Public: Management + Features | Public

No more 'unknown unknowns'

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:58:07 GMT

Donald Rumsfeld called them things about their jobs they weren't aware they weren't aware of, and the same can be said of developing political awareness in local government officials. Kent county council hope to change the status quo

Educating local government officials in how to support their politicians is an idea that points up an interesting fact: until now it seems they haven't known much about it.

Or nothing official, at any rate – with no formal framework for training the senior leaders of tomorrow in managing the environment in which they will have to operate, in the past it's been a case of listen and learn, trial and error.

Kent county council may are looking to change this premise with the trial of a project aimed at increasing its officials' political literacy, knowledge and awareness.

'Managing in a Political Environment' is being run by University of Sheffield politics professor Matthew Flinders, and close monitoring by Local Government Improvement and Development (formerly the IdEA) and the Local Government Association suggests it could be the first wave in a national sea change.

Two half-day training sessions have so far taken place, identifying among attendees what in Rumsfeldian parlance might be termed "unknown unknowns" – things about their jobs they weren't aware they weren't aware of.

In April and June respectively, senior IT leaders and director-level members of the executive leaders' programme were given pragmatic advice and explanations about both their roles and those of their political masters.

Mutual understanding

Using case studies, role play and input from politicians themselves, the project is aimed at fostering a mutual understanding of what it is both sides do. Hugh Martyn, the council's learning account manager for leadership and originator of the scheme, says officials need to engage in a process of influence and negotiation, advising and guiding though from a professional distance, while politicians must maintain good relationships with officers if they are to move their policies forward.

Improved communication is timely, he adds, given the challenges currently facing the public sector.

Flinders says part of the reason no such official training exists in local government is because senior managers and councillors have historically been scared of being accused of attempting to politicise their officials.

"As a result there was an assumption they would pick up a sufficient level of political awareness and knowledge through osmosis and simple day-to-day experience.

"The sessions have allowed officials and some councillors to explore their relative roles and responsibilities and, most importantly, where their roles potentially overlap and how this creates both opportunities and challenges. Even the simplest questions have opened-up quite complex debates about managing in a period of growing public expectations but diminishing fiscal resources."

Martyn says the new training will create more equality of opportunity. "Potential senior leaders and officials have tended to learn about the political environment through mentors, experienced directors who give them the opportunity to access and engage with politicians – without mentoring it's unlikely that individuals will succeed either in achieving their career aspirations or in driving forward the performance of local government."

Kent county council is currently working out how to insert the training into its leadership programme to deliver practical results.

"We want to be investing time and effort into people who can make a difference in their leadership, rather than simply creating a management qualification," says Martyn. "Once we've found a model that works we hope to get more people engaged in learning more about the political environment."

Checkmate: how bad decisions can cost an organisation

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:54:26 GMT

Why do public sector managers invariably fail at effective decision-making? It's through no fault of their own and until the system changes costly mistakes will continue to be made

A government department has a large programme of work ready to move from its feasibility stage to implementation. The programme will save the department £10m as well as massively improve customer service. However, it needs £300,000 spent upfront to kick things off.

Decision? Cancel the programme – there is a freeze on any external support.

Another government department needs to send staff on an overseas training course so they can learn key skills for their job. The overseas trip means spending £10,000 now, the alternative is to pay for external support over the life of the project at a cost of £100,000.

Decision? Spend £100,000 – we can't be seen to be sending people overseas in this period of austerity.

The above examples have highlighted a real problem in the public sector. That too often decision-making is lacking in any common sense when considering the overall net impact and bigger picture, even if the individual drivers at the time are valid. Decision-making is also often poor, slow, and too political.

Where has it all gone wrong?

"The problem", says Mark Warren of consulting firm Moorhouse, "Is that today's public sector has become so complex and political that leaders become almost 'paralysed' when asked to make a decision. They try and take into account too many influencing factors – the political agenda, the position of senior bosses, what the media might say - and are terrified of making a mistake. They then either procrastinate and do nothing, or go for the 'correct' thing to do depending on who has the highest influence – even if that decision seems like craziness to everyone else."

A challenge, or in some cases direct interference, from leaders at the top has made decision making particularly difficult in the NHS. Decisions at a primary care trust (PCT) level are being modified because of a strategic health authority's position on a local issue – even if it doesn't make sense for the customer.

Richard Marsden, a partner with The Berkeley Partnership says: "We've seen good decisions watered down or completely upturned at the insistence of senior bodies – only to be reversed back to the original, locally led proposal later on. It's a huge waste of time and money."

Bad decision-making isn't just the fault of politics or interfering seniors though. There are many psychological traps in decision-making that leaders should be aware of, as outlined in the classic Harvard Business Review article 'The Hidden Traps in Decision-Making'.

There is the 'sunk cost trap'– where a deep-seated bias sees us make a choice to justify a past decision, the 'confirming evidence trap' – which has decision-makers ignore evidence which contradicts their instinct on a decision, and the 'status-quo trap' – in which leaders make decisions that perpetuate the status quo - to name but a few.

With all this to contend with, it is little wonder that good decision-making is so rare and a radical change in approach is required.

"People need to think about decision-making as a specific skill set," says Warren. "Strategic decisions that have a high impact need to be treated like a major project, and given all the resource, data, time, and discipline that you would normally dedicate to an important initiative."

This approach, plus the addition of some strong analytical players and others who are independent and specifically tasked with playing 'devil's advocate', can help leaders who are otherwise apt to procrastinate.

Basic rules of decision-making

The basic rules of decision-making are worth bearing in mind. Allan Wood, chairman of Harmoni, one of the leaders in providing primary care services, has this piece of advice: "Understand the psychological traps you can fall into with decision-making so you can do your best to avoid them. Then put some time aside to build an understanding of the context, using the data and facts that outline the issue, and involving the right people to discuss the critical factors.

He suggests using a balanced scorecard to decide on choices. "Finally, factor in some common sense. For example, a decision may be 'politically correct' and please a boss far away, but if it damages an entire department's motivation, your second choice may be better."

