Case Study - LINC South Africa

8/13/2019 Case Study - LINC South Africa

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Case Study For Synergos

Vanessa Sayers, Reos PartnersMARCH 2013

The Leadership and Innovation

Network for Collaboration in

the Childrens Sector


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of my knowledge of the story of LINC is embeddedin this case. To acknowledge that I therefore holda particular perspective is an important interest todeclare up front in a study such as this. In order to

do what is possible to bring balance to this perspec-tive and increase the ground from which the casedraws, this experiential knowledge has been sig-nicantly augmented by a study of wrien materi-als created throughout the LINC process (includingmonitoring and evaluation reports, event reportsand reviews) and a series of interviews with ten keyrole players from the core team and fellows. A listof documents referenced and interviewees can befound at the end of the study.

This study does not claim to be the story of LINC,

because there are as many stories of LINC as thereare fellows and participants, however it providesa picture built from the views of people who werevery central in creating LINC and from a smallnumber of fellows from the the 3 cohorts whom itwas designed to support and benet. The intentionis that in drawing on these voices, a central (core?)story is told here.

The case is structured into the following chapters:

1. Fertile Ground and Sowers of Seed

Socio-political background,

Key initial role players

2. Creation and Growth

Creation

Growth

3. Fruition

Impacts: formal measurement and fellow/team perspectives

Challenges and responses

4. Looking back and forward

Lessons learned

Way forward

Conclusion

Glossary

Appendices

1. LINC Timeline

2. Stakeholder Group detailed descriptions

3. Sources

4. List of Interviews

The Leadership and Innovation Network for Chil-dren, LINC, was initiated in 2007 and today servesaround 100 fellows in the South African childrenssector. Its story to date is told on the following pag-

es: how it came to be, what it ended up lookinglike, its main activities, challenges, successes andlearning.

The story began with an idea about addressing thepotential crisis relating to children in South Africain the mid-2000s from a social entrepreneur (AnnLamont), who worked in partnership with a processspecialist (Mille Bojer of Reos) and an institutionalrepresentative with the mandate to support innova-tive work in the social sector (Barry Smith of Syn-ergos). From that base the initiative reached into

the key major stakeholders in the sector and gath-ered momentum and resources to be able to createa small core team and a set of facilitated spaces andservices to support the leadership in the childrenssector in ways that were appropriate to its needs.

As such the purpose of LINC only emerged overtime, but for the sake of oering a foundational corearound which the process can be explained, thepurpose of LINC as it was eventually articulated is:to enhance the leadership capacity of leaders in thechildrens sector to be more resilient, think systemi-cally and proactively collaborate; shift the nature ofinstitutional arrangements in the sector to enhancecohesion, collaboration and coordination; and cre-ate opportunities for leaders and their organisa-tions to innovate and provide solutions around keychallenges in the sector. This case aims to show

how that happened and what impacts it had.

Case Study Series

This research case study is one of ve cases com-

missioned by Synergos for the purposes of learn-ing and sharing, about programmes in which it hasplayed a key role, in its 25thanniversary year. Syn-ergos has been a consistent presence in LINC sinceits very beginnings, although that role has changedover time: Synergos is currently the organisationalhome for LINC in South Africa and it has been thelead organisation providing core support since ear-ly 2011.

Methodology

As a partner and then associate of Reos Partners, Iwas involved in LINC in a variety of roles includ-ing process design, facilitation and learning historywriting from late 2007 until 2010, as a result much

Overview and introduction


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The seeds for LINC the Leadership and Inno-vation Network for Children (which was ini-tially known as Leadership and Innovation forOrphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)) were

planted during 2006 in Gauteng, South Africa.To understand how and why LINC emerged inthe form it did, the story needs to begin with anunderstanding of what ground those seeds wereplanted in, who made the choice to plant themand why they chose to plant that particular kindof seed.

1.1 The ground: historical, political,social and economic contexts forthis initiative.

In 2006 South Africa was in the midst of an eco-nomic upswing along with the rest of the globaleconomy, the mineral resources which form thebasis for it being the largest economy on the Af-rican continent, were in high demand. This wasleading to the growth of a new wealthy blackelite and the small middle class was becomingincreasingly racially diverse.

However, pre-1994 apartheid policies had creat-ed inequality and massively underfunded educa-

tion, health, and social services for the majorityof the population. There had been and still weredeep economic divisions between geographic ar-eas where black communities had been relocat-ed, without running water, electricity or housingand the areas previously kept for white commu-nities being well served suburbs. South Africaremains one of the most unequal countries in theworld, vying with Brazil over the years, for hav-ing the worlds worst Gini co-efficient (a mea-sure showing the gap between the richest and thepoorest in society).

In an effort to address these massive inequali-ties, the ANC government was, by 2006, nearlya decade into a range of major programmes tobring vital social and basic economic services tomillions of people. Progress was positive butslower than many wanted. Meanwhile, the coun-try was plunged into a major health and socialcrisis of a nature and proportion without prec-edent. The HIV epidemic was embedded with-in a racially and economically unequal reality,demanding that urgent action be taken at largescale, which needed to be delivered through sys-tems which were still being or yet to be trans-formed and built.

Furthermore, HIV/AIDS was a highly political

Section I: The ground and the sowers

and politicised topic. President Mbeki, his ex-ecutive team and with them, the Departmentof Health, were not following global trends ormainstream scientific advice to implement a pro-

gramme to bring Anti-Retroviral (ARV) drugs tothe most effected populations.

Estimates for mid year 2007 fromActurial Society of 2003 model

HIV prevalence total population 11.40%

Total numbers of new

infections

5.5m

New Infection in 2007 512000

Life expectancy at birth 50.5

UN General Assembly Special

Indicators of level of response

% of those who needs ARVs

receiving it

33%

% of those who needPMTCT receiving it

30%

Table 1 gives model and census based statisticsas they were in 2007, provided by the HumanSciences Research Council, for the first majormeeting of the LINC initiative.

A battle was being waged between some of thekey policy makers and implementers in gov-ernment and many Civil Society organisationsaround the level of response. This battle wasboth very public and very intense with playerslike the Treatment Action Campaign leading le-gal battles and media campaigns in particular

around Anti-retroviral drugs roll out and the re-duction of prices of patented drugs or the right toproduce of generic drugs locally.

Only on World AIDS Day 2009, did the South Af-rican Presidency announce a significant changein government policy relating to the use anddistribution of Anti-retroviral drugs. This fol-lowed on a Constitutional Court challenge byAIDS NGOs that ended up forcing governmentto provide ARVs to pregnant women and theirchildren. The polic shift and increase in political

will has subsequentlyled to a significant improvement in the incidencempact of the virus, but that is another story.


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1.2 The sowers

The people who were originally involved in sow-ing the seeds of LINC into this ground were:

Ann Lamont: a social entrepreneur, an ex Moni-tor Consultant, who had at the start of LINC, juststepped back from running a South African educa-tion NGO called Mindset. She was a fellow in theSynergos Senior Fellows programme and a fellowof the African Leadership Initiative. These connec-tions and networks would prove vital in the seingup of LINC.

Mille Bojer: at that time a new associate with Gen-eron Consulting a specialised process consultancybased in the US, which was working with Synergosin India on the Bhaivishya Programme to addresschild malnutrition. Mille had previously run a so-cial innovation NGO called Pioneers of Change and

was looking for an issue and potential partnershipsto bring the U process and Change Lab methodolo-gies to bear in the South African context.

Barry Smith: then the Regional Director for Syner-gos in Southern Africa. He was working on a se-ries of programmes related to child health in the re-gion. In 2005 Synergos brought Oo Scharmer outto South Africa to co-facilitate its Senior Fellowsmeeting in the region.


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to provide a context for why LINC was focused anddesigned as it was and perhaps more importantlywhy three individuals believed that they could takeaction that could impact an issue as deep and wideas that of South African children aected by HIVand AIDS

Complexity and complex problemsA key insight into many of the major issues facingsocieties globally, is that the problems we now needto address are complex. Adam Kahane, uses thefollowing distinctions to explain the dierent waysin which this complexity shows up and how theyneed to be addressed:

Generative complexity, where the problem is un-folding in unpredictable ways and it is not straight-forward to solve with existing practices this requiresworking out solutions as the situation unfolds.

Social complexity where solutions depend on theinvolvement of diverse stakeholders with diverseand potentially conicting views, so no one partycan solve the problem, and responses must be par-ticipatory (so that the diverse voices and actors aredrawn in and become part of the solution).

