Seven Pillars of Public Sector Turnaround
Amid tight budgets and increasing demand pressures, it is now only the best managed (or luckiest!) public services that are consistently achieving great results for the public. Five police forces in England and Wales are currently (1) in the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) ‘Engaged’ process, the police equivalent of ‘special measures’. A number of councils are experiencing a different ‘failure’ regime, being overseen (and in some cases more directly run) by commissioners, appointed to support their financial and performance turnaround. And while not under the same level of performance scrutiny and intervention – unfairly, perhaps! – there are undoubtedly several departments that are struggling by many measures (2).
An increasing number of leaders we work with are therefore needing to get to grips with driving organisational turnaround (3). From our own work, we know that the task is often difficult and requires incredible courage. However, it’s also vital to be systematic – so below we suggest seven important steps that leaders should consider as they shape an effective turnaround approach:
7 Key Considerations for Leaders
- Understand root causes
- Build a resilient leadership team
- Harness the insight of the public and your people
- Be brave in your priority setting
- Allocate resources to achieve goals
- Build an engine room
- Test, learn and adapt
1. Understand root causes
Organisations and teams are judged to be failing for many reasons. But it’s easy to mistake symptoms and causes. Just because a council has failed financially, this doesn’t simply mean there is a funding issue or financial mismanagement. When an inspectorate says a police force has 50-plus areas for improvement, trying to tackle all of them will simply disperse organisational effort and lead to chaos for little gain.
The judgement of failure has to be a fundamental moment of reassessment. Which of the ingredients of high performance is lacking? Is the issue one of resourcing choices, leadership styles, staff skills, technology investments, or something else? Seek broad input from similar organisations across your sector, the middle management and frontline, or independent advice before forming judgements. And try to really narrow down, as most organisations can only deal with a few big issues at once.
2. Build a resilient leadership team
A failing organisation will almost certainly have weakness and/or conflict in its senior team. So it is vital to quickly get in place a top team that has the full confidence of its leader, and is psychologically ready – and up for – what can be a tough but rewarding few years. A key step is to agree on the leadership style and behaviours you will need to deliver the changes the public deserves.
Our view is that a ‘target leadership model’ needs to be co-designed, documented and built into review processes and team rhythms. It often makes sense to dedicate a section of a monthly or quarterly meeting to reviewing the target leadership model and self-assessing performance and improvement opportunities (ideally using data). Ultimately, this will role-model the behaviours needed across the organisation, but also build team trust and peer support for the tough decisions ahead.
3. Harness the insight of the public and your people
If you put the public and the voice of services users the heart of your calls for the organisation to change, the workforce is more likely to listen and the public will be feel heard. Most people take pride in their public service, so building the famous ‘burning platform’ for change works best when it appeals to the organisation’s ultimate purpose.
Similarly, your staff will be frustrated difficulties and criticisms, but are also fundamental to the change you are seeking. There are myriad choices on staff engagement approaches – but the critical mistake that we see people make is thinking that communicating and engaging is enough. The workforce – and the public – actually wants to see their input and feedback acted on, and problems in their daily lives solved. Simple ‘you said, we did’ communication goes a long way to building trust and confidence. Once this is mastered, you will also start to see more people wanting to get involved and drive change themselves.
4. Be brave in your priority setting
In the public sector, it is rarely an option to ‘turn off’ certain services, but we believe it is impossible to manage turnaround effectively without prioritisation. This requires clarity on which functions can be performed at the highest service levels and where ‘silver’ or ‘bronze’ service may be all that is achievable given budget pressures. While easier said than done, there are many successful approaches to setting priorities and objectives in a way that avoids gaming and perverse consequences. And once relative priorities are clear, you can clear-sightedly set budgets, decide which change initiatives should be resourced, and build a culture of delivery.
5. Allocate resources to achieve goals
Many public sector organisations have only a basic understanding of the demand, capacity, and performance of their key functions – and even fewer effectively forecast how these will develop over time. Under time pressure, you will need to make some judgements, but it is vital to set out the baseline of the performance you can expect from each function given the expected demand and current resourcing. This is the only way you can ensure you can hold your leaders to account for performance fairly, and then start reallocating resources and driving changes to meet your new goals. There are always a thousand things to spend money and time on, so you need to be laser focused on the few technology, process, structural or other improvement opportunities that will make the biggest differences – and then empower the workforce to be part of the change and do the little things.
6. Build an engine room
Major change requires focus, specialist skills and an activist culture of delivery. In general times there are pros and cons to central units, but at times of change you will need an internal team that is dedicated to supporting progress on the major elements of change – ideally one with problem-solving and design skills, and the credibility and senior support required to unblock issues related to competing priorities or differing views.
In general, we would recommend the engine room role being time limited to 18-30 months. It should conduct rapid ‘deep dives’ on priority initiatives in order to provide assurance and recommendations to accelerate progress; support projects and leaders to develop clearer, aligned progress reports; and flag emerging issues that require rapid resolution.
7. Test, learn and adapt
There is, of course, more to turnaround than the six steps covered so far, and every organisation is different. There is no simple formula for success in turnaround, so what you expect to work might not. This is why turnaround needs to be approached with an experimental mindset. Defining small demonstration projects and testing results, constantly tracking feedback on changes in governance boards, and building a culture that is open about and learns from failures are good places to start.
For more insights, read about turnaround in policing, and Cleveland’s successful exit from special measures.
“Leapwise provided support at the outset of Cleveland Police’s improvement journey. The team were very hard-working and provided intelligent and insightful input into the development of our improvement plan and strategic objectives. “ – Chief Constable Mark Webster, Cleveland Police
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