Whole-of-Society Approach To Policy Development And Implementation:
Building Convergence And Driving Change On The Ground

The changes that need to occur to shift the food supply and demand toward better health and economic outcomes are woven into everyday life of Canada: in the way individuals, families, and communities live, work, and consume, invest and take care of children; in the way in which educational, health, media, and business organizations produce, promote, trade, and provide goods and services to individuals, families, and communities; in the way that trade institutions, investment markets, and governments maintain the present health and economic divide that shapes the arena where individuals, families, communities, and organizations evolve.¹⁷⁷ This means that driving changes on the ground involves engaging a wide variety of stakeholders throughout the agriculture and agri-food value chain and, indeed, at all levels of society (Figure 18).¹⁷⁸

	Figure 18. Consumers and stakeholders involved in whole-of-society policy development and implementation. From a presentation of C.K. Prahalad, 2008, at Global Convergence Building Workshop Commissioned by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Montreal. Adapted with permission.

The Many Roles of Policy Development

A whole-of-society app-roach to the development and implementation of an integrated health and agri-food strategy will require that governments, like never before, take on a diversity of roles. Government needs to be the “commander in chief,” imposing mandatory regulations that define boundaries and rules for consumers and all stakeholders. Government must be the provider of public goods and services, the steward of public resources, and a partner in various collaborative undertakings with other jurisdictions, businesses, and civil society organizations (Figure 19).¹⁷⁹

	Figure 19: A WoS Approach to Policy Development. From a presentation of C.K. Prahalad, 2008, at Global Convergence Building Workshop Commissioned by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Montreal. Adapted with permission.

A WoS approach to policy development begins with the use of whole-of-government – or join-up – approaches that place potentially conflicting or synergistic domains of policy development (health, agriculture and agri-food in the present case) on the same decision plate in order to foster integration in policy development and implementation. These whole-of-government approaches must account for the need for governments to engage at multiple levels when jurisdiction is shared, which is the case for health, agriculture and agri-food matters. Government coordination is required for overall governance and monitoring, and can be achieved through the use of a strategy unit or other mechanisms such as multi-level government councils.

Clearly, to address the complexity at the health, agriculture and agri-food interface, a whole-of-government, principled-based approach to policy development and implementation will not suffice. The success of an integrated health and agri-food strategy critically depends on action being taken at all levels of decision-making, and requires action by consumers and a rich diversity of stakeholders. All of these parties need to invest resources and competencies into the strategy. This presents both challenges and possibilities. The challenges lie in judiciously matching role, context and measure (e.g., determining when mandatory rules and regulations are needed for public good and consumer protection versus when participation- and trust-based approaches are more appropriate). The possibilities lie at the heart of the creative power and determination of all actors; if the status quo does not work, or a disciplinary break occurs at the sectoral or within-level silos, a fresh analysis will be stimulated and effective dialogue and new partnerships will emerge, resulting in unforeseen horizons that are worth the investment.

The McGill World Platform Concept for Whole-of-Society Compacts for Convergence-Building and Action on the Ground

The McGill World Platform for Health and Economic Convergence (MWP) has been developing a process and approach to a Whole-of-Society policy development, using a WoS Compact. This Whole-of-Society Compact:

• Focuses tightly around results for a set of lever points for change that together form a strategy;
• Assembles around each lever point a network of the key public agencies, business, and civil society stakeholders that together become the strategic units for innovation and action on the ground. Invited participant organizations must be willing to invest not only time and expertise, but also core competencies and financial and/or substantive resources to shape and bring to culmination the action plan needed to achieve the goal set by the Compacts for each lever point; and
• Loosely couples all the networks into a WoS Compact, supported by a platform to share information and research and to build capacity.

The concept of the MWP’s WoS Compact shares many of the features of the strategic alliances that have become common practice across business organizations within and across value chains. These strategic business alliances have been established as complements to respective business activities and strategies, and join competencies and resources on specific initiatives that support the goals and mission of each partner organizations and the alliance as a whole. For example, pledges by groups of companies to reduce advertising to children would constitute one such alliance. The MWP’s WoS Compact also presents similarities with the broad, multi-stakeholder expert groups that were given mandates to lead the development of integrated strategies. For instance, the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control and the Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan are multi-stakeholder initiatives that recruited participants at provincial, national, or international levels to create broad integrative strategies and long-term action plans.

	Figure 20. MWP WoS Compact Convergence. From a presentation of C.K. Prahalad, 2008, at Global Convergence Building Workshop Commissioned by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Montreal. Adapted with permission.

The MWP vision of the Compact differs from other approaches in the degree to which it embraces the principles of corporate social responsibility and creative and inclusive capitalism. Under this approach, altruism and economics address health and economic issues in a holistic, organic way, maximizing efficiency and prioritizing quality of life without losing sight of profit motivations. The MWP’s Compact builds on a model introduced by leading business strategist C.K. Prahalad at the 2008 Gates Foundation MWP workshop “From crisis to convergence: Green Revolution 2.5.” The MWP’s Compact is guided by a series of convergence principles, including health and social equity, societal and market focus, societal and business risk management and resilience, economic and environmental sustainability, and caloric balance and scalability (Figure 20).¹⁸⁰

To lead change on the ground, the local, national and global convergence networks may use different business models, including:

1. Grassroots Collective Action in Communities: networks formed for advocacy, policy changes, and/or collective innovation and action, supported by shared information and collaborative platforms.
3. Social Businesses: an innovation conceived by Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus, social businesses are designed and managed as a business enterprise. They have products, services and technology that support health and wealth for all, with customers, markets, expenses, and revenues. But the business-profit-maximization principle is replaced by the social-benefit-maximization principle.
5. For-Profit, Creative and Inclusive Ventures: initiatives that adopt health-promoting, pro-poor practices in various strategic business functions with the objective of creating value for society at the same time as they create value for business. These may include leapfrogging product, service and technology innovation, social-cause and social marketing, human resources and supply chain management. These may be achieved by single for-profit enterprises or by alliances with for-profit, social or governmental partners.

Moving Forward on Developing an Integrated Health and Agri-Food Strategy for Canada using the Whole-of-Society Compact to Build Convergence and Action on the Ground

In conclusion, each of the lever points for change proposed in this discussion paper builds upon current regulatory and economic frameworks, population health approaches, education approaches, and research and innovation ongoing in Canada. The MWP concept of Whole-of-Society Compact is proposed as a process that can be used by stakeholders representing the Whole-of-Society approach to further refine these levers through innovative business models by:

• assembling around each lever point a network of the key public agencies, businesses, and civil society stakeholders which are the strategic units for innovation and action that will drive action on the ground;
• developing target results that can later be monitored for each of the lever points for change that will form the integrated strategy.

previous section

next section