Weeknotes - as published on Medium

I’ve always been one to blog, but it’s been now and then when something bothers or excites me, and I have something to say about it. Check it out. I reckon I need to hone this skill and share more regularly. Taking inspiration from Cassie Robinson. and my colleague at The Children’s Society with her Friday ‘fluffy egg’ e-mails, I’ve seen how it can help both communicating what I’m learning, but also in help me actually reflect on what I’m doing. I’ve also just read Jenny Vass’s What (on earth) are Weeknotes — which I would advise reading if you’ve still question marks above your pretty little head. I’ve been told I go at a hundred miles an hour and need to recalibrate my action vs reflection balance. So I’m going to aim to do this every week or every couple of weeks, trying not to make a religion out of it — because then it becomes a mundane task and I really want it to have meaning. This as also been published on medium, well, because everyone uses that.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO

I kicked off the week with breakfast with my friend Ché Ramsden, Innovations Manager at Amnesty International UK. Apart from us gurgling about her little one and sharing about how innovation and ‘test and learn’ is working in our respective organisations, we spoke about the wider innovation community in the sector — and how we would love to do more sharing and learning across it (see more on this later). Hopefully soon we will look at setting up another innovation community meet-up. Watch this space.

As part of my role at The Children’s Society (TCS), I manage a groundbreaking partnership with Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV), in which social tech ventures are sponsored and supported by TCS on the 13 week accelerator programme. I’ve been doing this for 2 years now and I can honestly say it’s probably the best part of my job. BGV has just recently moved into a new co-working space in Whitechapel, alongside companies like Centre for Acceleration Technology (CAST) and a number of other well known start-ups.

I must just go on a tangent for a second here to say how inspired I am not just by this co-working space — but by the vision of the founders. Yearning to create something more imaginative and meaningful than classic co-working, ex-corporate lawyer Rupert Dean and property designer and developer Phil Nevin decided to think greater than the daily grind. The duo became obsessed with the notion of ‘Why’. Why do we do what we do? Why does it matter? And what is the formula behind happy and successful business? I feel this mindset is what makes the difference — we should all be driven by asking these questions of ourselves on a daily basis. For Phil and Rupert, all answers pointed to purpose:their mission became to unite, inspire and amplify purpose-driven businesses. I feel like I need to applaud!

A couple of days this week was spent finalising and kicking off my workplan for a new set of commissioned work for an Academy Trust in South London. I say I do things like this in my spare time but I don’t really have any spare time! I’ve just finished a consultation and business case for the Trust — about the inclusion of a sixth form in one of their secondary schools. I’ve never done that kind of work before so it was great to help them out as they put the case to the DfE, and learn something new in the process! I’m terribly excited about the next phase of work, which involves me digging deeply into my fundraising skill pockets. More on this in the coming weeks.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

We are just over halfway on the BGV accelerator, now focusing on investors and partnerships — my favourite part of the programme. If myself and the teams learned one thing from the ‘what makes investors tick’ session, it was that every single investor is thinking about exactly the same thing: RISK AND REWARD. And our job, is to show them how these two balance. We discussed in depth each type of investor and how they tend to give. Ventures Capitals, Angels, Crowdfunding, Corporates, Grant givers like Trusts and Foundations. But for all these, your research into them is going to be most important. All investors will usually publish an investment thesis / approach / mandate which gives you the information about the risks they’re willing to take and the rewards they’re looking for. Always, always — Ask questions first and pitch second. And for those that have been turned down at some point, investors also get it wrong. Bessemer Venture Partners, for example, have published their anti-portfolio. These are investments they declined, each of which they had the opportunity to invest in, and each of which later blossomed into a tremendously successful company. The likes of which include AirBnB, Apple, Ebay and Google.