Dynamic complexity where cause and eect areindirect and far apart in time and space, so a sys-temic view must be applied, taking account of theinterrelationships among the pieces and the func-

tioning of the system as a whole.Thus approaches to engaging with complex issuesneed to be iterative, participative and systemic. Themethodologies of Theory U and the Change Labaim to meet just these criteria:

Theory U

Theory U originally developed out of about 100 in-terviews with creative people over a few years.1Itoers an explicit methodology for a group (working

with a complex problem) to access its collective intel-ligence or wisdom.2 One of the key intervieweeswho contributed to the discovery of the U as an ap-proach, was W. Brian Arthur. He explains the needfor it as follows:

Operating in the new environment requires knowl-edge that does not stem from an abstract frameworkthat we apply to or impose on a situation, but froma knowing that emerges from the quietness of deepobservation and reection. To access this deepersource of knowingthe source of all true creativ-

1 See C. Oo Scharmers book, Theory U, for a de-tailed exposition of the process undertaken by Jaworskiand Scharmer in 19992000.

2 Hassan, Zaid. 2004. Te U: A Language of Regenera-tion.

ity and innovationand to use it as the basis foraction, one follows three steps: (1) total immersion:observe, observe, observe; (2) retreat and reect: al-low the inner knowing to emerge; (3) act in an in-stant: bring forth the new as it desires.

The U-Process therefore comprises three phases:sensing uncovering the current reality by expand-

ing and deepening awareness; presencing retreat-ing and reecting to enable individual inner know-ing as a foundation for collective commitment; andrealising generating a new reality through rap-id-cycle prototyping, piloting and the implementa-tion of breakthrough ideas. The U takes a groupon a detour, in order to develop new solutions toproblems of an apparently intractable nature. If aproblem has a more obvious solution, then this de-tour is not needed: If you already know what to do,then do it. (Arthur) The diagram below shows howthese three processes are organised in time, anddemonstrates why the approach is called the U:

The U-Process

I.Sensing

IReal

II. Presencing

Figure 8: The U-Process

The Change Lab

A Change Lab is a space carved out in physical spaceand time for social innovation to take place. It usual-ly brings the basic architecture of the U together withkey convening, relationship building and workshopbased activities and structures to draw on and in arelatively small number (usually 20 80) of stake-holders from dierent parts of the system concernedand begin to access some of their key personal ca-

pacities to support complex problem solving. Thisprocess can be held by a very small group of peoplewho are responsible for designing the space and theor elements of the process.


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Creation Process (3) Finding a good t

The assumption of the people who sowed the seedsof LINC, was that an approach grounded in anunderstanding of complex systems and based onU theory and other social innovation technologiessuited the problems of the Childrens sector be-cause they were complex in the three ways:

Generative complexity

In the initial interviews undertaken for the pro-cess, one of the NGO leaders described the chal-lenge in the following way:

The great plague wiped out a third of Europe but

it was so highly infectious that a whole village would

disappear. If you look at war, obviously millions have

been killed in some of the signicant wars of our past,

but it was the men who died so you always had the

mother and child left behind. If you look at famine, insome of them, particularly in Africa, its the weakest

and the most vulnerable who get taken out, so the

children go rst in a famine because the adults will be

stronger and survive for longer. But with HIV/AIDS its

the rst time ever on a scale of those pandemics that

the people left behind are the children. Anthony Farr,Starsh Foundation

The unprecedented nature of the challenge wasreected in questions about delivery systems.

Existing systems would not meet the foreseenneeds: the traditional extended family system forintegrating orphans and deserted children hadshown a remarkable absorption capacity beyondexpectations, but would not be sucient to tacklethe numbers. Many grandparents are weak or tooold to cope and children left behind by AIDS areoften stigmatised by family members. The otherold solution, the orphanage, was also unrealis-tic: the sheer numbers made it impossible to buildenough institutions, and extensive research hasshown that they are not a healthy place for a childto grow up, and was in conict with African cul-tural values. While they may be needed in limitedcircumstances, they were not a viable scale option.

Social Complexity

Dierences of opinion showed up among stake-holders about:

denitions for OVC and whether a denition isdesirable.

advocating large-scale, systemic solutions fo-cused on quantity and serving basic needs (theCheckers solution3) versus those serving a small

3 Checkers is a South African supermarket chain,offering cheap goods with a reputation for lower quality.

number of children with integrated, holistic, andlong-term care, one-by-one (the Woolworthssolution4)

competition for funding and territory in theNGO sector and within and between governmentdepartments.

Models of psychosocial support: some believ-

ing in therapy and going into the trauma versusothers preferring to leave the trauma behind andsupport children in being normal.

And there were complicating factors relating toAIDS denialism and stigma and compassion fa-tigue: it was emotionally exhausting for peopleto engage around children. There were many per-spectives on many parts of the problem.

Dynamic complexity

The problems source and impacts were spreadout in space and time in a number of ways andthese were articulated in the following ways:

Orphanhood is intricately related to the issue ofAIDS prevention: transmission of the virus nowcan lead to orphanhood in a decades time.

If children are not receiving the emotional andmaterial support they need today, what kind ofcitizens will they be in 10 years time?

Many government grants were not reaching the

groups they are intended for eg. child supportand foster care grants as well as school fee exemp-tion schemes.

It is very dicult to single out orphans or chil -dren made vulnerable to HIV/AIDS where manychildren may be vulnerable due to poverty. Pro-viding special care for the former can lead to thembeing stigmatised or rejected or a child who is or-phaned but taken care of by an extended familymay be beer o than, for example, a child withan abusive parent.

Many interventions tend to be reactive and fo-cused on the short-term as opposed to being ho-listic, systemic and sustainable in the long-term.This results in inecient utilization of resources,resources not being ltered down to areas of need,and a failure to take successful projects to scale.

Thus the core group decided to move forwardin engaging with the Childrens sector using thebasic steps of the U process/Change Lab, whichbegan with a set of deep dialogue interviews in-tended to beer understand the sector, the stake-

holders, their views, and the potential for change.

4 Woolworths is a South African retailer offering moreexpensive goods with a reputation for higher quality.


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LINC and the Bridging Leadershipmodel

LINC only engaged with the Bridging Leadershipframework relatively late in its development: in2010 Synergos brought the Bridging Leadership(BL) framework to South Africa through a shorttraining workshop, thus exposing the core team to

the approach and it was not until late in 2011 thatthe BL framework was drawn into the design ofevents. However, it was used in a very structured,integrated way. Ann tells the story:

Once Bridging Leadership came into the fold, wedesigned in quite a structured way, I used a designtemplate: we used the Bridging Leadership frame-work and Theory U framework mapped onto eachother. I took the elements of BL . the rst elementis personal development, under that we would dosensing, presencing, prototyping, at a personal lev-el; so the rst day of workshop became that, usedpart 1 of BL and did Theory U, then 2ndpart of BLis the shift from self to working in a bridging waywithin your organisation or between two organi-sations so we would then do theory U once again,who are you collaborating with at a very micro lev-el not within the bigger system, with the next levelof the BL framework. In rst day wed use somepersonal tools: peeling the onion etc., then on day2, stakeholder mapping which were all in the toolbox, and the 3rdday..when you get to the system-

ic stu, (similarly to theory U), the tools become.nobodys cracked that stu yet. But we used itvery clearly in those 2 phases. In the design tem-plates and I still use those a lot.

Creation Process (4) Sourcing InitialFunding Support

Returning to the early process, the team now need-ed to raise funds to begin their work

Ann started talking to some of the people in hernetwork about doing a Change Lab on OVC. Shemanaged to get through her networks about R500kto do the dialogue interviewing phase..with thatwe did 40 dialogue interviews at national level and40 at regional level. (Mille Bojer)(NB. The regionalinterviews were conducted and used as part of the localinitiative, Kago Ya Bana, mentioned below.)

Funding largely came from Adie Eindhoven, partof the family that owns Hollard, a major insurancecompany in South Africa, as well as the Spier Estate,

a wine estate and hotel near Stellenbosch, WesternCape. Adie was inuential in commiing funds tothe project through the Hollard Foundation in theearly stages of the project and continued to supportLINC through his investment fund, Capricorn: core

funding still comes from Capricorns successor un-til now. Hollard later went on to fund a communi-ty level project, named Kago Ya Bana (help for thechildren), which addressed similar issues to LINC,

in one municipality near Johannesburg.

