1. Seeing it from the other side -
reflections on a knowledge transfer
placement
Natalie Armstrong
University of Leicester
www.le.ac.uk

2. ESRC Knowledge Transfer Placement Scheme
The scheme encourages social science researchers to spend time within a
partner organisation to undertake policy-relevant research and to develop
the research skills of partner employees.
Aims of the scheme are to:
• Promote knowledge transfer between academic departments and 'partner
organisations' and the staff employed in them;
• Provide 'partner organisations' with research-informed evidence to
develop and review policy;
• Expand networks for 'partner organisations' into academia;
• Provide career development opportunities and offer skills updating;
• Enable all parties, including ESRC, to develop their understanding of
research and policymaking process and the interactions between them.

3. The UK Cabinet Office
• The Cabinet Office sits at the very centre of government
and, together with the Treasury, provides the ‘head office’
of government.
• The Cabinet Office sits at the very centre of government,
with an overarching purpose of “making government work
better”.
• It supports the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, helping to
ensure effective development, coordination and
implementation of policy and operations across all
government departments.
• It also leads work to ensure the Civil Service provides the
most effective and efficient support to Government to help
it meet its objectives.

4. The Strategy Unit
• Its key objectives were:
i) To provide a cross-departmental perspective
on the major strategic opportunities and
challenges facing the UK
ii) To work with departments in developing
effective strategies and building strategic
capability across Whitehall; and
iii) To provide strategic advice and support to
the Prime Minister/No 10

5. What was the Strategy Unit like?
• About 45 people worked there
• Range of roles (Director, Deputy Directors, Senior
Policy Advisors, Policy Advisors)
• Generally people worked in either project
teams (youth/education; welfare; value for money) or
Standing Teams (Health / Home Affairs / Foreign
Policy)
• People were typically fairly young, very
ambitious, extremely intelligent, high achievers

6. Based in Admiralty Arch

7. How they approached their work
Strategy Survival Guide
• The Strategy Survival Guide aims to support strategy development
and promote strategic thinking in government. It encourages a
project-based approach to developing strategy and describes four
typical project phases. It also discusses a range of skills and useful
tools and approaches that can help to foster strategic thinking. It
is offered as a resource and reference guide, and not intended as a
prescription or off-the-shelf solution to successful strategy work.

8. Strategy Development
• Effective strategy development requires the
mandate to challenge, the space to think and
the commitment of stakeholders. For these,
and many other reasons, strategy work is best
undertaken within the context of a clearly
defined project that can act as a focal point for
generating momentum behind a change in
conventional thinking.

9. Strategy Skills
• Successful strategies are rarely achieved by spontaneous
flashes of genius, but rather result from the systematic
collection, analysis and evaluation of facts, circumstances,
trends and opinions.
• In the same way, teams do not work to maximum
effectiveness and strategies do not deliver full benefit unless
explicit attention is given to understanding the motivations
and developing relationships with the people involved.
• Successful strategy work therefore requires a wide range of
skills, including those below. Although each skill may prove
to be of most use at particular phase of a project, the
relevance of each is by no means confined to any one phase.

10. What did I work on?
• Researching and developing a proposal on reforming
the treatment of minor ailments.
• Developing and delivering a ‘Foundation Day’ training
programme.
• Researching policy options to create a more
personalised and preventive service for people with, or
who may be at risk of developing, chronic disease in
the UK. This work fed into the Department of Health’s
recently published document “NHS 2010–2015: from
good to great. Preventative, people-centred,
productive”.

11. But...
• The bulk of my time was spent working as part
of a small team developing a vision for 21st
century maternity and early years’ care, in
collaboration with the Department of Health
and the Department for Children, Schools and
Families.
• This was published on 16th March 2010.

12. Key points for this session
• How academic research evidence fits into the broader
range of evidence that policy-makers have available to
them;
• How qualitative research evidence is understood and
evaluated by policymakers;
• How best to present and communicate the outcomes of
qualitative research for a policy audience, including
common pitfalls and how to avoid them;
• The value and limitations of this type of Placement
Fellowship in building bridges between academic
research and policy-makers.

13. Kinds of evidence
• Lobbyists
• Pressure groups
• Ideological imperatives
• ‘Common sense’

14. Position of academic research evidence
• Seemed to be viewed as:
- credible
- objective
- authoritative
• Great in an ideal world, but also:
- slow?
- inflexible?
- resource hungry?
• Academic research vs management consultancy

15. Position of qualitative research
• Still primacy of economics/quantitative?
• ‘Customer insight’ work
• Some nervousness about representativeness etc
• More accessible/engaging?
- human element
- direct quotations
- characters

16. Communicating qualitative research
• Commissioned vs non-commissioned work
• If commissioned:
- keep in dialogue
- be challenging (if it’s called for)
- give feedback for mid-course corrections
• If non-commissioned:
- can never start thinking about it too early
- try to get people eagerly awaiting your findings
- network, network, network…
- use your press office

17. How to tell a policymaker something
• Start top-down
• What do they need to do, or do differently?
• What issue that they’ve got can you help with?
• Do the translation/application for them
• What could be different as a result?
• Not so interested in how you did your research

18. The Placement Fellowship scheme
I learnt a lot:
• Insight into how policy actually gets made
• Better understanding of how academic work
viewed and approached
• Better awareness of other kinds of ‘evidence’
• Skills from SU training courses

19. The Placement Fellowship scheme
But there were some drawbacks:
• Treated just like another pair of hands
sometimes
• Risk of ‘going native’

21. Presented at the 2nd European
conference on Qualitative Research for
Policy Making, 26 -27 May 2011, Belfast
For more information
Please visit: http://www.merlien.org