Introducing our ‘Do What You Can’ Insight Series from PPL Senior Advisors

At PPL, we have always described ourselves as an apolitical organisation, but as profound believers in the power of politics to change people’s lives.

As an organisation that grew out of local government; has spent almost two decades working with colleagues across the NHS; and works closely in partnership with the voluntary and community sector through our social impact fund and the PPL Hub, we know first hand how political acts – choices, decisions, funding, beliefs and behaviours, impact people’s lives in the most profound ways.

We also recognise that we are all innately political, whether we see ourselves through that lens or not. Every choice we make is political in some way and, as we often say ‘even doing nothing is a choice’.

As we enter a new era of British politics, as a team and as part of a community of people working to create and sustain improved public services, at PPL we are clear that we are entering a national process of change and that, within this process, we each have a choice.

Whatever your perspective on the change, it is undeniably different; a new chapter in our national story. We can choose to step into this new space with curiosity and maybe even a little bit of hope. We can allow ourselves to look again at ideas that we thought were good but have maybe not worked exactly as planned and ask ‘would that maybe work better in a new context?’. We have an opportunity to move away from the narrative that ‘nothing ever changes’ and into one that says ‘can we try this?’.

What we have seen since the election is an orderly and well-managed transition into a new era, but the journey is only just beginning. We talk at PPL about co-production and co-design, not as ‘nice’ ways of doing things, but as the only thing that might actually work. Public services cannot simply be designed in a darkened room and delivered to people, they need to meet us where we all are; to understand what matters to each of us, both as individuals and as a whole society. And we have a responsibility to step into the idea that this is possible, and to recognise that there are things we can each do which will make this era feel different and better than the one that preceded it.

Our unofficial motto as a team is a Roosevelt quote ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’. Whenever challenges feel too big, or too complex, we encourage each other, and our clients and partners, to take a deep breath, stand still and work out how to get started. What often stops things from changing is the fear that change is impossible, and that even trying to make things better is somehow naïve.

Cynicism is easy – any of us could reel off a list of why things don’t or won’t work. It is also dangerously comfortable, because it plays to our natural instinct for validation from other humans – building a community of cynics is relatively easy and can actually feel quite fun because no-one has to agree on what things ‘could’ look like, or compromise. Everyone gets to reach easy agreement on the fact that things won’t work. Coming together to build something positive is much, much harder. Everyone has to compromise, people’s individual definition of ‘better’ will inevitably look different, we won’t all get what we want and what we may feel at times is that this is better, but harder, than what we had before.

In our personal lives, we all learn that there are no easy answers to complex questions. We know that we make mistakes, try things that don’t work (or unexpectedly work brilliantly!); we know that relationships ebb and flow, that progress can often feel slow but what we also have is, however deeply buried, a quiet sense of hope and purpose. And we know that, at times when that quiet sense deserts us, the world can feel very bleak indeed.

So when we say that we are all political, what we are saying is that we have to bring who we are as humans back into how we live as a society – to bring some of the hope that keeps us moving forward as humans into how we work and live together. Listen to each other, find common ground. Above all, we need to allow ourselves to believe that things could be better, however risky that might feel, because otherwise we will make it certain that they can’t.

The PPL team is privileged to work closely with an extraordinary group of Senior Advisors who are embedded into our team, and who bring with them great insight into their individual areas of expertise, which cover the public, community, private and voluntary sectors, but also the pragmatism and humility of experience.

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing the outputs from conversations we have had with our senior advisory colleagues about what their experience and insight tells us is needed for us to respond to the challenge of this new era. We will be asking them about what they have learned, what gives them hope and what they personally will do differently to create positive change as we move forward over the coming months.

We hope you will enjoy listening to their insights.