Middle managers have crucial role to play

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:15:58 GMT

In the short term at least, middle managers will feel secure in the knowledge that they are needed to drive through change - what happens afterwards is less certain, writes John Charlton

The burden of effecting major change in the public sector will fall not only on the most senior leaders, but also on the ranks of middle managers, who will be critical to the process.

While some commentators are concerned that few existing middle managers will have experience of handling the kind of challenges that lie ahead as spending cuts bite, one recent polloffers ground for optimism.

The Public sector change: private sector opportunity survey found 77% of respondents thought they were either well or very well equipped to manage change, leaving 23% who said their organisations were quite or very poorly equipped to do so.

Some 51% of those polled said their key challenge was the impact of change on the services their organisations delivered, while 47% said it would be dealing with the impact of change on employees, such as redundancies and low morale. But a third said they were concerned by a lack of appropriate managerial experience and expertise.

Asked which areas of their organisations are key priorities in the year ahead, change management was mentioned by 86%, leadership training by 87%, workforce engagement and communications by 81% and middle management training and coaching by 79%.

"Middle management is critical to the change process," says Jane Cranwell-Ward, programme director for managing change at Henley Business School. "They are the glue in the middle."

She adds that those middle manager who have had project management experience, for instance in construction, are most likely to be proficient at driving through change.

No surprise then that Cranwell-Ward recommends the following skills and knowledge as key for middle managers managing change:

• setting objectives
• identifying responsibilities
• identifying risk
• identifying the effects of failure
• knowing how to manage and control processes
• setting milestones and meeting objectives on time
• engaging staff

"Keeping people engaged is very important," she says. "They need to know what's expected of them." This involves regular and open communications about impending and continuing change programmes.

Despite her view that public sector spending cuts are "too drastic and happening too quickly", Cranwell-Ward says there are some "very talented people in the public sector who will see things through".

They will need to be talented. Adrian Lock, consultant at independent management college Roffey Park says the challenge of change in the public sector is often underestimated. For example the average global petrochemical company has about 40 functions to manage, from HR to R&D, while an average unitary local authority might have 700 functions.

Lock says budget cuts of up to 25% on top of ongoing efficiency savings will put enormous strain on public sector middle management. "They may feel powerless and excluded from decisions but will have to implement them."

Emotionally intelligent and resilient

Lock believes that managing change in an emotionally intelligent and resilient way will probably be the central skill needed by public sector middle managers over the next five-10 years. "This is not something many middle managers are yet well-equipped for."

He adds that over the past nine months, Roffey has seen a sharp increase in public sector clients asking for programmes and conference presentations on the theme of building personal resilience.

Richard Crouch, lead officer on leadership and organisational development at the PPMA (Public Sector People Managers' Association) and head of HR and organisational development at Somerset county council, says that although public sector middle managers are used to change, it is the pace and complexity of current and upcoming changes that will challenge them.

"Local authorities are not used to changing direction in such a big way and the pace of change is 10 times faster than it was."

Apart from an increasing pace of change, Crouch says middle managers will have to re-configure the ways services are delivered and changing the ways in which staff work, which he sees as a major cultural shift where there will be less tolerance of poor performance. "The focus will be on consistently high performance."

Crouch adds that if they have not already done so, middle managers will have to acquire core business skills such as commissioning and project management and upgrade their people management ones.

In the short term, middle managers' jobs should be relatively safe, but the longer outlook is bleaker. "Middle managers will be in a safe position to start with as they are needed as change agents but, once that's happened, there'll be a major reduction in numbers," says Crouch. "That will happen when services are re-engineered."

Beat surrender: minister calls for fresh thinking on police

Jane Dudman — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:27:22 GMT

With the Home Office's budget cut by 25% there is a serious danger of having less officers on the street, no matter, new criminal justice minister Nick Herbert wants them to be accountable to the community with 'beat meetings'

The new coalition government has begun to outline its policy for policing and criminal justice, against the backdrop of budget cuts to the Home Office of up to 25%.

Yesterday, in a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, the minister for policing and criminal justice Nick Herbert called for "fresh thinking" on policing, to save money and to bring police closer to the communities they serve.

Herbert said that police forces would be required to hold regular "beat meetings" to allow local residents to hold them to account.

A police reform and social responsibility bill, which would guarantee the operational independence of the police, would replace police authorities with directly elected individuals.

A payment-by-results system, used to reward private groups that help the unemployed back to work, will be used for groups that succeed in introducing prisoners back into the community. "We must get the incentives right in the criminal justice system," he said. "Targets are poor incentives, and often drive perverse behaviour and outcomes."

Herbert's speech came against the backdrop of the emergency budget, in which the chancellor George Osborne announced cuts on average of 25% in departmental budgets.

Professor Colin Talbot, professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School, yesterday outlined what a 25% cut in the Home Office budget might look like.

He said that could equate to more than 70,000 jobs lost in the Home Office alone, including 35,000 police officers, 4,000 community officers, nearly 20,000 police administration staff, 6,500 Home Office staff and 4,500 from the Borders agency, plus some from smaller agencies and units.

"There is zero chance cuts of this magnitude can be implemented without affecting 'frontline service'," said Talbot, pointing out that cutting back so-called back office staff will almost certainly mean more police officers sitting behind desks, doing administrative jobs.

His analysis comes as senior members of the government warn that the 25% cut outlined by Osborne is the average across the whole public sector. With the NHS and international aid budgets ringfenced, and education and defence singled out by Osborne for some kind of protection from the fiercest cuts, some departments will inevitably be looking at cuts of more than 25%.

Jane Dudman

NHS managers must not gamble with patient care

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:40:47 GMT

A recent article about more entrepreneurial spirit in the NHS has raised eyebrows from already under pressure managers. While it is agreed change is necessary is business risk really part of the process, asks Andy Cowper

The recent Public article was an entertaining statement of faith that making the NHS more entrepreneurial will be the solution to financial challenges ahead.

