32 – Principles Conclusions: The Principles and the Starfish Thought Experiment

[00:00:07] Lily: Hello, and welcome to the IDEMS Principle. I’m Lily Clements, a Data Scientist, and I’m here with David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS. 

Hi, David. 

[00:00:15] David: Hi, Lily. We’re discussing principles and how they tie together. 

[00:00:19] Lily: Absolutely. We’ve looked at the principles kind of by themselves, but now we can stress test them a little bit more and see how they fit together as well.

[00:00:28] David: Absolutely. 

[00:00:29] Lily: I believe that they are, they are solid. But I want to try and find contradictions in there, and test you on them. 

[00:00:38] David: Well, we hope to eventually find contradictions in there and improve them. They should evolve. That’s one of our principles, Continually Evolving. 

[00:00:45] Lily: Yeah, you’ve kind of saved yourself with that one there. 

[00:00:49] David: It is the nature of principles, they’re guiding, we have stress test them in our own right, but there’s nothing to say that they should always remain our principles and they won’t change over time.

[00:01:00] Lily: No, that’s true. And as we know, and as we’ve mentioned before on these podcasts, there were initially 16 and now there’s 20 principles. So I guess we are evolving. 

[00:01:09] David: Absolutely. 

[00:01:10] Lily: And I suppose that these principles, they’re a little bit more controversial, some of them, maybe all of them, but if all of them are, then clearly I haven’t thought about them deep enough. But some of them, on the surface you think, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But actually as you dig into them, you kind of see some controversies in there. 

[00:01:29] David: I don’t know if controversy is the right thing, but it’s sort of elements which are not as obvious and then maybe they take you in directions where are maybe not controversial, so to speak, but counterintuitive is maybe, I would find that often comes out.

[00:01:45] Lily: Okay. 

Well, there’s kind of a story that you have heard, an old story, there’s kind of hundreds of starfish washed up on the shore, and a child walks along and he throws some of the starfish into the sea, one or two back into the sea. And someone says to him, what are you doing? You can’t save all of the starfish. And he says, well, no, I can’t save all of them, but I might as well save some of them. 

I feel that some of our principles say that that’s creating inequality. That actually, if you can’t save all of them, we shouldn’t save any of them.

[00:02:17] David: Well, not necessarily. I mean, this is where, again, it’s Options by Context. There’s many different situations that could be seen to be valuable. I would argue that we don’t say that because you can’t do everything, you shouldn’t do anything. That isn’t what I would argue is necessarily correct. 

What I would say is that helping the individuals as opposed to thinking about a solution where you could actually help them more generally or avoid this situation in the first place. Well, that’s where, you know, should you be thinking about the system rather than just the individuals. 

[00:02:56] Lily: So we could think about the system of how the starfish got there, and how we can save them, or prevent this from happening, or a bigger mechanism that could save them all in the future if this happened. But right here and right now we have these starfish that are up on the shore. So do we just leave them while we go work on another solution? 

[00:03:18] David: Not necessarily, but we need to think about the interventions and whether we’re doing something which is holistic or not. Could we be saving more by going to get more people and then saving them? Is that what we should be trying to do as opposed to just saving a few of them, and then not really saving as many as we could. That would be a question of actually sort of thinking about our intervention and thinking about the nature of the intervention.

How are we choosing who we save? Are we being collaborative in how we’re going about it? Are we being Collaborative by Nature? That would be an interesting question. And I think most importantly, I want to come back to this, Options by a Context, well, you haven’t quite given me enough contextual information and actually it’s a really deep context which could be needed to understand. 

Is this a natural phenomena? Is this a phenomena which has been caused? What’s caused this? What is the context behind this? Why are the starfish there in the first place is part of this. If by saving all the starfish we’re now causing, I don’t know, the seagulls to all starve. So maybe we can find an intervention which saves all the starfish, but then we’re causing actually disruption in the food chains in ways which was part of nature’s natural cycling.

So understanding the different context, we’re certainly not saying that that child is wrong and shouldn’t do that. It is absolutely sensible to sort of, to take Local Innovation and to try and actually do something consciously ethical in what you’re doing. 

But it’s also about understanding the context you’re in, thinking about the system as a whole, embracing the diversity in the sense that if we’re only focused on the starfish, and that’s having a negative impact on the food chain in other ways, then, although this is what would seem to be a very positive intervention, it might actually have negative consequences for the diversity and the diverse forms of life. That if it was part of a natural process, maybe then the starfish population explodes to the detriment of other species. 

