“Strategy” – what’s in a name?

I started wondering yesterday about the connection between “strategy” and the change process on which I spent so much time last year. And why I had failed to include the term in that 60-page paper about Change.

A STRATEGY is something an individual or organisation develops when they want to move from a present they see as problematic to a better future. It involves designing and implementing CHANGE – and can be done at different levels

• of the individual person – when, for example, (s)he wants to change diet or career

• organisational – both commercial and governmental. Companies will develop strategies for their change efforts whereas governments will tend to talk about “policies” (eg social, economic, urban, regional, military etc)

• societal – when the private, public and voluntary sectors team up to deal with an intractable problem – whether at the local, national or international level. Language tends to vary at this level – “anti-corruption strategies” is a frequently used term but, for some reason, there seem few “global warming” strategies.

In the beginning, it was the generals who used the language of strategy – 19^th century Clausewitz being the most famous and it was American business that started to use the term in the 1960s. Indeed it’s only been in the last couple of decades we’ve see definitive texts about strategy – in particular

• Strategy – a history; Lawrence Freedman (2013) a military strategist breaks out of his discipline and, in a highly readable fashion, summarises the literature of both business and government strategy-making – including an amazing chapter on “change from below” which brings in Marx

• The Art Of Public Strategy: Mobilizing Power And Knowledge For The Common Good; Geoff Mulgan (2009) which is a superb overview of government strategy development written by someone who was Tony Blair's Head of the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit when it was setting the world alight and has, since then, advised many other government

• Strategy safari: A guided tour through the wilds of strategic management; Henry Mintzberg et al (2005). The definitive treatment of the different approaches to the development of strategy in the private sector from the Canadian who can be said to have inherited Peter Drucker's mantle.

Performance v Results as a measure of strategic work

When an organisation attempts a strategy, you never know whether its separate sections are going to manage to work together. And it’s even more difficult for elected municipalities to produce results since they are locked into baronial structures. So how does one measure the success of a municipal or regional strategy – particularly when it’s phased over several decades and, therefore, affected by the vagaries of fate and fashion? In a previous post in this series, I said that Strathclyde’s Social Strategy could be judged a success “at least as far as the process of change was concerned”. Effectively this was drawing a distinction between the outcome of a strategy and its performance

Rosabeth Kanter is one of the most famous management writers and suggested in 1992 "Ten Commandments for Executing Change" worth reading in detail (click on the link)

1. Analyse the organisation - and its need for change

2. Create a shared vision and common direction

3. Separate from the past

4. Create a Sense of Urgency

5. Support a Strong Leader

6. Line up Political Support

7. Craft an Implementation Plan

8. Develop Enabling Structures

9. Communicate, Involve People and be Honest

10. Reinforce and Institutionalise the Change

This gives us a useful checklist for Strathclyde Region’s “Social Strategy”.

• The shocking 1973 “Born to Fail?” report identified the West of Scotland as a UK leader in “multiple deprivation” and a few of us – instead of acting defensively - saw this as an opportunity to ensure that the Region, set up in 1974, recognised this need as its basic priority - thereby establishing and sustaining a shared vision.

• “Separating from the past” was easy at one level since the Region was starting from scratch but enormously difficult at another since it was an amalgamation of six large powerful bodies – each with its distinctive style – let alone the strength of the professional cultures to be found in departments such as Education, Police, Water, Fire and Social Work

• That indeed had created a lot of potential enemies for the new Region – its very scale made it difficult to defend and its power left a bitter taste in the mouths of the politicians and officials working in the lower tier of local government. There was an urgency in the Region having to prove itself – which gave us the incentive to do things differently.

• For the first 4 years, leadership was shared by 2 very different characters – a community minister being the public persona and a miner being the behind-the- scenes deal-maker. It allowed a rare combination of practicality and idealism to flow in the wider leadership

• The challenge of community activists was an important element in the work

• With the implementation plan taking several years to evolve and ensuring a critical “learning process”

• and the appropriate enabling structures – at political, administrative and community levels

• Communication was intense and continuous – as you would expect of a democratic system

• And appropriate strategic changes reinforced and institutionalised

• progress was initially reviewed in 1981 – using community conferences attended by about 1000 local activists

• and a draft “Social Strategy for the Eighties” submitted to a final conference

• and then to the first Council meeting after the May 1982 Regional elections – to ensure its continued legitimacy

• with a further tweaking taking place after another few years with a new dialogue to strengthen partnership with Glasgow District and to exploit the opportunity presented by Margaret Thatcher’s expression of interest as she took power after the 1987 elections in a new deal for the inner cities

The keywords, for me, are uncertainty, experimental, inclusive, participative, legitimacy, community structures, openness.

