We often hear the saying that “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” How does this perspective play into your work?
We see communities using programmatic approaches to try to address deep systemic issues. A program solution doesn’t fix system problems. That’s why it’s important to surface what’s happening in the system. How was it designed? How is it structured that creates the outcomes we see today? That’s how you identify what policies need to be shifted, what practices need to be changed, what resources need to be moved or increased, and what power structures need to be addressed. Systems need to be changed and transformed if we want to get to more equitable opportunities for children and families.

What is collaborative improvement?
Collaborative improvement is a method for using data to understand what’s working and what’s not and to make changes to improve equity. What separates collaborative improvement from other traditional continuous improvement methods is that it’s aimed at changing outcomes across an entire community, as opposed to working within a particular population or organization. Collaborative improvement helps to create communitywide change that comes from working cross-organizationally and across systems.

What does it mean to change systems?
Systems can be tiny — a family is a system. Systems can be organizations, like StriveTogether or a school district. StriveTogether partnerships are focused on the biggest, most complex systems — communities.

Systems change is identifying bright spots and barriers in a system and then working to scale the bright spots and eliminate the barriers so that more children, families and individuals can thrive. Over time, this creates shifts to practices, policies, resources and power structures, which ultimately changes the system.

What does it mean to center racial and ethnic equity in this work?
Centering racial equity means not only being explicit that this work is being done to improve and ensure greater racial and ethnic equity but working alongside folks who are experiencing the challenges and burdens of the system and addressing those barriers and challenges together. To me, it also means focusing on changing how the system is operating and impacting people of color, because the system is the problem, not the people.

Read the full interview with Heidi Black about collaborative improvement by Elizabeth Male at StriveTogether.