CECAN Fellowship: “System Time” as an Evaluation Metric
Dr. Luke Roberts is a distinguished expert in innovation, organisational transformation, and Complexity Theory, holding a PhD from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Open University. With over two decades in conflict resolution, his comprehensive background spans evaluation, direct practice, and strategic advisory roles.
As Founder and CEO of Resolve Consultants Limited since 2010, Dr. Roberts provides international services in Conflict Resolution and Systems Thinking. His diverse projects include developing multi-year conflict resolution programs for organisations like St John Ambulance, pioneering complexity-informed approaches to tackle inequality, and providing strategic analysis for the NHS and Youth Custody Service.
Committed to societal improvement, he serves as an Advisor to Policy Fellows at the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy, a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art and the Unlocked Prison Officer Graduate Programme, and a Trustee for SHiFT, a national charity.
A published author, Dr. Roberts’ influential works include “Leading Schools and Sustaining Change: How to Think Big and Differently in Complex Systems” (Routledge, 2024), “Social Stepping Stones” (2021), and a chapter in “The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Bullying” (2021). His career uniquely blends academic rigour, practical application, and dedication to sustainable change.
Fellowship Summary:
Traditional policy evaluation often fails to capture the true complexity of social systems. It typically oversimplifies by assuming linear cause-and-effect relationships and a uniform “clock time” for all processes. This reductionist approach overlooks that social systems, such as schools, are complex adaptive systems (CAS) with unique internal dynamics and emergent properties.
Evaluations frequently impose short, fixed timelines that don’t align with the much more extended periods required for sustainable organisational change (often 3-5+ years). This leads to missing the subtle, non-linear unfolding of emergent behaviours and adaptations crucial for long-term impact. Additionally, evaluating policies on a single timeline overlooks the fact that different sub-systems evolve at variable paces. This fundamental mismatch between evaluation methodologies and the temporal and adaptive realities of social systems results in incomplete and often misleading assessments of policy effectiveness and sustainability.
