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. 

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!

Do you assume your leadership is useful?

I have just been re-reading a great article by Paul Whitby on Assumed Usefulness (The Psychologist July 1980 pp 308-310) which I had mislaid. I tracked Paul down on Linked-In and he graciously sent me a hard copy. 

It is a very neat and powerful piece. 

In the article, he ‘proposes a model to explain the widespread phenomenon of unwarranted self confidence’. In 1948, Skinner carried out an experiment with some hungry pigeons where he fed them a pellet of corn at regular intervals. As a result some odd behaviours were ‘reinforced’ (to use the behaviourist vernacular) such as head swaying or hopping from one foot to another. These behaviours persisted long after the corn stopped coming. So in this experiment a pigeon’s random behaviour was reinforced by an unconnected reward. 

Paul Whitby then goes on to propose that this is what happens with psychotherapy. Psychotherapy (as opposed to more rigorously tested cognitive behavioural therapy techniques) is very popular and many (both therapists and clients) swear by it. Many psychotherapists assert the value of their craft despite numerous objective studies suggesting otherwise. Paul’s view is that in some cases, psychotherapy clients will get better, as they would have done anyway. These naturally occurring remissions are the equivalent of the pellets of corn for the pigeons, and result in collusion between client and therapist over the value and importance of the therapy. This is very challenging stuff and I don’t intend to enter into the debate here about the value or otherwise of the various psychotherapies in use today. I will leave that to others. 

But I do want to pick up on Paul Whitby’s comment towards the end of his article where he says the “model is also applicable outside the healing arts. Probably the most fruitful field for Assumed Usefulness is business and management.” 

Since first reading this article more than 20 years ago, I have long wondered the same. 

How many of the everyday actions taken by leaders have been randomly reinforced in their pasts by performance improvements that happened through happen chance (or even despite what the leaders did)? How many strategies, plans, protocols and policies have merely seemed to work by the random occurrence of a few positive results? 

This debate is raging at the moment in police leadership circles. My colleague Peter Neyroud (erstwhile Chief Constable and Chief Executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency) and David Weisburd (Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason

University) have written an article in support of “Police Science: Toward a New Paradigm”. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/228922.pdf. Malcolm Sparrow puts forward an alternative view that instead of ‘scientific policing’ the focus should remain with ‘problem orientated policing’ (“Governing Science” http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232179.pdf) Both articles are well worth putting the time aside to read in full and weigh up the arguments yourself. 

But that debate is not really about whether the actions taken by managers and leaders should be evaluated but more about who should carry out the evaluation and in what context. I suspect that all three authors would agree that there is no room for Assumed Competence in police (or indeed any other) leadership. 

So my questions to you are these: 

• How do you know you are a useful leader?
• What evidence or feedback are you drawing on to assert or even prove this?
• How can you demonstrate a causal link between the policies (or whatever) that you have devised / implemented and the results achieved?
• Indeed, do you agree that there should or ever can be a causal link?
• Or would you assert that leadership (and all the actions that arise from it) is an art and not a science: leadership is just too ineffable and complex to be evaluated by reductionist methodologies?

Interestingly and with powerful foresight, Paul goes onto cite an article by Eachus (“The psychology of the stock market”, The Psychologist; Bulletin of the BPS pp 100-103, 1988) where he illustrated how “persistent activity [is] maintained by the occasional and random reward of a large profit which is independent of effort or knowledge”. Paul Whitby wonders whether Assumed Usefulness underpins the behaviour of dealers in the stock market. He speculates that “yuppie merchant bankers are well known for their high self-regard” which leads them to an emotional state prone to Assumed Usefulness. 

I wonder... 

(You may also like to see my previous article about bankers’ bonuses and the questions that Boards and investors should still be asking)

 

Original blog post: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2011/01/do-you-assume-your-leadership-is-useful.html

Heathrow: a breathtaking failure of leadership?

There is an old saying (and some dispute about who coined it first): Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. 