The Children’s Society is also finalising our Digital Fund application to the National Lottery Community Fund. I know I am not alone in feeling that the journey on this one has been frustrating. After being told we had moved into the second phase of applications by e-mail — and that somebody will be in contact — we waited 2 months…2 months of chasing to get a phonecall in to look at next steps. When finally we got the phonecall in the diary, we were told we had one week to turn the full proposal around to get to the July panel. Having dealt with NLCF before on many occasions — this, in fact, did not surprise us. And luckily, we had already embarked on detailed user and design research for our proposal. ALso, to be fair to the Lottery, this fund is in its essence, a ‘test and learn’ activity. They’ve never done this before, and as with us, are still learning about how it could work better.

The Children’s Society is in an interesting space in this regard. We have acknowledged that this path to true transformation will require a lot of hard work, organisational commitment, senior leadership and trustee buy-in and investment investment investment. As one of my colleagues who will hate to be named, stated: “If we look at it starkly — at the organisational level, we have made little progress in making the fundamental changes necessary to enable basic good digital practices by default. Our specialist design capacity is siloed, our investment in digital is not remotely proportional to the scale of the challenge, and we are structured in such a way that discourages multidisciplinary working. We might think we are doing the right thing, but we aren’t yet doing it well, and we aren’t moving at pace”.

However, my colleague is a recovering perfectionist. I think deep down there is optimism and we all feel that our movement is in the right direction. We are highly focused on systems change (addressing the root causes of social problems, which are often intractable and embedded in networks of cause and effect) and are training and encouraging people to test and learn in this space. We are growing our approach to service design and digital through our practice base (frontline practitioners and policy advisors). We are embedding agile and lean start-up working practices in parts of the organisation (I’ve written another blog about this)— and it’s all working. But it’s working fairly slowly. And commitment it patchy. Perhaps knowledge is patchy too. Maybe it comes back to that “why” question. Why do we do what we do? Why does it matter? For Phil and Rupert from X+Why it was “what is the formula behind happy and successful business?” For us it’s more like “what is the formula behind a strong charity making change for young people?”

We have some of the answers and others will emerge the further we build. I’ve been encouraged reading Digital Transformation at Scale alongside other books / resources to fill my mind with this stuff and see how it’s being done elsewhere. The launch of a large-scale digital transformation programme in national government led by the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2010 set the standards for digital ways of working in the public sector (being launched this July for ALL government services, not just digital ones — basically now, all public facing transactional services MUST meet the standard). These standards, building on 10 underlying design principles, demand that new services — whether developed internally or by external suppliers — implement fundamental good practices. These include:

• understanding user needs,
• doing user research,
• having multi-disciplinary teams,
• iterating and improving
• testing the end-to-end service

New digital services are assessed against these criteria and are not allowed to launch until they pass. My colleague Adam Groves (who I would highly recommend following) stated this in an internal memo: “As a result of GDS’ work, the UK government rapidly came to be recognised as a world leader in digital services. Moreover, what started as a change at national government is increasingly being taken to local government. Authorities such as Croydon, Hackney, Essex, Brighton and Camden are applying the lessons from GDS into their contexts. This includes the development of a Local Government Digital Service Standard. Just as the national standard began with digital services but will now apply to whole services, we might expect a similar shift at the local level. That is certainly the aim of those who are driving this agenda”. We hope to see this approach sweeping the charity sector soon.

WHAT WE CELEBRATE

Spent the day on Wednesday at the Impact Hub in Birmingham with our very own Innovation Community — about 30 people from across the organisation who are innovating: affecting change across systems and tackling problems for young people in new ways. We also had all of the practitioners on our systems changers programme in attendance (see what they are learning).

We talked about digital disruption, capturing change and learning for innovation, service design with young people in mind, case clinics and action learning sets for problem solving.

I was super duper proud of my team — the seedlings of the innovation community from fundraising and supporter engagement perspective — who put together a really engaging exercise around one of our ‘in development’ Christmas fundraising products. They gave people the opportunity to do some assumptions testing and think about how they would do a quick and early stage prototype to test the assumption with only £100 in hand.

We also had Imandeep Kaur from the Impact Hub, who helped facilitate our systems changers programme, talk, and thoroughly inspire the group.

