Samhällskontraktet X Dark Matter Labs: The Cornerstone Indicators
In this final blog in a 3-part series developed in partnership with Samhällskontraktet, we want to share some of the things that didn’t go so well in the process. This work is dense, difficult and emotionally demanding. We feel that it is important to acknowledge that, so that we can improve our own work and set realistic expectations for others who might want to build on it.
- Throughout these blogs we are using the word citizen to represent the people who live in a country rather than as a statement of nationality or legal status.
Blog 3 (of 3): learning into the future
Recently we have given talks about the Cornerstone Indicators at the RE*Leadership Festival in Copenhagen and the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin. This has been a great privilege, but has also highlighted how rare it is to hear anyone speak about what went wrong in their projects. If you read books and listen to talks describing the numerous wonderfully successful initiatives, you would be forgiven for thinking that everything is on track. Perhaps we should all just relax and feel confident that the knotty problem of urgent systemic change is under control? Except it isn’t and the problem space continues to intensify. It is for this reason that we want to embrace our vulnerability and appeal for help in strengthening and scaling this work. We haven’t quite got it right yet, but we believe the underlying ethos of everyday politics¹ is a foundational requirement in the race to reclaim our futures.
What did we learn?
Like anyone with an exciting new idea we quickly realised that not everyone would share our enthusiasm. People are busy. They also have their own ideas, value systems, constraints and goals. The five points that follow highlight some of the key challenges that we faced. We have also included some thoughts on how we might approach things differently in the future. We would be curious to know what you think or might suggest?
Local politicians: our initial assumption was that local politicians would be fully supportive of the project. This assumption came from a belief that the indicators we were planning to co-design, would be viewed as politically neutral and useful to multiple stakeholders. In reality, we found that there was an understandable level of resistance to the proposed strategy. This tension centred around concerns about raising unrealistic citizen expectations, together with potentially creating indicators that clashed with the mandates of elected politicians. In the future we plan to involve politicians early in the process with a quick initial survey about the project and then hold a workshop to explore their responses. We also think it will be important to clearly explain that the indicators chosen by their citizens will not conflict with their current policies and plans. Instead, encompassing the citizen’s views about wellbeing into their work should actually validate their actions. For example, if an indicator shows that citizens value cycling this does not mean that a new road cannot be constructed, but it would indicate that it should include designated cycling lanes.
Narrative: a strong learning point for us was the importance of having a clear and appealing narrative for the process that could be easily explained in a few sentences. We would suggest that future project leaders dedicate time early in the process, to think about who exactly their audience is and what success would look like. A further consideration is that there may be multiple narratives needed, for example one for the citizens and another for the local politicians.
Analytical rigour: we undertook both the EFA statistical analysis and the thematic mapping from the questionnaires and workshops ourselves. Within our team we have a talented statistician who was able to run this process for us, but we didn’t have the capacity to really drill into the finer detail. The initial results produced some interesting patterns that we think merit further investigation. In respect of the thematic analysis, we would acknowledge that our process could be strengthened to make it more robust and replicable for future teams. We would propose partnering with a university to develop this knowledge resource, so that results can be more effectively targeted to different scales of project.
Practical use: when we finished co-designing the indicators we realised that we hadn’t made detailed plans for how they would be used and monitored in practice. Whilst the process is important in its own right, we need a clearer pathway for how the indicators can be practically integrated into existing decision making structures. How for example could they be used to steer investment allocation decisions? Who should be responsible for keeping them up to date? How will the results be communicated to the citizens and what are the implications if they are getting better or worse?
Avoiding overload: we have been repeatedly asked why we are adding to the growing number of indicators that policy makers have to consider. This is understandable, because at a national level it is extremely difficult to continuously measure, consider and and compare data from multiple contexts. However, the Cornerstone Indicators are built on top of existing data points rather than creating new ones. Our challenge is therefore to make this interface function more easily understood, such as by presenting a clear link to existing frameworks such as the UN SDGs. In the future, we hope that we can develop this area of the work to create a natural mesh between citizen-led and state-led outcomes.
Despite the challenges outlined above, the energy and interest in the work is growing rapidly. This gives us the opportunity to really build and improve on this exploratory work. For example, we are endeavouring to address many of the above points in the design of the Canadian project. In Scotland, the focus of our work is to establish credible links from the ongoing community workshops back to policy making. We will share more about the progress of our work in both contexts later this year.
Some closing thoughts
At this point we are still grappling with a number of questions that we would like to invite others to join us in exploring:
- Are fully definable metrics (i.e. those that can be held to account) appropriate to quantify a thriving life?
Recently we were approached by a colleague and asked how the Cornerstone Indicators could be used to set the targets for outcomes based investing. Our reaction was quite viscerally defensive, almost as if watching someone kick a small animal. This is interesting! One of the defining features of the Cornerstones is that they embody feelings and a sense of vitality that cannot be directly measured. We see this as hugely important in the fight against the commodification of life; the Cornerstones represent a numerical buffer against further elements of the natural world and human experience being sucked into financial targets.
2. How can we bridge existing capital (investment finance) into generalised vitality goals?
When we reduce living stocks and flows to a set of digits, financial accounts and budgets, we are creating an abstracted view of reality. If we can understand these tools as useful approximations then they clearly have merit, but more often than not we see them as hard, technical ‘truths’. When we look at the world in this way, it becomes harder to make good decisions. It also blocks investment into critical elements of society, such as preventative healthcare and coordinated climate adaptation infrastructure.
3. If GDP and the underlying profits that define it have driven us to the survivable edge of our current system, what is an appropriate goal for the next phase of human civilization?
In our opinion, anything less than collective thriving is an insufficient goal to strive for. This is both our motivation to continue this work and our challenge to you in yours.
We would welcome your thoughts and reactions and of course be delighted if you feel inspired to run a process in your own city or region. Please do get in touch if you would like to collaborate.
Blog 1 and Blog 2 are linked here for ease of reference.
This blog was co-authored by Emily Harris (emily@darkmatterlabs.org) and Linnea Rönnquist (linnea.ronnquist@mdu.se)
References:
- The term everyday politics refers to community centred activities that reconnect citizens with public life.