This got me to wondering about leadership. Should leadership be breathtaking or breathless? It seems to me that many managers spend their time trying to be everywhere, support everyone, monitor everything and so forth. This is breathless leadership. Whilst this may give the leader a warm feeling that they are a ‘hands on’ influential leader, the chances are that others will not be as impressed. 

I suspect that London Heathrow, which is currently wrapped for Christmas in very sticky snow, is full of breathless leaders right now, all seeking to make something (anything, dammit!) happen and get passengers moving again. This is commendable and necessary given the circumstances. But what were these breathless leaders doing in the Summer? Were they still running around in a similar fashion? (Latest news as I write here)

Perhaps what London Heathrow needs is a lot more breathtaking leadership. This is the kind of leadership that listens, that empowers, that connects, that plans, that waits, that assembles, that includes, that challenges, that invests, that innovates, that focuses... that inspires. 

Breathtaking leadership is easy to spot. It is the kind of leadership that we have all felt once in a while when someone says or does something that makes us do a mental or real double take. We hold our breath as we think about what the person has just done. If it’s an exceptional moment of leadership, we may even forget to breathe until our body kicks in and we take short intake of breath. 

My challenge for 2011: how can you make your leadership less breathless and more breathtaking?

Original blogpost: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2010/12/heathrow-breathtaking-failure-of.html

Is there a shortage of commercial leadership? (Update)

I am struck that in several, perhaps many, parts of the UK public services there has been a shortage of commercial leadership. This is no surprise of course - government is not about commerce - despite some people's efforts to make it so. Government cannot pick and choose who it serves, it must be transparent, open and accountable, and it is about producing social outcomes not just financial ones. So for all these reasons, in my view, public services are not the same as commercial ones.

 

That said, the public services do enter into commercial arrangements where they have  to negotiate value for money contracts with suppliers. I do worry that sometimes this has not been done as well as it might. In short, I fear that our local and national government have been stuffed by some rather canny operators in the commercial world.

 

It seems to me that some public service leaders have treated transparent procurement as a proxy to commercial negotiations. But they are not the same. Negotiating a contract with a supplier after they have won the procurement competition is not the same as negotiating with them before...

 

I know - I am painting things in black and white here - and being deliberately provocative. But I came across a story the other morning which left me sad and fed up. I attended a seminar hosted by Civil Service World and sponsored by Hewlett Packard on the 'Digital Dividend'. (It was a very good event - so thanks to the organisers.) In the networking time I spoke to a young chap from a large government department who explained to me he had recently developed a macro for a commonly used spreadsheet in his organisation that would save a lot of people a lot of time. But then he found out that if his department were to use this - they would have to pay the outsourced IT contractor about £15k every time they used it. You see - there was a clause in the contract... So this small innovation (and you know how much I like small creative ideas) was squashed from the outset.

 

So this got me thinking - how much commercial leadership is there in the public services. Given the current austerity measures - I would propose that we need a lot more of this kind of leadership.

 

What do you think?

What does commercial leadership mean for you - what skills (apart from negotiating skills of course) need to be well honed?

 

-----------------

Just spotted this interesting and related article:

 

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2009/nao-slams-government-purchasing-capability/

9 November 2009 | Jake Kanter

"Significant weaknesses" in procurement skills are jeopardising value for money on major projects, according to the UK's National Audit Office (NAO).

The spending watchdog's latest report, Commercial skills for complex government projects, said the public sector lacked commercial capability in areas including contract management, commissioning and risk management....

The critical leadership role of middle managers in these austere times

Public service middle managers will experience heavy loads of stress as the implications of the austerity measures are rolled out in coming months. They will be the people tasked to deliver the redundancy bad news to staff. They may well have little say in the decisions being taken. These managers will probably see the shape of the services they have helped to build, reshaped and reduced before their eyes. And they too may suffer a redundancy fate at the end of it all. 

Throughout all this, these managers may well seek to juggle their deep commitment to the value of the service they manage & the people they serve, their need for ‘survival’ in this employment climate (& not put their heads too far above the parapet) and their desire to keep work & family life in some semblance of balance. 