Creation Process (5) Identifying and

Drawing in the Key StakeholdersAnn and Mille spent the next 18 months workingto bring together the main stakeholders in the sec-tor. The work involved contacting 80 people in thesector, 40 at national level and 40 in the Provincesand engaging them through dialogue interviews.These were in depth, up to 3 hour, conversationswhere the interviewers listened deeply to the stake-holders: asking them about their lives, their reasonsfor being in the sector, their hopes and fears, andhow they saw the current state of the sector andwhy they thought it was the way it was. Alongsidethis, they undertook advocacy sessions, where theyspoke to key stakeholders about their intentionsand sought support for the process and they ran fo-cus groups with children to hear their perspectiveson the issues.

They developed the following listing of the keystakeholder groups in the sector, detailed descrip-tions of each stakeholder group can be found in ap-pendix 2:

Community-based Organisations (CBOs)Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs)

Faith-based organisations (FBOs)

Government

Business

International donors

Universities and Research Institutions

Media

Creation Process (6) Sensing theSystem: Learning about the keystakeholders from the DialogueInterviews

The dialogue interviews were a powerful way tocreate deep relationships with key players, learnabout what really maered to them, and begin tocreate a picture of the key challenges facing them.

Mille: We were able to do real dialogue interviewsthat take 3 hours. We would have one interview

of 90 minutes then come back to continue and weended up with hundreds of pages of interviewnotes at the end. The relationship building of dia-logue interviews, was very convincing really lis-tening to people was how we got into the system


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A key question in the dialogue interviews was to askparticipants who else should we talk to? The over-lap of answers to this question enabled the team toidentify who were the vital stakeholders, who sat atthe centre of the sector, and at the centre of its chal-lenges and therefore who would have to participatein the process if it were to have the impact theyhoped for. The ve key players identied throughthis process were: the co-ordinator in the Depart-ment of Social Development of the National ActionCommiee for Children Aected by HIV and AIDS(NACCA); the co-ordinator of the National NGOco-ordinating body South African National AidsCouncil (SANAC); the Director for Children in theDepartment of Social Development; the Director forHIV in the Department of Social Development andthe head of the Oce of the Rights of the Child.

Ensuring that these ve people aended the initialworkshop became a key target for the team. Per-sistence was key in this process: we knew we hadto speak to one person in government she can-celled the meeting on us 8 times and Ann did justnot give up. And nally we had a meeting with herand a Dialogue Interview and she came to the meet-ing and she turned around. Ann had the capacity tomap out who are the key players in the system thatwe cant do without and how do we get them(MB)

Alongside the people who

were core nodes in thesystem, other key stake-holders who wielded sig-nicant inuence in thesystem and who emergedduring and immediatelyafter the rst workshopcame from: UNICEF, theNational Association ofChild Care Workers (NA-CCW), the Childrens In-stitute, and the Child Wel-fare Association as well asprivate sector donors andfoundations with a strongemphasis on children,such as the DG MurrayTrust.

Participants were recruit-ed from among the people who participated inthe dialogue interview process. As the initiativegained momentum, some, who had been missed

in the initial stages got to hear about it and weredrawn in. Sometimes this was a relatively sim-ple process of inviting them to the next availableevent. At other times, the fact that they may havebeen signicant role players and not seen by the

core team in the early stages, led to some resis-tance to participation. The core team then need-ed to engage in deep listening and responding tobring them around to being willing to participate.Later cohorts of participants were identied basedon recommendations from the rst set of fellows.

People who worked together drew each other in.

Creation Process (7) Sensing theSystem: Key issues in the system

Once the interview process was complete, a re-port synthesising its ndings was wrien. MilleBojer: I created a synthesis that structured all thethemes that were coming out but it was a lileboring and Ann then insisted on us doing causalloop diagrams. We had a stakeholder meeting andit fell at. For all the people who had been inter-viewed, a presentation of the synthesis, and put-ting all the causal loop diagrams on the wall wasnot the right way to do this: we were analysing thesystem. Then we had a break . and the teamwent back to the drawing board and ultimatelyused a framework that looked not at how the sys-tem of children could be viewed, but at how thestakeholders within it viewed it and themselves.So, this can be thought of as a map of their percep-tions, rather than of aspect(s) of the system theywere trying to inuence:

This view, which emphasised the role and perspec-tives of the stakeholders much more strongly, reso-nated well with the group who saw it rst at the ini-tial retreat which took place at the Spier Wine Estate

in November 2007. They could see the mindsetsand what conicts they were geing into with eachother.

The report also focused in on key issues that were


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identied from the interviews, which would formthe core driving purposes of the LINC programme:collaboration, systems thinking, leadership and in-novation.

Mille again, on why these topics: We asked peopleto tell their lifestories in the beginning and wheretheir future lies at the end and we realised that

there was a lot of moving between sectors, a lot ofpeople would leave their jobs but they were 100%commied to working with children, they mightleave Childline/Mindset and go to DSD or the Nel-son Mandela Foundation but they were all movingbetween the same institutions. And they were allburnt out and stressed. So we decided to basicallyfocus on this issue of collaborative leadership in thesector and their need to work together. What weheard was: we are all working in silos, we need tosee the big picture; we need a more systemic way of

thinking.

2.2 Growing LINC

LINCs Purpose

From this understanding, the core team designed aprogramme and process, which was frequently iter-ated, which initially followed the form of the U andalso responded to the four key issues of collabora-tion, leadership, innovation and systems thinking,

which had been identied in the sensing phase:the dialogue interviews. The exact framing of theseissues went through slight changes over time, butby 2011 these core purposes remained, articulatedin the following way:

Enhancing the leadership capacity of leaders inthe sector to be more resilient, think systemicallyand proactively collaborate;

Shifting the nature of institutional arrangementsin the sector to enhance cohesion, collaboration andcoordination; and

Creating opportunities for leaders and their organ-isations to innovate and provide solutions aroundkey challenges in the sector.

Core Capacity

The basic operational structure started out beingAnn as Programme Director and one or two sup-port sta. In 2008 Ann established an NGO calledConvene while starting LINC and another simi-lar project funded by Hollard Foundation. Initial-

ly she and Mille had worked under the banner ofthe African Leadership Initiative but now Convenebecame the organisation responsible for runningLINC. Reos and Synergos were part of a core team

that worked together on the overall design of theprocess (which activities and events should happenwhen, for example) as well as the design of specicevents within that. The core team also participat-ed in ongoing advocacy work. Reos came in withextensive experience in multi-stakeholder processwork, and Barry Smith from Synergos brought withhim long term and extensive networks and exper-tise in engaging with South African civil society andgovernment which he used on an ongoing basis tosupport the reputation building and acceptance ofLINC.

Why a Fellowship?

From the start, with the identication of the factthat many of the key stakeholders were commiedto the childrens sector for the long term, despitemoving organisational aliation, the team made a

decision to form a fellowship, where those stake-holders could stay involved over time. The initialcohort was drawn from the people invited to therst workshop at Spier. When asked at the end ofthis process if, despite their demanding workloads,they would be willing to participate in a year longprocess which would require aendance at 3 work-shops and participation with a smaller team ofpeople working around a specic issue in betweentimes, all but 2 of the people agreed. Thus the rstcohort of 36 fellows was formed and began work-

ing together at an event in May 2008. Two furthercohorts followed, identied by existing fellows ie.word of mouth and through the teams increasingknowledge of the sector. The second cohort joinedin May 2009 and the third in December 2010.

Role of the core

This core structure was set up to oer the followingsupport to the fellows:

Holding to the key methodological approach of

seeing dierent perspectives, deep reective learn-ing, collective action and nding ways to institu-tionalise.

Supporting learning and reectionby document-ing and reection how stakeholders work togetherand rene solutions, and to support scaling up

Fundraising: facilitating access to fundraising op-portunities and assisting with fundraising proposals

Facilitation and Design: through process designsfor events and the overall programme

Integrationthrough sharing information, support-ing stakeholder relationships and helping partner-ships to formalise and supporting leveraging andscaling up where possible.


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Project Management: support for implementationof ideas

Initially the three core organisations shared theseroles, with Reos leading on facilitation and designand Convene on project management, fundrais-ing and integration with support from Synergoson fundraising. Learning

and reection was under-taken by all the partnersin dierent ways: Reos fa-cilitated learning sessions,wrote Learning Histories,Convene drove conceptual-ising an evaluation frame-work. When Reos steppedback from holding facilia-tion and design, Conveneworked with a small teamof fellows and independentfacilitators to take on thisrole.

