Delivering Public Services That Work Volume 2

Description

Case studies of The Vanguard Method being used to deliver radical change in the public sector

Sujets

• Public administration
• Administrative division

Informations

• Publié par: Triarchy Press
• Date de parution: 24 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908009708
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Vanguard Method in the Public Sector: Case Studies
Delivering Public Services that Work Volume 2
Edited by Charlotte Pell Foreword by John Seddon
Published in this first edition in 2012 by: Triarchy Press Station Offices Axminster Devon. EX13 5PF United Kingdom
[phone] [e-mail] www.triarchypress.com
© Vanguard Consulting, 2012
The right of Charlotte Pell to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN: 9781908009685 Epub ISBN: 9781908009708 Kindle ISBN: 9781908009715
C ONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
THE VANGUARD METHOD
PART ONE
1. THE NEW DEVELOPMENT CONTROL SERVICE IN RUGBY
2. FOOD SAFETY IN GREAT YARMOUTH
3. WHAT WORKS AND WHAT MATTERS: WEST MIDLANDS POLICE
4. NO SOFT OPTION: CHANGING THINKING ACROSS AN ENTIRE POLICE FORCE
5. STAFFORDSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE
6. ‘DESIGN TO UNDERSTAND’ IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
7. HELPING PEOPLE SOLVE LEGAL AND SOCIAL WELFARE PROBLEMS
8. IMPROVED STROKE CARE AT HALF THE COST
PART TWO
9. UNDERSTANDING DEMAND
10. SHARED SERVICES: A NO BRAINER?
AFTERWORD
Glossary
FOREWORD
John Seddon
I am eternally grateful to the contributors for taking the time and trouble to write about their experiences. As I read their contributions I felt, as I always do when I visit people who are employing these ideas, inspired and energised. It contrasts with how I always feel when I have been in Whitehall.
It is now four years since I wrote my polemic on public sector reform 1 , but while we have seen many pronouncements from Whitehall about ‘freedom’ and ‘localism’they are rarely put into practice.
Despite having to work against the grain, many more public-sector organisations are adopting the ideas I set out in that book; because they work. The case studies in this and the previous volume 2 illustrate how different the public sector can be, how much better the services become and how, paradoxically, these better services lead to much lower costs. The evidence is strong currency amongst those whose job it is to manage public-sector services but is weak currency amongst policy-makers with ideological fixations on scale, competition, commissioning and inspection, to mention just the big ones.
Yet I remain optimistic. Politicians come and go, ideologies can be blown off course by draughts of reason or competing moods but evidence, which is mounting all the time, doesn’t go away.
In January 2012, David Cameron promised to rid the public sector of ‘the system’ that gets in the way. This collection of case studies shows that the current system still remains central to the problem and celebrates those who have fought the system and won.
___________
1 Seddon, J. Systems Thinking in the Pubic Sector, Triarchy Press, 2008
2 Middleton,P. Delivering Public Services that Work Volume 1, Triarchy Press, 2010
INTRODUCTION
Chapters in Part 1 of this book describe the application of the Vanguard Method to eight different systems: the Fire and Rescue Service, the Police, local government, the voluntary sector and the NHS. The case studies are written in the authors’ own words.
Common to the case studies is the way leaders approached change from a position of knowledge about the ‘what and why’ of current performance including, in particular, an understanding of the demand placed on their organisation by service users.
The case studies also have the following characteristics in common: Massive improvement Released capacity and real savings
Improving service has halved the cost of stroke care in Plymouth, released police officers to deal with serious offences in Wolverhampton, saved Rugby Borough Council’s planning service £168,000, significantly increased the number of businesses in Great Yarmouth producing safe food, reduced an enormous administrative burden on Staffordshire Fire and Rescue, halved the cost of advice cases in Nottingham, prevented unnecessary, unhelpful and expensive hospital treatment for vulnerable adults in Somerset and reduced the number of missing persons reports, currently costing Cheshire Police £3.8 million, by an incredible 75%. The savings to the wider public and the social benefits of these interventions are far greater than this.
Central to this success is a massive shift from the old ‘de facto’ purpose to a new purpose, articulated from the perspective of the customer or public.
System
New Purpose
Old ‘de facto’’ Purpose
Development Control
Ensure that development is acceptable.
Meet the 8 and 13 week targets for minor and major applications.
Food Safety
Ensure food for public consumption is safe.
