turning failure around?

A frequent theme on this blog is the "performance" culture which has overtaken British government. Target-setting, measurement, reward and punishment sometimes sound like the Fordist management which we were supposed to have left behind.
In relation to Gordon Brown's threat of having 1,000 "failing" schools "taken over", I said I would summarise the 3 year research project which ran from 2002-05 in th UK following the attempts to "turnaround" 15 or so English municipalities which were judged to be failing. I will cheat a bit - and use text from the project's First Annual Report of 2004. The italicised references show the confusing fequecy with which government has introduced new and better programmes. Little wonder that there has been cynicism and confusion - this was happening at the same time municipalities were being hit with other bright ideas from above - new governing arrangement, scrutiny processes etc

"The desire by central government level to improve the performance of local authority services has increased in the last 20 years. Policy initiatives moved from the relatively simplistic assumptions about the power of market forces that were inherent in Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) through more comprehensive service review and procurement approaches in Best Value and then into a range of demonstration and incentive initiatives including Beacon Councils, and Local Public Service Agreements.
The introduction of a nation-wide performance assessment process - the Comprehensive Performance Assessent (CPA) – has revealed that some councils are unable to respond effectively to the improvement agenda. Councils are classified into one of five performance bands (excellent, good, fair, weak and poor. Councils classified as poor are subject to special monitoring by central government and the Audit Commission, and may be the focus of legal intervention to direct them to undertake certain tasks or transfer responsibility for a function to a nominee of the Secretary of State".

"The evidence that a group of councils that is under-performing relative to national expectations raises two important questions:
1. Why do local authorities becoming poor performers?
2. What approaches to recovery (or turnaround) work most effectively and in what situations?

"There is little scientific research into these issues as they bear on the public sector. What literature there is tends to focus on failures in policy implementation (i.e. why a given policy is not delivered as intended or does not have the effect that was intended, e.g. Bovens, et al 2001; Bovens and t’Hart 1998; Wildavsky 1984) rather than weaknesses of organisational performance. The research into organisational performance in the UK public sector primarily concentrates on schools, reflecting the school effectiveness/school improvement debate (e.g. Gray et al 1999; Willmott 1999), although there is also some with a broader base (e.g. Anheier 1999).
"In contrast to the paucity of public sector research there is a voluminous and largely US-oriented private sector literature. This tends to focus on the way in which organisational leadership fails to respond to environmental changes affecting business profitability, and prescriptions are largely related to chief executive changes or organisational restructuring (e.g. divestment, re-financing, re-positioning, etc.) (e.g. Barker and Mone 1998; Boyne et al 2003; Mellahi 2002).

"‘Learning from the Experience of Recovery’ - was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Local Government Association (LGA), Audit Commission, and Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA). The evaluation was undertaken by the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at the University of Birmingham in association with Cardiff University, MORI and other partners. The study commenced in December 2002 and ran until summer 2005. It involved:
1. evaluation of the recovery process and its impact in five poorly performing case study councils, together with a more limited analysis in another 10 councils
2. a study of the implementation and impact of the policies of government and national agencies in relation to poorly performing councils
3. action-learning sets with managers of the recovery process and recovery projects
4. policy papers on themes and issues related to recovery in poorly performing local authorities
5. dissemination to a range of policy-maker, practitioner and academic audiences.
The first annual report provides early findings from the study, drawing on baseline studies of five ‘poorly performing’ case study councils and on the response of central government and national agencies".

