The Four Seasons of Changemaking

The Challenge and Our Response

Regular readers will know that in recent years my practice has been focused on changemaking, developing both mindset and skillset around a ‘second operating system’ in FE. As Maylor, Smith and Tully found out in their groundbreaking research Changing Systems of Change (2024), our sector’s systems, structures and hierarchies are designed to deliver on a narrow range of impacts and struggle to advance momentum around the social purpose of FE, creating conditions to enable healthy, engaged, active citizens of the future (which is what most of us came into FE to do!)

I think of changemakers as people who are intentional about doing something new in the second operating system space; running alongside conventional accountability structures but with some wriggle room to take a social purpose approach. Freedom also needs boundaries and a theory of change roadmap is helpful to the changemaking process. Over the past decade, my friend and colleague Joss Kang and I have been developing a theory of change for FE, which we’ve called ‘Four Seasons of Changemaking’, because who doesn’t love a nature metaphor?

Learning from #APConnect

Joss and I worked on #APConnect, the ETF’s Advanced Practitioners programme, from 2018-2022. Not only did #APConnect make a significant contribution to FE’s unique constellation of engaged educators; it provided a fascinating opportunity for us to notice what conditions seemed to be in place for intentional change to happen. 

Spring: Getting Unstuck (Goodbye to “We’ve Always Done It This Way”)

Firstly, Getting Unstuck means disentangling from current thinking, including taken for granteds, norms, axioms, and the old thinking of ‘gobackery’. This is where our old friends, “we’ve always done it this way” and “we tried that before and it didn’t work” get deconstructed and dismissed. In Thinking Environment terms, what this season does is unpick untrue limiting assumptions that we live as true. It means getting real about what we know and don’t know, about our capacity and parameters.

Summer: Releasing Potentia (Enter the Golden Unicorns!)

Releasing Potentia is the second season of changemaking. This is where the Golden Unicorns come in! Potentia is the joyful changemaking power that Golden Unicorns have: people who can still find a buzz and excitement in the work. It’s just that sometimes the unicorn is asleep, if we are battered down by the day job or life in general. We know from social contagion theory that if 25% of people in an organisation can mobilise around change, transformation takes on a life and momentum of its own. Changemakers use their influence and infectious potentia to wake up the Golden Unicorns around them.

Changemakers are always Golden Unicorns (who are intentional about driving change).

Golden Unicorns are not always Changemakers (and that’s fine, with their curiosity and enthusiasm they still have a net positive impact on the people around them. They just don’t want to get caught up in specific transformation initiatives).

Autumn: Gaining Clarity (Direction, Not Destination)

The third season of changemaking is Gaining Clarity. Here we take stock and start to get a plan down, one which focuses on establishing the direction of travel, not nailing down a destination. In a rapidly changing world, adaptability is precious. Being able to flex the programme without losing sight of purpose and values is a changemaker skill, as is the development of impact metrics which are authentic and meaningful.

Winter: Co-Creating Unimagined Futures (This Isn’t Fluffy Work)

Finally, we reach the point where we can Co-Create Unimagined Futures. Having disentangled from untrue limiting assumptions, released Golden Unicorns and put together a plan which is strong and flexible enough to survive external curveballs, it’s time to work with other changemakers to imagine – in practical terms – different futures. This is not fluffy work, it’s actually the work of diversity, of listening to others, of creativity, of considering alternate views which are rooted in different histories and experiences. Thinking about the future can bring fear, and also hope. And, as Angela Oguntala says in her influential TEDx talk, we forget, sometimes, that we can have influence too.

Putting It Into Practice (Spoiler: It’s Not Linear)

The Green Changemakers programme is structured around these four ‘seasons’. Of course, they don’t roll round in the linear way we (used to) expect our actual seasons to roll. Sometimes, we realise we need to go back and do a bit more ‘unsticking’, or the energy falters and we have to ‘release potentia’ again. But it holds well to shape Green Changemaking work, as well as it will hold, next time you think about having a planning day.

By Dr Lou Mycroft, Co-Director FE Constellations, a nomadic educator, writer, and Green Changemaker.