McMullin’s Tandem of Co-Production

I can pinpoint my love of delicious words and descriptive narratives to a really rather brilliant English teacher I had at senior school, Miss Ducroq, who showed us how exciting Shakespeare could be and introduced a genius weekly class activity where we would all take turns to pick a word that we thought nobody might know, present that word back to the class to share what it means, and then include it in a sentence.

This task was THRILLING.

On reflection I have absolutely no idea why I loved it so much, but the effect her lessons had on me was profound ((of a state, quality, or emotion) very great or intense).  She was fun and shared such energy with everyone in the classroom. You couldn’t help but be completely gripped.

Miss Ducroq suddenly became Mrs Macdonald and very soon after this vocabulary edit she moved to England to presumably live with “Mr McDonald”, whoever he was.

I will never forgive him.

She helped to instill in me a love of the English language and whilst I hope that I have an excellent grasp of it, there are still lots of things that can stump me.  I can never, off the top of my head, remember the difference between metaphors, similes and analogies.  I remember when I push myself to remember. Metaphor – “the wind is a howling wolf”, simile – “the wind wailed like a kettle’s whistle”, analogy – “the wind was as relentless as the war itself”.  And then I check that I’ve got them right on the internet – What’s the Difference Between Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy? – 2025 – MasterClass

Why the need to wrestle with these words? Well last week, I had the opportunity to hear a seminar from Dr Caitlin McMullin, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University, Denmark, as part of the Business School’s PUMAR (Public Management Research Group) about Co-Production. In the session she shared a, and I can’t decide which term is best, a ‘visual metaphor’ or a ‘pictorial analogy’ that instantly made sense to me and the others in attendance, to explain what her research about the necessary elements of successful co-production had discovered.

How can we ensure that co-production is sustainable? – Dr. Caitlin McMullin, 2025

I love ‘models’ like this. They just instantly help everything to make sense, but Caitlin herself said it wasn’t the sort of picture that could easily find its way into an academic journal (le sigh!). So if you are going to use it too, please reference her blog above. Please read her blog too, it brilliantly explains everything she has discovered.

In the session, Caitlin explained that even she, as an academic that has researched co-production across several continents, can still get confused about the term, about the differences between co-creation and co-production and co-design because of how they are interpreted by different cultures.  If I’m honest, I think that I’ve probably used the terms interchangeably with little thought about what genuine co-production actually entails.

Yet in just one diagram, metaphor and analogy, she tells us succinctly everything about good co-production that you might need to know and now I feel like I really understand it.

Co-production is a tandem bicycle where the core spine of the bike is ‘structure’. The operations management behind the co-productive relationship, aka ‘things that lean is good at’ e.g. standardised meeting formats, facilitative workshops, standard management routines. Basically, how the co-production happens in practice.

This structure is ‘made mobile’ by two essential wheels. The back wheel represents whether all involved have the necessary ‘skills’ to fully engage in co-production, be they I.T. skills, shared language or even just the confidence to engage in a collaborative relationship.

The front wheel of a bike is the thing that drives everything – whether you have the ‘resources’ to engage in collaboration, namely the time and the money to dedicate to the effort involved.

Then finally, and this is what I think is the killer part of the analogy, is whether each ‘side’ of the co-productive equation ‘mutually commits’ to the co-production.

The idea of this resonated with me instantly.

Co-production works when you don’t mind being stuck on a tandem with each other!

Can you imagine co-production when the person in front doesn’t listen to you and goes where they want to go regardless? Why that’s kidnap! And urgh! The rage inducing tedium of being on a bike with someone who just puts their legs up and coasts, letting you do all the work.  Even worse, can you imagine being trapped on a tandem with a complete bore?! The pain!

I have a talent for pushing an analogy to the absolute max. The optimist in me imagined that even if you didn’t have a front wheel, or a back one, if you genuinely could see the point and fun in hanging out together, if there was not a scrap of tandem structure around you, well then you could both just start walking to where you needed to go.

Albeit you wouldn’t get as far as fast.

But you’d still commit to travelling the co-productive journey together.

The high level summary of years of wonderful research into a brilliant Ladybird bookesque picture (that most journals wouldn’t consider entertaining) is so beautiful to me.

It might not be ‘easy’ (a.k.a. acceptable) to include the picture in an academic paper but I know what I will remember.

Miss Ducroq’s English lessons were co-produced.  Those Friday vocabulary sharing sessions were more us kids teaching each other than her teaching us. By involving us completely in the learning, by trusting us to do the work and to care enough to inspire our peers, by injecting the process with fun and energy, she was igniting in us the love of it all.  The love of learning and the love of language. They are the lessons I remember the most of any of my lessons at school.

Successful co-production, where you are having such fun cycling together on your tandem, is the absolute best.