Speech given to Team Nottingham, the annual meeting of Directors, Assistant Directors and Service Managers working for Nottingham City Council
[Foil 01] photo of Andrew Lowe and me talking about performance in the Old Market Square
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which covers finance, performance management and sustainable development.
I talk about performance management in the strangest places. Here, I’m pictured talking with an Acting Corporate Director in the Old Market Square.
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Andrew and I go back a long way – from when I was a County Councillor, over 11 years ago.
I can tell people now, how he had to intervene to save me from a verbal pasting at my first public meeting as a Councillor.
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I’ve held a marginal seat, more successfully than I held my previous job as a designer / analyst and project manager for British Rail Computing.
The session is titled a members’ view of performance management. To which the answer is of course, there isn’t one.
55 members; 47 points of view.
If you’re wondering why 47, well, first the Chief Executive has just announced that the answer to everything is 47. Just so.
Another way of calculating it is to recognise that 47 is 8 less than 55. There are 9 majority group members of the Executive. 9 Exec members with 1 view.
55 – 9 + 1 = 47.
How’s that for Level 4 Key Stage 1 maths!
As an ordinary member, Performance Management probably meant building up a list of achievements to present at the next election.
Things changed a little in 2000 when I became Chair of Transport, and enjoyed 2 years building upon the radical history of transport policy in this city.
The rewards for achievement given via the Local Transport Plan system brought a certain focus.
When I lost my job, I became a Peer Inspector on the Corporate Assessment part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessments of 2002.
And it was a bit of a shock.
[Foil 02] A Methodology 1.1 Ambition 1.2 Focus 1.3 Prioritisation 2.1 Capacity 2.2 Performance Management 3.1 Achievement 3.2 Investment 4.1 Future Plans 4.2 Learning
There was a methodology!
A methodology had been produced for assessing what a council did.
I didn’t agree with all of it, but there was ‘something’.
And I was trained in it!
[Foil 03] * Inspectors see weaknesses in organisations, quickly; * don’t re-invent the wheel; * apply key lessons learnt
I visited 3 other authorities.
And I learnt a lot.
Fundamentally, I learnt how incredibly quickly inspectors could see weaknesses, especially in corporate management of a council, especially the senior management.
Within 2 to 3 days, they could see who was not pulling their weight, who’d given up and who perhaps should never have been in post in the first place.
It was almost arrogant.
Yet, when the inspectors presented their findings to that Chief Executive, they were pretty much accepted.
How did the inspectors know?
It turns out that the people being interviewed were happily confessing all their weaknesses.
To me, it stresses the importance for an organisation of good self-knowledge and honest self-knowledge.
I also learnt is that somebody somewhere has almost certainly done what you are about to set out to do.
And I learnt that you should try to find examples of best practice elsewhere and apply them to your own organisation.
Now maybe some of this is blindingly obvious, but I repeat, training for members is often about procedures and our rights as a member; not about how to evaluate what a Council is doing.
From each of the 3 councils I visited, I brought back 2 messages
much of which has been applied.
[Foil 04] ’Raising our Performance’ – a change culture programme; evolving public consultation on the budget;
From Oxfordshire,
[Ox1] A strong example of a change culture programme –
‘Raising our Performance’ –
which was trying to turn a failing and demoralised organisation around;
[Ox2] And experience of 3 different types of public consultation on the budget
which went from
ask everyone with a bit of detail, to
ask the Citizen’s Panel with a bit more detail, to
ask a sub-panel of the Citizens’ Panel with a lot more detail and some discussion, which gave a much stronger steer;
So when it came to consultation on my first budget, we went straight to the last method.
[Foil 05] a clear and simple Corporate Plan; planning;
From Gloucestershire,
[Gl1] I learnt that a Corporate Plan, was made more powerful, by making the objectives
clearer, stating them more simply, and illustrated well and written simply;
3 corporate policy priorities, with improving the way we work underpinning it all;
expressed simply with timelines instead of Gantt charts.
[Gl2] And I learnt the importance of bringing the plans together,
[Foil 06] Community Plan and City Development plan, over the Corporate Plan, which is supported by the MTFP and the BVPP; driving the Departmental Plans, feeding down to the service plans, the team plans and Individual Development Plans, and working their way back up again.
in our case,
the Community Plan and City Development Plan over the Strategic Plan, - all aligned -
the Strategic Plan supported by the MTFP and the BVPP;
all driving the Departmental Plans,
feeding down to the service plans,
then the team plans and the Individual Development Plans,
and feedback working its way back to the top again.
[Foil 07] Sustainable Development as part of the mainstream; prioritisation
From the City of Bristol,
[Br1] I saw how Sustainable Development could be presented attractively with high quality presentations of trends on Quality of Life indicators.
[Br2] And I learnt about prioritisation.
That you could decide to move money around to meet corporate priorities and to require adjustments to be made elsewhere.
Bristol actually went for a 0% increase in Council Tax, one year. ...
[Foil 08] photo of Gordon Mitchell "Coaching Executive members"
Again much of these lessons learnt will be blindingly obvious to you.
