Karen McNeill

Associate

I work in the messy space where public services try to change and often get stuck. I’ve spent years doing improvement work inside the NHS, alongside time in the third sector, including as a fund manager. That mix matters. It means I understand how big systems think and behave, and I’ve seen up close how decisions play out in communities, families, and public facing services.

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My focus is not transformation programmes that generate impressive slide decks and exhausted people. It’s how systems actually learn in real time. How they notice what is happening, make sense of it together, and adapt quickly enough to make a difference.  I work with leaders and teams who already know the jargon and the narrative, but haven’t yet found traction.  The work I do is about moving from knowing the right things to doing different things. In complexity. With uncertainty. While the work is still live.

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I’m a strong advocate of Human Learning Systems, not as a shiny framework, but as a practical way of working when control is limited and certainty is a fantasy. I care deeply about evaluative practice that supports action, not post-hoc judgement. Learning that happens during the work, not six months after the moment has passed.  For me, learning is not neutral. It should shift power, improve lives, and change how decisions get made. 

I care about data, and I’m quite ruthless about it. Data is not learning. Learning comes from sense-making, context, and honest conversations about what the numbers do not tell you. It comes from noticing who is being failed by the current set-up, and why, and then being prepared to act.

I work hands-on with real systems, not idealised ones. I help people build learning cycles, make evidence usable, shift decision-making to the right altitude, and create conditions where improvement is not a one-off decision but an ongoing practice.

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I’m also well connected to others doing serious work in this space. I don’t operate as a lone expert. I exchange ideas, test thinking, and draw on a network of people with complementary skills across public services, academia, and the third sector. I am deliberately more than the sum of my own parts.  I’m interested in power, but in a practical way. Decisions should be made as close as possible to the people who understand the issue and live with the consequences. Senior leaders should not micromanage the public facing support. Public facing teams should not be left carrying the system’s unsolved problems with no authority to change anything.

I’m here for transparent learning, surfacing barriers, and making responsibility visible.  The point is not to look good. The point is to get better. With people, not to people and not done somewhere else and handed down later.