Easier INC

The journey which led to naming Human Learning Systems began in Spring 2016 in a conversation between Dr Toby Lowe, an academic and former charity CEO, and Collaborate CIC, a social enterprise that supports collaboration as a route to tackling complex social challenges. 

Both Toby and Collaborate colleagues were frustrated by how dominant approaches to funding and performance management often prevent rather than enable effective responses to social issues. Work that we had undertaken previously had identified two related issues which seemed to underpin the problems with approaches to traditional funding and performance management: 

1. They pretended that the world was simple and predictable, when the reality is that the world, and each of our lives, is complex.
2. That funding and performance management sought to control the behaviour of staff, rather than building the trust on which effective collaboration depends.

We knew that complexity and trust seemed important, so we set out to explore what different could look like.

The first stage of exploration took place in 2016/17. We spoke with 15 funders and commissioners to discover how they were thinking and working in ways which responded differently to complexity. The findings were shared in A Whole New World. This report outlines how the outcomes we seek are created by complex systems, not single organisations, and the implications of this for performance management. It identifies the need to shift away from a dominant New Public Management approach based on seeking control, towards an approach based on trusting people’s intrinsic motivation, learning, and funders and commissioners taking responsibility for the overall health of the system.

Based on the significant interest in the first report, we then explored in more detail what complexity-informed approaches look like in practice. We convened multiple workshops with hundreds of people and created an online community of practice to surface examples of new approaches, help people identify opportunities to develop their own practice, connect peers to enable ‘collective bravery’, and to understand what support people needed to work in a complexity-informed way. The main ask for support was practical examples and tools. In response, drawing on many case studies from across the UK, we wrote the Exploring the New World report and named the approach Human Learning Systems to bring to life what effective practice in complexity looks like.

The story of HLS is a story of collaboration. It draws on the ideas, practice and energy of hundreds of communities, civil society organisations, public services, funders and others. You can find several case studies on this site, which seeks to bring together these different actors to share ideas, support each other, and collectively transform practice.

Today Human Learning Systems is a movement of people passionate about a new and better way of funding, commissioning and leading social change.

The Human Learning Systems collaborative brings together people and organisations who share the belief that Human Learning Systems is a better way to work. Each has their own story about what brought them here and how they see the potential. You can read these stories through the links below:

• COMING SOON: Sarah Gorman (Chief Executive @ Edberts House)
• Brendan Hill (CEO @ Concern Group)
• Matt Bell (CEO @ POP+)

We will continue to add to this section so come back soon!

We would like to thank the funders who have supported the development of HLS:

• The Lankelly Chase Foundation
• The National Lottery Community Fund
• The Tudor Trust