Wednesday 24 October 2012

I attended the SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) conference last week in Coventry. It was great to catch up with colleagues from across the country and to explore the role of, and challenges facing local government. I thought that I would share with you some of the highlights over the next couple of blogs. The following is taken from the summary of the event published by SOLACE.


This year’s SOLACE Summit – built around the theme of Prosperous Places – provided a rich source of views and ideas from SOLACE members about the complex challenges facing local government.

This item reflects the richness of the Summit discussions and highlights actions for chief executives and senior managers to consider in their authorities. President Martin Reeves and Chair Joanna Killian are committed to developing the society’s work programme over the coming months, much of it based on these ideas.

Workstream 1: Your Local Future

How we think about local areas and what they mean to those that live, work and visit there. How can cities, towns and rural areas differentiate themselves from others, compete and collaborate? The answers have consequences for how we view a locality’s future and how we lead change.

Each place needs a narrative

It needs a distinctive set of attributes with which it is identified – reputation, identity, history etc – which provide a subconscious identification/sense of security/comfort/happiness. But sense of place can also undermine growth:

• People fear a loss of identity

• Residents resist change

• It can encourage people to look backward not forward.

Evidence matters – build up a picture of what people think of the area, and assess the impact of how the place is viewed from outside. Reputation can often unfairly denigrate an area – what are these negative perceptions and how can you tackle them? Local people can often buy into or perpetuate external misconceptions. You need to be in control of how others see you.

Branding matters

Branding can promote identity and tackle negative perceptions. It needs all local organisations to promote the same message. Businesses and other local organisations need to feel it is everyone’s identity, not just the council’s. Branding is an embodiment of culture, mood and emotional connection. It is more than just a logo. Place needs to be apolitical. Branding is not all about communications, but also about service quality and street scene, all of which need to reflect the values the brand is promoting.

Politicians

Members can sometimes try to keep the status quo to please voters. They need to develop a long term sense of place, which does not fit a political timeframe. Developing a sense of place may mean working with Members to develop a new set of skills, particularly around letting go of control of the sense of local identity and learning to influence as one of a number of local players. It is important to establish greater cross-party business strategies to ensure stability and success.

Boundaries

Different boundaries can be used depending on the audience, e.g. a home county might associate itself with London when talking internationally. Formal boundaries should not determine identity. There can be a conflict between the local authority and place boundaries – local authorities are not places.

Private sector

Businesses are now realising the ‘I pay my rates’ excuse no longer works. They will contribute if they realise they will get something in return. Private sector needs to recognise it is their place too and they don’t need permission from the council to transform it. Customer experience of an area is key e.g. Trip Advisor. The example of Burnley shows the value of the private sector in generating a sense of place because they understand branding. The 100 biggest companies now drive the message; the local authority does not front it.

Group comments from attendees

• A sense of place should help link local businesses with education providers, e.g. to help focus apprenticeships on business needs

• The narrative of place provides a foundation for policy issues which may destabilize existing policies and relationships

• Creating a sense of place can be a challenge if people feel you are taking over their own story

• Important to ensure leadership is not command and control – this requires a more enabling approach.

• Recognition of place management: in the UK less than 10% of places have woken up to the potential of place management. Australia does this well

• Loss of retailers: within 5 years, 30-40% of retailers will not be around. 100,000+ empty units. This requires a rapid rethink of the town centre offer

• Need to be ruthless with who is involved. Need people who want to make something happen

I find the ideas shared here thought provoking and profound for the challenges we face moving forward. We need to ask ourselves if we are up for this approach? I think we have to be...

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and I’ll share more with you soon from SOLACE. Talk again in a week or so.


Carlton

Tuesday 9 October 2012

I thought that today I would talk about performance targets. The government came into power in 2010 on a wave of anti-target rhetoric but we seem now to have more than ever. See the link below to see a 400% increase in targets over the last couple of years.


http://whitehallwatch.org/2012/08/20/targets-what-targets-change-and-continuity-in-the-performance-regime-in-whitehall/

My main beef with targets is that they don’t work and they cause massive amounts of waste – waste that we pay for in terms of poorer performance and increased costs.

The main causes of waste are many, but the main culprits are always: treating all customer demand as value work; variation and its misunderstanding; targets; poorly designed work (flow); IT; thinking (command and control); Inspection regimes and specification; management (and their decisions) disconnected from the work; and leadership (or a lack thereof).

Targets cause waste for several reasons. Firstly, there is no reliable way of setting a target. They are always guesses usually made by people who don’t understand the current system. Targets come from manufacturing, my background where standardisation is absolutely vital. They work there. In the public sector of course, every client, community and customer is different so our systems have to absorb variety. Targets can never work in such a system where the client is involved in production. It is also interesting to note that people quite rationally cheat to meet the target. Think investment bankers and performance related pay...

Measures derived from a deep knowledge and understanding of our systems are important. To select good measures, always start with customer purpose. The purpose of measurement is to understand and improve the system. It’s that simple! If a measure doesn’t enable you to do this it is not the right one. Measurement is not about managing people, managing activity or managing volumetrics. These are all important for managers to do but not by setting targets.

I use four simple rules for establishing measures:

1. Does it help to understand the work?

2. Does it show variation in the process?

3. Does it relate to customer purpose?

4. Does it relate to customer experience? (I often ask customers to rate the service they’ve just had on 1-10 scale and to suggest one improvement. Try it, it’s incredible what you learn... A 7 or below is a problem.)

Any useful measure needs to do at least one of these.

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and see you at next weeks’ staff forums in Salisbury. Talk again in a week or so.

Carlton

Tuesday 2 October

Just a very short blog today to remind you all to complete the staff survey on line. The closing date is this coming Friday for on-line responses and it is very important that we hear from you all. As an organisation which seeks to continuously learn and improve, it is vital that we hear your views, observations and ideas for our future. It takes only 3-5 minutes to complete and is very easy to use. For staff without computer access, the paper format is open for responses up until October 26.

I look forward to seeing many of you at tomorrows’ staff briefings in Trowbridge and in Salisbury and Chippenham the week after next.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and completing the survey. Talk again in a week or so.

Carlton