Guest blog by Silvia Steisel, IPP ’23
On May 14, 2024, a group of twenty leaders from civil society organizations focused on parenting in Belgium gathered in a central Brussels meeting room. They were brought together by the Degroof Petercam Foundation (DPF), not because the foundation is an expert in parenting—indeed, it knows far less about the topic than the organizations represented—but because DPF has, for over a decade, been committed to addressing pressing societal issues, particularly those related to employment. The foundation’s interest in this area was sparked by the alarming correlation between female poverty, which is three times higher than that of men in Belgium, and the lower employment rate among women. This low rate is closely linked to the dominant role women still play as parents in the country.
The participants in the room that day were presented with a groundbreaking opportunity: to contribute to the first large-scale citizen consultation in Belgium that would use artificial intelligence (AI) to address the question, “How can we reconcile parenthood with work?”
First meeting of a coalition of partners around “reconciling parenthood and employment in Belgium,” May 2024 – Photo credit: Marie Ndiaye.
An Unprecedented Consultation
One month later, the consultation was launched in four languages. By its closure six weeks later, it had garnered 180,000 votes—a remarkable response on such a critical issue.
This initiative stemmed from a personal intuition, born nearly a year earlier and structured during a course at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) on Implementing Public Policy. My initial idea, which focused on the intersection of parenting and work in Belgium, evolved through discussions with other young, active parents like myself. This led to over 300 hours of research, exploring the effects of work on parenting, children, and women, and examining public policies in other European countries. The central question remained: how could such a vast and complex issue be addressed? How could a personal initiative be transformed into a matter of general interest? At HKS, I was introduced to the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach, which helped me tackle this seemingly paralyzing challenge. (Learn more from blog Combining parenthood and employment in Belgium: What is the problem?).
From Individual to Collective Leadership
At that time, I was fortunate to be leading the Degroof Petercam Foundation and could channel my professional efforts into this issue, which was directly related to female employment—a priority for the foundation. My email inbox began to overflow with shared experiences, encouragement, and offers to participate and continue the conversation in Belgium. It became clear that addressing such a broad issue was beyond the capacity of any single individual. The key to tackling complex problems like this lies in the right leadership—evolving from individual to institutional and ultimately to collective leadership.
Using the Triple A analysis (finding the “sweet spot” where authority, acceptance, and ability align) can help evaluate the best approach to leading complex problem management. In this case, I handed over leadership to DPF, allowing the foundation to serve as an institutional leader, thereby increasing authority, acceptance, and ability for the project’s success.
A Foundation’s Unique Role
Foundations are unconventional leaders. They may not be the most knowledgeable, legitimate, or visible organizations on a given topic, as is the case with DPF on parenthood and work. However, they have distinct assets:
- They can identify problems and bring together people who would not otherwise collaborate.
- They serve as resource providers, motivators, quiet encouragers, and connectors, bringing together various pieces of the solution to form a collective response.
- By leveraging their neutrality, foundations can act as “ego-killers,” focusing on the general interest rather than representing any specific individual or organization.
DPF faced several challenges in this role: positioning itself as the convener rather than the owner of the initiative (especially challenging for media seeking stories with “faces” and “leaders”), deciding the extent to which it should be exposed (DPF carries the name of a private corporation), and determining how much power should be delegated to field actors. The foundation had to ensure it added value to existing efforts and established its legitimacy on the topic.
It is all about Starting
DPF had now taken the reins and institutionalized what had initially been an intuition and an individual project. The problem statement had been made clear: In Belgium, where women make up half of the workforce, they often reduce or abandon employment to manage early childhood care, which is crucial for building children’s mental resilience. By doing so, they risk social exclusion and precariousness.
Now ready and convinced to act, a crucial question, however, remained: where to start? For any entrepreneur, the key is taking the first step. Identifying entry points and starting with the most accessible ones, based on the Triple A analysis to determine where to act first, was essential.
Fishbone diagram presented for the Implementing Public Policy Course at Harvard Kennedy School, June 2023.
One of the sub-problems identified was the deep-rooted cultural belief that parenting and work are private matters, often considered taboo. This issue is so entrenched in the established system that it is often not even recognized as a problem—much like a fish that does not realize it is swimming in water.
The first straightforward action was to break this taboo, demonstrate that the problem is real, and prove the demand for change. This was achieved by conducting a large-scale, AI-driven consultation that aimed to show that working parents, especially women in Belgium, need a supportive environment that allows them to combine parenthood and employment healthily.