The report certainly gives very useful background history to the efforts of UK central governments to get improvement in both local services and municipalities. And it is relevant to note that the keyword for the past decade has been "improvement". Indeed the Scottish training and consultancy body for local government is actually called Improvement Services

threats as a policy tool

Britain and China are more similar than I thought. In their toolbox of policy measures, fear and threat are favoured tools. Yesterday Gordon Brown promised (threatened) to have 1,000 “failing schools taken over”.
He promises that inadequate schools, hospital authorities and police forces will all be subject to forms of takeover if either objective results or parental ballots demand new leadership. In education this could mean being taken over by successful state or private schools, education chains, or universities.
"The days of take it or leave it public services are over," Brown says. "The days of just minimum standards are over. The days of the impersonal are finished. It has to be personal, accountable and tailored to your needs, and with a mechanism to trigger change if the service does not meet your needs."
He says the aim is to unleash the highest quality providers, whether public or private, so that they can meet needs, not just in their local areas, but to turn around performance in other areas too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/11/gordon-brown-labour-manifesto-general-election

And trust in training in leadership and the market is still evident -
He also claims Labour has built a generation of public service leaders capable of running difficult schools, and sharing their leadership skills with other schools. He told the Guardian that his plan was better than the Conservative proposal to introduce a wave of new schools built on the Swedish model, since the Tory system required a costly surfeit of places. He said: "The Swedish free market school experiment has not been successful. The evidence of the Swedish equivalent of Ofsted is that it has led to lower standards and growing inequalities."

I was reminded of some articles on the experience of identifying failing PSOs (public sector organisations) and activating a process whereby they were “turned around”. After some searching I found them – on the sites of (a) the European Group of Public Administration and (b) the Office of the UK Deputy Prime Minister. In the early part of the decade, the UK government sponsored a research projects on “Learning from the experience of recovery” – which focussed on about 15 "failing" municipalities. The papers from the project can (at the moment) be found at http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/localregional/servicedelivery/learning/
I’ve downloaded them and will do a summary shortly.

No comment;
Communities and Local Government is a website of the British government - which contains guidelines and research papers for local authorities. Apart from the above paper, I also found a strategic guide, Improving Public Access to Better Quality Toilets.According o the site the guidehighlights some innovative approaches taken by local authorities to public toilet provision, although it does not prescribe what approaches they should take. Local authorities are the ones who are best placed to determine the mix of approaches most suitable to their area, and this guidance is intended to support them in making that decision.
This guidance is primarily intended for local authorities and partnerships wishing to explore the feasibility of setting up a Community Toilet Scheme. It provides an overview of the Community Toilet Scheme developed by the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, as well as a step-by-step guide on how to set up a similar scheme.
In addition, the toolkit includes a case study of the SatLav text messaging service operated by Westminster City Council, which makes use of mobile phone technology to help the public locate their closest accessible toilets

organising local services

Another interesting organisational perspective from BBC World Service – in the first part of a series on the Ganges River whose “magic” qualities have been worshipped by pilgrim bathers for centuries. But all is not well since many dams have been built for purposes of irrigation or general water management. You’ll forgive me said one polite Indian – for saying that the English have a lot to answer for! Water resource management apparently used to be handled by small communities along with many others such as cultural life, etc Then the English came to India and split everything into specialised functions – with irrigation being a separate function from water resource management and from cultural traditions. A crucial holistic dimension was lost as a result. A nice “take” on the silo mentality I referred to yesterday – introducing an important “systems” dimension to the discussion.

If you look at local government systems, the Brits certainly seem to have caught the rationalistic addiction much more strongly than their European neighbours. I have to confess that I was part of the first such on onslaught in the 1960s when – as part of the critical mood then in the air about our institutions - independent commissions in England and Scotland examined the local government systems in those countries and came up with radical solutions which found their way into legislation.

Scotland’s was more radical – Adam Smith’ ghost of specialisation perhaps? 625 municipalities of different sorts (large towns, small towns, Counties and communes) were converted into a two-tier system of 65 municipalities.
Literally a decimation – with 9 Regions, 53 Districts and 3 Island Authorities coming into being in 1975.

As a councillor in a large burgh of 65,000 souls (whose educational, police, water and sewage requirements were taken care of by a County Council – coveting about 300,000 people), I was a strong advocate of their replacement by a District of 110,000 people and a Region (Strathclyde) of more than 2 million whose destinies had been strongly linked by the River Clyde.

But people believed then in “economies of scale”.