But a fundamental part of what we’ve been doing in the last 18 months has been to ensure that this best practice is put in place.
It would be wrong to suggest that these changes came from my visits, cos in fact the new Chief Executive,
and others with experience of best practice elsewhere,
have been on hand to make many of these changes happen. Most particularly, “Gearing Up”.
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[Foil 09] photo of the credit card presentation of progress
A most fundamental part of the change has been the insistence on monthly reporting and quarterly public presentations of performance.
Fundamental. Even basic, you might say.
But it wasn’t in place.
And we’re still struggling to get the right information into our high-levels reports.
But it has meant progress, in this decent year for progress.
For instance, improvement in 59% of council services.
I produced a credit card sized presentation to celebrate our progress. Just like John Prescott.
We did one for the students’ fair last week. Achievements on one side. Useful phone numbers on the other. Top of that list was the number for bulky waste collections.
[Foil 10] 5 change culture values * Are ambitious for Nottingham * Act as one council for our community * Learn and share experiences from each other and from other organisations * Act on decisions made * Respect those we work with and for A 'point north' photo, with an "Actions Speak Louder than Words" caption
Drawing on lessons from elsewhere has informed my judgements on new proposals.
And it is no accident that “Learn and share experiences” is one of the 5 change culture items.
[Foil 11] photo of Brown making CSR speech; Comprehensive Spending Review
We still face 3 significant challenges.
The Comprehensive Spending Review;
a new dogma on the importance of reform; and
the next Comprehensive Performance Assessment.
It is extraordinary that when so much has been achieved and that when the money available for public services still looks set to grow in real terms,
we look set for yet another period of challenge and re-allocation.
The national political analysis runs something like this –
Now that the public generally feel that their jobs and prospects are secure,
they most readily show their appreciation for policies that advocate -
- better education,
- improved health services and
- tackling crime and anti-social behaviour.
Further, to win elections,
you do have to develop a focus on key messages, making a difference and establishing trust, on the terms of the public’s priorities.
It’s shaping policy.
[Foil 12] Gershon review * Procurement * Back office functions * Transactional services * devolved public services * shaping the private sector * Productive time
There is a new dogma on the reform of public services.
Crudely summarised, it contrasts the performance of services in England, against those in Scotland and Wales and says –
improvement has been more dramatic in England, because alongside the extra money provided, there was also a programme of reform.
An example of this dogma is Michael Barber’s report on performance, presented by Number 10 to the press in July and showing improvements in performance tied to introduction in changes to methods of organisation and service delivery.
So we can expect more challenge and more of the other C’s – certainly compete and compare; possibly a more mixed approach to consult.
An important example of this reform agenda is the Gershon report, which suggests that
Councils can do better with the money we have, with a heavy emphasis better procurement.
Overall, we face a period when the money available to us to spend will grow in real terms, but the scope of the work which will have to be done for that money will have to grow at a faster rate.
Crudely, our budget increases will be swallowed up supporting the Govt’s policy priorities.
[Foil 13] CPA - June 2005 (ish) (List of 5 areas to concentrate on w.r.t. June 2005) * joined up working (not departmental silos) * procurement * customer focus and access to services * partnership working * integration of children's services
On the Comprehensive Performance Assessment in May, June or July of next year, (now thought to be 2006)
our self-knowledge tells us that we will still have to show progress in the following areas –
Procurement, where although our co-operation with the County is an exemplar of best practice in the Region, it’s debateable whether we can point to enough evidence of radical change.
Customer focus, where we will be challenged on developing a sufficiently corporate approach to joint service provision; and having made enough progress on ease of access to our services; and use of feedback from customers to shape service delivery.
[We will be challenged on joined up working [forgot to say this].]
We will be challenged on the strength of our partnership working.
We will be challenged on integration of children’s services.
[Foil 14] Setting our Agenda - Learning from Best Practice - National policy and priorities - What is best for Nottingham
Now this presentation has covered a lot of ground in a short time.
Consequently it’s a tad blunt. A tad over-stated.
For instance, officers at other councils I visited did reflect back good practice from Nottingham; they were aware of, for example, our excellent transport; and tackling child prostitution.
We’ve shown this year that we are capable of improvement.
We don’t always need a solution dictated from Whitehall.
Some of the Govt’s reform analysis is less than convincing – for instance, tying improvement made in educational attainment to special schools, when progress has been wider and I know (as a Chair of Governors) that inspections have focussed has been on quality of teaching, learning and organisation.
There is some hope in some of the statements – for instance, yesterday, “I have seen [the] ethic of public service at work. … There are values far beyond those of contracts, markets and exchange.”
It means there may be space to shape the reform agenda to work to our priorities.
And we can do that best by talking a lead on the change agenda.
Maximising the opportunities when the national and local priorities align – as for Nottingham, they so often do.
And by showing that we do add value; and that we do it best when we can show that our organisation delivers more than simply a collection of public services.
[Last reviewed 2005-03-17]
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