Green Changemakers: A Second Operating System

It’s approaching a year since we finished the Green Changemakers pilot, a year where we’ve been supporting and energising one another in the community, co-creating a Virtual Green Skills Hub (more of that in another article; it launches at the end of March) and co-evaluating what works when it comes to shifting from good intentions to sustainable action in FE.

A Moment for Reflection 

As we begin to take Green Changemakers out of the West Midlands and into – well, everywhere that will have us – it feels like a fitting moment to reflect on some of what we’ve learned in this and subsequent articles. Reflection takes pause and consideration, so I felt very lucky to be part of the EAUC’s Leadership Lab in Cambridge at the start of the year, an opportunity to pause and let the thinking settle down a bit.

The Second Operating System

I was introduced there to the concept of the ‘second operating system’, which was both a lightbulb moment and a missing jigsaw piece which is helping me articulate the value of a changemaking-first approach to climate action. Green Changemakers recognise that an enduring frustration of the work is that FE’s strategy and systems are aligned around meeting the financial and operational demands of the sector – the overarching KPIs, if you like. And of course they are, that’s how organisations survive and it’s why our services are structured in the way that they are. We do that job well – with ever-decreasing margins. 

The Current State of FE

In short, FE and Skills is set up to deliver what we have to deliver, and we do the best job that we can.

But where does that leave momentum around the big issues facing us in a world of permacrisis and perpetual change? Climate action, the ethics and development of AI, mental health and wellbeing? Our social purpose, which is what brought most of us into the sector in the first place?

Split Purpose in FE

In their wide-ranging research of 2023/24, Changing Systems of Change, The Education and Training Foundation and Oxford Saïd Business School uncovered a split purpose at the heart of FE and Skills. We’re in it for a social purpose, but the demands of funders and policymakers actually shape our KPIs. This divided ‘North Star’ is inescapable. That’s why we need a ‘second operating system’ which runs alongside formal structures and enables us to avoid the ‘fizzling out’ of those good intentions.

The Need for Change

When we do what we’ve always done, we get what we’ve always got, runs conventional wisdom. Being brilliant – as we are – at delivering on what we’ve always been leaves little room for building and sustaining momentum towards an uncertain future. And yet who should be in the driving seat of the ‘green revolution’, if not for us? We are the Skills Service! Green skills, within a framework of education for sustainable development, are how we’ll prepare for the unknowns of a greener future.

The Changemaking Solution

This is where a changemaking approach comes in. Changemaking is the ‘second operating system’, where organisations have a constellation of people at all levels and operations of the organisation, working together in the community for sustainable change. Green Changemakers were trained not in green skills, as we conventionally see them in FE – after all, they are dependent on subject specialism and the uncertainty of future need – but in a suite of changemaking skills, including (but not limited to) influence, project design, storytelling, climate conversations and the development of new, complementary, impact metrics. There is wriggle room for both, even when the demands of the day job are accommodated. And our key learning is that this has to happen in the community to energise changemakers, allow them to pause and protect them from burnout. More of this, when I write to you again.

By Dr Lou Mycroft, Green Changemaker