It is a gross understatement to say that this will not be easy. 

But this is not an article to plead on their behalf – there are many others who will suffer too, not least the many (often vulnerable) citizens who will be getting lower of levels of critical services in the future. Instead I want to put forward some ideas about how these middle managers might play a critical leadership role as these looming cuts are rolled out. 

For me the most important challenge to face in these coming months will be whether the cuts are used to simply reduce / ‘salami slice’ the existing services or whether bold & creative decisions will be taken to mitigate the cuts (as far as possible) by doing things differently. I contend that middle managers are best placed to do the latter while senior managers may well be under huge pressure (from their governance bodies) to do the former. 

Middle managers know their services inside out. And whilst they may have a strong attachment to the current ways of doing business, their inside knowledge means that they have the potential to see some fresh green saplings instead of the old big trees. Whether this potential is realised or not will depend upon the leadership role that they adopt. 

If the middle managers pursue a compliant style of leadership and seek only to implement the demands for resource cutting, there is little chance of innovation and new ways being found to deliver more with less. These middle managers may gamble on saving their own jobs by being good soldiers. But this will be a gamble. (I once met someone who was instructed to make his whole team of nine people redundant. He spent 10½  hours that day talking with each person, doing what he could to make the ‘brown envelope’ an opportunity and not a curse. Finally at around 7.30pm he returned to his own office to find his own brown envelope, just left squarely on his desk. He set fire to his filing cabinet.) 

There is an alternative leadership role. (And from the discussions I have had with middle managers, many are and will be seeking to adopt this approach. I wish them well.) This approach seeks to create the room for manoeuvre to find the new ways of doing business. These might be radical innovations or just simple small changes that can lead to much higher performance, such that services and possibly jobs can be saved. This is not a leadership style for the faint hearted. 

This leadership involves:

 

• Being as strategic as the senior managers through understanding the past, present and future of the organisation, grasping the particular pressures which are being faced and having a vision of what could be.
• Having the courage and deft footwork to challenge and question decisions from higher up the organisation, in ways that make the people who have made those decisions wriggle, but not squirm.
• Being prepared to practise an inspirational & facilitative style of leadership which enables and encourages junior staff to think creatively and express their own bold ideas which will finesse the resources and find superlative efficiency & effectiveness
• Deeply knowing what the public want and need, and being able to show clearly how proposals for newly redesigned services will come far closer to meeting their requirements and delivering social outcomes.
• Maintaining honesty and transparency throughout, so that even if there is no job at the end, everyone will observe that the manager will still have their integrity. (In the end, that is all any of us have.)
• Knowing what questions to ask of all involved that will liberate new ways of doing business. Just asking, for example, the simple question “is there anyone who provides this service far better than us?” can prompt a radical shift in existing methods. (When the first budget airline realised they could cut costs dramatically by keeping their aeroplanes in the air more and on the ground less, they searched for who was doing this extremely well. They learnt a huge amount from a Formula One team who showed them how do a pit stop in 9 seconds.)
• Having the skills (and being able to share these) to redesign a service so that fewer resources are spent on ‘fire-fighting’ and more priority is given to prevention and systemic fixes that can head off the expensive mistakes.

 

Sometimes dramatic improvements are staring us in the face and when we finally see them we wonder how we could not have seen them before. One council I was working with had experienced something like this when they looked at how they repaired street lights. The original method involved taking a call from a member of the public that a street light was not working. An engineer was dispatched (at dusk?) to check that indeed the light was not working. If (as was invariably the case) it was not, a second engineer was then sent out to fix it. All this took a while and involved two journeys. They then changed their assumption from ‘we cannot believe the public’ to ‘we can believe the public’. As a consequence only one engineer is now despatched to fix a street light that has been reported as faulty. 

This leads me on to declaring what I think is the most important attribute of this more progressive middle management leadership:

 

• Having the capability to learn from the past (and possibly even chuckle about it) but not be attached to tradition. True, this is very hard to do in any organisation that is wracked with fear, blame and a belief that changing old ways necessarily involves a loss of face. But I believe (I have to believe) this is still possible, even in such organisations. Certainly if not now, then when? If this is not a time to let go of old & inefficient practises, when will it be?

