Inside Iriss

For me, the first part of learning week is putting my out-of-office response on. Iriss is closed for our annual learning week, it says. We are valuing our learning and connections as a team, it implies. It’s a nice feeling.

Arriving at the Social Hub in Glasgow there’s hugs and catch-ups. Haven’t seen you, in-person, for ages! How’s that project going? Me, well, yes it’s busy (a common theme). Let’s have another one of those tasty pastries. Then we’re all called to order: we begin. 

We’re looking for curious, thoughtful people to join our Board. 

Here at Iriss we want to create the conditions for social work and social care support to flourish. We help the people who support others to make real change through research, improvement and innovation. We do this because we know that great social work and social care can make all the difference in people’s lives. 

But we don’t do this alone. We have a Board that helps us by: 

As neurodiverse people, it has been a joy to see the recent rise in awareness and acceptance of how different brains work. In Iriss we have been discussing diversity, including representation, inclusion, accessibility and equity. In recent meetings on professional curiosity, there was a discussion that neurodiverse people might struggle with the topic of professional curiosity and asking those additional questions. Cue us two neurodivergent people (maybe a little too loudly) professing our disagreement with this status, and our love of questions and problem solving.

The map is not the territory

The last time I tried to climb a mountain I failed spectacularly. It was a warm August at the foot of the mountain, and a freezing January higher up. We were chased down from near the top by howling winds and hail. I knew I was beat. A discussion recently got me thinking about mountains again but in the context of the work we do. I was at an event about Human Learning Systems (an approach that always leaves me thinking ‘this makes so much sense, why isn’t this just how we do things?’).

Learning Week is over at Iriss now. We spent three days in person, eating pastries and chatting about how our year was, things we celebrate and learn, how we keep aligned to our new strategy, using our new evaluation process, showcasing our skills and impact and what the next year could look like for us. 

In a fast-paced environment, the instinct can be to act quickly, but without a shared understanding of where we have been, we could move in directions that are not fully aligned or as effective as they could be. In having a learning week, we are valuing and including reflective practice into our work, to help us be more strategic, more collaborative, and ultimately, more influential in the change we seek to create.

Earlier this month, as part of a project we are working on in the ethical commissioning space, we met with a team of care home managers. The session really made us think about the circumstances that these providers are operating in.

Back in 2009, I was a fresh faced researcher, working as an intern in the Office of the Chief Researcher in the Scottish Government. I was at an event listening to a talk by the then Chief Social Researcher, Diana Wilkinson. She was presenting on what influences policy makers to make the decisions that they do. There was a very sobering slide on how much politicians were influenced by evidence within their decision-making.