And so understanding the systems is really critical and how your intervention relates to this. 

[00:05:31] Lily: I see, so you’ve listed a lot of different principles in there, and then I can see how more of them link in, Transdisciplinary, you know, okay, well, we don’t know the context enough, or we don’t know the food cycles.

[00:05:43] David: Exactly. You can’t always just in that moment, you know, take all of these into account, but it would be really nice to do some research, to actually develop the right research to be able to understand what your interventions are actually doing, to get some evidence behind what you’re doing, to assess it critically so that you can make Informed Decision Making.

Wow, I just said four principles in one sentence. I’m not, that’s not really the game, but I think it’s easy to see how all of those really do relate to actually not just doing it and then forgetting about it. Actually thinking it through, you know, asking, being critical, being self critical, allowing others to critique you, to assess your actions critically, even if what you did was with good intention, then if it leads to negative consequences, then you might need to re-evaluate and so on. 

[00:06:35] Lily: Is there a time and a place for these? I mean, I’m kind of a little bit blown away by how your thinking is and how quickly you’re just listing through these different principles. Is this natural to you? Is this something that, with these principles, every decision that IDEMS makes goes through, or every decision that you make, outside of IDEMS? So if you’re walking along a beach and you see a hundred washed up starfish, do you start thinking this way?

[00:06:59] David: Yes, I guess maybe I do. It does mean that maybe I’m not as good at just acting in the moment because I’m busy wondering about is it right for me to act or not? Should I intervene? And there are elements there where, you know, that deep reflection is not always good. There are some things where you just need to act. 

But part of that is not incompatible with this as well. Taking action is being there, being collaborative in the way that you’d be doing it. And actually, you know, in the moment, your Local Innovation, allowing people who are there, who actually understand the context, supporting them, trusting them, trusting that collaboration, Enabling Opportunity, enabling others.

These are things where, by and large, I would want to position myself in that sort of context. If I walk past a beach where there are a lot of starfish, I would probably be looking to others and not trying to intervene on my own, but trying to build that collaboration to hopefully finding others who understand the situation better, understand the context better, and I’m able to then support. 

I suppose my role would often be a support role, and that is very central to who I am as an individual. These principles aren’t just my principles in that sense, that it is true that many of them are deeply ingrained in me, but it is something where I as an individual, some of them don’t come as naturally, some of them I have to be more explicit.

As an individual, I must admit that things like being Critically Assessed is one which I really understand the value of, but I still struggle with at times. Nobody likes necessarily, I try to avoid criticism as an individual and I recognise that I do that, and I catch myself doing that. We recognise the value of it, we understand the value of it, and we know that we have to be able to sort of embrace it, but it is one that I personally find very difficult.

[00:08:55] Lily: Interesting. And well, yeah, so to pick up on a few things there, you said that in your instance if you’re faced with the starfish, you’d play kind of the support role, which is how you see yourself, but it’s also how IDEMS fits in. You know, we said before, in a previous podcast, not even in the IDEMS principle, but in another IDEMS podcast about how we see IDEMS playing a supportive role. 

[00:09:18] David: Yes. And that’s if you think about these principles, these principles are very aligned with that, this Collaborative by Nature is really central. It’s interesting how much that’s come up in this particular episode, because to me that is, in this particular context, it’s recognising our ignorance as an organisation, as individuals, and therefore looking to collaborate while being Critically Assessed and reflecting and looking to make informed decisions.

[00:09:50] Lily: And so the decisions that IDEMS makes, which is mainly you and Danny at the moment, as I understand it.

[00:09:56] David: I mean, it’s interesting that you feel that because we’ve actually, from our perspective, we feel we’ve devolved a lot of the decision making. Yes, we do make sure that the decisions represent IDEMS, but individuals within IDEMS are making decisions on a daily basis with relatively little input from Danny and myself.

[00:10:16] Lily: That’s true. But these decisions that are made, you feel that they follow these principles. 

[00:10:22] David: By and large, yes. And actually it’s really interesting that in a number of cases, the principles, you know, holding up to the principles, let’s say with your starfish example, let’s say you were now trying to do some work on saving the starfish, and this was now something you were doing under IDEMS, you proposed what you were going to do. And if we found that your proposal for whatever reason wasn’t enabling opportunity for others, we might question it. 