One of the best development days I’ve had in a long while — and as I said earlier, one which I hope we can open up further.

MY NEXT WEEK

I’m excited for London Tech Week. I look forward to this every year. I’ve booked into a number of events including:

• AND Chat: Five Common Challenges In Agile Transformation (by AND Digital)
• Innovations, Tech and Espresso Martinis (Taylor Vinters)
• Capgemini’s Ethical AI discussion: what it means for you and your customers and how to address it
• Techfest Main Stage: Tom Cheesewright | High Frequency Change

The other big thing going on this week is the ‘download session’ on our mapping of the challenges in the systems focused on mental health. We’ve spent out time doing discovery research into these systems, the challenges and key issues — and then where best we feel The Children’s Society and partners can make a difference.

It’s been unwieldy at best — and for someone that likes things neat, cut and dried — I’ve had to put my OCD in my pocket. Having now done our first ideation session, we will be looking at the additional lines of enquiry generated, the list of solutions and how the group thought we could prototype and test these and readying of R&D propositions to take to market off the back of this.

Lastly, pretty psyched for a session being run for our Supporter Engagement senior leaders on Wednesday by a guy called Rob Woods who founded Bright Spot Fundraising. People who know me know I’m pretty cynical about this stuff in general — but this looks positive. It looks practical and interactive. These sessions have been designed to help senior managers understand and embody leadership behaviours aligned with The Children’s Society’s Supporter Engagement approach and will be based on The Three Keys To Supporter-Focused Leadership, the research report Rob created for the Commission on the Donor Experience.

The three themes are vision, people and culture. The memo says: “Rob will explain the areas in which over many years he has noticed the way that excellent leaders do things differently to others. Using real examples and stories Rob will bring these to life and, as a group, participants will explore which of these tactics they’d each like to test in their own work”. Groovy.

Mythbusting "Agility"

Discussing agility in charities, especially larger, more traditional charities is tricky. My mind is a bit of a haze on this topic. It’s a sticky subject. 

Having just read that under one third of agile projects in charities are failing because the teams are too geographically dispersed, while 34% have failed because the teams didn't plan before getting started or didn't plan sufficiently as the project developed – doesn’t fill me with hope. 

Especially when you have more than half of Chief Information Officers in the UK thinking that the agile methodology is just a fad.

Agile Working or Agile Development Methodology?

I mean, what even, is agility? Conversations I’ve had about agility either focus on flexible, remote working or on a methodology that promotes iterative working. And most of them just focus on agility in the IT space, not on greater business transformation.

Non-Traditional Project Management

In light of these challenges, let’s pull the strands apart and examine more closely:

Charities, especially larger ones, struggle with working in silos. These are often age-old structures, derived from teams with particular remits that aren’t allowed or don’t want to work outside of their job. My work across different charities has led me to often hear “why is that team doing that, it’s not their job, it’s ours”. 

Agile, by its very nature, is an alternative to traditional project management that brings job functions together with more focus and purpose. It empowers people across the organisation to collaborate, make decisions and develop everything from the customer’s point of view.

Non-Traditional Budgeting

Budgeting becomes a challenge when all budgets are allocated to teams rather than to plans or programmes of work, which utilise virtual teams to achieve outcomes. Budgeting in this way reinforces the silos and it then becomes tricky to share resource. Budgeting in this way requires a different way of thinking and although I feel many senior leaders ‘get it’, there’s a real struggle to make it real, to make it happen. To bite the bullet. Reverting back to the way things have always been done, is safe. Agility requires a bit of risk taking.

Definitions are important

Perhaps it is important to define to the organisation the principles behind agility – what it looks like in practice – and what it is not. Agile is about evolution and collaborative experimentation. It’s about trust. When it is explained and communicated, tangible examples of how it works and how it could work in context should be provided. Every time. People need to see behind ‘the jargon curtain’ to a simple approach that works.

It’s also about user stories being at the centre of the adoption of agile. 

