Introducing Catalyst Clusters and some big collective ambitions

The Catalyst is a big opportunity to build digital capabilities as networks, fields and ecosystems, not just as individual organisations.

Where organisations — as well as groups and individuals — share ambitions to work with the same people, address the same challenges and transform the same systems (which is most of the time), we should be doing everything we can to build greater collective strength and responsiveness.

Digital capabilities and infrastructure are essential to unlocking our collective capacity and putting people at the centre of everything we do.

Dawn Plimmer and Toby Lowe’s hugely helpful Human, Learning, Systems approach to working collaboratively in amongst the complexity of systems requires many forms and layers of shared capability and infrastructure. Digital, data and design capabilities are critical parts of this. And there are some great examples of how this works in practice, with models like Open Data Institute’s Data Trusts, the Law Centres Network’s shared digital capabilities and infrastructure, Homeless Link’s In-form platform for homelessness organisations and many others.

But, despite having better access to frameworks for collective progress like Dawn and Toby’s and bright spots of shared capability building and infrastructure like ODI, the conventional approach consists mainly of individual efforts and unilateral engagements — social organisations design their own digitally enabled products and services, they invest in their own digital and data infrastructure, they procure their own tech services and they build, when they can, their own digital capacity.

These activities reflect important ambitions and valid intentions to improve, innovate and harness the benefits that digital tools and services can bring.

But the idea that digital capabilities and infrastructure should be developed individually, procured independently and sustained by each actor within a system is a strange one.

For starters, it is hugely inefficient. As Tris Lumley so clearly lays out, it is simply impossible to imagine that every individual organisation could build and sustain this capacity. More fundamentally, this individual approach to capability building reflects a strange and counterproductive individualism and competition woven into the fabric of the sector. Almost everything is modelled as an individual pursuit — build your theory of change, develop your business model, innovate your services, measure your impact, apply for funding, compete for tenders, build your capabilities etc.

When the shared (and keenly felt) intention is to make sure that the people we work with are surrounded by a thriving landscape of services and support and that they are deeply understood, involved and empowered, the emphasis on single, independent organisations represents a flaw, not a strength.

“We are not lone rangers, and we shouldn’t seek to be”

— Dawn Austwick

As Dawn Austwick says, loudly and regularly, that “we are not lone rangers, and we shouldn’t seek to be”. That is absolutely right, but we have some radical changes to embark upon, across business models, funding and commissioning practices, operating structures, measurement principles and much more. We need to take every opportunity to push in this direction and The Catalyst represents a great chance to do that.

Introducing Catalyst Clusters

The Catalyst is trying to apply this thinking with much of the design of its model and one emerging area of strategy that particularly demonstrates this approach is Catalyst Clusters, which draws on heaps of great existing practice and builds off of Cassie Robinson’s exploration and synthesis of some of the best available models.

The Clusters model is a simple one: it seeks to build the shared digital capabilities of existing or potential networks in order to help them work more closely together, pursue their shared goals and improve their individual and collective impact.

At the moment, we’re exploring the Clusters model in relation to existing or potential networks that have two characteristics:

1. Shared objectives: where networks share common objectives to understand and meet the same needs, drive similar outcomes and make their best contribution in the same systems, such as:

• Develop stronger alignment, integration or interdependence of services or activities
• Build shared practice, evidence, tools, capabilities, assets or infrastructure
• Represent a shared agenda or interest (e.g. policy, awareness, commissioning or funding priorities), locally, regionally or nationally
• Accelerate progress (e.g. share learning, share resource, use same tech etc) on design and development projects by collaborating with teams working on similar challenges (e.g. multiple teams working on helpdesk services)

2. Shared digital capability needs: where progress against these shared objectives could be improved, accelerated or even transformed by greater digital capabilities, such as:

• Design better services — supporting the capabilities to collaborate to develop or improve digitally enabled services, tools, infrastructure or shared systems and assets (e.g. data)
• Shared learning — developing the collective mindset, practices and mastery of the tools to become more resilient and responsive through digital and data
• Leadership — supporting digital leadership within the network
• Standards — developing or applying shared standards (i.e. the documentation and processes that embed best practice), such as standards, codes, principles and assessments
• Re-use — increasing the re-use of tools, data, insights and design patterns across the network
• Supply — increasing access to the right talent and support (e.g. digital, design, data) for and within the network

We’re working with partners all over the UK to explore the role of this model in different contexts and systems, for existing networks of different kinds to those with latent or emerging ambitions to work more closely together and invest in shared capabilities and infrastructure.

Become part of this conversation

If you want to provide examples of relevant existing or potential clusters and help explore, challenge and refine this model, please get in touch with hello@thecatalyst.org.uk using “Clusters” in the subject.