Tim Care is right that the NHS must plan for a reduction in previously-anticipated budget growth cumulatively totalling £15-20bn over the coming years. In context, the NHS budget this year is £105bn, and the government has promised real-terms growth every year of this parliament.

Many senior NHS managers will raise an eyebrow at the notion, however, that their legendarily insecure jobs are "risk-averse" and the suggestion that the NHS should take more business risk requires qualification.

How much of the budget should managers risk?

The article suggests NHS managers should "have more of the mindset of entrepreneurs in the corporate world" - but which entrepreneurs? Ryanair's Michael O'Leary? Societe Generale's Jerome Kerviel? RBS's Sir Fred Goodwin?

Care seems unaware of such big beasts of NHS management as Sir Robert Naylor of UCLH (nicknamed "Bob The Builder" for his dramatic private finance initiative remodelling of the trust's estate); Sophia Christie and Andrew Donald of NHS Birmingham East and North PCT, working in partnership with Pfizer to deliver telecare support for patients with long-term health conditions; or Michael Scott of NHS Westminster PCT, developing and copyrighting bespoke commissioning data software.

Entrepreneurial GPs have formed successful companies in the urgent and emergency care sector – some for-profit; others effectively co-operatives. There is also the impressive Central Surrey Health – a community nursing co-operative, which has been running for some years with great success.

The article cites the example of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, which took over the Good Hope Hospital. This is true, but very much half the story. Good Hope was the first NHS hospital's management franchise to a private sector company, Tribal in 2003. While Tribal's two-year tenure saw the hospital's quality rating improve slightly, it couldn't solve the financial problems: hence the board requesting the foundation trust takeover. Hardly a triumph for entrepreneurialism

Moreover, a description of the semi-independent NHS foundation trusts as "the perfect vehicle" for entrepreneurialism merits consideration.

William Moyes, former head of Monitor, which regulates foundation trusts, has expressed his disappointment that the 130 foundation trusts were not more ambitious or innovative. It's also worth noting that while foundation trusts have tended to be the highest performers in annual quality and financial ratings, 12 of the 22 trusts with conditions on their licences with the Care Quality Commission were foundation trusts.

The article also calls the NHS "an ailing organisation". As diagnoses go, this is specious. Parts of the NHS are not good enough; it can still be indifferent to patients' experience of services; and occasionally, it delivers truly terrible care. Overall, however, the NHS's record over the past decade in delivering on a wide range of challenging government targets is impressive – admittedly, at a time when budgets were growing.

Those budgets will now shrink, which will force reforms. That need not be a bad thing: as former deputy chief medical officer professor Aidan Halligan notoriously wrote in 2006, "working patterns, practices and customs are at the heart of many capacity issues, and have never been challenged".

Entrepreneurialism could play a part of the next stage of NHS improvement – but the next stage is about creating 'win-win' deals

Entrepreneurialism could play a part of the next stage of NHS improvement – but the next stage is about creating 'win-win' deals along pathways of care for patients between the various organisations and sectors of healthcare and social care.

The skills needed will be those of negotiation and navigation, based on lots of data and analysis to prove quality and safety. Some entrepreneurs are good at this stuff; others are win-at-all-costs figure-fiddlers. Until they have bust a bank or broken a business, we tend not to know the difference.

A key lesson of public service reform is that one size does not fit all. Faith-based solutions – whether in the benevolence of big government, or in the allocative efficiency and informative perfection of markets – should be left out of serious strategies.

We should keep our minds open about the potential for entrepreneurialism to help improve the NHS - but not so open that our brains fall out.

Andy Cowper is the editor of Health Policy Insight

NHS: something's gotta give - either targets or services

Thu, 27 May 2010 10:06:12 GMT

Following a recent report on stress levels in the public sector, Eifion Rees reports from the NHS frontline where the pressure to meet targets is having a detrimental affect on services - and employees' health

Working in the public sector can seriously damage your health. That is the conclusion of research published recently in the European Heart Journal.

Conducted among 10,000 Whitehall civil servants, it found people who daily work three hours overtime or more were 60% more likely to suffer a heart attack than those working normal hours. Streamlining and cost-cutting have taken their toll: stress levels in the public sector are now said to be higher than in the private sector.

Public expectation

Anne Gibson, head of HR at Norfolk county council and vice president of the Public Sector People Managers' Association, puts the increased potential for stress down to an increased number of challenges. "In terms of outcomes to deliver, there is certainly a greater demand to work faster and on a more complex range of issues," she says. This is partly down to an increase in public expectation about what they should get in terms of services, fuelled by changes in the commercial world, such as online banking.

Whatever the cause, the results include greater pressure than ever on senior managers in the public sector. One NHS manager says the work-life balance in her London PCT began tipping heavily in favour of the former some 18 months ago. She regularly works 50-hour weeks, spending lunch breaks in front of her computer or in meetings, and occasionally works at weekends.

"We're expected to do whatever is required to get the job done," she says. "In most NHS organisations, people leave and their responsibilities are shared out on an 'interim' basis among colleagues – that this becomes a permanent arrangement seems to be an unwritten rule."

Contributing to the atmosphere of stress, she adds, is a tendency towards "buck-passing" and away from taking ownership of tasks. Communication is also a factor, with a feeling that some managers are being "set up to fail" by being given too much work and not enough training.

"The NHS used to be a more pleasant place to work, but over time has become more challenging and politically driven, with minimal flexibility for negotiation over target delivery. We try to keep up morale and make time to chat, but with many gaps in the service and few resources to fill them, something will have to give, either targets or services."

Reduced to tears

Or, indeed, people. One community services manager in the south of England ascribes her stress to restructuring within her organisation, overseen by an interim chief operating officer with a "very abrasive, bullying" management style. "Clinicians who are also managers, as I am, are not always valued or supported to make the development change into whatever new type of manager our leaders want," she says. Management meetings became increasingly difficult as efficiency and productivity goals were pursued, she adds, with colleagues sometimes reduced to tears.