While there was a struc-ture in place which shouldhave drawn in the keystakeholders into a SteeringCommiee, ongoing andcommied participation inthis body in the early stag-es proved dicult. The key

decision making defaultedto Ann in particular and the core team in gener-al. A combined group of Convene sta, Synergos(in the form of Barry Smith and occasionally AdeleWildschut) and Reos as the faciltators and processdesigners made the decisions about how each yearof the rst 3 years of the programme would prog-ress.

Programme Design

LINCs design comprised three levels of activity

focused on the three levels that fellows were oper-ating at: the individual, the group and the system.The process included

Regular group wide events which oered opportunities for seeing the system as a whole, de-veloping relationships across sectors and organi-sations, and networking to initiate action.

Coaching for individuals and at a group lev-el aimed at supporting the development of theirleadership and in particular their capacity to col-

laborate across organizational boundaries.

Innovation and cross cuing theme meetingsand work groups which were focused on particu-lar aspects of the system that fellows and the team

identied as being points of particular leverage forthe system.

The gure below shows how these were intendedto relate to each other to create impact across the

system.

A timeline of LINCs activities since 2006 can be

found in Appendix 1.

Innovations and Cross Cutting themes

Another underlying principle in the design ofLINC, was the idea that tackling complex challeng-es in soft systems is more eectively done by allow-ing the stakeholders participating in the processto try out many dierent options. In geing these

dierent options to work, other stakeholders, notinvolved, but with an interest in the issue would beapproached to oer feedback and provide resourc-es, where this happened, initiatives could thrive,where not, the lack of engagement is taken as asignal that this is not what is needed/wanted now.And this would mean that some initiatives wouldthrive and continue and others might not last. Thesurvival or not, of dierent initiatives, would bepart of a healthy process of system adaptation, sothere would not be an expectation of 100% success

of all initiatives.The creation of a diversity of innovations was struc-tured into the process in the early stages throughworkshop design which aimed to get people to


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cluster around issues that were key to them, usingopen space technology for issue identication anda process of voting on topics by the participants,for which issues they felt were most important andmost likely to have an impact.

The themes chosen at the rst innovation workshopin May 2008 were:

Building Community Capacity this includedlargely civil society players. It centred around aquestion about how to get foster care grants to workmore eectively especially for child headed house-holds, and in creating a cadre of child and youthcare workers, and crucially brought together twomajor civil society players, who had previously notbeen collaborating. This initiative is still live in thesense that the research, conversation and action tocreate a grant for households headed by 16-18 yearolds is ongoing and the Isibindi child and youth

care workers programme is rolling out. (see sectionon impacts for more)

Building Local Government capacity fellowsand LINC core team members undertook researcharound the challenges related to the capacity of lo-cal government to drive outcomes relating to ser-vices for children. This work aligned very closelywith work that Save the Children UK were initiat-ing to bring childrens issues into the local planningthrough Integrated Development Planning process-es and provincial activity around this innovation

is continuing. The group ran a workshop whichbrought together representatives from municipali-ties with the national co-ordinating structures relat-ing to children and HIV to share experience aboutsuccessful structures for incorporating childrens is-sues into planning and implementation at the locallevel.

Database on Children this topic was stronglycontested, and the team gathered around it wereoperating at very dierent levels of inuence in thesystem. The challenges this team faced were relat-

ed to the ownership of data and political dicultieswith sharing information. After having exploredthe issue thoroughly through an externally wrienreview, the fellows concerned decided to disbandthe innovation.

Co-ordinating the Childrens Sector this topic be-came a cross-cuing theme and held one workshopearly in the LINC process which brought govern-ment and civil society together to help clarify howgovernment budget processes worked and howNGOs could engage more eectively in the process.Through this work, and activities initiated by thedonor network team, the Isibindi initiative gainedexposure in government and LINC likely played arole in government taking the programme on na-

tionally and rolling it out; Treasury also adapted itsbudget planning process to incorporate civil societyvoices representing children more eectively, whilea LINC fellow was working there.

Donor network this team undertook researchthrough the Childrens Institute to map donorfunding and allocations and engaged together with

some team participants in supporting others to raisethe prole of funding for children amongst donorsacross the board (this involves for example re-cate-gorising reporting matrices and mapping projects),as well as improving the statistics on children. Thisteam held a workshop between donors, which ma-jor international funders such as USAID and GTZaended, with Treasury, to look at funding coordi-nation. Donors identied specic areas they want-ed to take forward, there were four of these initial-ly identied in the meeting, the LINC core teamfollowed up to support them to act on it, but aftersome time decided to not drive it beyond what thedonors themselves were willing to pick up.

Education This initiative only began in 2009. It ex-plored various options in the education system andwas particularly interested in improving paren-tal involvement in their childrens education. Thegroup stuck with this theme and decided to directtheir energy towards Early Childhood Developmentsince it was becoming part of the formal schoolingsystem soon. The team partnered with the Mahew

Goniwe School of Leadership in 2011 and raised thenecessary funds from the Jim Joel Trust to conductresearch on how parental involvement could be in-creased and tracked over time.

Media the topic of engaging with the media aroseduring the initial stakeholder interviews but wasnot chosen by the fellows in the voting process.However, the topic was reintroduced in late 2008and an event was held in early 2009 to raise aware-ness of how to cover childrens issues. A team wasinitiated in mid-2009, which undertook research

into what needed to happen to raise the prole ofchildrens issues in the media. This team initiatedcontact with specialists in the media sector, at leastone of whom subsequently became a fellow. Manysmall activities to raise journalists capacity to coverchildrens issues, provide accurate data and raisethe prole of children beyond the childrens sectorhave occurred as a result of this work.

Overall, the identied innovations met with varyingdegrees of success and there is considerable discus-sion and diversity of opinion about whether in fact

they should be/have been the focus of assessmentsof the success of LINC. For some, the innovationsdrew aention away from the task of improvingleadership capabilities, for others, collective actionis the main benet they get from LINC (although


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they dont necessarily see these designed innova-tions as being the source of this collaboration), andsome talk about the fact that without a practiceground for working together, the requisite learn-ing about how to collaborate could not have takenplace: outcomes were less important than the pro-cess they have gone through.

From the core team perspective, after the innova-tion review, they considered what we thought wecould change and do dierently: there was a shift fromteams and their existence, and rather a focus on the ini-tiative itself. We allowed people to come in and out as andwhen they felt it was relevant to them, rather than havea group that felt the need to get together without beingsure if they were adding value. So we kept the initiatives,and had a lead organisation whose objectives alignedwith that. We thought his had a beer chance of success.

Dineo Malembe, Convene core team member.

Coaching

A coaching programme was developed which in-cluded individual coaching for all the second cohortof fellows as well as group coaching organised on aprovincial basis to draw fellows working in simi-lar geographies together (this was largely drivenby the practical need for people to be able to reachcoaching session easily.)

With the coaching programme, as well the BL

framework was designed in:we took the BL framework and we tried to denecompetencies out of it and we matched the compe-tencies with the coaching framework, so we inte-grated it much more strongly, so what we did at apersonal level in those workshops was aligned withwhat we were doing with the coaching process andwe also did pre and post coaching testing on per-sonal leadership. So it was quite a sophisticated,integrated leadership process using the BL frame-work and those tools had not been developed, we

developed those tools, so I think we upped syner-gos competency around that signicantly with thatdevelopment. The feedback we got was positive atthat personal level. (Ann Lamont)


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Impact: formal measurement

LINC has undertaken two formal processes of as-sessing its impact since inception and one review of

innovations to beer understand challenges. Therst of these resulted in a 50 page evaluation reportin June 2009, relatively early in the process. Thisevaluation laid out a clear set of criteria for measure-ment and used existing wrien feedback and addi-tional specially designed questionnaires to gatherdata. This evaluation considered LINCs impact atthe individual, organisational and systemic level.

The second process took place in mid to late 2011 toassess the impact, which the individual and groupcoaching process had had. This laid out a set of

Bridging Leadership competencies that the coach-ing was hoping to develop and expand and mea-sured fellows own perceptions (and 360??) on howfar this had shifted as a result of the process. This,by denition, focused in much more closely on theimpact on the fellows themselves and their ability tobe Bridging Leaders.

In September 2010, Reos was asked to engage in areview of two innovation teams who were strug-gling to make progress, to beer understand whatthe issues were and what lessons there might be for

the system as a whole from their processes. This

was not an evaluation per se, but some of the viewsand thinking from that review have been includedthroughout this case study.

