Weeknotes S1 Ep01 Designing change in localgov and commercial thinking
By: Paul Frainer
Tags: Government, Transformation, Change Management, Local Government, Planning

So here we go; Series 1 Episode 1 and my first my attempt at week notes.

Starting as I mean to go on, I firstly must apologise, as in order to use up the only available slack time I seem to have these day a large amount of the content of these will be through a voice recorder whilst either driving or doing some other non productive activity, hopefully I’ll get to a point where I can start actually writing properly but in the meantime please excuse the mishmash of my brain dumps!

I must also thank Sam Villis for her very inciteful blog as I am a weeknotes newbie and her blog on weeknotes styles and development gave me a heads up on at least some ideas and styles floating round the Medium ether about good practice and ideas. Hopefully I’ll learn some good lessons with practice…

So this week has been an incredibly busy week and a really interesting week to start my new blogging journey. Since moving into a new job in 2018 and battening down the hatches to try and get me head above water workwise, I’ve recently made efforts to try and open up my network a little bit more again and start being a little more progressive. These have included making contact with people who are doing really exciting things in the #localgov world and people or organisations being progressive and inspiring the change mentality that is so desperately required.

Key individuals in this story so far are newly acquainted colleagues FutureGov especially Dominic Campbell Jen Byrne and Matt Skinner who I’m going to unashamedly ask give me a plug to help get a few more views on my posts and blogs! And also big congrats to those guys on their massive news this week on their merge with Panoply, in the short time I’ve known FutureGov I’ve realised they’ve got big aspirations and will be here for the long haul… They are really doing some amazing work on real fundamental change from a design perspective and I am genuinely excited to see how this can translate across and into many other areas of LocalGov to drive a much more disruptive version of how we not only redesign our services but how we apply that into strategic policy which will be fit and agile enough for the future too….

So with that immaculate Segway, the week started off with on this vibe; a really interesting day at Hackney Council attending the FutureGov ‘Designing 21st-century Government event. This was an amazingly vibrant event and hugely well attended (over 250 people for just the London event), my first thoughts were that it’s incredibly impressive to see the service design revolution gaining so much traction and hearing stories of where systems and design approaches are having such a positive effect in many areas the public sector not limited to Councils but healthcare, charity housing etc……

There was too much going on to describe it all, but one of the key areas that I picked up as a real interest was the presentation @jukesie on hiring in the public sector and how even those in the more progressive areas such as design, change and tech are often just playing musical chairs… This really hit a note with me because got me thinking (again) about the leadership (or sometimes lack of it) in local government and how there are simply not enough of those with the requisite skills to effect change and innovation at he pace or systemic interrogation required. Notwithstanding the number of senior government leaders in the room, the overwhelming demographic of these are generally those working within transformation/change/design/technology or the other slightly more progressive disciplines, certainly not from other core parts of government such as place/finance/planning/waste/highways etc. so there is much work and profile raising to do here as this absence in representation must be reduced in order to begin having conversations around the ‘whole’ picture of progressive governments and services provision.

Reflecting back on Matt Jukes presentation, having the right skills and more importantly the right attitude to progress and leadership is going to be critical going forward. The traditional ‘safe hands’ local government approach to employing (often well journeyed) senior leaders in local government resulting in musical chairs from a dwindling pool of effective and progressive leaders is simply not going to cut it!

So spread the word to all, ‘This challenge is for everyone’

I could talk for the whole blog about Monday but perhaps I’ll save that for another time as the rest of the week was reasonably interesting too.

