‘Most #commissioning training teaches you how to buy services. Very little teaches you how to reshape a system.’ We can help. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_commissioning-systemshchange-activity-7462398617065144320-WnsZ What barriers do you see in the way of shaping your systems for the better?
‘Most #commissioning training teaches you how to buy services.
Very little teaches you how to reshape a system.’ We can help.
That’s now the real challenge – in the NHS, police, civil service, transport, net zero, philanthropy, #systemshchange, social care, housing, community safety, homelessness, and beyond.
Public services are stuck in a strange place. Endless strategy. Endless reform. Endless procurement cycles. Yet demand rises, trust falls, workforce burns out, and too many people still experience services as fragmented and transactional.
The deeper issue isn’t capability in contract management.
It’s capability in systems thinking, outcomes, relationships, power, adaptation, and intervention in complexity.
That’s why the next Commissioning Academy, starting from September 2026, will explicitly integrate learning from the Outcomes in Complexity Level 7 Systems Thinking Practitioner apprenticeship throughout the programme.
Not as an abstract theory layer. As practical commissioning practice.
– How do you intervene in systems where cause and effect are unclear?
– How do you commission for emergence, prevention, capability, and resilience rather than just activity?
– How do you avoid creating perverse incentives and downstream failure demand?
– How do you work across organisational boundaries when nobody actually controls the whole system?
– How do you create enough ‘elbow room’ to make a difference?
The work behind the Commissioning Compass started from exactly these questions: understanding commissioning as shaping complex systems, not merely purchasing services – the framework evolved into the ‘eight aspects of commissioning’: whole system design, relationships across the system, citizen outcomes, capability building, intervention design, governance, innovation, and making room to act.
Or more simply: can we actually make a place work better for human beings?
That’s the work now.
If you want another qualification in procurement mechanics, there are plenty available.
If you want to learn how to think, act, convene, and intervene effectively inside complex public service systems under real-world pressure, this Academy may be for you.
Contact david.mason@publicservicetransformation.org now to get on the list. Discounts available for group books and hosting.
What if the biggest driver of demand in public services is the way we commission them? What barriers do you see in the way of shaping your systems for the better?
chosen path 