Thursday 18 February 2010

My blog is a day earlier today as I'm taking tomorrow off with Tracy and the children. I think I'm being taken to see Avatar, which I had no idea I wanted to see...

I spent this morning at Monkton Park with Andrew Kerr. It was good to see so many people in the three face to face sessions that we held - almost 90 or so people attended. It was good for us to learn about Andrew's background and the reasons for him coming to Wiltshire.

He summarised this as wanting to lead Wiltshire's key goal of stronger resilient communities, through high quality, low cost services, open honest, local decision making and working together for the good of our communities. This vision and strong leadership is something that he wants to build on with us and our members to do three things:
Make partnership a way of life
Make Wiltshire one of the best local authorities in the UK and the best place to work for
Making localism and local determination our greatest strength
He was clear in his belief that Wiltshire can achieve these things in a short space of time, making Wiltshire an even better place to work, play and visit.

Enjoy the rest of the half term break and talk again next week.

Carlton

Friday 12 February 2010

This week seems to have flown by as usual. I've been in Salisbury four times in the last seven days and at Monkton Park once so it's been a week out on the road; hub briefings, staff "face to faces", housing inspections and the like. It's been good to meet so many staff and talk with them about the big issues that we're all working on this year. Harmonisation of staff terms and conditions and work place transformation are the big issues of the day! ICT improvement is too and we're well advanced with all three.

I have also spent time with the new Chief Exec. this week discussing the budget for this year. It went to Cabinet yesterday and went through smoothly. Next week we take it to Scrutiny which will be a lively debate I think and then it goes to Council on February 23 for final approval. The Finance teams and departments have done a great job this year in preparing the budget; both the process to develop it and the final report are the best I've seen since I came to Wiltshire.

Preparations for our spring Resources Team Day are now well underway (March 3). The morning session is now full - with just over 300 people coming and we have around 220 booked in the afternoon. If you haven't signed up then please do so; it's a great opportunity for us all to pause and reflect on the work we have completed during the last 6 months and what we've learned. It's also a great opportunity to talk about the challenges ahead that we face. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend - and half term for those of you on holiday next week. Speak again next week.

Carlton

Friday 5 February 2010

This week has been dominated for me by our preparations for the 2010-11 budget and our Use of Resources assessment which will take place in March.

The budget will be considered by Cabinet next week and then debated and approved by Council later in the month. The Finance teams have been pulling this together for several months with the support of all of the departments. It's been a slick process this year and the overall result is, I think excellent. More details of the content and highlights in future blogs as the budget is reviewed by members and approved.

Our Use of Resources assessment, conducted by our external auditors - KPMG is an important piece of work. We were assessed as a 2 score last year (out of 4), on a harder assessment regime introduced for the first time. I'm seeking to secure a 3 score this year, and to achieve this about twenty of us are preparing case studies and key lines of enquiry (sometimes called KLOEs) to demonstrate the progress that we've made in the last year.

One key part of this work is our updated anti fraud and corruption policy. This will be shared with the whole organisation on The Wire today and highlights for all staff our policies and procedures around fraud and corruption. I encourage you all to read this short document to familiarise yourselves with the contents and changes.

Yesterday, The Service Directors and I spent some time together working on the Business Plan for Resources for the next four years. This work, to be published in early April sets out how we will deliver the objectives in the Corporate Plan and importantly summarises the likely changes which we will all be involved in over the coming years. More of this too in future blogs.

Thanks for reading, have a good weekend and talk again next week

Friday 29 January 2010

CLT will be discussing Systems Thinking, or Lean as some people call it on Monday. So I thought I'd share some my views on the subject with you today.

The big differentiator with systems thinking method is that it starts with obtaining knowledge about how your organisation is actually functioning. Other methods assume that the problem to be solved is known. But people working inside organisations often have a fragmented view of their work, unaware of how the complete system functions. They are also unlikely to have accurate data on the exact level of overall service their customers are receiving. These two factors mean that without better analysis the correct problem will not be identified.

People who have worked for many years in an organisation are naturally sceptical when it is suggested to them that they do not fully understand how their own business works or should work. It is this challenge to your assumptions about “good management” that is the hardest thing to accept. It is counter-intuitive, requiring leaders to experience it through normative learning first hand. You can’t lean this from reading.

The starting point is to assume that your organisation is full of waste. The need is to identify this waste so it can be removed. This removal of waste is how the apparently conflicting goals of cutting costs, improving service and having happier staff are achieved.

While there are many different types and flavours of management, the dominant model in the UK’s public sector can be termed ‘command and control’. This approach does work but it is inherently very wasteful. If you have spent your working life in a command and control environment you will probably assume there is no other way to manage. It then is logical for you to try to improve results by just being better at ‘command and control’. Unfortunately applying more of the same usually makes matters worse.

The key difference is that “command and control” organisations are driven from the top. A goal is set of say 3% cost reduction (Gershon Review, 2003) or of using IT to improve efficiency (Varney Review, 2006) and the organisation is obliged to respond to achieve the arbitrary target. The problem is that the target is set by people separate from the work and with no knowledge of how the work is carried out. Instead of engaging the workforce, a premium is placed on their compliance and how they perform against the target. This channels their ingenuity away from serving customers to achieving the target. The staff constantly look upwards for direction rather than outwards to their customers. This is the root cause of much bad service and low levels of innovation in the public sector.

Systems Thinking is a profoundly different way of seeing the world that is diametrically opposed to command and control, reductionist approaches to management. Seddon (2007) summarise it like this:


This systems thinking approach is continually developing, having evolved from over 20 years experience of interventions in the private sector and 10 years experience of public sector service organisations.

Organisations and people who become interested in systems thinking have discovered it to be a powerful method for radically transforming the way that they work. Many have found this journey to be the most stimulating experience of their careers.

Systems thinking can often seem controversial and uncomfortable as it challenges many of the core paradigms of management. This is because once a new way of seeing things that works has been learnt, it is impossible to accept management mythologies that have never delivered.

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend and talk again next week,

Carlton.

Friday 22 January 2010

Now the snow has gone, our Highways Team have the challenge of fixing the numerous pot holes and other road defects that occur when water gets into the surface of the road and freezes - breaking open the road. There is a lot of poor press, both national and local at the moment with the condition of the UK roads. In Wiltshire, our four depots have filled at least 1,800 potholes in the last three days. This is a tremendous performance, and truly customer focused as we seek to address the issues caused by the bad weather. The Highways Team have been conducting a Systems Thinking or Lean review of this part of the service over the past year. The service has been redesigned against customer purpose and customer demand which has led to the elimination of waste and this incredible performance. Well done and thank you to the whole team!

As an organisation, we need to expand this approach to performance improvement and quickly move on with all services adopting a similar approach. It works very well, results in delighted customers and better performance and most importantly will deliver the cultural shift that we all want in our new organisation.

I met with around 50 staff from planning earlier this week to explain some of the detail around the Harmonisation Programme; that is the harmonisation of staff terms and conditions. It's always good to meet large groups of staff and hear the questions they have direct. I just want to reiterate that every member of staff will be having the opportunity to meet with their manager face to face, in their teams before February 10 to go through the details of this important work. If you don't know when your session is, please ask your managers quickly.

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend and talk again next week.

Carlton