And that’s what’s often happened. This came up with tutoring as a sort of an idea. And it was then questioned, you know, are we being Inherently Inclusive? And actually, if we’re not being inherently inclusive, because not everyone can afford it, is that okay? Is that still aligned with our principles? And how do we make sure it aligns? 

So these are sorts of different ideas which have come up when we’re making decisions, and when others are proposing approaches or elements of what we do, then often the principles are a way of it not being mine or Danny’s no, we don’t believe in that. But we’re able to articulate, well, have you thought about this principle and how what you’re doing aligns with this principle? 

The real one which comes up time and time again, is Embracing Diversity. Very often, particularly with people outside IDEMS, who are looking to support in different ways, they tell us to focus. Why are you doing so many different things? You know, if you’re wanting to get support, just narrow down and focus on one thing. And the Embracing Diversity has been a principle which we’re able to sort of come back to say, look, as an organisation, this is one of our principles. We want that diverse area of things that we’re touching on.

And a lot of our work, because it’s support, actually is focused, but it’s focused on the underlying structures that we’re building, not on the topic areas which it applies to. Embracing diversity in what we do and how we work and who we have in our team has been central to a lot of our decision making and also come up quite often when people have tried to sort of find ways to help us communicate who we are.

[00:12:37] Lily: I see. And you say that these are principles that guide us as well, they’re not laws, they’re not things we have to work by. 

[00:12:44] David: Exactly. 

[00:12:44] Lily: They’re there to guide those decisions that are made by and within IDEMS, and they’re there to kind of point towards. I know that at least for me, when looking at decisions and things, it’s easy to have that kind of, I don’t want to say checklist, because I’m not keen on checklists, but it’s useful to have something that you can look down and see where do you fit in and what needs to be refined.

[00:13:11] David: Yeah, and are there things where reflecting on a principle might help you to sort of either change what you’re thinking of doing, or improve it, or reinforce why you’re wanting to do it, even though others might not be feeling it’s the right thing. 

And that sort of, this is very difficult, the principles, the guiding principles do not guarantee that we’re going to make the right decisions, but we are making decisions in a consistent and coherent way if we follow the guiding principles. That’s sort of part of the point. 

[00:13:47] Lily: Sure. From a mathematical mind, it’s like that they’re your, not axioms, because again, they’re not your laws, but you know, if one of the principles fall down, then the structure’s built on it. 

[00:14:01] David: Yes, exactly. The principles are your foundation, if you want. This is where, as we’ve grown the team, the principles are one of the ways in which we feel we can keep coherence with the original vision of the organisation.

[00:14:19] Lily: Yeah. And so those different decisions that are made, I guess, when I talk about you and Danny then, I more mean at the start of IDEMS when it was just you and Danny, could you quickly, would you kind of both quickly be able to go through the principles without even needing to look at them?

[00:14:40] David: Yeah. It’s interesting that the principles predate IDEMS in the sense that when we were thinking about setting up IDEMS, we came up with the 16 principles that were essentially our initial ones. And these were ones where we were trying to capture why it was we were creating something new, and not working with colleagues and others who were doing very important and interesting work, but weren’t necessarily aligned with us. 

And so we were trying to articulate what it was that we felt so strongly about and what we wanted to build, what we were looking to create. And the principles was a way which enabled us to, amongst ourselves, you know, identify that, articulate that for ourselves.

We never really used them until the first team meeting, which you were at, of course, in 2021. So it was over three years before we actually had a team where we actually brought it out, and that’s when some of the extra principles got added. 

[00:15:42] Lily: Were you surprised that these weren’t so natural to everyone?

[00:15:47] David: No. And this is something where Danny and I had worked together for so long, and we’d had so many common experiences, we understood where these principles came from for us. And we knew that this is not how people thought. 

Actually, with that in mind, let me give you a very simple one. Collaborative by Nature, which we mentioned a number of times in this episode, when we’ve had people coming in who are very experienced, they’ve brought lots of strength, but that Collaborative by Nature has been the one which actually a lot of people have really struggled with coming from other organisations. 

Because organisations are almost inherently focused on their self interest, they are inherently competitive with others. You’re looking to maximise for your organisation. And that’s an interestingly universal approach, which is surprising that even in the third sector, so you’d expect that from for profit companies, where their main aim is to maximise their profit. 

