System stewardship is emerging as a new way of thinking about the role of government. Described as “a new way of working that allows governments and their agents to effectively influence and steward systems from which outcomes emerge”, system stewardship is seen as being critical to contemporary public service practice. But what does it mean and look like in practice?
Join this conversation to explore the concept of system stewardship, and how to encourage more of it within and across government agencies, so that our systems work to serve the people who they are supposed to benefit.
Speakers:
- Toby Lowe (Visiting Professor in Public Management at the Centre for Public Impact)
- Lynn Mumford (Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships, Mayday Trust)
- Kym Peake (Partner, EY Port Jackson Partners, and former Secretary, Victorian Department of Health and Human Services)
- Lil Anderson (Chief Executive of Te Arawhiti – the Office for Māori Crown Relations)
Facilitated by:
- Sally Washington (ANZSOG Executive Director, Aotearoa-New Zealand, ANZSOG)
Watch the webinar
materials hub
To take our webinars further, we’ve collated a wide range of material exploring Systems Stewardship.
- The journal article “How can systems thinking enhance stewardship of public services?” is a bit of a must read. Karen Gardner, Sue Olney, Luke Craven and Deborah Blackman synthesise existing literature to provide an overview of core systems ideas and theory, and then propose a practical application of systems thinking in four key areas of stewardship.
- Human Learning Systems: Public Service for the Real World brings together theory and thinking from a diverse group of academics, community organisers and public management thinkers combined with emerging learnings from practitioners working across roughly 50 projects from across the UK and Europe. Explore the HLS site to access other reports, webinars, and resources as well.
- Is All Stewardship Equal? Developing a Typology of Stewardship Approaches is a UNSW Public Service Research Group article that develops a typology of four stewardship approaches – the Guide, the Gatekeeper, the Giver and the Maximiser – each containing different perspectives in terms of what stewardship should achieve and how it can operate.
- Systems approaches in the public sector: From theory to practice, is an OECD article that discusses why systems approaches are needed in the public sector, and why they haven’t been widely disseminated throughout the sector just yet.
- The Dawn of System Leadership by Dr Peter Senge, outlines the core capabilities of a systems leader – “…these leaders shift the conditions through which others – especially those who have a problem – can learn collectively to make progress against it.”
- In a Mandarin article, CPI’s Thea Snow calls for a shift away from government being about authority and control, and towards acting as stewards of complex systems – offering guidance on what this looks like in practice.
the theory
Dive more deeply into this topic by learning more through blogs, articles and reports.
- How accurate is the phrase, “What gets measured gets managed”? CPI alumnus Danny Buerkli explores.
- In “How do we measure public value?” The Mandarin explores what public value is, and summarises literature that explores its measurement.
- ANZSOG and the (former) Victorian State Services Authority’s paper, “Performance measurement: Foundations, consequences and futures” examines why the public sector is interested in performance measurement, how it came to be more important, and outlines some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning it.
- How does the Australian Government currently view measurement? While there’s not one approach – the Productivity Commission’s Approach to Performance Measurement section of the Report on Government Services 2021 offers insight into existing frameworks and guiding principles around measurement.
- Does performance measurement improve public sector performance? A case of Australian government agencies reviews performance measurement systems across three Australian jurisdictions, and finds there is little-to-no impact of performance measurement on improved performance.
- While performance measurement is often viewed as apolitical, webinar speaker Professor Jenny Lewis’ article explores the politics and consequences of performance measurement.
- Numbers are both powerful and perilous – in her New Yorker article, Hannah Fry explains What Data Can’t Do.
- System Stewardship: The future of policy making? is a 2011 Institute for Government working paper, that argues that policy makers need to see themselves less as sitting on top of a delivery chain, but as stewards of systems with multiple actors and decision makers – whose choices will determine how policy is realised.
- Getting the Work of Government Done is an ANZSOG report that explores the importance of commissioning and contracting in achieving outcomes for the Australian public. The authors argue for a more considered, principles-based approach to designing and stewarding systems as the APS engages with third party providers.
- In Rethinking relationships: clarity, contingency, and capabilities, Professor Janine O’Flynn argues that governments need to move away from a narrow, transactional view of relationships with others if they seek to get the most value from these arrangements. “The APS needs to think of itself as the designer of a much more complicated system, as ‘system stewards’ of a broader set of relationships.”
- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows discusses the places in a system where relatively minor interventions can lead to relatively major changes in certain outcomes.
- Sam Rye’s blog post, The Relational Field, discusses the importance of the quality of relationships in the context of social labs and social innovation programs.
- The Mandarin article, Reform and the (not so) new role of stewardship discusses how without some fairly fundamental reform, the ‘new’ world of stewardship may be unlikely to bring about change.
in practice
We’ve collated case studies and material to illustrate what these ideas look like in practice, and offer frameworks and tools to support experimentation with a similar approach in your work.
- The Systems School’s decision support tool for systems thinking supports people and organisations to apply systems thinking to their own work. We also highly recommend their list of resources and community of practice!
- In “A Quadruple Aim for system stewardship: How can we tell if we are effective system stewards?”, Sarah Mourney of Commissioning NSW describes a framework being tested to help stakeholders better reflect on their work and embed a stewardship approach.
- The Australian Taxation Office’s “systems-led design guide” is a tailored guide and playbook, providing insight into how the ATO brings a systems-led perspective to the way they design and embed change.
- CPI, Lankelly Chase, the RSA and Beverly and Etienne Wenger-Trayner collaborated develop a book – Systems Convening: A crucial form of leadership for the 21st century. This research captures interviews with 40 systems conveners from around the world, featuring portraits of these individuals to illustrate the work of systems convening in practice.
- Human Learning Systems has a treasure trove of case studies, featuring examples of Human Learning Systems approaches from all over the world.
- Through examples of health & social care in Scotland, Dr Ailsa Cook explains how complex problems require complex approaches to measurement. Her position paper – Outcomes Based Approaches in Public Service Reform – is a comprehensive review of literature and current-state practice, combined with practical recommendations for the future.
- The Joint Improvement Team’s Talking Points Framework is a personal outcomes approach. It classifies the outcomes important to individuals into three broad categories: quality of life; process; and change.
- Old Fire Station has produced a guide to using storytelling to evaluate impact – which details the Storytelling Methodology, and the 7 steps to storytelling.
- The Sensemaker software program captures a large number of brief narratives that are interpreted by the people telling the story, using dimensions defined by the implementer. Check out their use cases!
- BetterEvaluation is a global community aimed at improving evaluation practice and theory through co-creation, curation, and sharing information. The Australian Evaluation Society is another great community, which offers regular seminars and other resources.
join our community of practice
Our Community of Practice is a forum for conversations over the course of the webinar series, as well as a chance to build new relationships with like-minded people passionate about reimagining government. Content in webinars will be brought to life, with interactive sessions, conversations and networking opportunities.
Join us as we reimagine government.