Visual of the “parenthood and employment” online open consultation, June 2024.
Theory of Change
The theory of change behind this initiative was simple: If we reach thousands of parents through our consultation, we can prove there is demand for change. If the consultation is widely shared and visible, we can put the topic under scrutiny and break the taboo.
For DPF, a successful consultation would also increase its legitimacy and acceptance, providing strong data to support its mission.
Returning to the Brussels meeting room, DPF explained to the organizations present—nonprofits, semi-public organizations, federations, and influential voices in the field—why it wanted to lead on this topic, its role as a convener and funder of collaborative engineering, and the planned process. The project was broken down into several objectives and phases, with leading operational teams assigned to each.
The first three project phases – credit: Make.org
Multi-Stakeholder Leadership
One of DPF’s first learnings was that addressing such complex, long-term issues requires multi-stakeholder leadership:
- An operational leader with the right skills to design and manage a large-scale online consultation—in this case, the tech social enterprise Make.org.
- A capacity funder and convener (DPF), also serving as the “story-guardian,” ensuring that the problem narrative and knowledge are clear and well-understood.
- A connector (Make Foundation), orchestrating collaboration and gathering enablers, funders, and operators from public and civil society during the workshops.
- Specialized, temporary teams for specific missions (such as a media and PR team, and later, external evaluators providing evidence of the method and results).
- A coordinator of the different operators (internalized at the convener’s level or externalized) who sets the pace and holds the different parties accountable and connected, ensures clear communication and translation for different audiences, and resolves conflicts that may arise.
With this team formed, they began meeting weekly, setting precise weekly targets.
This collective action approach is essential for navigating complex problems with uncertain effects and long-term, unpredictable results. The process also involved identifying potential bottlenecks that DPF had to anticipate, such as the ability of participating organizations to take on new work, the capacity for collaboration, and the funding capacity of DPF, which could affect the possibilities for incubating solutions. Anticipating these bottlenecks made the process more resilient.
Building Legitimacy and Acceptance
As mentioned earlier, it can be uncomfortable for a foundation to find its right role in leading change. Leadership in philanthropy is complex, especially for foundations that aim to remain neutral. This raises important questions about the appropriate positioning and leadership for a foundation engaging with public policy-related topics, and whether pursuing the “general interest” constitutes a political stance. Should foundations represent the majority voice, marginalized groups, or focus on issues that will affect the most people in the future? Should they advocate for all voices within society and uphold pluralism, or should they support a particular line of thought? Is it appropriate for philanthropy to influence the public agenda? How can foundations truly remain neutral, and does genuine neutrality even exist?
In DPF’s case, neutrality is viewed as a strategy to avoid exposure to political shifts, with a focus on what is right and supported by society in the long term.
For philanthropists in general, neutrality – a condition for legitimacy – can be upheld by:
- Aligning with international agendas, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals or the Human Rights Act.
- Entrusting project leadership to those best positioned to represent a cause and providing them with the necessary support to succeed.
- Being data-driven, keeping beneficiaries at the center, and offering solutions based on their demands rather than imposing predetermined solutions.
- Operating transparently: documenting the work funded, sharing learnings and data, and creating a space for opposing views to come together and seek consensus. This approach can help address the democratic deficit that philanthropy sometimes faces.
These commitments to neutrality and transparency were key reasons why DPF chose to use AI to collect input from beneficiaries in a democratic, participatory manner. DPF also timed its actions strategically, conducting the consultation during Belgium’s election period as an indirect way to introduce this topic into public debate, maintaining as neutral a stance as possible while signaling a longer-term commitment to highlighting policymakers who champion this issue.
What Comes Next?
For DPF, the next step is all about building relationships and trust, establishing informal authority to bring people together. With the online consultation complete, DPF and its partners have successfully brought this issue to the forefront in Belgium. The data collected will guide the next steps: ten workshops to explore the most popular ideas, followed by the selection and implementation of three projects in 2025. As the process remains open and iterative (very much PDIA influenced!), other directions may emerge, and additional efforts such as evaluation and knowledge management will have their rightful place in the process.
This initiative demonstrates that what may seem like an insurmountable challenge can be tackled by taking one step at a time. DPF and the project teams know there will be moments of success and setbacks. They also know that by simply deciding to start, continually advancing, learning along the way, using the right tools—whether artificial or human intelligence—and staying supported by a coalition of willing partners, facing complex issues is far from impossible.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Participants successfully completed this 6-month online learning course in December 2022. These are their learning journey stories.