"You've got to be relentless and repetitive about it, if you're really going to create that change."

Description

How can we transform the national conversation around what it means to live longer better lives? How do we avoid drowning in nuance when trying to understand complex systems? What does it take to relentlessly pursue a single issue in order to bring about change? And how can you build a coalition to bring others on board?

Join Peter Barker in conversation with Catherine Foot, the Director of Phoenix Insights - a think tank set up to transform the way society responds to the possibilities of longer lives.

Conversation

The below excerpt has been heavily condensed and edited from the original for the sake of brevity.

Peter: What aspects of your work are especially complex?

CF: ‘I'm at a campaign-orientated think tank and I love building my understanding of the complex systems that I'm trying to influence. I get a big kick out of slowly putting the pieces of the jigsaw together.

I was raised with that value: above all else, ask why and seek to understand. And so that sits very deeply with me but it exists in tension with wanting to actually have social impact and influence policy because to do that you've got to get off the fence and choose the argument you're going to push, which isn't always easy.

What one change should we make in the next twelve or eighteen months to solve this enormous, complex system? What is the part of this system that's going to get traction in today's politics, that's going to have, on balance, the greatest possible positive effect?

So, that’s a perennial challenge because it involves a leap of faith away fromthe comfortable, fun and solid ground that you enjoy when you’re simply exploring, uncovering and understanding.’

How do you unravel that complexity?

You've got to be relentless and repetitive about it if you're really going to create that change. If you spend your days, hours and weeks with the same people that you’re close to you can start to feel a bit boring, like they’re thinking “Oh God, not this old thing again.”

But you have to try and make your peace with that because, of course, the job isn't just saying this stuff multiple times to the people that know you well. It's trying to find the people who don't yet know you, and who aren't yet taking action, who haven't already heard this issue a million times over.

What’s one piece of advice you’ve been given in your career that you keep coming back to?

It’s that when you are passionate about an issue and you think you have an answer or something you want to tell people, make sure that you don't only concentrate on what you want to say.

You need to properly consider who are you trying to say that to and understand what they care about before you launch into your ‘speechifying’.

Can you recommend a book that’s inspired you?

A couple of years ago, I really enjoyed a book by a guy called Adam Stones called Influence. Wonderful. Really practical set of advice. I think the tagline is something like, ‘so you want to change the world, but how do you get the world on board?’

Just thinking about how to construct a set of messages and an argument and a story that will land. And how can you understand your audiences. It's a really practical little guidebook.