Governance and leadership: hosting, trust-based and facilitate

CoSIE evidence suggests that co-creative activities require different leadership and governance logic than in facilitated by a deeper understanding of assets, the learning approach and the governance that supports a reflective learning culture among the stakeholders. One major question is what kind of leadership is required for that? In addition, who may undertake such roles?

A symbiosis of wise management and leadership is needed to promote co-creation culture by “developing a learning culture”. This may happen by creating conditions for conversations and sharing of experiences from piloting developments (hosting, sensemaking leadership) and translating them into concrete measures of relevance to be agreed and implemented in broader service areas (management). CoSIE evidences that governing co-creation may imply that formal or informal leaders act as “hosting leaders” who create arenas and the dialogue climate, if needed with the help of facilitators, to support reflexivity, sensemaking and re-negotiation of roles, relationships, assets and tasks along the service development cycle (e.g. Swedish pilot). Such leadership builds on trust for stakeholder, service providers and individuals’ supported by a service knowledge and abilities but also a need for constant development and learning.

This also includes facilitation in clarifying service vision, sorting out priorities and supporting implementation of such innovations and improvements that are fund valuable for those people that are supported by the services.  It is helpful to initially define aims and methods to help structure the sensemaking and change conversations but without suppressing learning. Co-creation was found to be facilitated by the presence of an initial structured methodology, but simultaneously allowing flexibility and malleability in order to face diverse interests and exploratory actions by the participating actors. The leadership may thus contribute, on the one hand, to structure and share a common methodology among actors involved and, on the other hand, to face the unintended outcomes and to steer the potential transformations along the way. 

First-line and Senior Managers may undertake such roles (e.g. Swedish pilot). Using an advisory body consisting of several parties, such as a Consulting Committee (Italian case) may help to gradually eliminate the mental borders between the leading service professionals/managers and the civil society stakeholders involved. Governing co-creation requires such management and leadership that is capable to secure the right conditions for repetitive co-initiation, co-design and co-implementation activities, and in the next step combating major discrepancies in co-creation between social service areas.

«Among the key lessons should certainly be included the importance of creating a network capable of incorporating perspectives, skills and enhancement of the knowledge of all those who worked together in the project. Without reciprocity and building a common ground, the co-creation process would have had completely different results» (Italy’s impact report)

«Co-creation requires time, commitment and the change in attitudes in order to succeed» (Finland’s impact report).

Sometimes pilots called for a strong steering actor.  This is understandable because with multiple actors and no central hierarchical authority, it can seem that things move slowly with a tendency to more talk than action. On the other hand, co-creation inherently implies power and control that are dispersed between different agencies as well as between service providers and recipients. It is certainly demonstrated from CoSIE pilots that there needs to be an energetic and committed facilitator able to navigate multiple interests and hierarchies and span their boundaries. An academic partner, preferably with practical experience and action research profile, is seen as non-threatening and able to bring parties together acting not only as boundary spanner but also ‘boundary shaker’, shaping the nature of what is possible/desirable.

In the longer term, it will be necessary to embed co-creation within the normal procedures of service providers rather than rely on the dispositions and interests particular officials, who may move on. The challenges of multi-agency, cross sector working point to the need for innovations in governance that “burst the boundary’ of a single organization’s hold on a complex problem” (Moore and Hartley 2008: 15).

A good example is the Italian pilot where this was done very successfully by forming a ‘consulting committee’ and expanding its remit. Despite the rather modest name (consulting is not co-creation) this committee has real decision making powers involving a plurality of stakeholders (departments / units of the Local Health Agency, departments of the municipality, state schools, public libraries, for-profit businesses, and many civil society organizations). The Reggio Emilia heath agency intends to ‘institutionalise ‘it after the projects ends.