Odanglesex Revisited: The Packages of Work (1)

Another reposted Odanglesex Chronicle, a little updated.

From: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Director of Transformational Excellence and Strategic Vision
To: All Transformational Excellence

I thought our away-half-day where we brainstormed our contribution to the Change Agenda and I explained our new mode of working in Transformational Excellence was a really encouraging, lively occasion. It's good to see so many people with a positive outlook. I was especially impressed that when I asked for any questions about our new made of working with packages of work, no-one had a question. Obviously everyone understands it and is fully on board. Well done!

Of course all the process requirements and standards are on the Infranet in the Transformational Excellence (Process) folder, passworded according to Directorate procedures, but I thought I'd just run through the main points.

In order to ensure that we're focused on the needs of our customers, which in our case are other parts of the Council, we no longer do work without a request being filed. This must be approved at Director level in the requesting unit and transmitted through Kelly Pattrick in my office to me for approval and allocation to a human resource. On receiving the request, the human resource must measure, milepost and categorise the package of work, identifying which of our corporate priorities it meets. The request must then be packaged according to the standard procedures and must be conveyed back through Kelly to me for transmission to the requestor. The requestor should then sign to confirm acceptance of the package, which is conveyed by the same route back to the human resource. At this point the work can begin. It is really important that none of these stages are evaded or short-circuited.

I have had a couple of queries about this process. One concerns situations where the requestor and the human resource do not agree the package. In order to ensure a robust paper trail, the above procedures must be followed: so the requestor will resubmit an amended request through the correct channels, the human resource (which may or may not be the one originally identified) will develop a package and so on. Meeting face to face to sort the matter out may seem attractive, but believe me, it only complicates things.

The other concerns situations where someone in Transformational Excellence actually originates the idea for the package. It is still necessary to find a requestor and proceed as above.

Of course, as I explained at the away-half-day, it will no longer be possible to have ongoing commitments and permanent specialisms, as these stand in the way of a flexible, responsive, fit-for-the-21st-century service.

FROM: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Director of Transformational Excellence
TO: Neil Balderson, Senior Transformational Excellence Manager

Neil: Councillor Pannona Willis is concerned that our packaging procedures may increase our carbon footprint. Will they? Please draft a reply for my approval.

Kenneth.

The Odanglesex Chronicles: The Reorganisation (1)

FROM: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Assistant Chief Executive and Director of Transformational Excellence and Strategic Vision

TO: Kelly Pattrick, PA to Kenneth Spotlessnob

Kelly:

I've taken a brief time out from the Future Outstanding Leaders' Strategic Visioning Brainstorm Event here at Sandbanks to put the finishing touches on my presentation to all TESV employees on the Strategic Realignment Reorganisation in TESV. Could you run your practiced eye over it for any gaps, mistakes or whatever? I've also indicated a number of places where I need a visual on the powerpoint and perhaps you can execute those.

WELL, HELLO!

I KNOW HOW BUSY YOU ALL ARE, SO I'M REALLY GRATEFUL TO YOU ALL FOR TAKING TIME TO ATTEND THIS PRESENTATION ON WHERE TESV IS GOING, NOT ONLY IN THE NEAR FUTURE BUT THE MEDIUM AND EVEN, IN CERTAIN RESPECTS, THE LONG.

(first picture: a blue sky)

I'M SURE YOU ALL UNDERSTAND THAT IN ORDER TO REMAIN EXCELLENT, WE NEED TO CHANGE - NOT JUST CHANGE, BUT CHANGE TRANSFORMATIONALLY. IN TIMES LIKE THIS, THE NEED FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IS PARAMOUNT, AND IF THERE IS ONE MESSAGE THAT COMES LOUD AND CLEAR FROM OUR MAGNIFICENT EFFORTS ON STATIONERY BEST PRACTICE TRANSFORMATION, IT IS THAT CHANGE MUST BE TRANSFORMATIONAL.

WE ALREADY DO A PRETTY GOOD JOB, BUT THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. WE NEED TO BE AN EXEMPLAR. IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE THAT, WE REALLY MUST NOT ONLY CHANGE THE WAY WE DO THINGS, BUT ALSO THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT DOING THINGS.