In fact, the Region functioned remarkably well – with the development of a new strategic dimension into policy-making which tried to pay proper respect to political, professional and community perspectives; its scale making it the first municipal body to forge a relationship with the European Commission and also making it easier to advance the internal arguments for experimentation and decentralisation at both the county and community level.

Recently Kenneth Roy suggested that the leakage of power from the Scottish towns was responsible for the poor shape in which they find themselves now – and he made a good case (as he always does). I was glad to see, however, that Alex Wood at least put up a rebuttal, arguing how corrupt and complacent town government had become. And, he might have added, the County Councils had already taken their power away – and were not directly elected! This was the critical note I struck in my contribution (What sort of Over-government?) to the Red Book on Scotland which Gordon Brown edited in 1978.

However, it is true that Scotland is now at the far end of the spectrum of the European scale as far as municipal size is concerned – with a one tier system of 23 Districts having been introduced in 1999. A major restructuring every 25 years does not seem a good approach! The French have a reputation for excellent public services – and have held on to their small communes. And their engineers, of course, are still held in higher regard than managers!
However French and German municipal services are now threatened by the credit crunch.

By the way, for further analysis of the Kyrgyzstan developments see an article on the excellent Open Democracy site -
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/boris-dolgin/kyrgyzstan-what-will-happen-to-tulips

ps - the picture above is the Ploiesti Clock museum - with the Boulevard Restaurant to its right

Mushroom soup and insitutional insulation

Nice run down to Bucharest yesterday – with a stop in Ploiesti to have lunch with Daniela. Nicolae Iorga - a great Romanian historian and politician - said 100 years of Ploiesti It's an ugly city - which begins beautifully - referring to its lovely Boulevard (of chestnut trees) which runs from the central station and was in colourful spring bloom yesterday. Previously known as Romania’s oil centre, the city is now clean. We went to the recently restored Boulevard Restaurant beside the Clock museum. It is roomy; aesthetically pleasing; gives a sense of the old Romania - and is a place to linger. The mushroom soup was the best I’ve ever tasted; and its Romanian Winter platter also very tasty. It draws on the great fish market just a few minutes away; cooks only to order; has a good range of wines (including half a litre house wine for only 2 euros). A rare example here of customer attention (even if the waiter did forget about my main course!)

(by the way, these 2 photos are not of Ploiesti! They are by way of illustration to the themes which now follow

BBC World Service is always a good listen – particularly after an absence. And Peter Day’s Global Business is a model of good conversation in a field which is generally so boring. This morning I was soon hooked on the conversation he was having with Ranjay Gulati about the latter’s new book. The starting point was that the business rhetoric about the customer being the core of company’s thinking was not borne out in reality. The emphasis, he argued, given to reengineering and sheer survival meant that techniques and products were the foremost thing in managers’ minds. Even their much-vaunted customer consultations focussed on their product – rather than trying to understand the wider context in which the customer uses it. And the departmental silos just compounded their distance from the customer. How often have we heard this? Rosabeth Kanter talked about it 27 years ago (in her Change Masters – corporate giants at work). Shoshanna Zuboff’s The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism made the same point 6 years ago in a more sustained critique. And Anthony Jay’s spoof article “Democracy, Bernard? It must be stopped!” suggests that structures are deliberately created to ensure that policy-makers are isolated from those they are supposed to serve (see key papers on my website). As Day put it wryly – “Big ideas – common sense!”
The book, by the way, has the rather awful title of “Reorganise for resilience – putting customer at the centre of your business" – available already on googlebooks - But you can read the basic idea in a shorter piece he wrote for Harvard Business review.
There are two reasons why I was hooked (apart from the style of the conversation). First it was the issue of departmental silos that first brought me into this field of politics and public administration – I could see that people in the various council departments were well-intentioned so what was it that prevented from (a) seeing things in a less perverse way and (b) cooperating with others? It started my interest in organisational structures.
The second reason is that my immersion in the field of government has made me so impatient of the smug rhetoric I hear both from insiders and those from outside who purport to have the answers to government problems – the think-tankers and consultants. So I am so happy to hear someone dare to say that the Emperor is naked!