Regularly working 10-hour days or more since September, this manager began experiencing breathlessness and incipient feelings of panic, and was eventually diagnosed with work-related stress and signed off by her GP. She believes many public sector managers are unaware they, too, may have work-related stress. "If people are on edge, anxious about their futures and unsupported in their jobs, they can't focus on patient care," she comments. "Procedures are suffering, and a growing culture of interims means an increasing focus on upping performance to the detriment of forming relationships with colleagues and loyalty to the local areas and organisations.

"The public sector has changed – my colleagues and I used to laugh a lot more and go out for lunch together, which was always a supportive time. The caring aspect has reduced as we strive to meet targets."

Stephen Chaffey, a solicitor at law firm Dundas & Wilson, says work-related stress may have legal implications, as well as impacting an organisation's "bottom line" by increasing sickness absence and reducing productivity. "While there is no UK legislation focused solely on stress, employers are obliged under the Health and Safety at Work Act to provide a safe working environment for their employees," he points out. "They will be potentially liable for a breach of that duty if an injury to physical or mental health occurs related to stress."

Management standards issued by the Health and Safety Executive offer guidance in distinguishing between positive and excessive pressure, he adds.

No stone unturned: how Natural England conducted a root and branch review

Wed, 26 May 2010 10:32:04 GMT

Want to know how well or badly your organisation is performing? Ask the stakeholders. This unusual form of scrutiny is how Natural England, the government's advisor on the natural environment, conducted a warts and all evaluation

Awkward and potentially embarrassing though it may be, washing one's dirty linen in public does have one saving grace – once the scrubbing is over everything's clean, and everyone knows it.

One organisation that has been up to its elbows in soap suds recently is Natural England (NE). In a bid to improve its service, the government's advisor on the natural environment asked its external stakeholders to help it undertake a "warts and all" evaluation – exposing its inner workings and inviting comments about strengths and weaknesses.

Given the swingeing cuts unveiled this week by chancellor George Osborne, such unorthodox measures may yet gain traction within a public sector eager to be seen improving efficiency. It remains to be seen whether it will be enough to stave off reorganisation or even the axe, however – last year the Tories promised a review not only of NE, but also the rest of Britain's 789 quangos.

Chief executive Helen Phillips came up with the idea of opening NE's books to the scrutiny of the public bodies with which it deals on a daily basis, and asking for their suggestions on how it might do things better. The goal: to make the organisation more efficient, robust and outward-facing.

"I was anxious not to have our senior leaders discussing what they thought our customers and stakeholders thought of us, putting words in their mouths," says Phillips. "I'm a great believer in creating upward pressure in organisations, and wanted to hear authentic comments in people's own voices."

Beginning in November last year, stakeholders including the Environment Agency, Forestry Commission and National Parks authorities attended four monthly meetings convened by Laurence Udell of strategy and alignment consultancy the Udell Group, with whom NE has been working since 2008.

Jim Dixon, chief executive of the Peak District National Park Authority, another of NE's stakeholders, describes a "structured" but "fairly brutal" process. Under discussion were issues such as why certain stakeholders didn't get on, why some key NE projects hadn't succeeded and why there was no buy-in to others.

"I felt we were being invited in to be candid, and some stakeholders were pretty direct in their criticism. There was no sense that we shouldn't say something for fear of the consequences, however – quite the reverse." Dixon adds that he took away from the evaluations a need to be bolder within his own organisation, and has already invited external partners to comment on its development work.

Joint initiatives

A recurring theme raised during the meetings was NE's failure to engage with its stakeholders on problem-solving issues at an early enough stage, consulting only when it felt secure in its decisions. Another was a preference towards ownership of certain projects, rather than co-created or truly joint initiatives.

"We now have a real sense of the extent to which that would be welcomed by our stakeholders, and as our partners recognise we're trying to do more, they also feel freer and easier about saying how it could work better for all of us," says Phillips. She points out that opening up an organisation to this process of scrutiny and review should be seen as a sign of strength, and that the sooner this happens, the better and faster the results.

Constructive disclosure is an unusual tactic among agencies, executive and non-departmental bodies, says Martin Laffin, professor of public policy and management at Durham Business School.

"My impression is that these organisations tend to be wary of opening themselves up too much to 'unnecessary' outside scrutiny – both through an awareness of how their accountability is necessarily focused upwards towards the department and minister, and through institutional caution."

He adds that although government departments have long had consultative processes, those processes tend to be focused on new policy proposals rather than performance overviews of the whole or even part of departments. While it would be very useful for capacity reviews to take stakeholders' views into account, he says such an exercise could be cumbersome given the size and scope of major departments.

Chemistry, communication and coalition

Tue, 18 May 2010 09:38:39 GMT

Managing in a coalition maybe new to central government, but the public sector have been working successfully this way for many years. Eifion Rees looks at some examples of successful collaboration

After the horse-trading, the cat-herding. Having wrangled for days over policy and glossed over pre-election insults, the Conservatives and Lib Dems last week finally agreed a deal for a coalition government. The battle to keep it together, however, to paraphrase Karen Carpenter, has only just begun.

And yet while central government struggles to get to grips with power-sharing, it's worth remembering that parts of the public sector have been managing in this way for some time.

Birmingham city council leader Mike Whitby, a Conservative, ascribes the success of his own Lib-Con coalition – in power since 2004 – to chemistry and communication.

"The two party leaders need to like each other, and the parties they represent need to trust and respect their leaders to look after their interests," he says.

Scrutiny committees

Whitby says a key decision was to create a bipartisan productivity and efficiency team to assess the impact of each major council decision, as well as forming scrutiny committees to shadow each cabinet portfolio, led by a politician of the opposite party.

"A statutory routine brings us together many times a month and works as a long-range radar, anticipating any disagreement," says Whitby.

