Time for Enquiry 2.0

To understand how we should have acted differently in a past event, or how to handle a current challenge, public agencies often initiate investigations and evaluations. Based on these, we are supposed to figure out what went wrong in the past and how we can do things better in the future.

The purpose is thus twofold: first, to identify and understand the cause, and then to create a better solution. The first part generally works quite well. However, when it comes to creating better solutions, the investigations as they are conducted today offer little help. It's not uncommon for these reports to be perceived as outdated, insufficient, or difficult to implement when they are presented.

The result is that we find out what went wrong and who was responsible, and then we put the report in the infamous "drawer" and leave it there. In other words, the report is too backward-looking.

Yet, an investigation should also serve as a basis for forward-looking solution proposals. It's only in the final chapter that we find what is truly useful: the analysis and recommendations.

We therefore believe the time has come to investigate the investigations themselves, not in the traditional way, but openly and exploratorily, so that we can find new tools and methods that make it possible to conduct investigations in a more fit-for-purpose manner.

Fusion: Design and management consulting

In several projects, primarily through the StimuLab scheme*, Norwegian design agencies, in collaboration with management consulting firms, have been allowed to test new ways of driving development in the public sector. We at Halogen ourselves have greatly benefited from our collaboration with Rambøll Management Consulting.

The StimuLab scheme funds projects designed to solve challenges where multiple actors from different agencies must work across organizational and professional divides to achieve their goals. This work largely involves creating a solid and thorough understanding of the causes of the problems we observe—while ensuring that both problems and causes are viewed holistically. This is what we call a systemic approach to a problem or area.

The toolkit that has emerged as a result of the StimuLab scheme contains several methods that can contribute to developing the way we conduct public inquiries. Experience has shown that it is entirely possible, and highly expedient, to use a more exploratory, systemic approach when confronting challenges in the public sector.

In particular, we have very positive experiences involving both public employees and users in processes where we create solutions collaboratively. These co-creation processes, where an issue is illuminated and discussed from various perspectives, not only provide good insight but also create a strong foundation for the new solution among those involved. In this way, the ideas are already rooted in those who will take them forward. They own the problem and can more quickly begin the change work.

This way, we mitigate the risk of the report being put in a drawer, neither read nor used by those it concerns, as soon as the inquiry is completed.

More from the toolkit

With this type of involvement and mapping, it is our experience as designers in public administration that a systemic approach is absolutely necessary to document what is relevant and to orient oneself among pertinent findings.

A design process is by nature open. It doesn't limit itself to looking at a specific element in isolation. The process always starts with an open question, a wonder, or a hypothesis. We don't have the answer and are open to encountering new respondents along the way who might take the insight work in a new and unexpected direction.

To maintain an overview in such insight processes, we use "giga-mapping." This means we create large system maps where we visualize how different entities, relationships, processes, procedures, and technologies interact. The maps enable those involved to have productive conversations about causes and connections, and make it possible to navigate complexity. By having the visual map in front of us, so we can literally point out what we're talking about, we reduce the risk of assumed consensus and ensure that we are actually discussing the same issue. This makes the system map work of drawing conclusions and finding solutions easier. Perhaps most importantly, the insight is owned by everyone who contributed, regardless of role and organizational affiliation. Each individual's contribution is visible—and part of the whole.

Giga-mapping reduces the risk of assumed consensus, making each participant's contribution visible within the whole. Here is a gigamap from the work of reforming the Norwegian Public Roads Administration's driver's license system. Illustration: Halogen.

Are enquiries already working this way?

Proposing a new approach to inquiries is not unique to Norway. Michael Quinn Patton, former president of the American Evaluation Association, initiated Utilization-Focused Evaluation. One of the core values in his work is to be open at the outset of an inquiry. Quinn Patton emphasizes that if one limits the inquiry and sets boundaries for what will be investigated, there is a high risk of missing important insights. He recommends a method where questions are not predetermined but emerge as part of the evaluation.

This aligns with how designers work. Quinn Patton is clear that an initial hypothesis is a good starting point for an inquiry, because one knows where to begin and what one wants to achieve, but that we must be open and create space to handle the fact that we don't know how those involved will respond along the way.

Quinn Patton emphasizes that there are many ways to conduct inquiries. His method, he believes, can play a central role in innovation work, organizational redesign, service development, and in complex situations and crises.