 

If you are a politician or senior manager reading this, my challenge to you is what can you do to allow, enable and support your middle managers to act in these ways? 

Putting the politics aside about whether now is the right time to be implementing extensive and deep reductions in public expenditure (I leave that to the politicians and economists to debate), it is always the right time for any manager to be putting in place radical improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. As Machiavelli said “a common failing of mankind [is] never to anticipate a storm when the sea is calm. A wise prince … must never take things easy in times of peace”.

Now that the storm has arrived, many people I fear are rushing to construct the world of public services as one large spreadsheet with lots of compartmentalised budget cells to slice and dice. I hope that the progressive middle managers will have the courage to practice leadership that calmly but dynamically acts in the interests of all of our futures.

But it won’t be easy!

Original blog post

Pro Bono Group established on Linked In

Together with a colleague (Marion Cole), we have established a group for experienced public sector consultants (including researchers, advisers, coaches, facilitators etc.) who wish to offer some pro bono help to public and third sector organisations during these austere times. 

The purpose of the group is exchange ideas, enquiries, opportunities and mutual support. 

The group is co-facilitated by myself & Marion Cole and is centred around Milton Keynes / Buckinghamshire. People from surrounding counties are most welcome. Indeed some have joined from further afield. 

The group has gained 35 members in less than a month.

Here is a link to the group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=3542050&trk=anet_ug_grppro (but you will need to be a member of linked in - which is free)

I am posting details here for two reasons:

1) to see if any consultants / researchers etc would like to join: you are most welcome

2) to see if anyone would like some pro bono support: My plan is to write to people in the public services in MK / Bucks / Beds / Northants / Oxon / Berks at some point soon (although I don't have a ready made mailing list...) - but in the mean time - I thought I would get the offer 'out there' for people to respond as they wish. If you are a potential client - please feel free to join the group - and post your request as a discussion thread. Or if you wish - browse the list of members and approach people directly. (There is a great deal of talent already in the 30 members signed up)

What is your 'boldness quotient'?

There has been much talk of 'New generation leadership' of late which got me thinking about how leaders establish new directions. 

One of the hardest jobs for any leader is going off in a different direction. This may only be a small change of direction, but it may be enough for existing followers to stop following. Those followers may somehow feel betrayed by this altered course. “After all that I have done, and now we are doing this?!” 

Cutting a fresh path is both harder and easier for a new leader. 

It is easier because there is no baggage to jettison, no inconsistency to defend and no loyalty to the past to retain for retention’s sake. And there can be plenty of quoting of George Santayana about ‘those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’ and so forth. The new leader is at liberty to both praise the old warriors and then, almost in the same sentence, make a virtue of departing from their strategies. 

But it is also far harder because there is no guarantee that a new leader will bring the followers of the old leader with them. The new direction may just be too novel and be seen as too much of a break with the past. Existing bonds of friendship and trust will have to be rebuilt by the new leader, as they are now the leader and the world has changed. 

The critical judgement comes in how bold to make the new direction. Will it just be ‘new’ in name only? Or will the new leader ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’? How will the new leader judge how bold to be, not just at the start of the new leadership journey but as it continues? 

The best leaders have people that they can rely upon and trust to give them independent, full and frank feedback about whether their ‘boldness quotient’ is on the money or not. 

How is your ‘BQ’ right now? 

(How do you know?) 

How will you stay ‘bold’ and avoid the ‘new’ becoming the ‘new old’

(How will you know?)

Another small milestone: 300+ ideas on efficiency, effectiveness & economy

My small creative ideas blog has now reached 15,000 pageloads - and 300+ ideas to improve efficiency and effectiveness. To celebrate this - I have turned it into a PDF / e-book too (see http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/1071722/blog/blog-display.do?backlink=ref&id=5078167 for my other e-book on my other blog)

The purpose of the small & creative ideas (news) blog is to support, celebrate and communicate ideas that are making a difference in the public and third sectors. (The live blog is at: http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/).

