📜 Policy research doesn't speak for itself

Where is your opportunity in a changing world?

The world feels unstable and uncertain. Part of the challenge is that we don’t know whether the changes that have already happened are a swing to a new world order, or whether the pendulum will swing back in four years' time. What do you do when everything is in flux? The questions we are asking ourselves at Wellcome are what the changes mean for us, and what we can do about it. Practically, this means we are continually building our understanding of the situation to identify new opportunities for policy change. I’d also recommend reading Duncan Green’s book ‘How Change Happens’ - it is really strong on the subject of finding opportunities during such critical junctures.

The public affairs skillset deserves more respect

If we’re going to be effective policy influencers in the current dynamic, we’re going to have to give the public affairs skillset some more respect. We need real political savviness, and that means meeting the world where it is and really understanding its full complexity and messiness. And at the same time not being bogged down in complexity, and being able to work out when you can make a tangible difference. There’s something about being political, and being apolitical at the same time. By which I mean we need to be really politically savvy, but not take sides. It demands us to think about the different types of politics that are often not the natural place for lots of people who work in the charity sector, and get under the skin of that politics and what’s driving it. That’s not always a very comfortable place for people to be, but it’s essential if we’re going to make sure that our policy solutions are politically pragmatic.

Look beyond research to make a difference

Researchers, certainly in the science community, are very evidence and fact based and tend to think you can more easily distill things into right and wrong - you can do some analysis and come up with a good answer. But the world is often messier than that. Sometimes the research community can lack appreciation for other skills beyond research - and those skills are going to be crucial for research to get heard today. At Wellcome we want to be visionary, but we also want to come up with things that are going to ultimately make a real difference.

Evidence needs an intermediary

We can't afford to let the evidence speak for itself. It simply doesn't work as an influencing tactic to say, ‘this is what the science says so this is what we should do’. People have feelings and are complex, and so is society. Alongside researchers, we need effective policy communications people to take the evidence, and shape it into a form that will cut through. Evidence needs an intermediary.

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Science as a consideration, not the rule

We should be broader in what we see as evidence. Coronavirus was a great example of this, where we saw scientific evidence being played into conversations about what should happen and what the policy response should be. But scientific evidence is not the only type of evidence you need to look at in designing policy instruments. There were a whole load of things we didn't understand about what the impacts of lockdown would be on society as a whole, on kids’ education and socialisation, never mind the economics and the wider impacts. Science for me should always be a consideration, but not the only consideration.

Spoilers first: clear communication is critical

I want to see spoilers first in every single policy output that I read because there's a good chance I'm not going to get past the spoiler. For some that means learning to write again in terms of how to structure their writing. I experienced that as someone who came from research into policy. An academic argument tends to walk readers through to its natural conclusion, whereas in policy I want to see a clear recommendation at the very top. Policymakers in Whitehall or Washington or Brussels need to see our ideas immediately.

Do less and focus on impact

I'm a big believer in fewer, better. You’ll never get any impact if you're making yourself busy writing a thousand consultation responses, rather than focusing on where the real impact is. Sometimes that means a focus on driving a very specific type of policy change. Think about where you want to be at the end from the very start. And then be ruthless about prioritising this and being agile in your approach.

Engage outside your policy bubble

We need to start having good quality conversations with people we disagree with. It's quite scary to deliberately create those hard conversations, and find those people you can have a sensible conversation with and disagree in a way that’s constructive. It's something that we're thinking about at Wellcome. For instance, we funded the Discovery Decade project at CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering) which is doing brilliant work looking at public attitudes to R&D funding. They’re embarking on some interesting work on views about R&D across the full political spectrum, which is important for us to understand the political dynamic and find ways to ensure science matters to more people.

Test ways to bring in fresh perspectives

We've done some experimentation with different and creative ways into policy problems in our Policy Labs team. In our research culture work, we created a board game to get researchers to explore challenges they were having in their working environment, which helped get them to a pragmatic conversation about solutions. During Brexit, we worked with Bruegel, the think tank in Brussels, to do a simulated negotiation of a research deal. Sometimes you just need a different mechanism to bring in different perspectives - what’s yours?