Nor is it "working from home" or working without structure...

I was recently speaking to a friend of mine in the civil service. I mentioned that people think agile working only means working from home rather than being in an office – and taking advantage of that fact! This example sits on the long list of reasons why it’s important to understand what agility means. Agility is not an unstructured project without a beginning and end. This notion, in fact, puts the term in danger of becoming a maligned buzzword in financial circles, because of the connotations that ‘make it seem very difficult to budget for’.  

My friend wisely replied to my statement by saying “agile isn’t flexible or unstructured. Agile in user centric.” He said that he feels charities are falling apart because they are not learning about their customers and iterating on their offer.

It's user-centred

Dan Sutch, director at CAST, highlights how agile can work well for charities:  “One thing that agile approaches really push is the focus on user-value (or user behaviour). Within the charity sector it is vital that this focus is pushed/reinforced as it’s so crucial to ensure their expertise is presented in ways that actually get used.” So if your charity supports vulnerable people, for instance, agile could be a useful way to put yourself in your audience’s shoes by understanding what they want and need.

Agile changes how people think and behave

It’s very interesting to see how even the most traditional-thinking staff from all parts of charities react when they start to take this agile philosophy on board. Suddenly they start to think in a much more integrated and flexible way. They gather user stories. They do user acceptance testing. And most interestingly of all they do all this even though it isn’t an official part of their job, which is exactly the kind of engagement that is required to achieving business transformation.

In the end it's about leadership

In all my research, I came across a brilliant quote from Jim Bowes, CEO of digital agency Manifesto. I think this sums up nicely what I have been trying to get at – but failing possibly to articulate. Jim does it really well: “In my experience it’s not any specific methodology that causes the success or failure of projects within charities – it’s much more likely to be whether a good vision has been set, that clearly relates to organisational goals and whether the right team is in place to realise the project.”

Haze dissipated.

Kirsten is a guest authour on the Tech For Good Hub, where this post was originally published.

Gambling with Our Data: Black Box Bellagio

I spent last weekend at Nesta’s Future Fest. Every year it continues to blow my mind. Bringing together thousands of people interested in an alternative reality, as Nesta says “looking for a different story” one that is desirable, plausible and able to connect past, present and future”. I strongly believe that people’s beliefs about their ability to shape or control their destiny strongly depicts whether or not they thrive or just survive. This year we looked at the fragility of nature, the brokenness of politics, sex, race, gender in robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what I’d like to touch on in this blog, the challenges of data sovereignty.

I found an empty space at the blackjack table within the darkened ‘Black Box Bellagio’. This transforms what we know as a casino, into something unusual. “Take a seat at one of our playing tables and place your bets at Social Strip Poker (not sure the stripping actually happened, thank the good Lord), Best-Bet Blackjack, or maybe Risky Roulette”. Instead of money, your personal data becomes currency. “Play with the (un)fairness of expected values and chances, predicted risks, and giving up your identity” states the house. This and recent articles I have been reading on big data have led me to reflect on my concerns about data handling.

The data industry is one which has massively exploded in recent times. You will hear people talking about ‘big data’ being used to improve systems, improve customer experience and have better tailored services and products for clients. Overall it is a near-essential for any company in this day and age. The collection and use of all this data is what will be driving AI and machine learning. Indeed, even 'The Economist' agrees in a recent article about AI that “the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.”

I was watching a TED talk yesterday. Dina Katabi talked through how vital signs can now be monitored by wireless signals. Data on breathing, heartbeat, sleep and even impending cardiac arrest and other chronic diseases can be collected, analysed and provided to an individual or health care professional without the needs for probes, censors or intrusive data collection methods.

