When well-run agencies aren't enough: designing for the whole system

Your agencies are performing. Your system is not. This is one of the most persistent and most misread problems in public sector design. When the parts are working but the whole is failing, the instinct is to improve the parts further. Systems thinking points somewhere else entirely. 

This webinar introduces systems thinking as a diagnostic discipline for senior public servants and shows how Allen + Clarke's Four Lens methodology puts it into practice. The four lenses — Value, Governance, Culture, and Capability — each surface a different class of system failure that conventional agency-level analysis tends to miss. 

We apply this to the Home Energy Advice Research Project: BRANZ-funded research examining how New Zealand's home energy advice sector can be better configured, coordinated, and leveraged to deliver on the country's housing, energy, and climate objectives. Phase 1 findings have not yet been published — this webinar offers one of the first opportunities to hear what the research reveals, and to see what a systems lens changes about how you read it. 

What you'll learn: 

1. Why well-run agencies produce failing systems and how to recognise when this is your problem 

2. How systems thinking differs from conventional policy analysis and what it surfaces that standard approaches miss 

3. How to apply the Four Lens methodology to diagnose failures in your own system 

4. What the Home Energy Advice research found — and what it looks like when you apply a systems lens to those findings 

5. The diagnostic questions to take back to your own work this week 

Who it's for: Senior public servants responsible for designing, governing, or funding systems. You don't need to work in the home energy or climate space — the sector is the worked example, the diagnostic method travels. If you've ever suspected the problem isn't individual agency performance, this webinar is for you.