(second picture: footballer scoring goal)

ONLY EXCELLENCE WILL ACHIEVE OUR GOALS. I'VE BEEN THINKING BACK OVER THE FOUR YEARS SINCE I BECAME DIRECTOR OF WHAT WAS THEN POLICY AND PARTNERSHIPS. THE CHANGE OF NAME ALONE SHOWS HOW FAR WE'VE COME. WE HAD A CLEAR MISSION THEN. BUT UNDERSTANDABLY, IT'S GOT SOMEWHAT MUDDIED BY CIRCUMSTANCES, BY INCREMENTAL SMALL CHANGES THAT SEEMED SENSIBLE AT THE TIME, AND NOW WE NEED TO CLEAR THE DECKS, AS IT WERE, AND, AS IT WERE, REDEDICATE OURSELVES TO OUR OVERARCHING STRATEGIC VISION. THIS IS WHAT TESV MUST BE LIKE IF WE ARE TO MAINTAIN AND ENHANCE THE EXCELLENCE OF OUR SERVICE TO OCC:

(third picture: Core Values of TESV as reflected by the reorganisation, namely:

* A lean, muscular organisation
* A fit-for-purpose organisation for the twenty-first century
* Customer responsiveness
* A challenging vision
* Flexibility and manoeverability
* Team spirit
* Goal-orientedness
* A positive attitude
* A transformational mindset.

I propose to reorganise Transformational Excellence and Strategic Vision around three core functions, CHALLENGE CULTURE ENHANCEMENT, CUSTOMER ORIENTATION and GOAL IMPLEMENTATION. I expect most of you have a pretty good idea of how you'd fit into those.

In order to achieve this vision there will be changes which will be quite difficult for us all and even in some cases painful. Believe me, it will hurt me more than it will hurt you. If you look at page 123 of your pack, you will see that there will be a number of redundancies. The process for achieving these redundancies and for slotting people into new positions is explained on pages 125-172.

KELLY - HAVE TO LEAVE IT THERE FOR NOW. LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR COMMENTS.

Kenneth.

FROM: Kelly Pattrick
TO: Kenneth Spotlessnob

Kenneth:

I've put in the graphics and changed "manoeverability" to manoevrability".

Kelly.

FROM: Kenneth Spotlessnob

TO: All TESV

Colleagues:

I expect you know that I've been mulling over changes to TESV to make us more fit for purpose for some time. I'm pleased to say I now have something to show you. Therefore please come to one of the two sessions listed below. There will be HR people present to answer any questions, and also. I'm really pleased to say, a voluntary sector presence from three outstanding organisations, Alcoholics Anonymous, Dignity in Death and the Samaritans.

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Kenneth


(to be continued, of course)

The Market and the Ballot (2)

As I suggested two days ago, the Market is great for reflecting individual choice in the present. It can be distorted by advertising campaigns - people buying a particular car or drink or footwear because they've bought the message that it'll make them young and popular and sexy and trendy, perhaps, when in fact it can't deliver most of these things - but customer pressures do quite often go against what the producers or retailers might like.

The question of what should be left to individual choice can usually be settled through John Stuart Mill's test. Does your choice hurt someone else (or, we might now add, for example drive a species extinct)? Some things cannot be settled by a series of separate individual choices: in my post on the dangers of being customer-centred, I gave an example of a controversy over proposals to cut down some trees in a public park. It is not possible for all the different users to have what they want, so a much-despised thing called politics intervenes to make a collective decision. As I suggested in that post, a danger of a zealous market approach to public services and decisions is that it undermines the understanding of community decision-making and co-operation and creates the expectation that individuals should always be able to get what they want; and when they don't, they turn against politics and democracy. Our species developed as a social animal making collective decisions: it's an essential part of being human.

Where an individual choice can be made without harming others though, as in a frail old person deciding to spend on making her garden accessible rather than on improvements within the house, it's of course far better than professionals deciding for her.

I am not usually one for conspiracy theories (they have abounded through history and very few of the alleged conspiracies have gained any support from evidence subsequently coming to light), I do suspect that behind the populist campaigns of the Murdoch press, for example, is a wish to denigrate public service, politics and democracy, not to bring in dictatorships, but to make people happy to see collective democratic decision-making replaced wherever possible by the market.

So would there be a problem? In some areas, yes - as if we can't understand the processes of debate and compromise that lead to a decision on that public park or library, we may end up with no public parks or libraries, only charged-for services far more accessible to the rich than the poor.

A few years back, two radical right Conservative writers embarked on a  series of articles on land and housing policy. They actually came up with some good points, such as that German local authorities' greater powers to raise local income from business led to more balanced decisions on building proposals; but in advocating the abolition of land planning, they proposed, in some detail, that government should not intervene in issues of wildlife habitat protection. If enough people wanted some marshes preserved for wildlife, they said, they could join the RSPB or whatever, pay subscriptions and donate, and their economic power would be measured against that of the developer.  Now this proposal was mad for several reasons, but I want to concentrate on one. Whereas in democracy everyone has one vote, to influence public decisions, in a free market power equates to spending power. A million people of modest means could support an organisation trying to establish or preserve a nature reserve and be "outvoted" by one billionaire or by a corporation made rich by consumers who would never have been consulted on the nature reserve and might be horrified at its destruction. The extreme pro-market approach is simply grossly inegalitarian: it assumes that the more money you have, the more power you should have in a straightforward relation: a hundred times the money,  a hundred times the power.