A couple of years after I had left Scotland I had an opportunity to present the Region’s strategy to an OECD committee and it’s interesting to recall the 5 points I made -

"(a) RESOURCE the Priority Programmes with "MAINLINE" money

Urban Aid money from central government was essential for the strategy – but ran out after 5 years. Senior departmental management did not feel a strong sense of ownership - and the subsequent project management generally had its problems. Not least because of

• the relative lack of experience of those appointed

• the complex community management arrangements of the projects

• the uncertainty about funding once the 5 year point was reached.

"(b) SUPPORT CHANGE AGENTS !

No self-respecting private company would introduce new products/systems without massive training. The more progressive companies will pull in business schools and even set up, with their support, a teaching company. The time was overdue for such an approach from the public sector; for a new type of civic "entrepreneur". And certainly the reaction of much of the public sector in the 1980s to the various threats they faced - not least privatisation - has been to put new life into the public sector. We do appear to be amateurs in many respects compared with the United States as far as managing change is concerned.

Many organisations exist there for training and supporting these, for example, in community economic development corporations. At least 3 levels of training need can be identified for urban development - political, managerial and community. And the most neglected are the first and last, particularly the last.

One of our recent reviews of Strathclyde Region`s urban strategy decided there was a need to give more support to the development of local leaders - for example by giving them opportunities to travel to see successful projects elsewhere - not only in the UK but in Europe. This had multiple aims - to give the local leaders new ideas, to recharge their batteries, to make them realise their struggle was not a solitary one: to help develop links, as Marlyn Fergusson has put it, with other "con-spirators" (literally - "those you breathe with").

Such a venture by an elected agency required some risk-taking - sending community activists not only to places like Belfast but to Barcelona ! - and one too many was apparently taken with the result that it was quickly killed off !

"(c) Set DETAILED TARGETS for Departments to ensure they understand the implications of the strategy for them

Information is power. It is only the last few years that information has been collected systematically about how the local authority resources in areas of priority treatment relate to the needs. Without such sort of information - and a continual monitoring of the effectiveness of action taken in relation to clear targets - any strategy is just pious good intentions.

"(d) Establish FREESTANDING Community Development Agencies

The combination of social, economic, environmental and housing objectives involved in regeneration requires local, free-standing agencies operating from a position of equality and self-confidence: and able, as a result, to challenge the narrowness and inertia which, sadly, tends to characterise normal public bureaucracies.

"(e) Be realistic about the TIME-SPAN the change will need!

The task we are engaged on is the transformation into a post-industrial world: the changes in skills and behaviour - and in organisational forms - cannot be achieved in less than 20-30 years. Hence the need for a learning strategy."

To cut this long story short, the Region got it about right. Our management of the strategy may not have met everyone’s standards but least we were spared Gordon Brown’s infamous target-setting!

A great winter recipe

I’ve lived and worked in quite a few countries in my time – in both Central Europe and Central Asia. In culinary terms, Cehia was perhaps the most boring – although great for beer, with Slovakia being better for wines. But it was Azerbaijan – with its Persian traditions – that offered the most exciting eating particularly the way they embellish the main meal with FRUIT.

Since my Glasgow days, I’ve always been partial to curries – with side-dishes of banana and yoghourt, oranges and onions.

Here in Romania, I now blend these traditions – with minimal meat.