In my line of work, what would data look like for the safety of young people? How does it fit into the notion of a smart city where data from multiple sources and agencies is layered and mapped to give a more detailed reflection of “the whole picture”? Gathering and sharing the latest and most accurate information on cities and where trouble occurs exposes recognisable ‘trends’ in incidents that can be better prepared for and faster responded to. SafeStats’ recent work around ‘hotblocking’ is case in point: a crime mapping method showing where the risk of violent street crime is highest. Making optimal use of shared data from Ambulance services and A&E departments the Met police were provided with clarity about where and when particular police activities should be targeted so as to maximise efforts to cut violent crime. The Children’s Society, working with a number of partners, is exploring how this might work to link up victims, perpetrators and common ‘hotspots’ of exploitation, thereby enabling disruption of common exploitation and trafficking networks.

Data quality will also become increasingly important. There will always be, and increasingly so as we walk into the future, a need for roles which ensure data quality – people who possess the skills and assets to collect, clean, consolidate, store and analyse the data. This is the only way we can truly ensure that we as humans, and our AI counterparts, are making educated decisions.

When it comes to data, privacy is understandably a major concern. How do we as members of the public understand how our data is being used and handled and how will it be regulated. I guess the first test is GDPR (if you don’t know what this is after the thousands of e-mails you have received on the 24^th May 2018, then you need to do something drastic like go to specsavers). This will be an early indicator of how companies are able to comply with this legislation and no doubt demonstrate how effective legislation is or can be with tackling non-compliance. If anything, it has given people like me a huge opportunity to clean up existing personal data.

It is a common fact that Facebook uses algorithms to track our behaviour. But what these algorithms do, or when they are around, is commonly unknown. Still, we are being held responsible for our own knowledge. In this imposed state of insecurity, all our options seem to be untrustworthy. What is good and what is evil?

The Economist, in its report, makes the point that the current outlook is “likely to be between utopia and disaster”. Doesn’t fill me with much hope, or doom either. I believe that as the likes of companies like DigiMe and ArchiveSocial which help to unlock the power of your data, grow, we will be able to build new rules which are featured around the individual as the central decision point for sharing and protection. True data sovereignty. Many of these issues I have highlighted can be tackled if we decide to address them immediately and with significant legislation and frameworks to provide boundaries within which to work and operate safely.

As for my stakes at the Black Box Bellagio? Let’s just say I lost my ability to maintain data sovereignty when I lost to the house. The impending result being I had to ‘like’ a facebook page randomly selected by the Croupier. I wasn’t as unlucky as getting Britain First or some kind of neo-nazi group page as some people did, but I did have to like Gary John, Flat earth conspirator. Perhaps someone Nesta could engage with for next year’s Future Fest? *pops note onto suggestion wall

Tech Me Up: harnessing tech to help young people

Growing up in South Africa, poverty and unemployment were the norm. Young people dropped out of school to join gangs; violence and drug addiction were part of a lot of the daily routine in many communities, many young people were exploited, abused and neglected - just as in millions of communities around the world where the future seems dim.

Working in the children and family arena for many years in Britain, and helping some of the most disadvantaged families and young people, I have realised that although the location may differ, these young people, too, have plenty to block out.

For at-risk young people experiencing multiple challenges in their lives, there can also be huge gaps in the support they receive. Services may be unable to identify the different issues or engage effectively across them. Reductions in public spending mean fewer services are available with rising thresholds to access support. Opportunities are missed for earlier intervention for the most vulnerable young people. This leads to problems escalating and lasting negative outcomes that have a devastating effect on young people as well as a detrimental and costly impact on wider society.

But with the advent of social media, I observed an alternative addition of youth – their obsession with technology. A double-edged sword. It has opened pathways for, and opportunities to grow networks and connections. It has provided a gateway to quicker, easier and more diverse sharing of experience, information and knowledge. At the same time, it has opened the door for exploitation, bullying, a very transient and disingenuous sense of “friendship”, and an overload of information/communication that can actually compound the sense of isolation some young people feel.

My curiosity about this led me to wonder how we can harness the hope and stickiness of technology to help young people overcome challenges in their lives.