The Market and the Ballot: (1)

Over the last thirty years or so, in Britain and many other countries, the areas of life controlled by market processes have expanded at the expense of those controlled by government. In many cases, of course, the governments were not democratic - East European Communist regimes or African or Latin American military dictatorships, and the replacement of these regimes has been accompanied by marketisation of many areas of life, especially in Eastern Europe.

I want to concentrate on the existing democracies and to point out some of the dangers and losses along with the undoubted benefits of the triumph of the market.

Anyone who saw the old Soviet regime with open eyes, for example, would know how an absence of market mechanisms can distort and deaden so many areas of life. The shops do not stock what people want and they have no great incentive to attract customers or to sell. The customer does not matter - only what the state says the customer should want. Even in mixed-economy, democratic Finland in the 1970s the effects of the combination of a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol with planning policies that deliberately held down the number of bars and other alcohol consumption outlets below demand, were to disadvantage small producers, reduce choice and the quality of advice and leave bars with so much demand that they could afford to offer a bad service and be rude to customers because they would still make a profit.

The market is very good at reflecting customer choice where customers or families can make individual choices and where they are well-enough-informed to do so. This has been extended into some areas of public service, for example the "personalisation" of social care in the UK. In principle, people who need help such as frail old people, instead of being offered types of help they may not want, get a budget and can spend it as they like. There are risks, particularly with vulnerable people lacking good advice, but basically this is a liberal and empowering measure. Even where services are hard to break down to an individual choice - it would be impossibly inefficient for each household to make a free choice of their refuse collector - an element of competition can be healthy, with local authority providers competing with the private sector, social enterprises and one another. The benefit here is not an extension of personal choice, but a likelihood of better value for money.

In some areas, though, the market does not work well. Consumers may not be well-informed enough to make a good choice. For example, energy provision in the UK is theoretically a free market with competing providers, but the deals are so complicated and so often look good but on exhaustive study are bad, and the companies make it so hard to swap, that there is virtually no real competition and the vast majority of people are on deals substantially worse than they could get. This may well be through collusion, and in theory at least, action by a regulator could force changes which made the competition real. But the point is worth noting - that an unregulated market does not necessarily work for the best for consumers. This may be because take-overs and aggressive business tactics result in monopoly, which the state can and often does ban. But monopoly does not necessarily mean providers understand less about customer desires than in a competitive market. Let's compare rail travel or policing with credit cards or car insurance.

Policing is a state monopoly (though I could see that changing, with state-given powers for private security forces). The police do not suffer economic pain through loss of customers if their performance is poor or their actions unpopular. But people who are dissatisfied often complain - to the police, to the media, to their elected representatives. As the police know they need the support of the community to be effective, such pressures have an impact. and the police generally know lots about what people want of them. Some rail travellers have choice if a car journey would be a credible alternative, or a flight, or a bus journey: but in the UK, many commuters have no real choice. The car journey is too stressful, too comparatively unsafe, too difficult when it comes to parking, to be attractive, the buses are too slow and the airports too far from home or place of work. So people who feel aggrieved by changes in the timetable or by cancelled services complain or even campaign. Consequently, if the rail companies don't know what people want, it's a deliberate act.

By contrast, what do you do if you find a better deal on your car insurance (a genuinely competitive market), or you're unhappy about some inefficiency at your credit card provider? You switch. There is no point in telling the company you're leaving what turned you off. You just switch. Companies may try to test customer preference through surveys, but very few people respond, and the findings are unlikely to reveal, for example, that while a change in a  service is popular with 65% of customers, 20% disliked it enough to leave - so the company will be reassured and will not consider offering two options to satisfy both groups.

Where services are provided on by local authorities, there is another thing you can do. Your experience of the service can influence your vote. Many other things influence voting behaviour, of course, but it's a safe bet that a new administration that makes services better stands a better chance of re-election than one that doesn't.