My meals most days consist of

• a very few portions of turkey or muscle pork – the pork should have slices of garlic inserted into cuts ar regular intervals and topped with mustard; the tarkey should be impregnated with pepper balls. When done, they should be marinated in garam marsala powder

• half a tin of juicy smoked beans

• sprouts, carrots and a couple of chopped potatoes

• small amount of chilli and soya sauce,

• chopped and pickled carrot and onions

• one chopped celery stalk

• a couple of tablespoons of tomato juice

• generous helpings of garlic and natural ginger

• a touch of apple chutney

• a few fried mushrools

• with a few pueces of orange and banana added after it’s been heated

Sometimes a touch of coconut milk can add a bit of zest

The ever-growing irrelevance of Pluralism

A few years after I started to work (in institutional development) in central Europe, I got the chance of a short sabbatical at the Urban Studies journal of Glasgow University which allowed me to produce a more definitive statement of the lessons which I felt had emerged from the Social Strategy work. I remember presenting this in 1995 to a Human Rights conference in Bratislava – but it was 1999 before it was incorporated into a book I used as my calling card for my 8 years in Central Asia - In Transit – some notes on good governance

But the model of change it contains was perhaps not as clearly presented as it might have been - with a brief references to Kurt Lewin's freezing/refreezing approach and only the briefest of references to a more relevant 1977 article entitled Community Development – its administrative and political challenge which I had published in a Social Work journal This actually gave a much better sense of the thinking which drove some of us in our thinking about conditions in the West of Scotland - arguing that

Our society is hardly what one would call a participatory democracy. The term that is used - "representative" democracy - recognises that "the people" do not take political decisions but have rather surrender that power to one tor several) small elites - subject to infrequent checks. Such checks are, of course, a rather weak base on which to rest claims for democracy⁴ and more emphasis is therefore given to the freedom of expression and organisation whereby pressure groups articulate a variety of interests. Those who defend the consequent operation of the political process argue that we have, in effect a political market place in which valid or strongly supported ideas survive and are absorbed into new policies. They further argue that every viewpoint or interest has a more or less equal chance of finding expression and recognition. This is the political theory of pluralism.

Community development disputes this view of the operation of the policy process. At its most extreme - in some theories of community action - it argues that the whole process is a gigantic confidence trick. In its more liberal version it merely wants to strengthen the voice of certain inarticulate members of society.

There is, I would suggest, a relatively simple way to test the claims of those who argue that there is little scope for improvement in the operation of our democratic process and that any deficiencies are attributable to the faults of individuals rather than to the system. It involves looking at how new policies emerge.

The policy process

A key question is: How does government hear and act upon the signals from below? How do "problems" get on the political "agenda"? The assumption of our society, good "liberals" that most of us essentially are, is that

• the channels relating governors to governed are neutral and

• the opportunity to articulate grievances and have these defined (if they are significant enough) as "problems" requiring action from authority is evenly distributed throughout society.

"Problems" emerge because individuals or groups feel dissatisfied and articulate and organise that dissatisfaction in an influential way which makes it difficult for government to resist. "Grievance" or "dissatisfaction" is not. however, a simple concept - it arises when a judgement is made that events fall short of what one has reason to expect. Grievance reflects the relationship between “expectations” and “perceived performance” – with working-class people being bludgeoned to expect mere crumbs and to be grateful.

Community development staff were, in a sense, the shock-troops to help make the pluralist system work again.

As we were drafting our first slim attempt at a strategy in 1975, the Labour government was winding down what had become an increasingly critical Community Development Programme – reflected in John Bennington’s Local Government Becomes Big Business; (CDP 1976); and Gilding the Ghetto – the state and the poverty experiments (CDP 1977) Little wonder the Labour government regretted opening the Pandora's box of community development! By then, the country was being increasingly assailed with economic problems which are usefully outlined in this article

And then, in 1979, that Labour government came to an ignominious end – brought down by a combination of industrial action and Scottish nationalist insouciance, allowing Margaret Thatcher her 11 year reign. So we no longer had a government sympathetic to our endeavours. But Strathclyde Region was not one of the overtly leftist councils which aggressively flaunted its opposition to government policies. We played a very different game and were assisted by a sympathetic Scottish Office and “wet” Ministers such as George Younger, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker. It is, however, still noticeable that my 1977 article is sympathetic to Ralph Miliband’s critique of parliamentary democracy!

At this point in the story, I should perhaps be more open about where exactly I stood on the left. I was seen as right-wing but had taken part on a fair number of ant-nuclear demonstrations and was an avid reader of New Left Review. But my university reading of Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies” had built in me a suspicion of left-wing rhetoric - although I was more than happy once to share a platform with Tony Benn and attended a Conference in Sicily in the late 1970s with Stuart Holland of Socialist Challenge fame. That critique of his had been published the same year, 1975, that Gordon Brown’s Red Paper on Scotland came out. And there were many similarities. But I was now in power – with all the constraints that involves – although still burning with a deep sense of the injustices deeply inherent in UK society of the 1970s.