But you actually get a lot of this even in the third sector, the charitable sector and government sectors as well. And what’s really interesting, I find, is that in some ways, within the constraints of maximising your profit, I find there’s more elements of collaboration that sometimes appear in the sort of market force, you know, the purely private sector economies where you recognise that actually, if you have to take on everything in the value chain, you don’t have the skills to do everything. So as long as you have the right partners, being collaborative is a win win. 

And so even focusing just on pure profit as a self interest, then collaboration comes out very naturally as a win win, where you choose the areas where you maximise your profit, and you collaborate with others so that you’re more than the sum of your parts, and it creates these win wins on many occasions.

And it’s very interesting that quite often in the third sector, the dynamics are very different and I’ve always been surprised at how competitive charities can be with one another, when in essence they should be much more collaborative because they’re all aiming for the same goals. 

But you can’t work towards those goals if your organisation doesn’t have enough. So there’s been this sort of interesting dynamic which has emerged, where actually there’s a lot of competition even within, or maybe even especially within groups that are ostensibly not motivated by self interest. 

[00:18:40] Lily: You said the third sector? 

[00:18:43] David: The third sector, thank you. So this is sort of, not government, not private sector. So this would be charities and others that fall into that whole spectrum of being motivated not by governmental agendas and not by pure private sector profit. 

[00:19:01] Lily: I see. I see. That’s an interesting observation. 

[00:19:06] David: It’s part of our motivation behind IDEMS, you know, this is where Danny and I within academia, worked a lot with partners in the third sector. And we found that they weren’t as collaborative as they should be and therefore there were always these sorts of challenges that came up because, yes, it was sort of, although it should have been very collaborative, it wasn’t. And that’s one of the reasons why our approaches within IDEMS you know, we are so strong on that particular principle.

[00:19:40] Lily: I see. And so is this one that comes up a lot when making decisions with working with kind of contracting, collaborating with other companies? 

[00:19:49] David: Yes, exactly. Even within our team, when we sort of discuss budgets and so on, you know, there is a tendency for people who have experience beyond to try and maximise what we would get within a relationship. Whereas Danny and I would often be sort of pushing back and sort of saying, okay, well, what we should be focusing on is what the whole is doing and, you know, actually the collaboration as a whole and how we can make sure that the collaboration is really working, even if that means that we’re not maximising what comes to us.

And we’ve got a number of cases of this where we have grants where we as an organisation are actually subsidising that grant for others, in some sense, but that’s the correct decision because in the sort of scheme of things we gain because of the role we have and the other bits of work we get in because of it. But by not trying to sort of maximise our component, we’re able to achieve more in the grant and get more impact out of it.

And this is sort of one of these really complicated things when we work particularly with partners in lower resource environments that can be much more cost effective than us. So there are certain grants which are relatively small that by deliberately not including our costs, our full costs, the grant can achieve so much more and therefore feedback to our impact much more. And we then benefit from that as part of the sort of collection of things we have in our portfolio, even though that particular, activity, is one which we end up investing in, it’s still positive for us as a whole. 

[00:21:37] Lily: It sounds like when working with other companies and getting grants, it must be very expensive to be able to fit our principles in with the kind of contract. IDEMS has to put in extra investment to make sure that it fits all these principles. 

[00:21:54] David: Well, I mean, we can’t always do that in every opportunity. So of course the question is where are those costs born and how do they pay out. Actually, many of the principles don’t lead to us being more expensive, which is interesting. They might affect our profitability margins, but we don’t need to maximise profit. We do need to be profitable. 

So thinking about the system, again, it comes to embracing the diversity within the work we’re doing. We have some contracts which are more profitable than others, and that’s okay. You know, some contracts end up supporting others in different ways. But actually, nine times out of ten, the projects that are supporting financially end up being supported in terms of the technology they have coming their way, and the other elements.

And so, often these things play out in very interesting ways. And it comes back to sort of understanding and thinking about the system as a whole. 

[00:22:55] Lily: Systems Thinking? 

[00:22:56] David: Systems Thinking. 

