How to shift towards co-creative governance?

Involving individuals in co-creative roles and orchestrating achievement of commonly agreed outputs (services, improvements, application of new methodologies) and outcomes (such as empowerment, integration, well-being) requires both wise service management and governance that differs from authoritative governance by rules and new public management governance based on predefined goals. Indeed, co-creating new services or service improvements requires a new perspective to service system governance.

As co-creation is a tool for service or social change, improvements and innovations governance to support it needs to be more conversational, collaborative and co-creative rather than heavily relying on management based on predefined goals (outputs), and measuring their achievement based on statistics and objective data. Such governance goes beyond reorganizing structures, issuing regulations or new financial measures and becomes rather an orchestration of conversations between stakeholders where they try to make sense about service intentions, roles and relations as well as their value. Co-creation requires governance that is reflective and open to learning. But how to get there?

We still need managers to generate clear goals, operational structures, plans, rules of engagement and allocate the resources required to deliver intended service outputs, so that individuals supported by the service may experience enhanced service value.

Yet, to know whether the intended or even unintended outcomes are achieved it is not enough to rely on qualitative, objective measurements. Sensemaking conversations with stakeholders and especially individuals supported by the service are needed to better understand their perceptions of generated service value. Such governance views that service value or desirable outcomes are rather deliberatively arrived or agreed in sensemaking conversations.

Sensemaking conversations also need to cover the roles of service professionals, other stakeholders and targeted individuals, including their abilities to contribute, desirable relationships as well as facilitative or hindering conditions.  For that service managers (and professionals) need to ask the following questions:

1. What is happening? What roles and values are experienced?
2. Are these roles, relationships, responsibilities and outcomes or service value what we intended (in terms of influence, power sharing, winners and losers, etc.)?
3. Do we still intend them, given this experience? Can this be improved? What is being done to address it?

Governing relational services involves an ongoing comparison between the values and principles embodied in the service intentions and the witness of outcomes which have taken place based on inclusive, reflective conversations.

PILOT EXPERIENCES: In the CoSIE project, it was common for service managers or even group of stakeholders to reflect based on questions 1-3 above. For example, in the Swedish pilot joined manager conversations were initiated to reflect about the value of co-creating social services with individuals with disabilities and what principles should guide co-creative practices. Furthermore, the dialogues allowed to reflect on manager identities and roles as change makers and facilitators in changing service culture among their staff.

Basically, governing of any system towards enhanced service value poses two governability requirements. Firstly, to ensure that governance is informed, which is done by asking questions 1 and 2 above. Secondly, to ensure that change can be put into effect, by asking question 3. For both of these tasks a combination of wise management and governance is needed.

Incentives

Additionally, to be able to co-create service changes and innovations (outputs) so as to enhance service intended values (outcomes) the service professionals’ incentives or willingness to act co-creatively are essential. While incentives are an individual choice, they can be affected by securing resources and support.  Yet, that is not enough!

CoSIE evidences that sensemaking together about needs, aims and roles in the service is one of the major reasons for enhancing service professionals’ and managers’ incentives to adopt more co-creative approach with the aim to enhance service value and meaningful change in the lives of individuals.

Elements of co-creative governance

Service management and governance affects what elements are activated to support co-creation culture. The CoSIE findings stress following contextual and processual conditions that may favor and improve the process of co-creation itself:

1. The creation of a multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial network of relevant stakeholders;
2. The production of new (either un-digital or digital) communication systems;
3. The development of new competences;
4. The articulation of new languages, comprehensive by all parties;
5. The formulation of coherent guidelines and their subsequent experimentation, by applying the methods and the approaches codified on different situations and with different stakeholders.

When these elements become patterns, they repetitively contribute or hinder in shaping the final result (outputs and outcomes) of the service improvement or innovation attempts.

Only if these patterns are institutionalized within the regular service process, a new co-creative governance may emerge, and as a result – co-creative culture will spring out of it.

Co-creative service innovations and improvements on a large scale and in other contexts are only possible if such new culture of governance is in place.

In sum, co-creative governance is such that is shaped by a conversational and reflective approach to who and how may participate (inclusive, asset-based, interpretative), methodology to explore service improvements (see Questions 1-3) and wise organization of supportive roles and resources. See more under “Co-creation cornerstones and challenges”.