Our focus at the time was thoroughly pragmatic – what precise steps were available to us as a Council to show that the strategy of urban deprivation Strathclyde Region had approved in 1976 was to be taken seriously. Our audience was clear – mainly the teachers, policemen, engineers, social workers who formed our 100,000 strong staff. These were the people we had to convince – both that we were deadly serious and with the message the document contains about the need for change. Many of them were members of the Labour party and holding a mental model which actually blamed the victims,

Shortly after the launching of the Strategy - and combining my academic and political roles - I brought together a diverse collection of officials and councillors of different councils in the West of Scotland, academics and others to explore how we could extend our understanding of what we were dealing with – and how our policies might make more impact. It was a regular monthly forum called “the urban change network” and it was probably the single most effective thing I ever did. I still have the tapes of some of the discussions – one, for example, led by Professor Lewis Gunn on issues of implementation!

Google erases common memories - and devalues collective effort

Why do the last 3 posts hark on about events from 50 years ago – let alone apparently going back over material I covered last year? Mainly because of the deep concern I’m developing about the effects google is having on our institutional memory which I first shared last year here – and here

If you’re a celebrity, you’ll find numerous references to your activities on google. If, on the other had, you’re a hard-working, innovative community activist or councillor, you’ll find just a blank – you’re erased from our collective memory. It can happen even to high-fliers - try googling the name of one of the brightest Parliamentary stars (and prolific writer) of the 1970s, John Mackintosh, who died at the tragically early age of 48 and you’ll find so little (admittedly, you have to know to put in his middle initial “P” which produces much more!)

Google rewards celebrities - and whitewashes the rest of us out of history. We deserve better – our collective efforts are important – don’t let the fatalists get to you!

In saying this, I’m aware that I appear to be one of these Jeremiahs railing against the evils of technology. I’ve been a serious blogger since 2009 – even if I succumbed to Twitter only last year and smart phone only a couple of months ago! So you can put me down in the middle somewhere – neither a techno-optimist nor enthusiast. A year or so ago I tried to articulate my feelings on this subject -

There are very few of us who dare to challenge technological change. Most of us fear the ridicule involved – being the targets of taunts of being Canutes or Luddites. It, therefore, took a lot of courage for Jerry Mander in 1978 to produce Four Arguments for the elimination of television and for Neil Postman to follow this up in 1985 with “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. And, with his “In the absence of the sacred – the failure of technology” (1992) Jerry Mander took his critique our technological society even further.

In this provocative work, Mander challenges the utopian promise of technological society and tracks its devastating impact on cultures worldwide. The Western world’s loss of a sense of the sacred in the natural world, he says, has led us toward global environmental disaster and social disorder - and worse lies ahead. Yet models for restoring our relationship with the Earth exist in the cultures of native peoples, whose values and skills have enabled them to survive centuries of invasion and exploitation.

Far from creating paradise on Earth, technology has instead produced an unsustainable contest for resources. Mander surveys the major technol.ogies shaping the “new world order”, computers, telecommunications, space exploration, genetic engineering, robotics, and the corporation itself and warns that they are merging into a global mega-technology, with dire environmental and political results

Needless to say, none of such book were taken seriously. It took perhaps a BBC television series of technological dystopia Black Mirror – which first hit screens exactly a decade ago – for us to begin to realise that technology (in the shape of the social media) has its perverse side

More recent texts

The Shallows - what the internet is doing to our brain Nicholas Carr (2010)

From Guttenberg to Zuckenberg – what you really need to know about the Internet; John Naughton (2013)

To Save everything click here – the folly of technological solutionism; Efgeni Morozov (2013)

The Internet is not the Answer; Andrew Keen (2015)

Utopia is Creepy; Nicholas Carr (2016)

Ten Arguments for Deleting your social media right now; Jaron Lanier (2018)

Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity

The early 1970s saw an intense debate about the very future of Glasgow – the rehousing of people from the city’s slums in the 1960s to New Towns in nearby parts of Scotland had resulted in a significant decline of Glasgow’s population and many felt that it was useless to go on ploughing money into the city. And the shocking 1973 “Born to Fail?” report identified not just Glasgow but the entire West of Scotland as a UK leader in “multiple deprivation”.

There is always, however, opportunity lying within a crisis; and those of us who seized this one were those who had been most critical of the performance of Labour councils. They may have had a good record of slum clearance and house-building but couldn’t handle the new assertiveness being shown by tenants. The new Region established in 1974 required, in our view, a new approach, based on the new spirit of participation which the Labour Government had recognised with its Skeffington Report on “People and Planning" (1969).

The very legitimacy of the new Region was in question – partly because of its enormous scale, its services used by half of the 5 million Scottish people. This, after all, was still local government and people were beginning to express some discontent with being taken for granted by too many Labour municipalities. The Scottish nationalists had scored some stunning parliamentary victories in the late 1960s and the talk, by the time the Regions came into existence in 1974, was of the prospects of being “over-governed” – with membership of the EC having been confirmed in the 1975 referendum and active talk of a possible “Scottish Assembly” which was eventually put to a referendum in Scotland in 1979, failing only on a “technicality”.

“What sort of Over-government?” was indeed the title I gave to my contribution to Gordon Brown’s famous Red Paper on Scotland which came out in 1975. I readily admit that the Over-government piece was an angry and academically pretentious one But its stress on the complacency and conservatism of Labour municipalities was an important corrective for the times. The headings give a good sense of the drift of the piece -

• Local government and devolution – a confused debate

• what is wrong with local authorities?

• structural weaknesses

• ideological weaknesses

• the challenge of corporate planning

• paternalism

• Labour Groups

T he Devolution of Power was an important little book produced by Labour MP John P Mackintosh in 1968 which helped produce the Kilbrandon Royal Commission, reporting in 1973. The problem with devolution is that what's conceded can readily be withdrawn and generally is - as we saw with the abolition first of the metropolitan bodies like the GLC in the 1980s and the Scottish Regions in the 1990s.

The basic point is that the 1970s saw great turmoil – and the Region needed to give people some hope that it understood their concerns and would be willing to use its resources to ensure fairer public services.

An initial deprivation strategy was set out by 1975/6 but, over the winter of 1981, was further developed at a series of community conferences attended by 1000 activists who reviewed the initial actions taken by the Region and, with the May 1982 elections, ensured that the subsequent report had a fresh legitimacy

It was printed as an attractive (little red) booklet (complete with poems by TS Eliot, Brecht, Adrian Mitchell and quotations from William James and Alice in Wonderland!) and widely distributed, as was a shorter version in the internal staff Bulletin. The Region's free Newspaper distributed to every household - and more selective monthly "Digest" sent to all Community groups - were both intensively used in the years to come to explain the details of the work. Workshops were held in a variety of public and professional settings over the following years to get the key messages across. And these were simple - if challenging -

"The existing inequalities in service allocation did not happen by accident: they are mediated through the administrative machine by generally well-intentioned professionals and administrators practising apparently fair and neutral principles. To tackle these inequalities therefore requires more than a general expression of content handed over, in traditional style, for implementation. It demands the alteration of structures and the working assumptions".

"What we were asking our staff to do in 1976 was to accept that fairly simple things were needed from them in the first instance; not massive spending but just a commitment, firstly to those who lived in the APTs; secondly to attempting new relationships both with their colleagues in other Departments and with residents. We were also asking for imagination and courage in encouraging staff to bring forward proposals for better practice despite the discouragement we knew they would encounter from the rules, traditions and prejudices which seem deeply engrained in certain departments"

"The majority of staff are discouraged from joint work with councillors, other professionals and residents in APTs by the way the traditional departmental system of local government works. Career advance depends on one's work as a professional or manager in a particular department - and not on the collaborative ventures emphasised in this and the 1976 document. That is the crucial issue which must now be faced and resolved. Exhortations and good intentions are no longer enough"

Previous Posts in this series

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/born-to-fail.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/bliss-was-it-in-that-dawn-to-be-alive.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/turning-crisis-into-opportunity.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-ever-growing-irrelevance-of.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/performance-v-results-as-measure-of.html