During Lambeth’s journey to developing the original Living Well approach, one tension above all was experienced; that of whether we should have a system led by medical expertise often held by clinicians and doctors, or whether we should have one led by social expertise often held by those in the community and in the voluntary sector. For Lambeth, this tension was played out time and time again; both when trying to make strategic decisions for the long-term change Lambeth wanted to achieve and in the day-to-day decisions on people’s mental health support and how resources were prioritised. So how did Lambeth resolve this tension? They didn’t. Instead of setting out to resolve the conflict, they sought to connect with different perspectives and deepen their understanding of the problem. This revealed that it was not the expertise that was polarising, but the way in which the expertise was used in a relationship of support. In fact, both perspectives in the polarity believed that each other’s expertise was not just valuable, but essential for a person to experience good support. The current way the system was organised appeared to put each expertise in competition with each other, creating a dynamic where each felt the need to prove its legitimacy over the other. The effect of this was to package expertise as stand-alone interventions that could be prescribed to an individual. What was required was a more collaborative form of support that placed the person experiencing a mental health challenge at the centre, so that each form of expertise could be tailored and combined. What first appeared to be an impossible and polarising choice between two forms of expertise, became about a choice to move away from a prescriptive to a co-productive approach. This ‘third way’ became the shared story at the heart of Lambeth’s transformation, connecting and energising a system around a previously unthinkable possibility. So how did Lambeth manage to find this third way? Well, the answer is simple; by creating opportunities for people across the system to have human conversations and relationships. From connecting around stories of lived experience, to regular Collaborative meetings, to large scale events bringing together diverse stakeholders- the purpose was always the same - to connect people with each other and create the means for a deeper, more collaborative conversation. In fact, this simple idea was not only in the ways in which they managed the transformation of their system, but in the ways in which they delivered support to people in communities. What this led to was the pioneering Living Well approach, underpinned by a set of new relationships in the system that prioritised collaboration - from new ways of commissioning to contracting in services.