Meet inspection targets.
Police (West Midlands)
Active offender management, providing an excellent service to the public and doing the right thing.
To meet individual and sector targets.
Police (Cheshire)
Address requests for service, the needs of the public, keep the peace and protect the public.
Give a pre-determined level of service based on the categorisation of a call to comply with national inspection regimes.
Fire and Rescue
Put out fires and rescue people and do sensible things to prevent fires and other incidents occurring.
Help partners achieve their outcomes; Perform against indicator sets; Support the work of departments at headquarters; Fulfil the requirements of the National Framework.
Health and Social care
Maintain independence, and find the solutions to do the things that matter.
Meet functional targets and objectives.
AdviceUK
Help people pay their rent and Council Tax by making a decision and paying their benefit quickly.
Complete individual transactions.
Stroke Care
Optimise the care of patients of stroke from the start of symptoms back into the community and beyond.
Get it right in individual bits.
There are also significant differences between the case studies. Each case study has/or refers to a different: Customer/client/service-user/public Combination of politics and personalities Professional expertise Leadership style Inspection regime Budget Jargon Geographical boundary Management structure System archetype
Leaders in all case studies face major barriers to further improvement and savings, including: Central and local targets Compliance with central government and local organisational mandates Market-based competition Standardised processes IT systems Functional specialisms Risk aversion Data protection policies
In Part 2 of the book are three essays on the theme of ‘demand’.
The first essay, by Richard Davis, is an important piece about the most useful way to view demand. He discusses hidden demand, the role of geography in understanding demand and the problem with treating people as ‘customers’.
The second essay by John Seddon is about how not to meet demand. He explains why mass production logic – where demand is treated as a transaction, standardised to become a commodity and then shared in an attempt to cut costs – is flawed. He concludes with advice on a better way to share services.
The purpose of my concluding afterword is to illustrate, with stories from the people on the receiving end of the services described in this book, why it is cheaper to take a ‘leap of fact’, understand what matters and deliver public services that work.
THE VANGUARD METHOD
The Vanguard Method is the method used by service organisations to change the design and management of work from a command-and-control to a systems approach. The Method moves organisations from the left hand column to the right hand column of this table. Command and Control   New Thinking Top-down, hierarchy Perspective Outside-in, system Functional specialisation Design Demand, value and flow Separated from work Decision-making Integrated with work Output, targets, standards, activity and productivity: related to budget Measurement Capability, variation: related to purpose Contractual Attitude to customers What matters? Contractual Attitude to suppliers Co-operation and mutuality Manage budgets and the people Role of management Act on the system Control Ethos Learning Reactive. Change by project/ initiative Approach to change Adaptive, integral, emergent Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic
The Vanguard Method is a unique approach to change in that it starts with getting knowledge about the ‘what and why’ of current performance as a system.
The Method was originally developed by John Seddon who began his career researching the reasons why major change programmes fail. Based on what he learned, he developed this method for change, which can be described as a combination of systems thinking – how the work works – and intervention theory – how to change it. John has received numerous academic honours for his contribution to management science.
The Method provides leaders with the means to study their organisation as a system and, on the basis of the knowledge gained, to re-design their services to improve performance and drive out costs.
The Method has evolved through more than 20 years of application in the private sector and over 10 years of application in the public sector. In this time, Vanguard consultants have learnt how to help clients study the systems faster and more efficaciously, ensuring that the studying is effective for different system archetypes.
Check – Plan – Do

There are three steps in the Vanguard Method, known as ‘Check – Plan – Do’.
In ‘Check’, you get knowledge of the ‘what and why’ of current performance by working through these steps (the steps for all transactional services): Purpose: What is the purpose of this system? Demand: What is the natu