We reflect on two of the lessons from our work with people and communities: changing the system takes time, and the importance of balancing shape, pace, power and certainty.
24 April 2025
Since 2019, the Foundation has been working alongside six communities across England and Wales to strengthen small community led organisations and find new ways of designing and resourcing services so that people facing complex issues get the support they need, when they need it, and in ways that work best for them.
We’re all learning together about how to do things differently and make lasting change within communities. Our learning partner Brightpurpose produced a report on some of the lessons we have learned from our work so far.
In this blog series we will be spotlighting each of the ten lessons with reflections and real-life examples. Here, Harriet Ballance, People and Communities Manager at the Foundation, discusses two of the lessons we've learned so far: changing the system takes time, and the importance of balancing shape, pace, power and certainty.
We approached each place with an invitation to local people and organisations to work together to improve the lives of people within their community. We chose to work with local people and organisations to decide what the focus of the work should be – we wanted to be able to respond to the unique needs of the local community rather than provide a predetermined programme. It takes time, patience and investment to get to know the places and people (and they us), to facilitate conversations, to plan, to challenge, to spot opportunities, and establish stable resourcing and capacity to support the work.
There is an inherent tension in this work with regards to time. We know that many programmes and initiatives do not make the long term impact that might be hoped for because not enough time is invested into ensuring that change can be truly embedded and sustained within a community. But we also know that crises facing people and communities are happening right now, so it’s challenging to spend time building relationships and finding new ways forward when the positive results of this can’t be seen straight away.
One of the things that took a significant amount of time was choosing a starting point for the work in each of the places as we found that there was some challenge around finding the ‘right’ thing. People often commented that it was novel and different to be coming together in this way to have conversations about what might be possible, with people they might not usually have been working with. The broad open nature of these conversations sometimes led to a sense of confusion and perhaps a little trepidation, with some people loving the space and freedom to think ‘outside the box’, and others struggling with the lack of shape and certainty. But without taking the time to consider what’s both important and possible within a community, it’s difficult to develop strong ideas and collaborations.
We have worked with each place to help them identify a focal issue that they want to address as a group. In some cases, this has been more closely defined or service focused, but in other areas people have gravitated towards a broader preventative focus. Sometimes this has led to really broad starting points that needed to be narrowed down further.
For example, in Telford our group of local people and organisations chose to focus on ‘aspiration’ – clarifying that this was about ‘unlocking potential’ for local people. They recognised the strengths and potential of the local community and that by intervening early on and addressing the barriers that get in the way for people, this can prevent people getting to a crisis point where the right support has not been in place for them.
Honing down from this broad focus to identify key priorities and action points has taken time, but the work that is arising from this process is genuinely grounded in local priorities and is succeeding in bringing people together to address some of their most pressing challenges. The work in Telford and Wrekin is now focused on creating support and opportunities for people to achieve their potential in education and employment – you can read more about their progress here.
A focus on preventative work brings to mind the Desmond Tutu quote: ‘There comes a point when we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in’ and the African proverb ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.'
Going upstream takes time to achieve, and we won’t always get it right first time. But the act of persisting with focused attention, and working together, is crucial in achieving long-term change.
- Harriet Ballance, People and Communities Manager, Lloyds Bank Foundation
Ann Johnson (far right), who leads our work in Telford and Wrekin, with representatives from local organisations at a networking event for local voluntary organisations
We identified four factors that we refer to as the ‘Goldilocks’ factors that must always be balanced – power, certainty, pace and shape. Too much or too little of each has a negative impact, so it’s essential to find the right balance.
Something we have found from the early stages of the work is that there is an art to treading new ground, opening up a space to start to work on change, enabling people to think big, but also providing a sense of structure and clarity to help people do that. One of the things we’ve noticed is that different kinds of thinkers respond differently to the invitation to work together in new ways. Some people really enjoy the expansive space that is created by an invitation to change the way the system works. However, for people who prefer more structure, the work can feel difficult to engage with – people want to know and understand what the ‘ask’ is.
Everyone involved has their own pressures which influences their capacity to engage in the work. To address this, we’ve found it helpful to think about ‘footholds’ within the work – creating a holding space for the work and recognising that not everyone has to be involved in everything. Creating that clarity has enabled people to find a place in the work. Sometimes that can mean saying ‘I’m under pressure at the moment but I will be able to engage again later’. It also enables the people that want to move onto action to do that (benefiting from the learning by doing), and those who want to focus more on building collaboration, skills development and strategy to do that.
A key focus for the Foundation team is considering the role of power. We have considerable power as a funder, so we must consider how this can influence the expectations and behaviour of the people we are collaborating with. What we want to do is use the power we have to enable people in the places to create the change they want to see. But we have to be conscious of how power is operating (so as not to unduly influence or sway people with what they think we might want to hear), and also be aware of how we can best use this power to change things for communities. Sometimes that has meant ‘holding the mirror up’ and reflecting back what we see happening, or using our role as an outside organisation to say the things that might be harder for local people to point out. Initially we have been tentative about doing this, for fear of overstepping the mark when we are working to build trust, but we have found that it is part of our role to act as a ‘critical friend’.
In a broader sense, we can use our power in a positive way by using our capacity and flexibility to stick with the work when it’s challenging, and remaining open to feedback. We’ve always grounded the work in relationships and trust, and it’s really important that we develop trusting relationships with our partners in the places so that they can be open and honest with us and trust that we will continue to adapt our approach accordingly.
