The Brockovich Effect

I’m sure that like me, you remember the 2000film, Erin Brockovich – a story of an ordinary American, at the time alegal clerk, who despite her lack of education in law, was instrumental in 1993in building a case against PacificGas & Electric Company (PG&E) involving groundwater contamination in a town inCalifornia. Today she continues to challenge corporate pollutants and is aconsumer advocate and environmental activist. 

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We need brave people like these on our planet, to stand up to the spoilsof capitalism and make a stand for health, wellbeing and our futuregenerations. And these ‘spoils’ can indeed be complex, challenging anddownright daunting, and require an adaptive approach to solving them with thecollective force of an aligned team. 

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It was very fortunate then, that we had the opportunity to speak withBecky Malby on We Not Me. She is Yorkshire’s answer to Erin Brockovich,supporting the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as Professor in HealthSystems Innovation and Director of the Centre for Innovation in HealthManagement, as well as uncovering the pumping of raw sewage into the UK river’sby water companies – many of which feed local swimming spots in thesummer. 

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The problem has gone unnoticed for many years.

“Because they hadn’t been asked, Yorkshire Water had said (about thedischarges). And because there wasn’t even monitoring of the sewage outflow,they weren’t obliged to say anything. Meanwhile, the Environment Agency hadn’tasked Yorkshire Water about the discharges because they didn’t think there wasa problem,” she adds.

With no data available on the spills, and a seeming lack of interestfrom the relevant bodies, Ilkley locals decided to take matters into their ownhands. It was a classic ‘We not Me’ moment as they formed the Ilkley CleanRiver campaign in 2018.  The group was able to test the waterthemselves the following year thanks to funding granted by the town council,with the Environment Agency allowing use of their labs for analysis. Thisrevealed that raw sewage was entering the river over the equivalent of 114 daysannually. A counting exercise by the group, meanwhile, revealed that up to1,000 people were using the river in Ilkley for leisure on a hot sunny day.“People were picnicking, paddling and playing among human waste,” says Becky.

As Becky coalesced a number of interested and less interested corporateparties to work to solve the problem, it became obvious it was not a simpleone,  but instead a ‘complex system’ problem requiring the principlesof adaptive leadership as outlined by Ben Ramalingam and his team.

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• Ensure     that there is evidence-based learning and adaption (get the facts and     figures)
• Stress-test     the underlying theories, assumptions and beliefs (what’s really going on     here and why?)
• Streamline     deliberative decision making (hold people accountable)
• Strengthen     transparency, inclusion and accountabilities (bring the parties together     for discussion and keep a public record of it)
• Mobilise     collective action (build the ‘we’ power around you)

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What the likes of Becky Malby and indeed Erin Brockovich, teach us isthat we all have access to make significant changes in our communities and ourworkplaces. Seemingly simple answers and solutions may not fix the biggerissue, and indeed may make the matters worse. But adaptive leadershipprinciples combined with a good dose of passionate, social activism, can enablemany more of us to stand up to the spoils of capitalism that exist today.