sharing a fuller (non-academic) version of my findings shortly – but some key highlights are:
- Learning about how our brains work, and improving our physical and emotional awareness through mindfulness can help grow critical co-production skills like emotional regulation, balancing messiness with action and working with conflict.
- Mindful awareness also helps people realise that their view on ‘how things are’ is inevitably limited, and so genuinely engaging with and listening to diverse relevant perspectives is essential to doing our jobs well.
- Despite co-production being a mainstay of many policy priorities, these skills and qualities are rarely included in mainstream training for civil and public servants in the UK and this is a miss.
- Despite the success of the mindfulness training (which reached 3.5% of the Welsh Government workforce), the term ‘mindfulness’ was still seen as misunderstood or off-putting by many. And sitting in silence is not for everyone.
- So if we ARE looking to grow these skills and capacities in Scotland then we might want to think carefully about how we frame this learning and what will resonate most with the intended audiences.
The second good thing, and on the same day, the Human Learning Systems (HLS) Collaborative launched a new series of exemplars of HLS in action in this webinar.
For those that have not heard of it, HLS is an alternative approach to public management which, in their words, embraces the complexity of the real world and enables us to work effectively in that complexity and focusses on human thriving. For me it makes an awful lot of sense and connects with the learning I have gained through my MSc and personal mindfulness practice.
HLS is increasingly discussed in the policy world of health but less well known in employability. Which is why I was delighted when the HLS team accepted a case study of the work done by the Opportunities Fife Partnership (OFP) in implementing No One Left Behind.
The team leading the Fife work used HLS theory to underpin the co-production and service (re) design of the local employability commissioning strategy and approach. And HLS thinking is now shaping how the OFP structure their governance and oversight as well.
You can read the NOLB Fife case study, along with numerous other examples of HLS in practice at the HLS website. And you can watch a video explaining how this is informing the OFP’s strategic governance and approach to commissioning oversight here:
I feel honoured and privileged to have participated in both these learning journeys, and to be able to share them with you.
It is nice to celebrate the good stuff, now what might that third good thing be…?