The attached book is a collection of all the posts since Feb 2009. All feedback welcome.

Cutting without bleeding: Advice to senior leaders on how implement cost savings in the public services

The public services are facing an unprecedented challenge to reduce costs by upwards of 25% whilst maintaining frontline services. There are some who would say this is impossible and that, after years of efficiency savings, there is simply no more ‘fat’ left to trim. This article says the opposite and offers you 10 progressive ideas to assist you in making these cuts without doing any long term damage to the social and physical fabric of this country, or indeed the public services we have grown to depend upon. 

1. In all of your communications about your strategy to implement these cuts make sure that you only discuss the costs of services, never the benefits. For example when you come to publish expenditure on the web, as progressive councils are already doing, do not outline what the money was spent on. Staff and public alike are only interested in what cash (their cash of course) is going out and not on what has been purchased or provided.
2. Beyond telling the public and staff what you are doing (mostly, of course, to avoid Freedom of Information enquiries and comply with statutory consultation requirements), do not seek to involve or engage them in ‘thinking’ about how the resource challenge might be met. They will only bleat on about ‘saving jobs’ or ‘saving services’ and offer no constructive ideas whatsoever. They are not paid enough to be creative. You, however, are paid enough to have all the ideas, take action and be a decisive leader.
3. Make sure you hire a team of expensive, but valuable, consultants to do most of the unpopular leg work for you. Many of them are very bright economics graduates who will have spent all of 8 months or so learning their consultancy craft and gaining experience of the ‘real world’. They will get to understand your organisation inside out in a matter of hours. Do not worry that the partners who sold you the consultancy assignment now seem to have disappeared as they are there in the background closely ‘supervising’ the team that are now working with you.
4. Absolutely do not let smooth talking ‘process consultants’ lure you into thinking that the public services can be ‘reshaped’, ‘redesigned’ or indeed ‘re’ anything. They may even try to suggest that if you work in partnership with other public service providers that ‘things can be done differently and more cheaply’. This is a distraction from the main task of reducing your budget and your budget alone. You did not get to where you are without being fiercely parochial! Be on guard against any talk of ‘whole systems’, ‘total place’ or members of the public ‘living joined up lives’.
5. Sometimes you may get to hear of ministerial announcements or emails from central Government Departments advocating ‘collaboration’. This is a clever ruse to persuade you to give up some power and control. This is to be resisted at all costs. After all, since when did Whitehall Departments ‘collaborate’? Never of course! So their attempts to get you to do it, is clearly designed to weaken you and strengthen them.
6. The best way of achieving cuts, of course, is to demand that every budget holder makes a similar percentage cut no matter what their department, unit or function does or achieves. Although you may be aware (or not) that some functions provide more vital services to the public than others, and indeed some units have already been cut within the last 12 months, this is no consequence. A uniform ‘salami slice’ taken off everyone is the only fair and responsible approach. There are several accountants who will support this strategy.
7. This is not say of course that you do not have a few favoured functions who have shown over the years to be of huge value, who may have invited you to open a new facility or indeed have asked you to speak at their ‘team away days’ etc. The heads of these functions will have shown themselves to be of particular value for money in that they have never challenged any of your decisions. These value for money functions should of course be allowed to cut their services by slightly less than the others. But this should not be widely known until after the event.
8. Whilst you may talk about accountability and empowerment (always very good words to use during downsizing) and that you will ‘leave it up to the budget holders to make their own decisions’ about how to implement their contribution (another very good word) towards the cost reductions, do make sure that you put in place a few ‘no go’ areas. Yes of course it may be cheaper and perhaps better to empty bins once a fortnight, you will know that this is not popular with certain parts of the news media. There are other examples too. Therefore it is your leadership responsibility to make sure these ‘no go’ changes are clear to all concerned. Some managers may moan about having ‘no room for manoeuvre’ but dismiss these people as ‘troublemakers’ who do not really understand what empowerment is all about.
9. Although it might seem like a soft target, one function that must not be cut more than the very minimum is ‘public relations’. These are the people you must rely upon to get your message across to a sceptical public and staff. Money spent on glossy publications and road shows explaining how frontline services are not (really) being cut and only the ‘chaps and chapesses in the jolly old backroom are having their belts tightened’ is money very well spent.
10. Above all, whatever you do, do not let anyone including even your most trusted lieutenants suggest that your assumptions should be examined. You are a senior leader and therefore all that you believe and say must be correct, if not enlightened. 500 years ago Machiavelli may indeed have suggested that true leaders need people around to tell them the truth. But he was clearly wrong as evidenced by the fact that he died a long time ago. Be certain, be sure and be confident: the strategy that you are implementing is unavoidable. (You may wish to write this last statement out and place it on your bathroom mirror.)