Scientific management

Michael Quinn Patton is supported by two other Americans, David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone. In an article in the Harvard Business Review titled "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making," from 2007, they write that the time has come to expand our traditional way of understanding the world. We must apply the science of complexity. We must practice understanding complex situations, which, unlike simpler and more obvious situations, often have multiple correct answers and choices. In complex situations, there is usually not a simple and clear relationship between causes and effects. Leaders in the public sector need methods and tools that guide them through new and at times incomprehensible and unpredictable waters. A new type of inquiry and evaluation can be an important contribution in this context.

If we look at it simply and broadly, we can say that today's methods for inquiries and evaluations are based on the world being largely predictable and stable. This perhaps worked well during the heyday of "scientific management." Our inquiry and evaluation tradition has its roots in the time of Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor. Taylor's book "Principles of Scientific Management" was first published in 1911 and is considered the beginning of what we today call management consulting. The book has helped shape how we organize businesses, and also projects, for the last hundred years. The ideas signed by Henry Gantt, who was Taylor's student, are considered to have perfected project management. A clearly described and delimited project became an efficient way to frame tasks.

But things have changed radically since Ford, Taylor, and Gantt's time. In today's complex organizations, the linear project form has become increasingly challenging because situations are less and less linear. Challenges cut across organizational structures and disciplines. Solutions become difficult to implement across silos. Why should the National Police Directorate prioritize a task that only yields benefits for the Norwegian Directorate of Health? How can the Ministry of Justice prioritize making a painful change to their way of working to simplify life at UDI (Norwegian Directorate of Immigration)? Or to give a current example: How can one set up a delimited, linear project when the NAV scandal is to be investigated in all its multifaceted complexity? The answer is that it will not be possible. At least not if one wants to find both the root causes of the scandal and come up with good proposals for how to avoid similar incidents in the future.

It is precisely in such situations that a systemic approach can replace the traditional project. The system does not have clear boundaries or given flows and directions. It orientates itself organically and does not take into account silos, departments, and decision-making lines. The system is the whole.

The death of silo-based organisations

McKinsey, one of the world's largest consulting firms with almost 100 offices in 50 countries, published a report on the paradigm shift that businesses face today ("The five trademarks of agile organisations": 2017). The report states that today's silo-based, top-down organizations are too cumbersome. If we are to be able to adapt, handle global challenges, and adapt to new digital technology, organizations must be more agile. This does not mean that we should give up stability and control, but we must find new ways of maneuvering that are more dynamic than today. McKinsey actually goes so far as to bury the traditional hierarchical organization that has a penchant for linear, project-based work. Why? Because silos and projects set frameworks that limit effective performance in increasingly complex organizations. McKinsey compares future organizations to living organisms, organized as systems, that adapt and interact with their surroundings as appropriate, rather than how they are fixed to be organized.

Inquiries and evaluations are based on scientific methods, and typically shaped by the same project mindset that hierarchical organizations have traditionally used. In other words, it assumes that the inquiry is framed in advance. Often, inquiries are put out to tender, and consulting firms and research institutes compete for the assignment on equal principles.

The fixed form of an inquiry, with a clear problem description, verifiable methods, analyses, and conclusions, appeals to our need for control. It is safe and good, but in its current state, it only solves one part of the task, namely the description of what happened, in a satisfactory manner. It does not say enough about the actual reasons why it happened, and it poorly prepares the ground for new and better practices. Hence, many reports end up in the drawer.

Learning along the way

Back to the experiences and toolkit from the StimuLab scheme. One of the premises for receiving support from StimuLab is that projects must be open and experimental. Unlike a traditional inquiry or project, one cannot have decided the outcome in advance. This means that the projects can often be perceived as both chaotic and risky, so that the involved organizations must work on their ability to tolerate risk and accept that activities and proposals may fail.

The advantage of accepting that errors will occur, and daring to withstand the risk that not everything will go smoothly all the way, is that we can test concepts and proposals along the way. Moreover, we can test it on real users, whether we define the users as the bureaucrats working on the project, their clients, or the citizens who are ultimately affected. Such an approach allows us to see whether we are actually meeting their needs or not. In short, experimenting is about testing different concepts along the way, to finally choose the one that best answers the task.

Springboard for change rather than drawer fillers

If we agree that the challenges we face are cross-sectoral and complex, a systemic approach should be considered. We should broadly involve those affected, i.e., the users, and not least experiment and test hypotheses that emerge along the way.

We believe and hope that the positive experiences the public sector is now gaining with the StimuLab scheme will eventually influence how inquiries are commissioned and carried out. That the need to increase both the pace of change and the accuracy in public organizations also impacts how inquiries and evaluations are chosen.

We believe that if we dare to think innovatively, inquiries can become better springboards for developing the public sector of the future.