The public sector these days needs no convincing of the need for change – it has indeed become the way to show virility and to make your reputation. But the techniques have become predominant – we need to return to the simplicities! We do need to have conversations, listen, think and act (or is to act and think??)

I had to turn BBC World off when they suddenly terminated a conversation which was beginning to explore the reasons for the uprising in Kyrgyzstan – and switched to golf news. Who makes the judgement that listener more interested in golf than Kyrgyzstan? Is this yet another example of producer interest? I noticed one reader of a Guardian “Comment is Free” article wanted some background reading on the country. Google for “Understanding Politics in Kyrgyzstan” by Askat Dukenbaev and William W. Hansen; and go on the website of International Crisis Group – and get their December 2005 report on the Failing State of KR.

ps a note for posterity - the first photo is of a small window in the superb Queen Mary complex in Balcik, Bulgaria. I took the second photo from my car as I was returning to Tashkent from a wine tasting at Pashkent, Uzbekistan. It gives a good sense of the reality for most people in these central asia states

language and control

Saw yesterday my first nesting storks – at Moiecu – despite the recent snow. It was one of my first impressions of central Europe 20 years ago when I drove into Slovakia and Hungary in May.
Before yesterday’s trip for provisions, I had about 5 hours on the internet – uploading my blog and then surfing for the review of the English inspection system which I noticed was missing from my E-library. I remembered having originally come across this review (and its Scottish equialent) when doing a bibliographical search for the Bulgarian project in 2007 on the whole EC compliance process (a huge academic field!!). I eventually traced it – it was the Hampton report of 2005. For some time there had been concern in the UK about the “audit explosion” (40,000 inspectors it was reckoned). Even the academics got into the act – and produced studies. Hampton had been invited by Gordon Brown to look at the whole system as part of the deregulation theme. His report recommended restructuring about 31 bodies down to seven (an interesting theme for post-communist countries).
The Labour Government accepted the report in its entirety – but I couldn’t find any paper on what has actually happened – with what lessons.
As I’m writing this, I have “Romanian Cultural” radio in the background. At midday they do jazz – and right now they’re playing comedy hall songs from the 1930s – eg Lancashire’s inimitable Gracie Fields - let’s see whether they play Harry Lauder or Will Fyfe!! In the meantime I’m thoroughly enjoying the “flappers’” songs – with a mixture of impeccable and regional accents. I suspect that this is the sort of stuff that my mother rather enjoyed – before her married days in the Scottish manse – about which, incidentally, there was a nice little piece in Scottish Review - http://www.scottishreview.net/CMartin233.html

I thought that the Parliamentary Select Committee (under the impressive chair of Tony Wright – with his collection of other mavericks such as Paul Flynn (with whom I once shared a car from Bucharest to a Sinaia workshop)- might have looked at this theme. Apparently not – but I did discover a marvellous report they issued late last year on government and public service language. Time was when the issue was only the obfuscated language of official forms and reports – but now it has become the managerial terms in which many politicians talk. The chairman’s welcome for a couple of journalists and a representative of the Plain English campaign who were giving evidence was couched in highly appropriate terms - Perhaps I could say, by way of introduction, welcome to our stakeholders. We look forward to our engagement, as we roll out our dialogue on a level playing field, so that, going forward in the public domain, we have a win-win step change that is fit for purpose across the piece (!!)
Please have a look at the report – and some of the evidence they were given (written and oral) at - http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/public_administration_select_committee/pascmindyourlang.cfm
The written evidence give excellent examples of meaningless language (much, it must be said, taken from project management) Paul Flynn submits an extract from the House of Commons Business Plan which concerns planning for “business resilience” and “risk management” within the House (that is to say how well the House is protected from a terrorist or other attack and how it could continue after such an attack). It's priceless.

