Exploring change and how to scale it

Pia Waugh – Pipka

This is a characteristically excellent post, examining in some detail both what it takes for change to succeed and, perhaps even more importantly, how to scale it.

The short answer is that if you want to change the system, you have to change the system. And to do that on the fifty plus year scale which is the level of ambition behind this post, requires rigour and discipline. Five questions are set out, including the two which are the most critical: what future do you want? And what are you going to do today?

Scaling from an idea of the future to systematic government and national level change can’t be done by exhortation – and simple observation suggests can only with the greatest difficulty be done at all. The recommendations here are an intriguing mixture of the very slow burn (supporting long term varied career development, to reduce aversion to new thinking) to the much more immediate (mandating the use of user research in funding bids).

All that still leaves the question of how best to start this whole process, but this is a manifesto of what should be done, or rather how it should be done; it doesn’t purport to be a set of instructions for making it happen.

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