In brief

What dictates our social behaviour, and how do these conditions come about? In this month’s Learning Out Loud blog, we return to the Relational Funders cohort and the idea of permissions. Specifically, how norms, assumptions and rules shape how we behave.

In the blog Changing Our Permissions, David Robinson highlights three interrelated forces:

Real rules: the explicit, formal boundaries which are written, enforced and sanctioned.

Across this Relational Funders cohort session, we asked – which of these are we actually responding to, and who do they serve?

Organisational context brought imagined and real rules into sharper focus as well. Is seniority a kind of ‘permission amplifier’, offering more flexibility in interpreting or bending rules?  There was also curiosity about scale – do larger organisations unintentionally enable ‘pockets of anarchy’ hidden from view? And if so, does that make experimentation safer, or simply less visible?

We also heard how entrenched some behaviours can become; even when explicit permission is granted to do things differently, longstanding habits can hold firm. Imagined rules, once embedded, can be surprisingly resistant to change.

An interesting tension emerged between the formal rules and the rules that actually govern behaviour.  Some described environments where innovation depends on testing limits – stretching, bending or working around what is written, where the distinction between real and imagined rules becomes blurred. What is formally prohibited may, in practice, be tolerated (or even encouraged) if the conditions are right. 

This raises important questions. Are we navigating set systems (of rules, policies, hierarchies and procedures), or are we relying on trust, relationships and personal risk tolerance to get things done? For those wanting to work more relationally, it’s ambiguous. And this can be helpful and limiting. It creates room for creativity and flexibility, but that space isn’t shared evenly. Some can step into it more easily than others. Those who feel the most secure will invariably be those who hold the most power. How do we ensure that other voices are also heard?

Challenging a rule, real or imagined, rarely feels neutral. It carries personal and collective risk. It can take both courage and a degree of safety (often linked to power) to step out of line and question what has been taken for granted. Yet what may start as trepidation can quickly lead to excitement and even exhilaration when we finally do break cover. Naming a rule out loud, and questioning it, often reveals that others were quietly questioning it too. 

In some cases, what feels like a firm boundary dissolves under scrutiny. Perhaps it never was a real rule, only an inherited assumption. It highlights the quiet but transformative act of making the implicit explicit.

The moment we consider letting go of a rule can be revealing. Resistance can signal something deeper – a perceived loss of structure, control or certainty. But it also offers us an opportunity to assess what we prioritise, and why. Are we upholding real rules that serve a clear purpose? Are we holding onto imagined ones because they provide comfort? When we say something is necessary, whose needs are we centring?

Mark Smith, the director of Public Sector Reform at Gateshead Council, works on applying a “Liberated Method” to public services in the North East. His work is based on just two absolute rules – “do no harm” and “stay legal” – and on five principles which “guide decision making”. The team found that roughly two thirds of what they now do differently was not previously prohibited. It was “current preoccupations” which prevented them from seeing the value of “operating on the basis of relationships which can absorb variety rather than processes which cannot.”

From David’s blog, Changing our permissions 

For many funders, the tension is strongest around governance. There are real rules, legal duties, financial regulations etc. that cannot be ignored. Yet these can sit uneasily alongside a desire to be more relational, particularly when grantseekers require flexibility that systems can struggle to offer. What are the opportunities to honour the intent of governance, while questioning whether it reflects imagined constraints or real ones? What might be the minimum needed in order to safeguard that vital creativity and flexibility?

Cologne Cathedral in Germany took 632 years to complete (1248-1880).

We closed with the idea of ‘cathedral thinking’: the concept of laying foundations to something that wouldn’t come to fruition for perhaps many generations to come, in the same way that cathedrals were originally begun. This long-term, multi-generational approach throws down a challenge to reimagine the future, or at least to begin building without quite knowing what it will hold. If we are building for a future we cannot fully know, then the permissions of today may be a poor guide.

When we begin thinking this aspirationally, what does it look like to disregard the rules, to remove the limitations and boundaries imposed by current legislation, governance and culture? Perhaps the work is not only to navigate permissions more skillfully right now, but to reshape them, working out how funders can invest in the future and lift future organisations out of the rules that currently constrain us.

Learning Out Loud

Enjoyed this blog? Catch up with the rest of the series:

1. Six emerging needs
2. Power in partnerships
3. Endings and beginnings
4. Relational offsetting
5. Changing our permissions
6. The impact of evaluation

Please share any thoughts or questions in the comments, or contact katherine@relationshipsproject.org.