government and the people

What courage in Bishkek yesterday!
And amid all the consultant talk of public officials and government, we have to remember that this is sometimes the behaviour....

creativity and offices

The picture is a favourite of mine – and shows some of the activists (or municipal change agents) with whom we worked in Kyrgyzstan. It was a 2-day session we had at Lake Issy Kul – and we played and worked hard. You can see their enjoyment. Perhaps a Dilbert or Feiffer cartoon would have been more appropriate to today's theme - but, given events in Kyrgyzstan, I wanted this picture up
I’ve worked very creatively in the last 2 days on a subject about which, in another place 2 months ago, I could not conjure up a single idea – let alone a creative one! What is it about an office environment that kills creativity? In both Sofia and Bishkek, I had my very comfortable flat just 5 minutes walk away where I sometimes go to write. In Bishkek I had an excellent team with whom brainstorm sessions took place – sometimes over yahoo. In Sofia we had a nice little conference room – and had some good brainstorms there which helped the grey cells. I thought at one moment of having a weekly session – where each of us (we were 6) shared something which was enthusing us (preferably a professional paper or book!) I’m very sorry now that I didn’t introduce this – particularly when thing were lagging with the contracting authority!
The office in Tashkent had 4 researchers and a great local project manager with whom I could brainstorm in a large conference room. Perhaps that’s the reason why I was able to produce so many (unasked for!) discussion papers.
Here in the mountains, I create the atmosphere I want – no interruptions – fresh air - inspiring view – and don’t feel guilty about surfing the internet or having music in the background. I just need the occasional feedback – best with a skype conversation.
You cannot turn on creativity according to the scheduling required by action plans – and the best work is probably done as a labour of love!

So how should managers deal with contracted staff who are suffering what the authors call “writer’s block”? In every project, I’ve had one team member who seemed indolent and whom I had to (or wished to) “let go”. I wasn’t trained in how to deal with them. Perhaps it was my fault that I couldn’t create the environment for them to flourish? I know in my case that I suffer from insufficient positive feedback to the stuff I produce. When I start a new project, no one knows about it – although I have had my little book “In Transit – notes on Good Governance” to give a select few. But it is now rather dated (1999). Another challenge?

I had forgotten about the Discussion papers which I produced between 2000 and 2002. One on training one I had used as the basis for the larger paper on Training I produced for the Sofia project (see website). But I felt good about the 60 page paper I produced (and used again in Azerbaijan) on the experience of Western European countries in “transferring functions” (upwards, downwards and sideways) between 1970 and 2000. Noonme else had produced the sort of typology I used. I’ve now uploaded that paper to the website – which has become a real resource for change-agents – with 21 papers waiting for you.

My reading didn’t too well yesterday – the emphasis was on writing with a bit of flicking of the 30 odd papers I downloaded to help my work on the paper. Mainly they related to the evaluation of national administrative reforms – about which not a great deal is written. Finland has probably got the strongest record – the UK publishes a lot but it is mainly celebrationary stuff about their various strategies. A useful discussion on the theme is Evaluation as useable knowledge in public sector reform by Jean Thoenig.
Another good paper I read yesterday was by the Head of the UK Academy of Government I think it calls itself now. The paper has the intriguing title of The Relentless Unforeseen and is at last a paper from someone associated with government which does not pretend that government is or can be all knowing and all-powerful. He contrasts the problem-solving approach which most governments take with that which selects desired outcomes and sets up strategies for their achievement (firefighting versus prevention).

Kyrgyzstan - in homage

breaking news is that 17 people have been killed in clashes with the police at the Presidential Palace and TV station in Bishkek - where I spent 2 very productive and happy years. I was there in March 2005 when the demonstrations sent the previous President packing for the same reasons which seem to be arousing people now - the control and corruption.
My heart goes out to those who are suffering. They are a great (mountain) people. The picture was taken at one of the 50 workshops my project ran for municipalities in 2 pilot Oblasts. Earlier this week I uploaded one of papers I wrote from the experience.