I’m going to briefly mention council shared services just to give some context to this and forthcoming blogs and weeknotes, although I suspect I will be writing a few solely dedicated to this subject (for all the wrong reasons). An enormous amount of my time currently and over the last year has been involved in the process of bringing two services together from two separate local authorities (Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils). This has, is and will continue to be a huge challenge and just trying to learn tangible lessons I can actually share having come into the process midway point has been difficult in itself. (DM me for a more candid story)

In designing the process of developing a shared service I’m constantly trying to have to persuade people that the difference between service design and designing a structure is not only vast but a complete reversal in approach to the usual hierarchical methodology, and certainly something people need to get their heads around in local government especially those who have not had any involvement in systems approach previously (definitely not there with this at the moment). However you can the amount of learning you can do from something like embarking on shared services, partnerships, mergers or JV’s is huge specially around the culture, legacy and systems between two different organisations. Don’t believe for one second you can align all of these things and set small milestones to be delivered at pace with frequent iteration is my advice…

Finance will almost always be a driver so don’t be fooled by fluffy language of politicians, however there is great opportunity that design and systems approaches can bring here — not just to improving service delivery but to adopting more commercial ways of working with business focus and income generation as part of the whole offer (this really helps the sell to elected members) as this type of LEAN thinking helps reduce waste and free up resource for more progressive activities or aspirational objectives.

Tuesday was a good day in respect of this and my day was formed around developing an initial approach with colleagues in other departments across the councils such as housing, environmental health and streets and open spaces is helping us understand how we set out what we want from each other going forward, what common ground we should work from and what stories are important in thinking about how we transact with other services, organisations and citizens.

The concept of recharging was a key part of this conversation and is often quite divisive as it’s viewed sometimes as a process of ‘wooden dollars’ or moving money around in a single organisation (or dual) which doesn’t have any benefit to the bottom line. I fundamentally disagree with this from previous experience in Essex because understanding what charges and financial mechanisms and transactions are in place across services and how they can how they contribute to resource understanding and levels of service is so critical in developing a wider more commercial understanding within our teams and bringing forward a skill set more attuned to the constrained financial landscape we are now working in within local government .

The traditional way councils work is often built on the legacy of not thinking in a business focused way and that needs to change if councils are to be able to move forward sustainability into the future and understand the true cost of what it takes to deliver services to both citizens and across their wider departments and partner organisations. This will help focus on real priorities and where they should be some focusing their resources especially with huge increases in the demand for frontline services.

The remaining part of the week was mainly spent running in and out of meetings and chasing my tail around (which is pretty much the norm this last year), but I did have an interesting roundtable table discussion with colleagues from partners in our universities and at Visit Cambridge and Beyond which manages tourism in the City and surrounding area.

This is a really interesting area to be thinking about because it’s not something I’m massively familiar wit but now comes under my remit. I was enlightened to really be thinking of the effect that tourism has on local residents and citizens from both a negative perspective from overcrowding and segregation, to the positives if you can successfully shape this to benefit the local economy and spread the opportunities it brings.

One thing that is a constant presence and still never ceases to amaze me the silos that exist within local authorities (first hand experience again this week which astonished me). I’m not pretending these can be removed wholesale but some can be completely avoided just do some very basic things like talking to people regularly communicating and just not solely focusing on what you’re there to deliver.

Maybe as I consider myself a generalist that I find this easier to see but it is a definite area on my list of things to discuss and raise up…understanding relationships and interactions between not just people but teams and services, not to mention partner organisations and suborganisations will be crucial in changing and future proofing public sector service delivery.

I’ll continue to try and develop these posts and hopefully there will be something to keep everyone's interest. Let me know on any LocalGov insights you think I might be able to share with you too…

Pod of the week is definitely #ThisAmericainLife — Ladonna episode (still shocking to see the inequality that exists in 2019)

No books this week as no time!!!

Things I want to pick up on soon are; Shared Services, Leadership and the dark art of planning.

I’ll leave you on that note and hopefully this first week notice hasn’t been too much hard listening I’m going to unashamedly tag some of my new and existing colleagues who are involved in blogging to try and give this some visibility and I’ll be sure to return the favours if there’s anything I can help with, so please get back to me with comments thoughts ideas criticisms challenges anything that could be helpful I gladly take on board

As a good friend of mine always says….Please share if you are popular.. see you next week.