No further assessment of impact has taken placesince 2011; at provincial fellowship gatherings inearly March 2012 there was a strong request to re-turn to the initial evaluation and update it for thepurposes of understanding what LINC was contrib-uting and how, and for use in possible further fund-raising. However this has yet to happen.

A small number of new interviews were undertak-en for this case study to explore particular elementsof the process, and some anecdotal evidence fromthese, in particular relating to one or two very large

projects that LINC played a role in, is also consid-ered in this section.

LINC evaluation June 2009

Given the nature of the LINC programme, theevaluation framework required to measure impactneeded to be carefully designed. The consultantsused to do this work were specialists in monitor-ing and evaluation. They co-created a frameworkbased on the following conceptual understanding

of the process of LINC having impact

In

Section 3: Fruition

fgure 2: Diagrammatic representation of envisaged LINC fellowship programme process

The LINC fellowship increases the quality and quantity of care to children


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keeping with this framework, the report, which ranto over 50 pages, clustered its ndings around thefollowing categories of impact:

Change in organisations

Change in inter-personal relationships between fellows

Shared values/principals and commonly agreed lan-guage/framework in group

Inter-organisational and inter-sectoral collaboration

Links to national structures

Systemic change

Individual capacities:

Leadership as an individual

Systems thinking and innovation

Ability to collaborate

Tangible actions:

Micro individual actions

Actions within fellows organisation

Small collaborative actions involving a few fellows and organisations

Actions relating to innovation projects Cross-cuing actions and action relating to

shifts in the whole system

Overall strengths and weaknesses of

the fellowship.The overall ndings included detailed feedbackshowing percentages of fellows agreeing or dis-agreeing with dierent statements about LINC,as well as sharing specic examples of actions andalso stories of the most signicant change theywere aware of (this is a specic monitoring andevaluation methodology which was used).

In summary, the conclusions were that LINC hadimpacted on individual fellows by giving them ac-

cess to key people in the childrens sector (and fromacross sectors), access to information, increased un-derstanding or exposure to dierent ways of think-ing, opportunities to see the big picture and workacross the sector barriers, especially with govern-ment, while creating time and space for reectionand oering coaching support. This was reectedin more condence and ability to engage with abroad range of stakeholders and as one NGO re-spondent put it, the insight that it starts with me.

LINC had created space to foster interpersonal rela-

tionships between fellows through breaking downbarriers and creating new ways of working and inparticular most fellows felt that the diculties inrelationships between government and other stake-holders had diminished.

And identied impacts relating to this process as follows:

Diagrammatic representation of types of impact for each category


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LINC had created a coherent fellowship with ashared culture; people felt beer able to work togeth-er, and beer able to build networks. They felt thattrust building had been undertaken in a deliberateand careful way and the environment that ensuedfrom that made moving forward with conscious-ness and purpose possible. A particularly importantachievement was that LINC had made it possible tohave dicult discussions about language (the OVCissue) and race, which might previously have divid-ed people.

LINC had made an impact on inter-organisationaland inter-sectoral collaboration through more andbeer cross sectoral communication, listening anddialogue, and the vast majority of fellows felt theywere ready and able to see, hear and feel the perspec-tives and voices of other stakeholders. This meantthey had, all but one, identied new opportunities towork with other organisations in a mutually bene-cial manner and could do so from a position of think-ing about possibilities rather than problems, whichin turn had helped stretch the available resources forthe care of children.

Finally in terms of clear achievements, LINC had thepotential to eect systemic change through facilitat-ing co-ordination, addressing duplication and llinggaps. Since the evaluation report covering the peri-od from October 2008 to March 2009 it made geingconcrete examples of these kinds of activities elusive

but interviews undertaken for this case study, whichare referenced later in this section provide some ex-amples of this type of impact which have occurredsince 2009.

The report noted that LINC had not by that time,had as much impact inside organisations (only asmall majority of 60% said their organisations wereworking in new ways) although these included twosignicant examples one of a donor shifting froma reactive (responding to proposals) to a proactive(seeking proposals in key areas and initiating pro-

grammes) approach to funding, and a second froman academic institution shifting towards seeing itsresearch as socially responsive and changing strat-egy to reect this.

As far as capacities were concerned, fellows com-mented most strongly on their greater ability tocollaborate, both in terms of developing the skillsand knowledge needed to operate in a more col-laborative manner, and in the provision of oppor-tunities to test this collaborative capacity in prac-tice. Interviewees generally expressed the view

that they had signicantly beneted from the ca-pacity building focus of the fellowship includingseveral comments about learning the value of trustand honesty as well as communication, listeningand sharing information.

Individual leadership capacity

Fellows made specic mention of their ability tolisten, interact/engage with people and to consideralternative views of other sectors (especially gov-ernment). Some fellows mentioned their height-enedwself reection and self awareness.

Systems Thinking and InnovationCapacity

The majority felt they were more able to access cre-ativity and imaginative thinking by working withtheir head, heart, and hands, more equipped to de-velop, iterate and rene solutions to complex chal-lenges in the environment and with the people forwhom the solutions need to work. With 80% of themfeeling that they were much more capable to lead incomplex systems and that they understand and nav-

igate the bigger picture. Almost all intervieweesfelt much more comfortable about their own abilityto work within the systems approach.

Collaborative Capacity

Most fellows highlighted this as the single great-est benet of their participation noting that LINChas been able to aract and retain a wide range ofpeople in leadership positions and that it has gienthem information about how the various role play-ers within the sector work. LINC had also been

instrumental in developing an understanding asto how government works about the energy andpassion that goes into the childrens sector. To quoteone: (LINC) has created a core of people who arepassionate about this particular area, and you cantget anything more powerful. At the same time,there was a note of caution: partnerships are easyon paper but hard in practice. It takes an enormousamount of championing, vision sharing, adaptabili-ty and exibility to make it work.

Micro individual actions of anindividual fellow demonstratingchanges in individual capacity

The actual process of participating in the fellowshipwas noted by a number of interviewees as beingconducive to increasing activity levels or energisingindividual action. This is reinforced by the network-ing element, where the opening of doors to seniorpeople was denitely seen to be make individualswork easier and more eective. As a direct example

of an individual action, one respondent has taken theLINC approach into a regional network addressin-gissues faced by orphans and vulnerable children.


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Actions of individual fellows in theirorganizations

48% of fellows gave short descriptions of changes attheir work. These included reections on the gener-al planning and principals that were being used asa result of LINC, as well as specic actions that en-hanced or supported existing initiatives.

Small collaborative actions involving afew fellows and their organizations

Most actual activity appears to have taken place atthis level, largely due to the nature of the network:Just having access to new people has meant that[my Department] has been able to identify and sup-port new projects.

Fellows were explicitly asked to describe any newrelationships or partnerships that have resulted fromtheir involvement in the LINC fellowship and re-sponses revealed business fellows reporting build-ing and strengthening relationships with govern-ment departments and national structures, and withthe donor sector. Civil society fellows spoke aboutworking with government departments and particu-lar individuals within them, as well as national struc-tures. Some government fellows mentioned contactsand relationships with the donor sector. There wasnally specic mention of training collaboration andreferral of projects to organizations represented in

LINC.

Actions relating to the innovationprojects

A substantial 68% of fellows felt that most of the in-novation projects would require ongoing fundingand support from the LINC fellowship, after theyhad been prototyped. This indicated an area of con-cern about the ongoing and longer-term sustainabil-ity of the LINC innovation projects. There was also

some concern that innovation team activities hadbeen rather slow to get o the ground.

Cross cutting actions and actionsrelating to shifts in the whole system

The evaluation report identied the collaborativework on the Childrens Act involving Child WelfareSA, Childline and SANAC, mentioned several fel-lows as having the potential for system wide impact.One of the interviewees wrote about it, thus:

the ultimate eect of the group working together mayhave a greater impact than a product .. We may feel thatwe are not succeeding because the product is lagging (theinnovation was moving slowly at the time), but the rela-

tionships and networks that have been built are possiblyeven more valuablethe fellowship oers a way of work-ing together and engaging which fundamentally aectsthe quality of the product.

Coaching Assessment

A systemic coaching intervention was implement-

ed in LINC which included individual and groupcoaching. During this period, the Bridging Leader-ship framework had been brought into LINC andintegrated into the programme and event design.Thus the measures used for the coaching were di-rectly drawn from the capacities required to be asuccessful Bridging Leader:

Bridging Leadership Competencies:

Ownership Personal Mastery

Bridging Leader owns the issueUnderstands systemic analysis and recognisesmulti-stakeholder interests.

