Small Creative Ideas: 300+ ways to improve VFM

This blog has just passed through the 20,000 page load barrier - so again (as with my other blog) - here is a collected digest of all the ideas (some 300+) on the blog. These are ideas sourced from local government and many other places - usually invented by frontline staff - to generate ways of delivering more with less. 

Please search, peruse and plunder ways that will enable you to make the most of diminishing resources. 

Leading change from a whole systems perspective: digest to upload

My blog (http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/) has just tipped past 15k pageloads so it seemed like a good time to produce another digest of some of the more popular posts. I have uploaded this to the community library - but it is attached here also.

I hope you find it of use.

Jon

Springtime for leadership!

The sun is beginning to feel warmer, flowers are beginning to bloom and my willow tree is laden with leaves about to burst... it's Spring! 

So as Nature wakes up again, what kind of leadership do we need this coming year? Please complete the sentence: 

A leader is someone who... 

To help your sap to rise, below is a list of response to my question "What three words sum up the kind of leadership we need for 2010?" on Linked In (and there is more on my blog here too):

• Murad Salman Mirza: persevering, invigorative, visionary 
• Mark Orr: Honesty, integrity, definition 
• Ger Bargerbos: integrity, empathy, visionary 
• Dean Fygetakes: duty, honor, country 
• Josh Chernin: imaginative, open-minded, decisive. 
• Jørgen Brøndum: determination, will, hard work (believe that is one too many, but found it relevant enough to take the risk...) 
• Trevor Durnford: Host Not Hero (This originates from a powerful article written by Mark McKergow of Solutions Focus Fame (www.sfwork.com) 
• Adrian Snook: not Gordon Brown 
• Michaela Kassar: honesty, integrity, innovation (of a longer list) 
• Abdul Rahim Hasan: lead by example 
• Phil Johnson: authenticity, service 
• Samir Sharma: creative, connected, collaborative 
• Rajib Lochan Pathak: passionate, humility, flexibility 
• Raju Swamy: country, business, productivity 
• Michel Langelier: strategic, committed, enabler 
• Rohail Alam: basics, trust, communities 
• Souri: empathy, integrity, ability 
• Wayne Patterson: responsible leaders needed 
• Gaurav Bhargava: vision, integrity, commitment 
• Sam Whitten: innovative, proactive, impressive 
• Lou Storiale: integrity, accountability, performance 
• Wallace Jackson: creativity, optimization, applicability 
• Dave Maskin: listen, learn, open to change (OK, so #3 isn't one word)... 
• Judy B. Margolis: decisive, diplomatic, wise 
• Peter B. Giblett: collaboration, brand intervention, revenue opportunities 
• Larry Ellis: humble, accountable, experienced 
• Kevin Kuhl: adaptable, humble, aware 
• Kenneth Strong: ethical, proficient, action 

(Thanks to all those people) 

So again, here we are at the beginning of Spring 2011: 

A leader is someone who.....

 

(more entries on my blog too)

Navigating the three ‘C’s

A short questionnaire to test how successful your organisation will be over the next 18 months 

The most successful organisations are ones that balance 

 

• Creativity
• Commitment and
• Complexity

 

Every organisation needs innovation to delight their customers/citizens/users, stay ahead of policy changes and to keep driving down costs. Creativity is the fuel for innovation and many public service organisations are brilliant at not recognising when it is needed, or worse, crushing it out of people. 

With the commitment (or engagement, as it is often called) of everyone involved in an organisation, everything becomes that much more possible. People work smarter and more steadily: not just harder and harder (and harder). 

In our frenetic world where new technologies, new demands and new ideas approach us from all angles, and clients / citizens want that something different and bespoke: managing complexity is critical. If a public service cannot handle the complex demands it faces, it will quickly transform into Kafkaesque bureaucratic whirlpools. 

