5 Mindsets of crisis-solving innovators
Andrew stansbury, PROJECT development lead, Housing Festival
Crises are the ground in which innovation and progress can flourish if fertilised by courageous leadership and watered by a collective commitment to embracing risk to find replicable solutions that tackle the complexity, severity, and scale of the crisis.
As I see the COVID inquiry unfold, I’m reminded how the rush for a COVID vaccine in the pandemic was a great example of this, as was the response to the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme that saw thousands of Ukrainians housed quickly with host families across the country.
These crises were sudden, shocking, and emotive. Risk-taking and quick responses were a natural response to the horror of the emergence of those crises and the solutions found amid those situations provided refuge and safety.
Were those solutions perfect?
Of course not.
Were they better than doing nothing?
Almost certainly.
But not all crises are as sudden, yet involve just as much pain, suffering and danger.
The current housing emergency our country is facing is a crisis of huge proportions inflicting great suffering, pain, and harm. Yet because it has been growing steadily over years, rather than in a sudden event, the shock and urgency of response needed is missing.
If 104,000 households, including 451 primary schools worth of children (131,000 children), were made homeless overnight in our country because of a sudden event, we would be aghast and expect long-term, safe, secure and quality homes for them to be found or built at pace in response.
And yet that is the number of households and children currently in temporary accommodation and there is no urgent, cohesive or collective response.
Under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, over 100,000 households have been housed with host families.
I hope you can see the challenge of the discrepancy of how our response to the sudden Ukraine war crisis stands in stark contrast to how we are responding to similar numbers in our current temporary accommodation crisis that is ever worsening, hidden in plain sight.
Instead of a hopeful, determined and collective response, the temporary accommodation crisis is being accepted as an unavoidable and unchangeable fact of the economic and political climate we are in.
What is the route forward?
Yes, you read that right – on average we have lost 8,100 social rent homes a year over the past decade.
Our current housebuilding systems and processes are failing to build the social rent homes we desperately need, meaning there are fewer and fewer safe, secure, suitable homes for those stuck in temporary accommodation to move into.
In no other sector would maintaining the status quo that is not delivering the outcomes desired or needed be accepted as a good route forward. Do we really think that by following the same processes, using the same viability measure, with the same partners we will suddenly produce the social rent homes we need when over the past 10 years it hasn’t?
If we want to see an increased scale of social rent homes built, then we must do things radically differently.
Without collective ownership across the sector that this emergency is our problem, we will continue with business as usual, even though it is putting people into housing poverty.
If we are unwilling to innovate, take risks, try new things, act with urgency and work in partnership with others, then we must accept that we are complicit in pushing people into poverty.
Unfortunately, innovation and doing things differently is complex, challenging, slow, frustrating, and demoralising.
There’s just no way around that.
And that is why we need actual leadership, especially if we work in a sector that in anyway touches housing. Gritty, determined, focussed, persistent, envisioned, hopeful, courageous, collaborative and patient leadership that consistently believes that there is a way through because the cost of there not being is just too high.
5 Mindsets of crisis-solving innovators:
1 - Embrace failure
Accept that doing something differently inevitably includes failure and mistakes. These don’t automatically mean you shouldn’t try it again. Embrace failure, don’t avoid it.
2 - There is a solution
When (not if) you hit a block or hurdle on a journey you believe in, don’t accept it is the end of the road – explore every avenue to find a work-around to enable what needs to happen.
3 - Work with urgency
Pace is important – fight to avoid delays wherever possible, keep each other motivated and driven in the work you do.
4 - Challenge poor decisions
When you see those above or below you washing their hands of their responsibility to the crisis in how they work and the decisions they make, be brave and find appropriate ways to challenge it
5 - Stay Focussed on the big picture
When we lose sight of the big picture vision (e.g. creating high-quality, affordable, safe and stable housing for the most vulnerable and exposed in society that creates a foundation for them to find and fulfil their potential) it is tempting to become a ‘maintainer’ rather than an innovator. Work hard to constantly keep the urgency of the big picture front and centre.
Whatever level we operate at in the organisations we work in, we have power to drive the leadership culture needed to respond to the crisis we are in. Through taking ownership of the crisis and accepting that we have a part to play, no matter how small, and by doing things differently to deliver different outcomes, we can, collectively, start to change the narrative and trajectory of this emergency and the people desperately suffering because of it.