Original blog post: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2010/06/cutting-without-bleeding.html

Radical Efficiency: Different, better, lower cost public services

Went to a fabulous session this morning which launched a new report from NESTA about 'radical efficiency' and how to make it work. The point was well made that delivering public services in a radically different way is no longer just very important or even critical - it is an imperative! Here is a link to their excellent report:

http://www.nesta.org.uk/home/assets/features/radical_efficiency

The launch had some excellent presentations and questions - which prompted lots of ideas in my head about how to make effective and efficient innovation happen. I will write more later - but here is quick summary which I have already tweeted (of course!):

• Use the common wealth to create more common wealth...
• Look for ways to connect consumers together to create new expertise resources
• Stop blaming central govt and just get on with taking radical action locally
• Break accountability 'rules' and give authority to the point of service delivery
• Lead so that you enable risk taking, not to close it down
• Get everyone in one room so that professionals can 'hear' the voices of consumers directly!
• Think of doing more with more (not less) - but redefine what you count as your resources
• Create a culture where structure & passion coexist sublimely to achieve real results

My huge thanks to everyone involved with the report and indeed present at this morning's event. (I wish we'd had the whole day to debate the issues emerging... perhaps NESTA would like to organise such a day....?)

Original blog post: http://tinyurl.com/radefficiency

Cutting consultancy spending & improving services at the same time!

Today the government has announced how it plans to reduce public sector spending by more than £6bn. More than a billion of this, will come from savings in 'discretionary' spending on consultancy, travel etc says the BBC news website:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8699522.stm

Here are some ideas that I have blogged about in the past about how consultancy budgets can be slashed by taking a radically different perspective on consultancy & organisational improvement:

http://tinyurl.com/keepingthewatch1 - how not to steal the taxpayers watch by using consultants more shrewdly

http://tinyurl.com/keepingthewatch2 - small creative ideas blog brimming with ways to improve efficiency & effectiveness in public / third sectors

http://tinyurl.com/keepingthewatch3 - what goes wrong with consultancy reports and why they often waste money

http://tinyurl.com/keepingthewatch4 - getting the whole system in the room as a cheaper & better way to make plans

http://tinyurl.com/keepingthewatch5 - why we need small & creative ideas now more than ever...

Please browse and let me know what you think...! Thanks

Original blog post: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2010/05/cutting-consultancy-spending-improving.html

EVENT: UK Employee Engagement Network meeting 28 June, 12.30, Russell Square, London

Through a ning on employee engagement ( http://employeeengagement.ning.com/) a bunch of UK people thought it would be a good idea to get together to discuss practice in this field. We have set up this event.

There is a modest fee of £30 to cover food and room hire. It is happening in central London. 

Anyone with an interest in employee engagement - particularly as to how everyone's hearts and minds can be harnessed to tackle the fiscal pressures on public services (which is one of my keen interests) - you are most welcome! 

You can register here: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Invitation.aspx?e=ca03591c-7faf-48f3-8b1d-506ed4368095 Please register soon as we are trying to get an idea of numbers. 

We will be using Open Space to set the agenda - so anything that needs to be talked about - can be talked about!

I hope to see you there!

Coalition: a opportunity for more radical innovation?

