What have we learnt?

People cannot thrive without good relationships, so we need to put them first – in our society, services and organisations – not treat them as an afterthought. Over the last year, we’ve learnt three key things:

1. Designing relationships in, not out, generates ‘relational power’ 
   Where there are good relationships, communities and society pull together and individuals flourish, potential is unlocked and problems are forestalled or shared. Building kindness and humanity into our services and public life, and creating connection and community, not just passive services, can build ‘relational power’ and help people thrive, not just cope. But they have to be designed in, not out.
   

2. Our humanity is the most powerful change agent
   People not organisations build relationships, and behaviour is more important than processes or rules in encouraging good relationships to flourish. If we used the full range of our experience, rather than simply thinking with our professional hats on, the shift could be enormous – for example, thinking about recipients of services as ‘our loved ones’ changes how we think about those services. As we build relationships, it’s vital that these are inclusive, not exclusive, and sensitive to differences, for example of race, religion, gender and sexuality.
   

3. We need to stop talking about people as problems, and see them as solutions
   Our national conversation disempowers and polarises, portraying people as problems to be fixed, blaming individuals for their own misfortunes or presenting issues as intractable. As a consequence, we walk away from problems, rather than working together to solve them, and see processes not relationships as the best response.

What can we do?

Here are some things we’ve identified that everyone can do – service providers, charities, central and local government and public agencies, private companies and funders too, and we’ll be exploring further how to do these things well, as well as investigating new ideas:

Designing relationships in

• Make relationship-building the purpose of our work, with everyone in an organisation seeing relationship-building as core to the job they do.

• Direct resources to relationship-building activities, and measure this, not outputs.

• Invest in relationship-building capacity through social infrastructure, including the social connecting role of community hubs, community organisers and others, as set out here. 
  

Unlocking our humanity

• Turn organisations into communities, not machines. If organisations focus on internal relationship building, they can unlock creativity, and give front-line staff opportunity to build relationships externally too.

• Replace the ‘rational lexicon’ of targets and standardisation with a ‘relational lexicon’, which could create the conditions for positive relationships to flourish everywhere and show the principles and behaviours to get there.

• Make systems more relational. Tick box exercises are unhelpful but checklists, encouraging open questions and allowing space for reflection, can work. 
  

 Seeing people as the solution, not the problem

• Stop the language of ‘them and us’ and start talking about mutual support, where we care for, depend on and learn from each other.

• Act more as enablers, seeing people not as ‘consumers’ or ‘beneficiaries’ or ‘vulnerable’ but as citizens who help create the changes they need and can often lead the way, and present those we help as having agency and potential, rather than as problems.

• Encourage authentic voices and new narratives in which people are portrayed not as passive recipients of support but as heroes of their own stories.