{"id":1475,"date":"2015-07-04T15:04:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T15:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/?p=1475"},"modified":"2018-01-24T11:03:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T11:03:28","slug":"getting-buy-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/getting-buy-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting buy-in"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Big Idea represented a challenging shift in working style which was not universally embraced by the entire staff team. In fact, it was initially a really polarising initiative within the office. The project represented a huge shift in working from our traditional policy-driven approach to a place-based approach. Getting organisational buy-in was a process that took months, lots of conversation and ultimately, a leap of faith.<\/p>\n<p>What were some of the barriers?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a fear of committing to a project without knowing the topic we would be focussed on<\/li>\n<li>a worry that we may not be best suited to support hte kind of change communities wanted to see (what if the community identified an issue with potholes? or planning permission?)<\/li>\n<li>an acknowledgement that working differently in the community meant a potentially different working week, including working remotely and working on evenings and weekends if needed.<\/li>\n<li>a question of resources &#8211; by committing significant time to a fairly small geographical region, are we making the best use of our resources as a national organisation?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think its important to note that we didn&#8217;t particularly overcome these barriers and fears, we just came to terms with them and decided that The Big Idea was worth the risk. We learned as a team to deal with uncertainty with different levels of comfort andmake the decision as a collective to build the Big Idea into our three year strategy. Part of that compromise was about individual staff members setting the boundaries of their own skills and capabilities and committing to what they could.<\/p>\n<p>An unexpected outcome was that by debating and justifying the Big Idea internally, we felt more able to explain the project to external partners. In this internal negotiation, we also found that we were living some of hte challenges of collaboration that The Big Idea itself hoped to uncover. Acknowledging our own internal discomfort with collective decision making was an important experience that we were able to share with partnes further down the line.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a change of director meant (of course) a change of direction! The project has originated before this organisational change process began, but it was reevaluated within a new context. A new direction included a focus on scale and reach, which meant it was even harder to imagine an investment in just one place. A new round of negotiation and debate began and what surprised us was that people who had originally been against the new way of working were able to defend it.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of internal papers emerged form this debate and discussion &#8211; some of which have been an opportunity for us to articulate our own views on scaling and embedding ideas internally, and some like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iriss.org.uk\/resources\/iriss-place-based-working\">our thoughts on place-based approaches<\/a>, which have turned into useful external outputs.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately we are still grappling as an organisation with our role in The Big Idea, but have found some common ground and appetite for change.<\/p>\n<p>Written by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iriss.org.uk\/our-team\/rhiann-mclean\">Rhiann McLean<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Big Idea represented a challenging shift in working style which was not universally embraced by the entire staff team. In fact, it was initially a really polarising initiative within the office. The project represented a huge shift in working from our traditional policy-driven approach to a place-based approach. Getting organisational buy-in was a process &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/getting-buy-in\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Getting buy-in<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":""},"categories":[16721],"tags":[16753,16754,16755,16756,9755],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iriss.org.uk\/thebigidea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}