I tweeted earlier on today: 

Will the gaps in our coalition be a source of strength not weakness: as spaces for innovation & experiments? 

It seems to me (at the moment) that having a coalition government opens up many more possibilities for how public services can be delivered. This is partly because this situation is pushing many politicians well outside their comfort zone and they are having to entertain uncertainty, negotiation and consensus building to a degree that many of them have not had to do so before. Or at least they are now having to do this under public gaze. In my experience many politicians like to give the appearance that there are 'right' and 'wrong' answers to the pressing challenges of the day. 

Perhaps this coalition will mean that politicians, locally and nationally, will be more prepared to wrestle with complexity and engage with public service leaders, professionals, third sector and citizens in a collaborative inquiry into radical innovation. In these increasingly stringent times, we will need to challenge our core beliefs & assumptions if we are to achieve that goal of delivering more (or at least no less) with a great deal less. (See my blog post for a 'legs eleven' set of ideas on this) 

A slightly wobbly coalition could be providing a very supportive context for imagination, bold thinking and a big blooming panoply of small creative ideas!

Original blog post

Playing with the future

Leaders are often very good at managing the present and responding to events and issues as they arise. After all, it is often people's ability to troubleshoot that helps people get promoted. But, a key part of being a good leader is managing the future. This is far more challenging.

The one thing that we do know about the future is that we do not know what the future holds in store. We can make predictions based on past trends, we can devise likely scenarios and plan around these. But in the end, managing the future is a journey into the unknown. What makes the future particularly difficult to predict is not knowing how people will react to changing circumstances. Economists spend years devising models to anticipate the effect of various changes to taxes, commodity price changes and so forth. But these models often struggle with anticipating the capricious and messy decisions that people make within these changing circumstances. For example how many economists or business leaders predicted the recent recession?

(Some have argued of course that the reason that astrology exists is to make economics appear scientific!)

One approach that is widely used to manage the future is to use whole system open simulations. These are different from simulations that you may have come across such as console computer games (including flight simulators, of course) or training exercises where there are a limited number of options from which to choose. These are essentially 'closed' simulations and a great deal of effort goes into designing the 'rules' of the simulation (if x is chosen then y occurs). In essence they seek to codify and 'bottle' human complexity. Whilst they are interactive they are not developmental nor do they change much in the light of learning and experience. Such closed simulations also struggle with people who seek to break the rules or who are just not sure what to do.

People breaking the rules (or at least bending them) is almost, perhaps, what makes us human rather than automatons.

So if an organisation wants to investigate

• how a new service might be delivered,
• how a new organisational structure might work,
• how a new product might change the market,
• how a partnership or strategic alliance might work out

... a whole system open simulation might well be a very effective and efficient way to do this.

The basic ingredients of a whole system open simulation are:

• Get all the stakeholders in the room together - ie anyone who will be affected or will want to affect how the future happens
• Put people into roles that are similar to (but critically not the same as) their existing roles so that they can apply their knowledge, experience and insights
• Give people a 'map' of the new system/structure/product (etc.) with enough information to bring it to life but not so much as to overload people with spurious detail
• Set up some tasks and objectives for the stakeholders to work on (such as agree a plan, or test an idea, or trial a new service...) within a concertinaed time frame
• Consider how you may want to 'interrupt' the flow with 'events' that could happen in order to test reactions and consequences
• Give people the time to reflect on what they have discovered from being part of this fictional system - what did they learn, what surprised them, what concerned them etc?
• Finally give people time to resolve - 'now what?' - what learning needs to be applied to real world and how?

Because these are whole system 'open' simulations there is no need to try and predict or seek to contain the simulation. The simulation itself is a voyage of discovery and becomes a crucible of learning. People find out how they may need to adjust what they do and how they will behave in the future within the new circumstances. (As a consequence, simulations are a very effective tool in the development of leaders and managers.) Strategies & plans can be devised, refreshed or jettisoned.