"We ameliorate differences through constant working together, councillors as well as cabinet. There's no doubt that managing a partnership takes some considerable time, but it's worth it."

On a more individual level, the many instances of job sharing in the public sector suggests a practical and workable way to make collective decisions. Judith Killick and Maggy Pigott are joint executive directors of the Judicial Studies Board (JSB). They have been job-sharing together for 21 years and seven posts, the last five in the senior civil service.

"We have similar commitment and values, as well as attitudes to work and leadership, but different personalities," says Killick. "We play to our strengths. It's valuable in terms of being able to talk things through, and if you know the other person well you benefit from support, coaching and feedback."

The pair meet once a week and share or divide projects according to an agreed overall strategy, but make decisions depending on who is in on the day.

Never look back

"We resolved early on never to unpick each other's work – we always move forward from decisions, rather than looking back and unravelling those that have already been made. We try to ensure there isn't much of a gap between us and take it as a compliment when people forget which of us they've talked to."

Job-sharing promotes a more collaborative style of leadership that benefits the whole team, she adds. It encourages delegation and so presents "empowering" opportunities for those further down the chain.

When it comes to partnerships between different parts of the public sector, Paul Williams, reader in public management and collaboration at Cardiff School of Management UWIC, says spending cuts will focus managers' minds on the need to build relationships and seek consensus.

The irony is that budgetary issues are likely to undercut the collaborative approach required to resolve them.

"The process of collaboration is hugely resource-intensive. The fear during a time of unprecedented financial cuts is that organisations will retreat to their silos, taking responsibility only for carrying out their core and statutory duties, and that the efforts put into working with other organisations may come under threat."

There is widespread recognition that untangling intractable, cross-agency issues requires the sharing of resources and expertise, says Williams, but overcoming structural and institutional difficulties, as well as navigating problems associated with statutory duties and financial frameworks, can be time-consuming.

"A consistent complaint from people involved across different sectors is partnership fatigue," he adds. "There is a lot of apple-pie rhetoric about working together to solve problems, but achieving this is a much more difficult proposition."

Don't blame me

Mon, 10 May 2010 09:53:32 GMT

The blame culture is rife in the public sector, especially in organisations dealing with lots of inter-agency work such as social services

The week after a general election that resulted in a hung parliament, it's fair to say that all political parties will be indulging in recriminations, but perhaps none more so than the Labour government – and until his dramatic statement today that he intends to resign as Labour leader, it might have been safe to assume that Gordon Brown would have been leading the way.

"Bigot-gate" taught us not only Brown's views on Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy but also plenty about his management style – in particular his propensity to apportion blame. "They should never have put me with that woman," he confided to an aide (and a lapel microphone) as he climbed into his car. "Whose idea was that?"

This quickness to point the finger is as common a problem in Number 10 as it is in the public sector in general, says Richard Ferguson, director of human performance consultancy Sensei UKE.

"Cultures of blame often obfuscate the real issues. Effort and energy are being expended on unhealthy reactions like apportioning blame or covering up mistakes, rather than identifying what the real problems are and dealing with them in the here and now."

He argues that blame cultures are more prevalent in public sector bodies with strongly hierarchical and silo-oriented structures, pointing to large county councils in particular.

Issues of trust and transparency

Where work is ring-fenced and mistakes occur, those looking to protect their own boundaries are quick to point the finger. Issues of trust and transparency compound the problem – if workers are unsure of their own positions, entrenched in old ways of doing things or aren't clear about others' roles, for example.

A lack of common purpose or clear sense of direction can also contribute to a culture of blame, something that is harder to achieve in sprawling housing departments than in schools, says Ferguson.

Martin Parker, professor of culture and organisation at the University of Leicester School of Management, agrees that cultures of blame are more likely in organisations involved in lots of inter-agency work. He cites social services as a classic example, routinely dealing with the police, education departments, clinical and educational psychologists and the prison service.

"Once you have a very diverse distributed set of responsibilities then passing the buck becomes quite an understandable thing to do," he says. "However there needs to be a distinction between the disavowal of personal responsibility and establishing the cause of a particular problem. Identifying systemic failures in order to change organisational processes seems to be sensible way of conducting debate about public policy, rather than accusing individuals.

It's important to move away from a culture of the attribution of blame and towards a discussion about responsibility."

As Brown knows, blame is also more likely to rear its head where the public is involved, and especially when filtered through the prism of the tabloid media.

Visibility is an issue – where there is relatively little outside scrutiny because of a lack of interest in the internal workings of, say, universities, there is less call to apportion blame.

Public sector bodies dealing with issues of child safety, policing or healthcare, on the other hand, where mistakes can be life-threatening and fodder for front-page news, are more prone to cultures of blame.

"Those organisations will hopefully have strategies for dealing with the fallout, not necessarily by blaming someone else, but by pointing to the complexity of inter-agency agreements," says Parker. "This may look as though responsibility is being abdicated, but in practise it may simply be pointing up the ways that joined-up government should be working."

As the primary determinants of a culture in any organisation, managers need to lead by example, says David Kirby, of 3 Spires management and leadership consultancy.

"Managers have a range of options to how they respond to mistakes – making employees feel bad will lead to them hiding further mistakes, becoming unwilling to try new things or trying to deflect the blame by denying responsibility.

The alternative is to treat those mistakes as lessons, encouraging problem-solving. To this end, it is important that managers constantly ask for feedback from their teams. If employees learn from bosses that it is acceptable to blame HR departments, for example, then that's the behaviour they'll demonstrate, leading to a culture of personal protection rather than personal accountability. "

Leadership: Time for a different way of thinking

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:30:15 GMT

Stephen Brookes considers the role of academics in helping define a new public leadership

In the post-election landscape, the challenge of public leadership under huge spending constraints will be very difficult.

There is widespread agreement regarding the complexity of leadership in the public sector. Much of the focus in the past has been on "management" as opposed to leadership both in terms of "hands on" management as well as policy development through new public management (NPM).