Are you and the other key leaders of your service balancing these three C’s well enough? Try this questionnaire and see how you score: 

(Score how much do you agree with the statement - where 1 is ‘not at all’ and 7 is ‘totally’)

 

1. I can easily remember the last time one of my team had a brilliantly creative idea that added to our overall performance.
2. In fact I can remember quite a few times before then too when people around the organisation have come up with new and fresh ideas.
3. In my (part of the) service, we do things very differently now to three years ago – new pressures mean we have had to change
4. I usually come away from a meeting with colleagues or partners with at least one new idea.
5. When my team and I sit down together, I just expect there to be creativity and there usually is.
6. Often at work, I am delightfully surprised by the ingenuity of the people I work with
7. In my organisation, there is no effort needed to sell the new strategies, people know what they need to do already – and are doing it
8. People all face the same direction in my service, not in some regimented way, but with a clear focus on the future
9. I enjoy coming to work and so do all my colleagues: we work hard, but we also have fun
10. Staff appraisals are not the turgid box ticking exercises I see in other places, in ours we have lively conversations about the past and future
11. The plans in our service don’t just gather dust in filing cabinets, we use them to handle the pressures we face
12. In fact we don’t really have large planning documents, instead we have a community of people who all understand what we need to do
13. Just like a good military general, I don’t spend all my time in the valleys, I am often up on the hills looking further & beyond the current challenges
14. I read newspapers, magazines & journals to spot the trends that are coming our way – there are patterns in most things
15. My team and I are able to work the detail as well as we work the big picture – we can link it all together
16. I use every chance I get to talk with my stakeholders about what changes they are seeing, or would like to see
17. Things are much more complex than they used to be, but I think we have managed to have big enough conversations to handle these changes
18. Sometimes I get scared when I think about everything the service needs to achieve but I know I can rely on everyone to bring their piece of puzzle
19. Come the end of the week, I am able to relax and know we are surfing the waves of change rather than being drowned by them
20. I spend a good chunk of my time managing the future and not just to reacting to the present day challenges

 

If you scored 140, you need to bottle what you organisation is doing and sell it! Certainly if your score was somewhere above 110, your service is probably far more creative, engaged and strategic than most. You will enjoy coming to work. Between 60 and 109 is probably around average – but is average enough these days? How might you up your score? And if your score was below 60, there is probably room for some change – you, your organisation or both. 

This, of course, is not a scientific survey but merely one to prompt reflection. The ideas underpinning it though are – the best public service organisations are the ones where creativity, commitment and complexity are blended well together. 

Do you know where your smalls are?

Regular readers of my ramblings will know I run two blogs: one about leading change and development from a whole systems perspective (http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/) and the other about the small & creative ideas that are making a difference in the public & third sectors.

I am posting this - just to alert people to this blog which now has over 300 ideas for how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of local services. 

http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/

The blog is:

• Totally free
• Totally searchable
• Totally open to more ideas being added!

In these stringent times - there may just a few small ideas in there to help you reduce costs while still maintaining or even improving services.

The blog also stands up for public service organisations 'home growing' their own improvements rather than spending buckets of dosh on consultants who borrow your watch, tell you the time, keep the watch and slip a needle in to carry on drawing blood too.

And this links back to my other abiding interest: leadership. What are leaders doing or should be doing... (apart from not signing cheques for large consultancy contracts that add no value) to foster the necessary levels of engagement / verve / commitment / creativity (even in these austere times) amongst public service staff?

Answers on a postcard - or better still - please post them below >>> 

Thanks

Seeing David Cameron in person: an afternoon at the Treasury (Simplifying procurement)

Last Friday, I attended a meeting at the Treasury about SME procurement. It was fascinating, memorable and useful, not least because I got to see David Cameron, our Prime Minister, in person for the first time. 

This was the (first?) “SME Strategic Supplier Summit” and it was hosted by Francis Maude who is Minister for the Cabinet Office. The aim of the afternoon debate (which included about 100 representatives of small and medium sized suppliers to the government bodies, as well as press and senior members of the civil service) was to: 

• Cover what the Government is currently doing to progress SME-friendly procurement practices;
• Report back on comments received from the SME feedback facility hosted on the No10 Downing Street website;
• Seek our views on what reforms and actions the Government should be prioritising to make the marketplace more attractive to SMEs

Seated in cabaret style, the meeting began with the PM and Francis Maude entering to open up the debate and make some initial speeches. Baroness Eaton, the LGA Chairman also gave a presentation. A number of key initiatives were announced (see here, here, here and here for Government and press reports of them). Also attached is the document we were given to help seed the debate. 

The essential message from all the presentations is that the Government is thoroughly committed to making Government procurement more ‘SME friendly’. Their ambition is that around 25% of all government contracts will be with SME suppliers (although one person later questioned whether this was as a % of contracts or a % of value). 

People who read my blog will know, I have some strong opinions about procurement! (My humorous rant against the excesses of procurement, my suggestion for what makes an excellent procurement function and the need for more commercial leadership can all be accessed from those hot links.) And so, it was a real pleasure to hear about the Government’s plans to make procurement less onerous and more effective. Moreover, it was great to hear that I am not alone in my views! I was also very impressed that the Minister stayed for the whole afternoon, engaging in the table debates that occurred.