Makes a personal response to the issue

Co-Ownership Organisational Mastery

Convene stakeholders on the issue

Through dialogue & engagement, create opportu-nities for stakeholders to nd common ground andreach a shared vision and response

In collaboration with other stakeholders foster

wider societal vision that commands wide support

Co-creation Sectoral Mastery

Works with stakeholders to create new institu-tional arrangements new rules and ways of doingthings

Collaborates with others over time to institution-alise new arrangements (inclusive, accountable &transparent) and take it to scale


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With others, builds a community of values andpractice commied to an empowered citizenry,more responsive institutions, and equitable access

to basic rights and services

The main conclusions of the coaching impact re-port were that the importance and value of LINCfor each of the leaders working in the Childrenssector was unquestioned, that in terms of BridgingLeadership competencies, by October 2011 fellows

had moved from personal into organisational mas-tery and to lesser extent to sectoral mastery (an areawhich still requires focus), that multi-stakeholdercollaboration/partnerships are complex and needtime to develop and that coaching does add valueto the leadership development agenda and can bemore powerful when linked to a programme like itwas in the LINC example.

One important insight that emerged at this point inthe process was that the investment in a dedicatedportal for LINC for social networking had not sup-

ported the programme in ways envisaged. Therehas not been an investigation of what drove this out-come, to understand why fellows did not nd the

platform useful enough to engage with it regularly.

Impact: Fellow and Core Teamperspectives

For the purposes of this case study a series of 9 in-terviews were undertaken with 5 fellows and 4 coreteam members to draw on their perspectives andunderstanding of what had happened in LINC andwhat impacts it had had. By necessity, this data isanecdotal. However, without the benet of an up-

dated in depth evaluation report, it oers a partialsnapshot of a series of specic impacts which haveaected the system as a whole, parts of it, and par-ticular organisations, as well as interviewees com-mentary on other impacts related to improved lead-ership, understanding, and collaboration capacity in

the sector.

The Isibindi Community Care modelRoll out

The National Association of Child Care Workershas been a strong civil society participant in LINCsince the initial Spier workshop. They had a modelof community based child care using trained child

The way these were designed to work together in LINC is shown in the following illustration and graphic:

Ownership : Indiv Coaching;

Events; Retreats

BridgingLeader

Societal

Inequity& Stake-

holders

PersonalVision &

Mission

Personal Response

Co-Ownership: Group

Coaching; Events

Engagement

Mechanisms

New

relationships

among

stakeholders

Multi-

Stakeholder

Processes/Convening and

Trust-Building

Dialogue

SharedVision &

Mission

Co-Creation: Innovations; Group

Coaching; Action Learning

Empowered

Citizenry

New

InstitutionalArrangements

Transformed

Institutions

Responsive

programs &services/

social

innovations

Social

Equity

Collaborative Response

The Bridging Leadership Process

Source: E Garilao

Sectoral Response


19/33


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childrens forums as well as one particular initia-tive in Mpumalanga funded by multiple privatesector donors in collaboration with Provincialgovernment to develop Early Childhood Devel-opment in an Agri village programme as a pilotacross 60 communities.

There were also examples of donors and NGOs

trying new approaches together in a more infor-mal way, for example to link mobile clinics whichare already reaching communities and to expandon them by putting a trailer behind a clinic witha toy library and an open seat and an ECD fam-ily facilitator to train/work with mums and chil-dren. The local government havent bitten yet,but were working on it.

As Corne Peters from Mondi said: if you real-ly start to track programmes and projects thatwere doing through those connections, the ex-

posure gives you new ideas, and how to bringchildren in to projects. (Even from events twoyears ago.)there is still contact and input, andthe effect of decisions is ongoing now.

Intangible impacts

We definitely created some structured spaces forcritical conversations to happen, those had never hap-

pened before . I think that certainly we shifted somedeep rifts in the sector, we certainly shifted a lot of

personal relationships and we did shift some levels ofcollaborative relationship amongst the broader stake-holder groups, so I think in terms of did we contributeto greater collaboration and cohesion in the sector, yeswe did. Is it nearly enough? No. But I think that wedid do that. I think we did create some safe space for

people who were close to burnout and help them in re-charging batteries and I think we did develop individ-ual leaders and give them more coping mechanismsand help them to cope in the sector. Ann Lamont

Critical conversationsThe activities forced you to talk to each other aboutissues, and there were opportunities to personalise,what are your personal memories of growing up someone from the department sharing something

personal, there was a clever design of activities andopportunities using plasticine, designing somethingtogether, the way groups were put together, different

people together and even the broader discussions thatallowed for some tricky issues to be raised as well.Zeni Thumbadoo

Healing rifts

At the start of the LINC process there was a majorrift between one of the main government organi-

sations operating in the childrens sector and oneof the largest national co-ordinating networks.Civil society organisations allied themselves onone side or the other of this rift, with the maingovernment department in the sector sittingsomewhere in the middle. At the first LINC lead-ership retreat, the processes, space and facilita-tion enabled the key protagonists in this conflictto reconcile. As one of them said to Ann subse-quently about the benefits of this: you will neverknow what you have done for the childrens sector(Ann Lamont)

Collaborative relations acrossstakeholder groups

There had been different forums where we gathered,we might have met funders and the department sepa-rately or NGOs plus the department but here it let the

3 categories come together. To bring the funders inas well as government, created an opportunity to talkto each other. It levelled the playing field, the facilita-tors created a non power environment to talk togetheron same level: thats unusual - from the start. Theactivities and the facilitation was excellent in doingthat. Zeni Thumbadoo

Theres a proper network of people so you get peopleto see from different perspectives, its the only forumof its kind that Ive been in, where all the parties talk-ed openly and honestly about their challenges, for the

first time you get a sense there are people in govern-ment who do give a shit, what are their annoyanceswith NGOs, that they feel theyre on their own deliv-ering services. William Bird

Safe space and recharging for thoseclose to burnout

I remember sitting at a table, of women all about myage and in a similar situation, that basically it wasa sense of loss we had and how that had called us to

do this kind of work. I had a really deep connectionwith the other women who were part of that. I foundthat very enriching to hear my own call again. Definitely, it inspired me helped me to feel congruentwith what I was doing and more connected to othersin the field. Heidi Loening-Voysey

Finally, a further change at the level of the sys-tem might be that LINC has engendered is a shiftin the culture of many in the sector towards un-derstanding and being able to collaborate. Onefellow interviewed for this case study noted thata similar process is needed in the gender rela-tions sector where there is currently no such col-laboration and it is sorely needed.


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Challenges and Responses

The LINC team has faced a series of challenges overthe life of the programme. Often these have shownup as dilemmas ie. problems which dont havea solution but which instead draw one betweentwo polarities which require balancing. Managingthis balance is a dynamic process, which by nature

changes over time as the environment and the play-ers themselves change.

Wide or narrow? Scope and focus

One of the key challenges LINC faced was embed-ded in the initiative at the start, and was identiedby the interviewees in the synthesis report. This wasthe question of how narrowly or broadly to focus.Ann and Mille had developed the issue beginningfrom a desire to tackle one aspect of the huge chal-lenge presented by the impact of HIV/AIDS and hadthen chosen to engage with the issue of children.However, during the dialogue process and in therst event at Spier, strong voices from academia andthe NGO sector argued that separating children af-fected by HIV/AIDS from others who were sueringto a similar level but for dierent reasons would beto reinforce paerns of stigmatisation already hap-pening in society. The words orphans and vulner-able children were also dropped because of similarconcerns about the term vulnerable and problemswith the denition of orphans. Thus the initiative

became about the whole childrens sector, with anawareness that much of what was happening wasdriven by the impact of HIV/AIDS.

This decision was driven by fellows, and as such, be-ing willing to respond to their interests and concernswas demonstration of the core team following a keyprinciple used in social innovation methods, suchas Open Space Technology, to respond to where theenergy is among the stakeholders, rather than stick-

ing to an external agenda held by the facilitators/organisers. At the same time it created a signi-cant challenge for LINC as a programme, in termsof how to then dene boundaries of its scope andimpact, and more specically how to measure those.

This issue cut across another important distinction,which was apparent to the designers of the pro-

gramme but not to fellows or external observers,particularly over time. It was evident from the ini-tial interview process that the voices in the sectorwanted LINC to focus not on direct impacts on thechildren themselves but on building the capacity ofthe leadership in the sector. As Mille put it: LINCwas not about children but about the stakeholders.This would mean that measuring its impact on chil-dren on the ground would be dicult and couldpossibly be considered an unfair measure of success.

