Co-creating a Community of Practice for Government Learning in the 21st century Part 1: From “where next?” to “how, next?”

It was a fantastic Curiosity Incubator day at Jesus College, Cambridge, with colleagues from the Cabinet Office, Department for Education, Net Zero mission and the University Policy Engagement Network, co-discovering together what needs to be built for government learning in the 21^st century.

A key piece of the puzzle is the peer-to-peer learning that gets to the very heart of how we learn together what works, what to try, and how to try it. Our workshop was bookended by sessions with the National School of Government in Brazil (ENAP), sharing their experience in co-creating what a public policy and administration curriculum, research approach, and School needs to be to meet the steep challenges all around us.

They helped the group shape in a candid way the challenges and constraints as well as the opportunities in this work, how they had grappled with these, and what they had learned in the grappling.

One critical shift we identified, generated out of discussions before the workshop and during it, was: government learning in the 21^st century is also about moving from “where next?” to “how, next?”.

The mountaineering guide to the work of Government: not just where, but how?

Reflections from more than 10 years of work with ENAP on what is needed for learning in government, focused our co-creative discussions on the fact that much of what is produced for governments, by those not in government, whether it is by think tanks, research institutions, multilaterals or consultants, is reminiscent of the first image.

Staking out one specific destination (top of the mountain) and charting a clear, simple pathway to that destination, in an easy-to-understand way – similar to a campaign promise: x done by y time, to then be “delivered” through that clear and easy pathway (and naturally that pathway is specific to the interlocutor’s own theories and intellectual property, but we digress).

The problem with this is that governing, and government, in the 21^st century, is less about simple pathways, and more similar in experience to the second image: an unstable mountain beset by unpredictable weather patterns, unknown rock stability prone to avalanches, and with us needing to urgently decide which possible assent to try, with new and unfamiliar equipment.

So finding and learning with those who both know these mountains (the Place) and have scaled them multiple times (peer to peer co-learning), as well as the meteorologists, geologists, geographers and mountaineering experts (policy and subject matter experts, the learning impact and design teams, collaborators outside of govt with the ability to help or hinder the work) – this is closer to challenges and experience of the “doing” of work in government, right now.

Therefore, our learning and co-learning provisions, designs and approaches need to reflect and incorporate work on the “how” of “how, next”, with multiple modes, ways, and resources for co-discovery into continuous co-learning.

And it’s in the “how”, not just the “what”, that the success or failure of the work itself lies.

Next up: what does this mean for how we approach government learning? Stay tuned for Government Learning CoP Co-Creation Part 2!