Markets also famously think short. Depletion of non-renewable resources, for example, does not have much impact on the markets until the crunch is very near. Where confidence is the issue, as with loans, ridiculously excessive confidence can drive towards a sudden collapse as in 1929 and 2008 - and then lack of confidence can be just as illogical. Markets also think narrow. If a company can save modest amounts of money by making 30% of its staff redundant, and the consequent loss of money through lost business is less than the gain through reducing the wage and energy bills, it will almost certainly make the change. The state, and through it, all taxpayers, pick up the bill in increased benefits take-up, health problems and so on. It is possible for government to disincentivise such choices, but business will use its influence effectively.

When I return to this, I'll look at situations where collective democratic choice implemented by bureaucracies is directly in competition with an atomised market approach and at how marketisation sits with the cocept of community.

Was that heavy? OK - to my post on the winter ale festival, I add high praise of Shalford's Levelly Black and Allgates' Caskablanca.

And I leave you with another learned presentation on words. Cats are kept in a cattery; bats in a battery; apes in an apiary; nurses in a nursery; and alligators in an allegory.

The dangers of being customer-centred

Who could argue with it? Public services and agencies should be customer-centred. It's constantly repeated and has become an article of faith - which usually means (outside religion at least) that it's wrong.

The urge to be customer-centred is partly a reaction from the old attitude that people receiving public services should be grateful for what they got, whether it was a pension or a planning decision. But that attitude is just about dead in most parts of the public sector (not, perhaps in welfare benefits or health) and the can be few people who haven't got stories about arrogance and lack of concern for customers in large private companies.

Nonetheless, surely it's good to see things from the point of view of the customer and try to give them what they want if resources permit? Not always. Being more customer-centred would certainly be healthy in the NHS, where centrally-imposed targets ruled until recently and few managers were much bothered about whether patients were happy or miserable, engaged or bored, or felt they were not treated as human beings. But secondary health services are one of the public services that can largely be reduced to an agency interacting with a "customer". Some can't.

Although a sophisticated understanding of who are a council's or the police's "customers" is possible - it can include a whole community plus others who pass through or work in a place - customer language persistently beckons people towards seeing public service as being like buying cheese in a supermarket or insurance on the internet. But if I choose to buy Lancashire cheese, the effect on someone else's desire to buy Cheshire is imperceptible. Some public services, like personal care for old and frail or disabled people, can be seen this way. There are pitfalls, especially around vulnerable people making informed choices, but they're capable of being overcome. Other public services and decisions are quite different.

Take two examples.

Social workers are trying to help the Jones family, who have multiple problems and are struggling hard to stay together and bring up their children. At the same time, neighbours are complaining about anti-social behaviour by the children, the police suspect the adults of fly-tipping, and one of the social workers notices something which could raise concerns about whether the adults are abusing their children. Who are the customers? Action that is in the interests of one customer and pleases him/her may be against the will and interests of others. This is not an academic question as I strongly suspect that in some recent cases of child murder, too strong a focus on the parents as customers was one of the reasons why the signs of danger to the children were discounted.

The local park, which had got a bit dilapidated, is being improved. Some people want some trees removed, and argue:
(1): It would give people a beautiful view down to the lake;
(2): There is some danger from falling branches;
(3): It would improve conditions for mountain-biking and tobogganing.

Others disagree and the following arguments are put by different people:
(1): The trees are beautiful;
(2): The trees sustain wildlife and are of more biodiversity value than open grass;
(3): Kids like them and an element of danger is a natural part of growing up.

No solution can be found which satisfies all the "customers". Someone will have to make a controversial decision. Moreover, should we consider as "customers" the future generations who will be affected by the decision - or the wildlife, whose value and interests may not be adequately represented by whether people think it cuddly?

We could hold a meeting of all interested parties and take a vote - or say that politicians are elected precisely to take tough decisions like this, and having lobbied them, we'll wait for their decision. Both of these are called "politics", which is how we resolve conflicts in an open society. But the constant talk of markets and customers in public affairs obscures this and creates an impression that public affairs, like the insurance market, is a matter of people serving your wishes in return for your money, and if you don't get what you want, they've failed. But as I've shown, in public decision-making this is not always possible. We are in danger of losing an understanding of how to resolve conflicts collectively by debate and democratic decision, and an acceptance that a fair process may lead to an outcome you don't like. That undermines democracy itself.

Let me finally refer to a big report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission called "Hidden in plain sight - an inquiry into disability-related harassment". It quotes two cases where a vulnerable disabled adult was seen to have an association with a teenage child who had his own problems - including a history of violence. Agencies aware of the matter looked at it purely as a child protection issue. The child beat up and murdered the adult. Public workers were no doubt determined to be customer-centred about the child.

So, OK - be customer-centred; but always ask at least, "Who are the customers? Have I included all the people who may be affected? Are there legitimate conflicts involved?". And remember education and nature aren't cheese.