Sprint 1 - Introduction to Societal Model

Sprint Objective – To appreciate Societal Thinking and the Societal Model, arrive at a big question, and identify friction to orchestrating change at scale, with speed, sustainably.

Changes around us have always been exponential – compounding and cascading. We see this in evolution – the Big Bang leading to the world as we know it or the rapid infusion of oxygen during the Cambrian Period sparking a rapid increase in diversity of species on Earth. We see this across history – from the way simple tools in the Stone Age triggered more and more innovation to now, our interconnected world, thanks to the Internet. We see this in social movements – how an idea spreads across communities, leading to a new state of society. We see this in nature too – seeds that rapidly spread and sprout far and wide, birds following simple shared rules to come together in beautiful formations.

When studied, these changes and phenomena revealed similar patterns – how shared tools and resources enable faster and contextual innovation, how many make an idea or innovation their own, add to it, and how collaboration around such ideas leads to exponential change. It evoked a question: Since today’s problems are exponential, can they be addressed with exponential change?

While co-travelling with change leaders on a quest to solve big problems such as enabling access to education, reimagining climate resilience in communities and more, many of the same patterns resurfaced. Along the way, these patterns were organised as Societal Thinking – a systemic approach to reimagine and realise exponential change. To apply Societal Thinking, its four core components need to be appreciated – the Societal Model and related mindset shifts, Core Values and design principles.

What is the Societal Model?

While analysing and organising the patterns observed, it became clear that they were not just emergent or coincidental, but could be proactively designed for. To do so in a deliberate and thoughtful way, the Societal Model – a framework to practise Societal Thinking – was developed

The Societal Model is a framework to design:

Societal networks – to amplify the benefits of solutions co created by civil society, government and markets Co-creation ecosystems – to innovate / co-create context responsive solutions and meet diverse societal needs Open infrastructure – to build a foundation of narrative, policies, technology, and resources as a public good

The Societal Model is not a prescription or a silver bullet, but a scaffolding for exploration that supports us as we design for exponential change. Designing with the Societal Model enables:

• Radical adoption – civil society, government and markets working together to reach all

• Contextual innovation – many actors coming together to co-create diverse solutions

• Shared capabilities – building blocks others can reuse to solve faster and at lower costs

Reimagining Education Leadership

To better appreciate the sprint journey, we are following the story of how ShikshaLokam has been developing 4.5 million education system leaders in India. For this sprint, we will illustrate how ShikshaLokam arrived at their big question and surfaced the friction they may face in solving the education leadership challenge at scale, with speed and sustainably.

Having set their sights on developing the leadership skills of 10,000 school principals and education officials with NILE, the ShikshaLokam team began deliberating the best way forward. As they brainstormed setting up NILE as a typical institute for in-person training, they realised that though they would be able to facilitate quality training, India had 4.5 million education system leaders. If they wanted to enhance education leadership at scale, going the NILE way would take them 5,000 years!

Curious to learn more about the leaders already in the system, the team visited schools and met these leaders. They found that despite time and budget constraints, some leaders were able to leverage their agency to drive improvements that were simple enough to squeeze between their commitments and small enough to lead without needing more resources. These leaders, they noticed, had a stronger muscle to create change. Thus, the idea that leadership is the ability to exercise agency to make continuous micro-improvements emerged. This led ShikshaLokam to re-frame their big question from “How do we augment leadership in 10,000 principals and education officials?” to “How might we enable 4.5 million school leaders to drive continuous micro-improvements in their contexts across 1.5 million schools?”

With the objective to reach 4.5 million school leaders, the ShikshaLokam team knew they had to bring the salience of education system leadership to the attention of the education system in India. They had to rally an ecosystem of actors to co-create solutions with, as well as, offer new and existing education leaders pathways to learn and improve. However, many types of friction existed towards this:

• Few actors across civil society and government took heed of leadership development. In 2017, ShikshaLokam hosted an all-partners meet where only 20 actors came from three organisations.

• While a few knowledge assets existed, they were context-intensive and could not be abstracted and used by others. This was not conducive to co-creation as everybody had to start from scratch.

• Education policy had no mention of leadership and funder interest was low. Further, there was no driving narrative on leadership or a digital backbone to enable discovery, sharing and reuse.

Upon reflection, the ShikshaLokam team found that the friction they were facing stemmed from deeply held beliefs – by them, by the ecosystem actors and the system at large. This led them towards identifying and embodying the beliefs that could better align the ecosystem… More in the next sprint!

Now to Prepare for Our Sprint Together… Please reflect on these questions from your perspective.

• What does scale mean? Why think about scale now? What are some current scale limitations?

• What does speed mean? Why is speed important now? What are some current speed bumps?

• What does it mean to sustain change? Why is it important? What is it difficult to sustain change?