Perhaps one way to sum up whole system open simulations is to say that they are about taking your shoes off rather than forcing shoes onto your feet. People can play (and bend the rules) within such a simulation and so learn, innovate and plan for the future. As Roger von Oech (author of 'A Whack on the Side of the Head') said "Necessity may be the Mother of invention, but play is certainly the Father"

Do you want to play?

Disruptive technology... or maybe disruptive questions?

I met an old friend for lunch yesterday and we got to talking about 'disruptive technologies' - the kinds of new gizmos and systems that really change the way we live our lives. I remember Charles Handy talking about this in his book 'The Age of Unreason' - although he did not call them disruptive technologies then. One of his ideas was how the invention of the chimney meant that you could have a house with more rooms - and so began the fragmentation of family life.

Of course when we think of disruptive technologies we are now more likely to think of the internet, MP3 players or indeed how my car ESP system helped me manage a skid on snow the other day without ending up in a ditch.

But I got to thinking about what might be disruptive questions? The sorts of questions that if asked of a way of working - might just change we the way we look at a service and encourage people to do things things differently - in a leaner way perhaps.

Over the years, I have been collecting a set of questions which I often present to people to help them redesign a process or a service. I say that they come with a guarantee: if you ask them seriously of any process or service and don't find at least one (or indeed two or three) ways of improving the service, I will eat my hat!

So here are the questions - which I offer as a means to help people reflect on their ways of working and come up with new ways of doing it (in no particular order):

 

• Have we agreed the stakeholder requirements?
• Are the providers involved adequately trained?
• Are there too many ‘handovers’?
• Is the process being done in the right order?
• Could it be made simpler with a ‘triage’ stage?
• Could we make better use of technology?
• Where are the sources of rework?
• Could some parts of the process be done at the same time?
• Could we get the users / clients / etc. to do more?
• Are there too many checks and controls?
• Could we get our partners or suppliers to take action?
• Could we create an expert system to make it work better?
• Is there a ‘standard’ way of carrying out the process?
• Could different people or agencies be providing the service (or part of it)?
• Have we made any cultural or professional assumptions that are getting in the way?
• Are the performance measures helping?
• Could we stop providing the service altogether?
• Are decision making protocols getting in the way?
• Does the process contribute to outcome goals?

I hope this proves useful to people. Please blog here with any results that you come up with.

One of my favourites was from a local authority that looked into its street light repairing process. They quickly realised that when they sent out an engineer to see if the street light was in fact not working (as had been reported by a member of the public) they were in fact assuming that the public probably lied. When they changed this assumption to 'the public are probably telling us the truth' - they saved themselves huge amount of resources by sending out the fixing engineer first.

Jon

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/

 

The power of a good checklist

Yes - we all 'hate' checklists and all that infuriating 'box-ticking' that goes along with it... But are we in danger of overlooking the power and usefulness of a good checklist that has been well researched? 

Listening to the radio yesterday morning (BBC Radio 4) I heard a piece about how the airline industry & the World Health Organisation have been working with the NHS to deploy the 'Surgical Safety Checklist'. The main principle of this seems to be about team work and making sure that, at the start of an operation, everyone knows what they are doing. 

To quote a well known meerkat - "simples!" 

There are the other stories about these developments here, here and here. And there is more information about the whole approach to create "The Productive Operating Theatre" on the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement here. 

But back to checklists... how many other services could be improved for want of a good checklist? Whenever I talk about 'knowledge management' (which is often over complicated beyond belief) I talk about the value of a simple checklist as being the embodiment of practical knowledge. 

What checklists do you work with... and what new ones would help?

Original blog: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/

10,000... 300... one blog of small & creative ideas!

Just a note to say that my 'small creative ideas' blog has now had 10K page loads since I set it up 10 months ago. The purpose of the blog is support, celebrate and disseminate the small and creative ideas that are making a difference in local government - and elsewhere in the public and third sectors.

Please visit and take a look if you have not already done so. There are more than 300 innovations there to save money, improve service or just make work better.

And if you have an idea to share - please let me know. Thank you.

http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/

(And I have given it a facelift too - prompted by some feedback I got from one visitor)

Jon

jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk