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.