It is our view that the time is right to move towards a new leadership practice through a collective approach that develops a policy shift away from NPM towards new public leadership (NPL) but drawing upon the best of the earlier approaches.

The public sector is highly diverse in character, governance and size and there are competing needs within and expectations from diverse stakeholders, and tasks involve different types and sizes of organisations. Added to this, is the need for public sector organisations to work in increasingly collaborative ways.

This applies at all levels of public leadership from Whitehall to Wigan.

We recognise the commentary of the National School of Government entitled Whole Systems Go and agree that leadership and management development has been a neglected area of both theory and development.

Devaluing of public services

We believe higher education institutions, by virtue of thought leadership and the experience underpinning it will help in turning what some describe as a crisis or threat into a period of innovation and one of opportunity. The period of criticism and the perceived devaluing of public services in recent times, fuelled more recently by the economic crisis, present key challenges but also significant opportunities to influence both current and future top leaders to think differently about leadership.

The development of inter-connected and inter-dependent approaches to leadership across public services as a whole system represents the key challenge for public leaders in the future.

This will also be critical after the election on 6 May, across government and in relation to the localism agenda.

The traditional view of leadership is that followers will look to leaders to provide the right answers particularly in times of crisis. We argue that the role of the leader is to ask the intelligent question rather than give the answer. This is not without historical precedent.

Writing over half a century ago, Selznick described the leader as offering "a guiding hand to a process that would otherwise occur more haphazardly, more readily subject to the accidents of circumstance and history" and, in separating institutional leadership from interpersonal leadership and administrative management, extols the virtue of leaders as statesmen by asking a range of questions which touched on tradition, long established practice and self-restricted outlooks.

As with Heifetz, Selznick argued for adaptive change.

When considering why Selznick's ideas were not popular (in the sense of generating a leadership paradigm) one has to consider the context in which he was writing. At the time of writing the Human Relations School was becoming very influential, but Selznick expressed concern in relation to the growing conflict in which individuals sought 'place' and 'preferment', in rivalry among units.

At an institutional level, one could argue that the tension between new public leadership as opposed to new public management has similar challenges in 2010 and beyond.

Total Place

We acknowledge that Total Place – as a means of changing the focus of public services -has the potential to deliver a step change in both service improvement and efficiency at the local level, as well as across Whitehall in providing what the Treasury refers to as "strong local, collective and focused leadership which supports joined up working and shared solutions to problems with citizens at the heart of service design".

Our approach is premised on the view that the development of whole systems of thinking and delivery requires an understanding of, and commitment to, the development of intelligent leadership through networks and improved knowledge and skills in a collective environment.

It requires a different way of thinking about leadership from the most senior levels of government through to those who deliver public services at the point of contact or encounter. This is increasingly difficult in a complex world where an issue, problem or strategy of one organisation has an impact on other organisations across the public sector.

Indeed, collaboration in tackling these issues or problems through joint strategies is now becoming essential rather than just desirable. Although most acknowledge the benefit of partnership working, research suggests that the evidence of impact of partnerships on improved performance is not readily sought.

This article is an edited extract from an article first published in Transforming Management

Doncaster's failing: how did it get so bad?

Jane Dudman — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:35:01 GMT

Audit Commission publishes 'worst ever' report on a local council as search for a new chief executive continues to pull the authority 'back from the brink'

The "brutally frank" reporton Doncaster yesterday by the Audit Commission identified three, inter-related failings that will have sent a shiver down the spine of many a senior public manager.

This has been a case of severe political dysfunction, which has led, in turn, to organisational dysfunction, amid an atmosphere of bullying and intimidation.

The result has been a council where councillors have set themselves against what an elected mayor and cabinet have sought to do; where there has been a lack of effective leadership by the mayor and the cabinet; and where the lack of leadership by some senior officers has meant that no one has taken a lead and no one has been able to work together effectively.

The reality of this on the ground is clearly laid out in Appendix 2 of the Audit Commission report, which sets out, step by terrible step, the process by which an interim chief executive was appointed at Doncaster in January.

Michael O'Higgins, chair of the Audit Commission, says this is the worst report he has seen on a local authority in his time at the commission - and others believe it is probably the worst report ever published by the organisation about a local council.

An initial political failure has in turn, over time, corroded officers' behaviour, so there has been organisational failure as a consequence

How did things get to this pass? It has been an intertwined political and organisational failure, says O'Higgins. "An initial political failure has in turn, over time, corroded officers' behaviour, so there has been organisational failure as a consequence. If there were in place a chief executive strong enough to back his or her officers when councillors overstep the line, then you could begin to push back behaviour into the right places," he says.

A great deal now rests on the ability of the authority to find a permanent, new chief executive with the skills to pull the authority back from the brink. Finding such a job candidate may be a challenge and it is not yet clear whether this appointment will be made before the general election, although O'Higgins says the process is actively under way.

Still questions to be asked

There are still more questions to be asked about Doncaster. Is this an indictment or endorsement of the inspection process? Not surprisingly, O'Higgins takes the latter view.

"It is an open call whether we should have intervened earlier, but the tenor of the times was against it," he comments. "But this case demonstrates why the Audit Commission needs to exist. We didn't have to ask anybody to intervene here. Our report, while brutal, is straightforward. We are trusted to call it as it is, and we have done so in this case."

Did the Audit Commission act soon enough, given that its own report says Doncaster has been failing for 15 years? O'Higgins says that some councillors in Doncaster have been "very sophisticated" in their actions, suggestion that they are changing while in fact continuing to behave in a dysfunctional way.

There have of course been a number of interventions by central government at the council over a number of years. But it has taken until yesterday to get emergency measures in place. "Until the recent ministerial intervention in children's services, the council had been successful in deflecting all previous attempts to address its problems," acknowledges the Audit Commission report.

The report criticises the behaviour of the controversial elected mayor, the English Democrat Peter Davies. It says he is "not averse to provocative and inflammatory statements" and says he "'does not always act in a way which demonstrates the need for an elected mayor to lead his authority and represent all the people in Doncaster".