Drive the process or be responsive?Fellows views revealed a tension around a prefer-ence for LINC to drive outcomes through the corecapacity versus a desire at the centre to respond towhat was emerging among the participants, and forfellows and their organisations to drive outcomes.This was revealed in interviews undertaken for aninnovation review in 2010, which focused on two in-novations which were struggling to make headway,as the two contrasting quotes below demonstrate:

I think the task teams need to have a dedicated LINC em-ployee who steers, helps sort out the niy griythe lossof our LINC co-ordinator was a big loss. Quote frominnovation team review 2010 (fellow all quotes inreview were unaributed)

All of us need to take responsibility, we are adults whocan communicate. our co-ordinator didnt have to dothat, it spoiled us, now with her not being around all ofa sudden the common push is gone.we could have ap-

pointed someone among ourselves to do that.


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This perspective had as underlying assumption thatLINC would take on a signicant role in driving thedirection (at least) of innovation, through contentknowledge. And thus a related issue for those whowanted the LINC core to take a stronger drivingrole was the need for more content knowledge inthe supporting structures:

Over time LINC was missing a depth and detailed con-tent knowledge of the sector which would have madespecic initiatives more appropriately designed. (AnnLamont)

It changed focus when it started talking about innova-tions. That was where my big frustration came in. LINCwas trying to facilitate innovations in a vacuum, didnthave project knowledge to expertly facilitate. What theyhad knowledge of was how to bring us together and dealwith dynamics of working as a team. (Heidi Loen-ing-Voysey)

Changing thinking or driving action?

Dierent philosophical views were revealed aswell, through perceptions of what success wouldhave looked like. On the one hand was the perspec-tive that, in hindsight, thought the focus shouldhave remained on changing big picture mindsetsand high-level systems change through beer rela-tionships among the big shots: Maybe there wasnta need for a new project or initiative, rather we shouldhave asked the question: what can be achieved in terms ofa systemic shift? Mille Bojer

LINC had the opportunity to facilitate beer under-standing of the frustrations, challenges, workloads, andof what was working, that the system required strong co-operative relationships because services arent providedby government like they are education and health. Theyneed civil society for delivery.. But as soon as we triedto get into innovations I think thats where the wheelscame o for me. It just didnt work. Heidi LoeningVoysey

On the other hand, voices spoke of the signicantimpact of bringing people together in terms of thenumber and quality of projects that happened. Al-though these perspectives were not being given inopposition to the big system view, they point tothe fact that at least some of the sought for collabo-ration was actually happening through people net-working at LINC events.

System impact vs OrganisationalMandate

One of the key learnings for some of the core teamfrom the process, was that there wasnt enoughalignment between what people needed to do tomeet their own objectives inside their organisa-

tions and the role they played there, with what theycommied themselves to doing in their innovationteam in terms of scope and their place in the system.Where this alignment was close (in the communi-ty capacity team, for example) results were beer,than where the alignment was weak. On the otherhand, one fellow who took on tasks far outside hisorganisation mandate, spoke about the impact ofthis alignment being more a function of the organ-isations ability to tolerate movement away fromline function for the purposes of wider systemicimpact:

In my old line department which wasnt closeto LINCs mandate, being part of LINC wasnt aproblem: they saw it was useful for me to engage.In my new department, its a bit more that there arealways questions about why do you want to go tothat? They dont see the importance. Im not surewhat happened to the relationship, (since the newdepartment was one of the key ones for LINC to re-late to), but now its hard for me to prioritise..

As Ann retells, late in the LINC process, the insightabout leing people act in their organisation be-came more clearly designed in:

On the organisational level what we wanted to do,was to work with a couple of organisations be-cause really where we got to was that if you cantcollaborate and work eectively within your organ-isation, theres no way you can take it (beyond). So

what we started to design was to take BL into someof those big organisations like NACCW, Child Wel-fare, a couple of the big ones, just choose 5 and workwith them and one was meant to be DSD. So we hadquite a bit of development work done in developingthat. What you can do in a workshop is obviouslylimited: what we did achieve in the workshop wasraising the issues and making people think aboutthe issues and shifting some individual partner-ships.

With regard to the systemic stu and this is

not BL framework or theory U the way we shift-ed much more towards the end was that there arethemes and what can your organisation, even notworking collectively, what is your organisation do-ing to contribute to this theme and how can you domore of it? And how can you share your learnings?We shifted the way we look at collective action, butthat wasnt out of the BL framework, it was out ofour own learning and experience.

The revolving door for fellows: do wego deep or wide?

This issue was exacerbated by the challenges ofworking with a revolving door approach of bring-


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ing in a second and third cohort of fellows overtime: old fellows found sessions repetitive as newfellows needed to go through the process of trustbuilding and engaging.

Newer fellows did not have the benet of the ini-tial experience, which engaged deeply and directlywith power issues and therefore many were more

interested in networking and didnt necessarily seethe need to engage with issues about purpose/focusof LINC nor did they (in the eyes of early fellows)go to the deeper levels engendered in the early ses-sions.

This left some of the older fellows frustrated bythe apparent repetition of the process in later ses-sions, expressing a desire to be able to build on the

depth and rigour of the early work. One said: Ican really see (the potential) if we had stuck to theoriginal group and deepened our understanding

and challenged what was blocking us.

Consistency of participation: pushingagainst the bureaucratic culture

The challenges of holding a purposely multi-stake-holder space were manifold, as the diversity ofvoices within sectors, let along across them, wassignicant. One challenge in particular repeatedthroughout the process: this was often articulatedas diary management. As one fellow put it:

(LINC) was wonderful gift; there should havebeen a quid pro quo that we made a commitmenton (our) own goals and reported back on them.We needed a tighter accountability, for any pro-gramme that runs over 5 years, for the process, toprioritise it.

The challenge of working with the culture in theSouth African bureaucracy emerged clearly. This isseen to undermine the ability of individuals work-ing within it to commit to and plan for engage-ments. Barry Smith explains the impacts of this:

People (In government) dont know what theylldo each morning when they arrive, as their agendamay be changed by what the Minister needs themto do since politics are in tumult there is neverany time when things arent political, so a naturalresponse is to keep your head down. (as a result)its been hard to build political will. LINC had in-terest and sympathy from ocials but thats hard totranslate into a concrete commitment, particularlywhen you ultimately need ministerial engagement

to move these things forward. This is a story thatrepeats itself across government and is a challengefor any aempt at systemic change that engages

government outside itself. w

How were challenges and opportunitieshandled, and with what results?

Scope and focus

The question of focusing narrowly on children af-fected by HIV/AIDS or not was addressed and an-

swered by fellows during the rst retreat, where thevoices arguing against the narrower agenda carriedthe day. Thus LINCs mandate was a broad one.Given that this choice point was decisively navigat-ed at an early stage of the process, there is no wayof knowing whether outcomes and impacts wouldhave been signicantly dierent with a narrowerfocus. As Ann commented:

I think that what we were trying to do was verycomplex, so the only thing from a systemic pointof view that I couldve thought of that maybe we

should have done was to dene the topic moretightly, but we would have still had the complex is-sues among the stakeholders, but I think that den-ing the issue more tightly might have helped. Andin a way the issue got broadened by the sector itselfand I dont think we kept a tight enough rein on it.Maybe the need in the sector was to have the wholething, even though it was more dicult to achieveoutcomes. I dont know, we denitely got pushedbeyond OVC and HIV/AIDS.

ExpectationsRelated to the issue of scope, with hindsight, twocore voices felt that the expectations from LINC inthe early days from themselves and the fellows hadbeen unrealistically high:

LINCs intrinsic issue and limitation consisted inbeing a national network in a large country with alot of regional variation and a very complex systembringing people with a range of urgent issues to-gether. It was always going to be dicult to ndcommon ground on a few concerns. It wasnt a textbook application of U and change lab, it provedsome limitations of that thinking on a national lev-el: its extra dicult for one to bring a wide ranginggroup together, and distil their concerns to a coupleof focus issues. It didnt have the driving and ac-tive participation of government it led to a lotof angst about what (the fellows) were really therefor what was the concrete outcome? how couldthey justify this input? how could you commit to ajoint innovation when you were only there every 6months, and then back into overstretched burn out

work? What had to shift in LINC was people com-ing to terms with what was achievable, in what timeframe, geing sensible about moderating systemschange in a short period which is the Achilles heel


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of the U process/Generon approach.its always intension with the reality that people wanted to pleasedonors in a very conventional way. Barry Smith

I dont know if we created this or the sense ofdesperation created it but the expectations weretoo high, from us and the sector. You know thatssomething Ive thought about Ive really come

to terms with, I think what we did, yes there arethings we could have done beer and achieved, butI think what we did was possibly as much as couldbe done. Ann Lamont

After the rst Spier retreat, LINC ended up ambi-tiously aiming to tackle challenges of an astonish-ing level of complexity and breadth. It is no sur-prise, therefore, that this made it harder to progressconcrete initiatives on the ground and moreover, todo so in multi-stakeholder teams was perhaps toomuch to ask for.