[00:22:58] Lily: No, interesting. Very interesting. No, thank you. I suppose I’m just still quite impressed by how quickly you ran through with the starfish example. It would strike me that it must be time consuming to go through these, but you kind of were given this example and you ticked off on where it fits in and… 

[00:23:14] David: Well, you say that, but I didn’t tick off in any sense. I just said these are the things I need to think about. And that’s part of the sort of question that I actually face with something like that. You know, the first thing, the main thing that the principle has led me is that I need more information. The starfish example of actually looking how does that play out, and let’s be clear that there’s elements of this which really do come out.

We have a project where there’s some of the people we support have been doing some fantastic work in over 10 years, they’ve been able to really transform the villages that they’re working in, in very low resource environments, but without transforming the neighbouring villages. 

So these are things where, you know, we support that work, we encourage them. This is a great form of development if you look at it at the scale of the village. But if you look at it at a slightly larger scale and think about the system they’re working in, then you’ve got to actually think differently now. How much support should continue to go to that village, which is already now relatively wealthy compared to all its neighbours?

How much should you be thinking now about sort of being Inherently Inclusive and bringing the neighbours in to make sure that everybody is growing? I mean, one of the things which is so difficult is this element of inequality, which isn’t mentioned explicitly in our principles, but it’s sort of central to a lot of what drives us. 

Anything we do, if we create somewhere, we are creating inequality as well as maybe reducing it. And so that balance between how what we do relates to inequalities and what the implications of that are for inclusivity and, you know, for the ethics of what we do. To be Consciously Ethical about this, which is our principle, is really hard, because, you know, success can create inequalities, creating inequalities can actually have negative effects. 

And more generally, if you look at historically, societies as they’ve developed have changed and they’ve lost many of their cultural aspects. What is the cost of development of societies, and what are the benefits? These are really, really difficult problems. The inherent nature of what we do is to think deeply about them and not to just assume we have the answers.

Most of our principles are aligned with that. They’re aligned with helping us to think more deeply and to be observant and to collaborate and to take into account context and systems, diversity. 

[00:25:48] Lily: Yeah, it’s really, well, yeah, it’s very interesting how it all, there’s a lot more depth to it, I think. I listen to it and I’m like, okay, there’s more depth, and I start to understand that depth, and then it’s like, oh no, but there’s still more depth.

[00:26:02] David: And I think the interesting thing there, where this conversation is actually, I’m quite happy with where it’s heading now, or where it’s headed to, is that, you know, that depth is happening both in the individual principles, but particularly once they start coming together. Once you actually start thinking about, whether it’s a thought experiment like your starfish, or a real project, there’s elements where thinking about principles does help us to just be going a bit deeper.

And the combination of the principles together, almost always any project we actually work on will be aligned with some of our principles and sort of pushing the boundaries of others, in the sense that it’s sort of pushing the boundaries in the negative sense that, actually, any project which was really aligned with all of these principles would probably become unachievable.

It’s that balancing act where hopefully the principles help us to identify areas where in a given set of activities or a given project where we’re maybe not yet thinking about something else, but maybe that’s something we could do in a follow up activity or follow up project.

[00:27:19] Lily: Sure. Sure. We’re reaching the end. Is there anything else you want to add before we finish off? 

[00:27:26] David: No, I think, thank you for sort of bringing this up and having such an interesting sort of way of discussing this. And I must say the starfish example that you’ve given is a difficult one for me because I really support that child who just gets on and does what they can do.

And this is where I have great admiration for them. In some sense, I wish I didn’t have the baggage of all these principles to make me sort of, you know, have to think through, what’s the right thing to do, but just that instinctual desire to help and to solve a problem. Oh, I admire that so much, it’s a great inspiration to me. 

So, much as I believe in and deeply live the depth which comes from thinking things through, probably, more than anything, I admire and I value the people who just see, get on and contribute what they can, without worrying about the bigger picture sometimes and just doing what they can. That is a source of great inspiration to me. 

[00:28:35] Lily: But I guess Embracing Diversity, we want to have these different perspectives. 

[00:28:41] David: Absolutely. And I would argue that nine times out of ten in our context, we’re the person who brings the child the wheelbarrow so that they can do more. We support them in what they’re trying to do.

[00:28:55] Lily: I imagine if it was one of your two children that were putting starfish back in, you wouldn’t stop them and tell them.

[00:29:03] David: No, I would try to support and encourage them while also sort of maybe thinking about all the problems and all the things that come with it. 

[00:29:12] Lily: Well, thank you very much David. It’s been a great discussion. 

[00:29:15] David: Thank you.