Some selected comments from Francis Maude: 

• “We will make it easier for SMEs to do business with government: that is an absolute commitment” 
• “Hold our feet to the fire to make sure we follow through on this” 
• “Demands for public services are as great if not greater than ever” 
• “This is the end of the era of big state, this is now the era of the Big Society” 

And very interestingly

• “We are not friends of the idea of framework contracts”

I am watching this space with interest and I have already subscribed to the new and free one stop shop for Government procurement (Contracts Finder). I would recommend all suppliers and buyers do likewise. I am happy to report that SMEs were involved in the development of this new service (we were told this at the event in answer to my question). 

So what now? Naturally, I am a little sceptical, although I do not doubt the verve and commitment of David Cameron and Francis Maude. I am sceptical because I have seen much of this before with the Glover report which seems to have only had marginal impact. (As a small example, I am still sometimes asked to provide paper copies of tenders when this report specifically recommended doing away with this.) 

I am also cautious in my optimism because I think there are a number of very big dilemmas the Government has to handle in driving forward on this strategy. They will need to find a way to balance: 

• The economies of scale with the desire for localism (what might be called the “Sir Philip Green factor”)
• The desire by central government to control and direct with the desire to develop bottom up solutions from SMEs and third sector suppliers
• Big business interests (who currently hold many of the cards with some very large contracts) with the small business aspirations of SMEs who want to slice the marketplace in smaller chunks
• The interests of big third sector suppliers (such as NACRO and Age UK) with small local consortia of SMEs, small charitable bodies and the whole Big Society
• Procurement professionalism with procurement centralism (and what I perceive sometimes as their ‘control freakery’)
• Single client/customer focus with a multiple stakeholder ‘whole chain procurement’ approach (see below)
• Transparency with commercial confidentiality
• Supporting and developing progressive commercial practices (such as encouraging women owned business or ones that have visionary aspirations for health and safety) with making procurement too ‘politically correct’ and insufficiently concerned with bottom line VFM for the public purse
• Suspicion with openness, (or how not to see all commercial suppliers as smooth tongued snake oil sales people and more as partners with whom to collaborate openly, even when some commercial suppliers are...)
• The prevalent idea of submitting one final bid with the (often common in the commercial world) practice of negotiation over a number of iterative conversations
• Fixed and concrete specifications with ones that recognise complexity and change such that service contracts need to allow for emergent solutions rather than ones fixed in aspic
• Due probity and essential risk management with bureaucratic and unwieldy demands
• Methods to provide assurance against corruption with the institutionalising of risk averse and Byzantine processes (I noted that David Cameron mentioned the ‘nobody got fired for buying an IBM’ factor in procurement...)

I could go on (and already this blog post is probably far too long: so thanks for reading to here!) but I will end on one thought. And this picks up on a constant theme of my blog – the need to take a whole system perspective. One point I made at the event, which Francis Maude said was a good one, was the need to involve the end user in the procurement process. I used the example of a soldier sitting for the first time in a newly procured and sparkly tank: the soldier knows immediately that it will not work as well as it should and could have done.

• How many soldiers (and, of course, many other frontline public service officers) are still never involved with a procurement process?
• How many of their insights and ideas could contribute ££ millions in savings and other improvements if they were given the opportunity?
• And indeed, how much more could be achieved if the people who will be receiving the service (the citizens, clients and customers of public services) were also given the chance to offer their ideas?

What we need is (to coin a phrase) “whole chain procurement” that brings people together to co-design and thence procure the services we all need to create a civil society: one that is creative, ambitious and fair!

Leadership: Your 2011 reading list has been delivered!

As anyone who reads my blog will know, I have been on the hunt for books, films, poems and whatever that have inspired people about their leadership. I sat down this morning to compile the collected list. I have attached it below for you to download as you wish.

Many people responded including some notable celebrities in the shape of Stephen Fry and Alistair Campbell. In the attachment is a list of suggestions from whole bunch of people from local government, third sector and other public services. There is also a smattering of consultants, several of my colleagues and some random contacts from Twitter (these are the @people in the list) and elsewhere.

I am most grateful to everyone for their suggestions and explanations. Thank you. In many ways, the comments and explanations around why a particular book or film made an impact are the best bits.

Please enjoy and be inspired!