Senior councillors are also taken to task. The report says: "Some influential councillors place their antagonism towards the mayor and the mayoral system, and the achievements of their political objectives, above the needs of the people of Doncaster, and their duty to lead the continuous improvement of services."

It says senior officials at the council have struggled to provide leadership. "Some have become used to the dysfunctional politics of the council and no longer seek to maintain proper boundaries between definitions of the respective roles of officers and councillors."

The report concludes: "The people of Doncaster are not well-served by their council." Many, not just those who live in Doncaster, will be asking about the role of an elected mayor, and the role of democratically-elected councillors at this moment, when central government has had to step in to rescue their authority.

Jane Dudman

Developing future leaders

Jane Dudman — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:19:49 GMT

As applications open for the Clore Foundation's social leadership programme, its director Dame Mary Marsh talks to Jane Dudman about its value to the third sector

Today, applications open for the second year of an innovative programme to develop social enterprise leaders.

The Clore social leadership programme is an initiative of the Clore Duffield Foundation, which has previously set up the Clore leadership programme. The Clore social leadership programme is now recruiting between 14 and 20 people for its social leadership programme, following research that revealed minimal training provision for those with leadership potential across the third sector and concerns on the part of funders that the innovative potential of social enterprise projects might be jeopardised by a lack of leaders in charities, community groups and social enterprises.

The launch comes as unions have expressed concern about proposals to use more voluntary bodies to deliver public services.

This is a highly-tailored, intensive course that is likely to attract a diverse range of applicants, according to Dame Mary Marsh, director of the Clore social leadership programme. "Based on what happened this year, we expect to welcome a diversity of applications, from those in very small organisations to those from medium and large bodies," she comments. "We were especially pleased to have people based in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as it is good to have the views of those doing interesting work in each of the devolved administrations."

Marsh adds that she was pleased with the representation of black and ethnic minority fellows on the first course, as well as the sponsorship by the RNIB of a blind fellow. "Of 14 fellows on the first programme, four are from a black or ethnic minority background and in terms of disability that is good at championing people with a disability, but less good at having disabled people as leaders in the sector, we are pushing that very strongly," she says.

Personal development

Fellows can study either full-time for 12 months or part-time for up to two years. Applicants should already be working in the third sector and will need to demonstrate their leadership potential. "What's important to me is that we can only justify this kind of intensive investment in a smallish group if we have spinoffs," comments Marsh. So, for example, the process of applying for the programme is itself designed to be part of someone's personal development, with feedback at every stage. The foundation is also publishing all the material from the first programme and the Work Foundation, funded by Capacity Builders, is evaluating the work.

"The time is so right for what we are doing," says Marsh. "We need to invest in leadership capacity across the whole of the voluntary sector and it is hard for individual organisations to make that investment, so someone like us needs to do it. If politicians want charities and social enterprises to provide more public services, they have to invest in the capabilities of the sector, not just buy the services.

* Wednesday's SocietyGuardian will feature an interview with Kate Lee, director of strategy and evaluation for the Red Cross, who is one of the first cohort of fellows on the social leadership programme

Jane Dudman

How to be indispensable in today's job market

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:08:13 GMT

There is no room for complacency in the public sector - from both employers' and employees' points of view. So what can HR departments do to maximise staff and resources, asks Eifion Rees

There is something vaguely Orwellian about public sector workers being asked to "recommit" to their organisations.

The idea is that workers realign their values and goals with those of their employers in order to make themselves more valuable and, the hope is, indispensable.

The term itself may sound like newspeak – and 1984's Winston Smith was a civil servant, after all – but it's founded in a less literary dystopia, one of impending and wide-ranging public sector redundancies.

Recommitting is ostensibly about helping employees help themselves, according to Jo Ellen Grzyb, director of professional development firm Impact Factory, and it's just one of the practical ways the public sector is preparing itself for a seismic shift in human resources.

"Employers will always prefer to retain people who can make things happen, rather than simply doing the bare minimum," she says. "Public sector workers will need to be operating at a higher level than before, and this is one way to help them do that."

Job description

Gryzb's company works primarily with local authorities and the NHS, running workshops encouraging employees to think about how they can demonstrate their worth – how they might do things differently within their current roles, how they could go beyond the bare requirements of their job description.

They are effectively being taught the skills to keep their jobs.

"Where departments are being merged, those who are more enthusiastic are more likely to get the job – it's harder to change a negative attitude than it is to develop someone who's already keen to begin with.

Positivity means being more likely to come out on top if you're competing against someone with an equal or even slightly higher skill set."

For other parts of the public sector it's a case of preparing their workforces for eventualities such as interviews, as pertinent for those expected to reapply for their own jobs as for those leaving the public sector entirely.

Gillian Hibberd, strategic director of resources and business transformation for Buckinghamshire county council, says the council has introduced a professional outplacement service to help employees prepare for redundancy.

She expects 400 jobs to go over the next two years.

"As well as a support package to help people make informed choices, they will receive one-to-one support and career counselling, support with preparing their CVs, help improving interview skills and advice on starting up their own business."

But the severe cuts in budget will also affect those who don't get laid off. In consideration of the shape of the organisation in the aftermath of job cuts, who stays will be as important as who goes, which is why employers are not only asking employees to prove themselves, but helping them to do so.

Longer-term strategy

Switched-on employers are taking a longer-term strategic look at their resourcing requirements, according to Robin Wood of Career Management Consultants. They are identifying the skills gaps that a smaller workforce and a maturing population will produce, and encouraging employees to explore new and additional roles.

"Instead of letting people go they are retraining them and developing their skills, anticipating a very different public sector, one with less people doing more work," says Wood.

"Employees are also deciding for themselves that they'd like to stay – either in post or within the public sector – and using the tools supplied by their employers to help them realise that goal."