Tackling social problems requires a plethora of services and resources that many low-income communities don’t or can’t access. And technology is no silver bullet. Yet, as improbably as it sounds, its beginning to build bridges for young people from despair to hope. In my time on the tech scene, I’ve seen at least three ways that technology is breaking social stigmas caused by poverty and helping and empowering young people to see themselves as part of the solution to challenges facing their communities.

Accessibility

Many vulnerable young people are full of potential but can face huge barriers to thriving where they are exposed to risks, live in challenging environments, and experience adversity. Yet too often, seeking help can be perceived as a weakness or debility – so many young people avoid it, even if it’s free and on their doorstep. We’ve seen an increase of accessible text based, online counselling services and apps, for instance. This offers young people a way to anonymously reach out to counsellors and therapists located in different places. This tech can also enable the professionals involved, to connect conversations behind the scenes to track progress and see trends in behaviour. The stigma of accessing counselling also decreases as more young people access these services.

Accessing advice and information is also becoming easier as tech like chatbots take flight, enabling young people to access specifically tailored information and advice at any time of day, which replicates the human interactions without the associated costs. Ally is a prime example of this, a chatbot connecting young people to relevant and tailored information about housing, benefits and employment. Next step will be connecting it to voice assistants.

Connectivity

Just as technology can build connections between young people and the help they need, it can also connect them to helping others. Job shortages in a community don’t imply a shortage of work that needs to be done. A great example where technology has inspired young people to help others is by web-based platforms where young people area able to share their skills and expertise with others via volunteering opportunities – while being connected with local job or work experience opportunities to allow them to build profiles and experience that recruiters can access.

Upskilling

Just as technology coupled with the right content in the hands of young people can be exceptionally beneficial, so too, for the people working with these young people. ‘EdTech’ like e-learning platforms, can enable a much wider scale of upskilling across shorter periods of time. Traditional face-to-face training models are often expensive, arduous and time consuming, so blended models  of delivery (online and offline) seem to be a lot more popular these days. These platforms allow many people to be trained to better support and work with young people, from better understanding how to spot the signs of many of the challenges they might be facing (like the Children’s Society’s Seen and Heard e-learning platform which helps health professionals better spot the signs of sexual abuse and exploitation) to tools which they themselves can use with young people during one-to-one or groups sessions (like Mind Moose, a web platform aimed at building resilience in young people).

These are all interesting and creative ways in which tech can be used to better support young people with multiple vulnerabilities. 

Inspiring courage through change

One of my best friends from primary school recently posted a very insightful blog on the seven ways to inspire courage through change. A change maker, wellness junkie and a worker for happier, healthier teams, she has become one of my go-to gurus for inspiration into how to create, embody and be an exemplar for cultural change within organisations.

In her blog, she clarifies:

"Some people may think of bravery when we say the word courage. But don’t confuse the two. Bravery is the ability to face something that has the potential to harm us without any feeling of fear. It allows us to seem bigger than the crisis, whether we are more powerful than the situation or not. It is the absence of fear.

Courage, on the other hand, is very different. It is the ability to undertake an overwhelming difficulty despite the presence of fear. It is about stepping up, taking risks, moving towards something no matter how much you want to stay back and hide. It is about seeing past the negatives, even though you know they are there".

What leaders often fail to realise is that their people don’t need to be brave to face change. They need courage. There needs to be an acknowledgement that it is scary to go through change. It is particularly frightening facing the possibility of failure. But if leaders establish a culture where employees are inspired to be courageous, they not only engage employees, but they heighten their chances of succeeding in creating change.

Key to these are the following ingredients, which she talks about at length - and which I personally love because they are so fresh-faced and honest:

1. create an atmosphere of trust - nobody has all the answers

2. allowing employees to fail and celebrate the effort

3. understand what connects people to the cause

4. be a courageous example

5. create an atmosphere of trust - resilience is built through connection with others

6. create points of certainty

7. have fun!

She closes with the following statement: "Courage doesn’t eliminate fear, it answers it. After all, fear is an emotion and courage is a choice".