Drive the process or be responsive?

There were examples where the core team droveaction strongly, in reintroducing topics that the fel-lows had not prioritised in the early workshops, indoing legwork for initiatives between meetings, indriving a particular set of activities at workshopsthrough design and strategy and, given the factthat the Steering Group, which had representationthroughout the sector, struggled to nd the time tomeet, the core was left to take more leadership thanhad been envisaged at the start.

Coaching was intended to support people to devel-op Bridging Leadership skills and to support bet-ter diary management and reduce other barriers toeective collaboration among those in governmentand with the most senior roles. The longer term in-tention being that leaders in the sector would overtime need less of the type of support that LINC pro-vided.

However, it is clear from perspectives shared by

current fellows, that external support is still neces-sary and wanted to enable the capacities and rela-tionships that LINC has built to sustain and spreadfurther in the sector:

If you look at ICT sector which is incredibly suc-cessful; business pays millions of rands, dollars, toget the best thinkers together, they have countlessopportunities to come together and think aboutwhere things are going in their industry, be thataround leadership or whatever. People see the val-ue of it, theres no need for tangible output, in fact,

people pay for it! The real value is that they can gettogether and share opportunities. (Children) are farmore important and (without LINC) it isnt goingto happen because you cant make money from it,

but the value of it is as great as in any of those sec-tors.

LINC sta took on a strong role in driving inno-vation teams until late 2011 and at times the corestepped in (such as in reintroducing the media is-sue as an innovation), so there were clearly exam-ples where the core drove the process. On the

other hand, the willingness to respond to concernsabout language and terminology which lead to thewider mandate, the willingness to let some of theinnovation teams disband and later, to shift theirstructure so that one organisation held a theme andother stakeholders came and went, is evidence thatat times the core responded to the fellows.

What does emerge here, from the writers perspec-tive is a question about how this process of bal-ancing this dilemma might have beneted fromseeing it as such and managing it proactively, with

the knowledge that the need for intervention orspace diers over time and circumstances. Fromwithin the core team it sometimes seemed that thepush/pull between these two poles became a ten-sion that sat between individuals or orgransiationsespousing either one, instead of the group holdingthat tension collectively.

Changing thinking or driving action?

From a facilitation point of view, there were mo-ments of missed opportunity during the early meet-ings, where deeper understanding of paerns in thesystem might have been revealed and worked with.Mille, for example, noted the fact that a shift fromseeing children as victims to seeing them as poten-tial protagonists, was siing in the group at Spierin 2007 among some people and had shown up asa possible new lens in the dialogue interview pro-cess, but it did not emerge through the collectiveengagement and didnt become a driving insight in

LINC going forward.

However, LINC did change thinking in the sectorin other signicant ways in particular, fellowspointed to major shifts in how the sectors perceivedeach other and in how much people identied theircounterparts in other sectors as being just theirroles, began to be able to experience and interactwith them as human beings who cared about chil-dren, releasing all of them in the process to imaginedierent future possibilities together.

One of the really good things just being able to see thepeople behind the roles. Actually just seeing people and

their humanitythere were some very transformativemoments.

The tension between changing thinking (which is


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hard to pin down, track and measure) and driv-ing action (which is more easily observable) is atthe core of this type of work. As Donella Mead-ows states in her paper on leverage points forsystems change5the most powerful shifts happenin systems at the level of paradigms or mindsets:that which is hardest to see has more impact thanany measurable concrete action. However it iselusive and frustrating to seek: perhaps we onlyknow it with hindsight.

At this point in LINCs story, the fellows whowere interviewed have spoken most passionate-ly about the changes in their own mindsets allof the evaluation reports and reviews evidencedthis. But this only attests that change is happen-ing at the level of the individual and as the ex-ample of the Treasury budgeting process demon-strates, this does not necessarily lead to change inthe organisation let alone the system. The ques-tion then is not does this work, but how do wesupport change at the individual level to createchange beyond the individual? Is it a matter oftime alone as some have argued (William Birdscomment that this will need at least 10 years, thecoaching reports assertion that 2 5 years is anormal time period for personal change even)?Is it more of the same? Or are there other waysto expand and deepen the changing thinkingimpact across a system.

If it is driving action that needs to take promi-nence, then Ann Lamont seems to have alreadylearnt from her experience in LINC and to beimplementing a new approach. Here she talksabout how she is working on a new initiative inthe Education sector, called Bridge:

Bridge, which is deeply collaborative in a differentway, is drawing on everything that I learnt fromLINC. The core of Bridge is how do you spread suc-cessful practice, if there are so many pockets of excel-lence which there are..how do you spread that? And

thats not about everybody doing one project, it can beabout everybody doing bits and pieces that if you putit together in a certain way will have a much greaterimpactI think its a better model of scale becausethe myth that we have about you prototype then you

go to scale, even without prototyping there are verysuccessful projects that just dont go to scale: we cantkeep on pretending that that is going to happen. Sothe Bridge thinking is if lots of people are doing suc-cessful work in a particular area how do you createscale out of that, or systemic change out of that.

5 Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in a Sys-tem. Donella Meadows, The Sustainabilty Instute,

Paper, 1999 (accessed online)

System impact vs OrganisationalMandate

The strategy of continuing to work through designedand facilitated innovation teams with multi-stake-holder participation, was a key cornerstone of theLINC approach in the early years. However, inter-views with a handful of fellows point to an inter-

esting system driven response to the limitations ofthis approach: the opportunities provided by teaminteractions, informal interactions during time oat the retreats, and by group activities, led to manyconnections which were not designed.

The initiatives and activities that came out of theseconnections, such as working together on existingprojects, scaling up, and learning from each otherfor programme design and implementation wereall, by denition initiated by fellows and werealigned with their existing organisational mandates.Although formally, there may have been challengesrelating to the need to beer align with job descrip-tions, fellows took the spaces which LINC providedto do what they needed and wanted to do togetheranyway.

(after that) it was just about buiding links with dier -ent people so that we could work more closely together onthings we were running, there wasnt an innovation assuch. William Bird

The revolving door for fellows: do wego deep or wide?

The initial strategy to create an ongoing fellow-ship was pursued, thus bringing in two addition-al cohorts after the rst. The idea about the lack ofdepth of the second two cohorts was reected onlyby those from the rst cohort; fellows from cohortstwo and three valued LINC for its networking op-portunities and did not feel they had less of anexperience. By the end of 2011, there were almost100 fellows from 60 organisations, so the fellow-ship was a wide one. From the perspective ofa core team member, bringing in new participantshas, each time, brought fresh ideas, perspectives,and crucially, energy into the Fellowship. (RenaldMorris, Synergos, LINC co-ordinator)

The question about what might have happened ifa smaller group had gone deep will remain un-answered. But for one (initial) fellow, the questionremains: I think that as LINC grew bigger withnew people coming in, who might have not been

grounded in the same way, there were times whenwe didnt sing together as well. The only way youcan keep bringing in new people is if they wereproperly oriented and grounded.I thought itdidnt happen.


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Consistency of participation: pushingagainst the bureaucratic culture

Despite knowing that this issue was not specif-ic to LINC, it remained an area of concern and

ongoing questioning: Ann talks about whatLINC might have done dierently to draw moregovernment commitment, but also of how thosestrategies have been tried, without success:

Ive thought about it a lot. Im not sure I havethe answers from a systemic perspective. I justsee it again and again and again in development.Its the games we play. Government sits withthe power, people wont aend if governmentdoesnt aend, this one feels left out and that onefeels left out ... Maybe it would have helped if

we had more relationships with the Minister, butIve done that too and then when you get passeddown it becomes an issue at that level. The DGwas going to come to the rst meeting and maybeit would have helped if hed been there, but Ivedone that before as well and they get too busyand even if you have that support it somehowdisappears along the way.

As one fellow commented:

People realised that we had dierent workloads,but I

Case Study - LINC South Africa

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