He adds that more enlightened public bodies are becoming effective at communicating to employees affected by redundancy what the opportunities are, and encouraging and supporting them in their efforts to improve their retainability.

"There needs to be a clear and fair selection process when restructuring, of course, but it is also intelligent to make employees who have the potential to fill those future roles aware of the benefits of staying," he says.

A past master at change management

Jane Dudman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:21:04 GMT

Graham Holley, the chief executive of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, has seen it all in his 30-year career in the civil service. He tells Jane Dudman why his latest role is his most satisfying

There's been a lot of talk recently about the public sector not having managers who know how to manage through hard times. Graham Holley, the chief executive of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, is one person who has seen both hard times and managed through a change of political administration.

Holley has been running the TDA since it was set up three years ago to create a career framework for everyone working in schools, not just teachers. He has more than 30 years' civil service experience, gained in three Whitehall departments and three agencies. He held several senior posts in the former Department for Education and Skills before becoming executive director and then chief executive of the TDA in February 2006.

The TDA, like other public bodies, now faces budget cuts. The agency's budget will be reduced by £10m next year and by a further £45m the following year. Holley's autonomy to make cuts has been further reduced by the government announcement that funding for initial teacher training will be protected. "That has reduced the amount of budget we can look at when bringing about reductions," notes Holley, who says the agency is still working through the implications of the cuts.

"We want to realign our activities more towards helping schools to build their own capacity, rather than hand over money for specific activities," he says.

One of the agency's main priorities over the past three years has been rolling out extended services in schools in England, including providing breakfast clubs and homework clubs for pupils.

"Having started off from nowhere three years ago, we now have more than 95% of schools with extended services," says Holley. "That job changes from now on. It is now about sustainability. We have learned a great deal - and schools and local authorities have learned with us."

There's no point in children turning up hungry, cold and wet and sitting them in a classroom and expecting them to learn. You have to address wellbeing

One of the biggest challenges that has faced the agency is how to prove that academic achievement is enhanced through workforce reform. "Our argument has always been that this is long term work," says Holley. "There's no point in children turning up hungry, cold and wet and sitting them in a classroom and expecting them to learn. You have to address wellbeing."

It was therefore something of a breakthrough for Holley and his team when this link was explicitly acknowledged. In January's Ofsted report [http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Workforce-reform-in-schools-has-it-made-a-difference] into whether workforce reform in schools has made a difference, the watchdog said such reform has made a "considerable difference" to pupils' learning and that all members of the workforce in the most effective schools understood how they contributed to pupils' learning.

"It was a bit of an act of faith at the beginning, but now at least we have a report supporting our work on wider staff skills," comments Holley. "What has been key has been the quality of commitment to this agenda by leaders in schools. You couldn't expect people who are junior to teachers to set out their own sense of direction, but now all members of the workforce understand how they contribute to learning and there is a clearer understanding of how the roles fit together. We were very pleased to see that Ofsted said workforce reform has freed up a substantial amount of time for teachers. That is economic, efficient and the right thing to do."

Holley says he hopes his agency's work will help other parts of the public sector. "We ourselves learned from what was happening in workforce reform in the NHS and how we have implemented many reforms with success, we hope other professions, such as social work, will apply these lessons," he comments. The TDA is already working with the Children's Workforce Development Council on how it might reorganise its training and recruitment.

"This is about change management," says Holley. "It's always difficult. Here we are, a central government agency, telling 24,000 schools there is a better way to do things. We have to persuade them that it is in their own interest to embrace this. It's done by working with early adopters and demonstrating the results to other schools around. It is the schools themselves saying they are soaring up the league tables."

Holley has been in education for 30 years, but describes his present role as the best job he's ever done. But he acknowledges that there is some truth in the wider observation that there are few really senior managers in central government and arms' length bodies with the experience to help lead through tighter fiscal times and a fast-changing political environment, whether that is a change of government or, if Labour is re-elected, a change of ministers.

"There are not many people in the senior cadre who have been through a change of administration," he notes. "There were lots of people who may have been in departments - but not in positions of influence."

Jane Dudman

Total Place: give it more time says Bichard

Jane Dudman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:20:20 GMT

Total Place may not be perfect but should be judged on its potential to transform local services

Today's Total Place report should be seen as "more than just a set of pilots" according to the chief architect of the innovative programme.

Sir Michael Bichard, director of the Institute for Government thinktank and influential former permanent secretary, who has been driving forward the Total Place programme since it was announced in last year's operational efficiency programme final report, says there has been a lot of misunderstanding about Total Place.

"This is not about saying that Total Place will only have succeeded if we have 170 pilots by 2011," comments Bichard. "It's about trying to get people to work and behave differently. That is how it will have to be judged."

This morning the government will release the headline findings from the 13 Total Place pilots alongside the budget and the full report will be published tomorrow. Several issues that are likely to be raised, including whether the pilot schemes have been sufficiently rigorous in identifying potential savings.

On this, Bichard acknowledges that there is more work to do and that not all of the 13 pilot areas have "quite fleshed out" the possible deliverable savings.

Changing public services

But Bichard adds that changing public services in this way cannot happen overnight. "Total Place has been around for less than a year. People having been thinking about this whole problem for 10 years," he comments.

"The Smarter Government report made it clear that the government was going to tackle this and I anticipate something in the Budget about all of this. That's not bad. But it will take much longer than a year to do something meaningful."

Bichard adds that the whole project is in danger of falling foul of what might be called the Monty Python effect, with too many conversations on Total Place getting a bit like asking what the Romans did for us, as in the comedians' film, Life of Brian.

Yesterday, a report from thinktank Public Services Trust 2020 proposed a new government "superdepartment" for devolved government, with one single aim: to move all relevant powers on service delivery and improvement from Whitehall to localities. It also called for a new kind of balance between power and funding, with localities able to ask for lower "single area" funding in exchange for the power to bring together more agencies and public services.

In some areas, this is already happening. "This is a developing story," says Bichard.

Jane Dudman