Have a read of the full blog, connect with her on social: @luisawing - well worth a follow

Trailblazing in the dark: Change in the Social Sector

I've just watched a Bear Grylls special in which he dumps 10 celebrities on an island and they have to survive. Yawn. It did, however, strike me that a lot of what they went through in their first days on the island was very similar to the early days myself and colleagues spent embarking on a trailblazing journey of change (survival) in the social sector.

Working in the social sector you often hear people throw the following terms about: ‘disruption’, ‘innovation’, ‘acceleration’, ‘incubation’ (ad nauseum). These are nice big words – but - when the nose hits the grindstone and the reality of limited human resource, budget constraints, time limitations and increasing pressure to be ‘lean’ or ‘efficient’ and do your utmost to eliminate ‘waste’ sets in, the space for free and open thinking often disappears.

Recently I was having an informal cup of coffee with another colleague who works for a large charity. We were sharing tips and tricks on what we have found works – and what didn’t work so well. Having been through a journey of working with a number of agencies in this space and having hands on experience of seeing first-hand what might work and what not, I decided that it might be beneficial to share this with the wider world. Most of it is common sense, but the application is critical.

Here are some of the things I have learned on my journey:

• It is imperative that any structure that is set up to disrupt or innovate within the social sector is given authority and autonomy to ‘go out and do’. There is nothing worse for stifling creativity than adding onerous processes, hoops and hierarchical governance structures.
• Further to this, I can’t say enough for operating as a ‘flat structure’. The chain of command should be short and the span of control, wide. This allows for better communication, accountability and transparency, sharing of work, less bureaucracy and easier decision making, reduction of cost – and my personal favourite – better team spirit.
• It should be external facing. Organisations can become so internally focused, wound up in knots by politics and relationships which don’t necessarily add any value to their work. The idea is to start off by building networks in spaces which you don’t necessarily operate in, meet with ‘gatekeepers’ who can help you to build and expand those networks and find access to people with the right frame of mind, vision, skills and expertise to help you. I have found that people are generally very giving with their time and thoughtfully open with their ideas. All you have to do is ask.
• And on this note – social media is a powerful tool. The amount of positive responses I’ve received from people that I just tweeted or linkedin messages to ask for help, support and a ‘picking of brains’ is incredible. Don’t be afraid to be upfront with your request. There is a genuine openness to sharing and learning in this space.
• Don’t underestimate the importance of internal buy-in to your vision. Target influential people within your organisation, spend time building those relationships. A sense of ownership is crucial for driving change. The team tasked with innovating, accelerating, incubating etc. is merely a catalyst. You will rely on your influencers to champion your cause.
• Very often there is no or very little money attributed to functions within an organisation trying to create major change. Why build your own digital lab, for instance, when you can be equally as effective by forming a partnership with a digital accelerator with the skills and expertise you require to meet your aims – and - who would do all of that for you at minimal cost? Collaboration and partnerships are the way forward.
• Linked to the point above – be sure to build your networks, collaborations and partnerships with like-minded organisations, and across a variety of sectors. Don’t limit yourself to who your partners might be. ‘Shop around’ and give yourself time to be selective.
• Be outcomes focused. And keep them as simple as possible. You’ll suffocate innovation by focusing on the interventions you’re using rather than on the outcomes you want to achieve. Numbers of bums on seats (outputs) is far less important than whether the lives of those bums were changed for the better (impact)!

One of the best learnings, and the one I will conclude with, is that the journey is just as important as the goal. We learn and change so much en route, it is important to track that, map that and ensure we have some kind of record of how, where, what, when, why there were successes and failures. This is gold dust. Others will want to follow in your footsteps. As a trailblazer, make sure you cut a trail open and wide enough for them to do so. 

As one of the camermen on the celebrity island said to expedition leader Ollie Locke (of Made in Chelsea fame and looking fabulous in pink): "you've led us with a perfect balance of risk and caution".  Don't be afraid to hack away at the trail, but always keep in mind that you might be 1m from a cliff edge. I think I'm ready for your island, Bear.