[Post-lunch dip was strong, so this session\u2019s notes are not as comprehensive]<\/p>\n
Phil Badley, Stockport<\/strong><\/p>\n Interesting to hear Phil talk about his own realisation that his area, HR, was full of the same errors that he\u2019d seen in other areas of the business. I\u2019d like to find out more about what it was that helped him go through this experience. Phil Badly spoke about leadership buy-in. Seddon says if you want to make organisational change, you need CEO or Local Authority buy-in, otherwise your chances are limited. <\/p>\n Denise Lyon, East Devon Council<\/strong><\/p>\n The experience of going through Check was like an \u201chonesty mirror\u201d because the news we discovered was horrible. They spent five out of six weeks of Check was spent arguing who the customer was, not what service they were getting. They were horrified by how bad the service really was (141 days for some activities). It was so shocking because we had no measures in place that would have helped us see\/understand this. Our national indicators showed they were not meeting some measures, but none of them showed the scale of the problem. Understanding value or failure (called \u201cpreventable demand\u201d because staff didn\u2019t like it) and one-stop capability and end to end times allowed them to see and understand their service levels. Their previous measures were always applied after the event.<\/p>\n The question they keep coming back to is, \u201cwho is accountable for this service? Which manager in this hierarchy of managers is responsible? Who\u2019s feet do you hold to the fire?\u201d Most managers thought \u201cIt\u2019s not me; I\u2019m strategic!” whilst the next level said \u201cIt\u2019s not me, I\u2019m strategic too! I\u2019m too busy to deal with this!\u201d while the manager at the bottom was looking at the top saying \u201cYou higher managers are paid a lot more than me, so it must be you!\u201d<\/p>\n They don\u2019t call them \u201cinterventions\u201d (too much like Audit commission) so they call them reviews, but it\u2019s stopped at management. It\u2019s only two years later that they are starting to do \u201csomething radical\u201d(?) with the \u201cmanagement piece\u201d.<\/p>\n The Vanguard consultant is described as a \u201cclass 1 drug\u201d and a \u201cmind bending hallucinogen\u201d and a \u201cguru\u201d who was central to making fundamental changes to our thinking.<\/p>\n John van de Laarschot, Stoke City Council<\/strong><\/p>\n John spoke about the idea of \u2018red\u2019 hats and \u2018green\u2019 hats (which I think refers to the idea, if there was a fire and everyone left the building, who would you let back in first, because they were central to doing business, and who would come in last) and discovered that 50% of their staff don\u2019t contact the customers!<\/p>\n Interesting capability chart that showed after the initial intervention, performance trended worse for a period, showing that thinking hadn\u2019t fully changed (people reverted to older behaviour). John spoke about the need to \u201cnot walk away\u201d from the intervention.<\/p>\n Example of Surface Water Management. A preventative maintenance program was set up to send a truck around on a calendar schedule, but the city is a flood risk so when it rains there are huge problems. But this shouldn\u2019t happen because there\u2019s a preventative program. However, the frequency of maintenance didn\u2019t match the fact that the drains at the bottom of the hill needed more cleaning than those at the top! They overlaid the geography of the city onto the drains and re-drew the maintenance program. They even used Google Earth to help with the mapping, with a \u201cyoung person\u201d (I love this phrase!).<\/p>\n Challenges are the scale and scope of the potential changes. It\u2019s hard to create the space to explore new ways of doing things. You can\u2019t do this on a shoe-string (if you don\u2019t have the capacity it will probably go slower). There are also big political implications (often opposition groups want to \u2018put it in a coffin\u2019). Systems Thinking creates a \u2018different type of critter (employee)\u2019 so there are issues of demarcation so having the Union on board at the start is important. <\/p>\n Question and Answer Session<\/strong><\/p>\n Q: Could John say more about \u2018top level reporting\u2019 with \u2018systems thinking slipped in underneath\u2019<\/p>\n John: Local Authorities are familiar with classical accounting and McKinsey \/ PwC. The type of methodology we want, to get change going, requires clear buy-in. The first attempts I had at selling the organisation on Systems Thinking was \u201cwe think it\u2019s you and your mates\u201d, so we needed to be \u2018creative\u2019. We\u2019ve had Vanguard and PwC in the same room; and it\u2019s like oil and water. Out of the work that we\u2019ve done, we\u2019ve managed to keep them away from our customer-oriented interventions. We were able to show it in ways that Command and Control types can understand. [So they showed reports and model to Command and Control types while running a separate set of \u2018books\u2019 showing their Systems Thinking view of the world]<\/p>\n Seddon: When you get to the evidence, it speaks for itself, but then you have a problem that people want it for the wrong reason. I want it because it works, not because it\u2019s about thinking. Buy-in is the wrong word, \u2018understanding\u2019 is the thing. The Vanguard Network is for middle-managers to do the Vanguard Method but not telling the boss, which we encourage them to do.<\/p>\n Denise: Support was essential for the funding, support, opportunity to view other places. If you can do it yourself, in your part of the organisation, then this might be a good start \u2013 better than no start, I think.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Q: If you hadn\u2019t done Systems Thinking, where would you be now?<\/p>\n Denise: We were in the bottom quartile in national rankings. As time has moved on, and the financial crisis has hit, we have been in a good position to understand how we can sensibly take out from management and services. I dread to think about Local Authorities that are doing 10 \u2013 20% cuts across all services, which I think is a poor way to manage. We feel in a strong position in the troubled times we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Q: Where was your \u2018moment of truth?\u2019 where you said \u2018I will never do it the other way?\u2019<\/p>\n Phil: Reading Seddon\u2019s \u201cSystems Thinking in the Public Sector\u201d. I read it on holiday and realised that I\u2019d been accountable for change in the past, and now understood \u2018why\u2019 it didn\u2019t stick.<\/p>\n Seddon: The number of people who tell me \u201cI wished I\u2019d never met you \u2026\u201d (joke)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Post-lunch dip was strong, so this session\u2019s notes are not as comprehensive] Phil Badley, Stockport Interesting to hear Phil talk about his own realisation that his area, HR, was full of the same errors that he\u2019d seen in other areas of the business. I\u2019d like to find out more about what it was that helped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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