This case study sets out our analysis and recommendations for an organization facing major strategic and cultural change. Some of these recommendations were taken up, and some withered on the vine, but the process of analysing and recommending is thought-provoking in itself and we felt worthy of inclusion here.
Summary of key points arising from the case study
Even if employees sense the need to change, and want to change, this is not always enough. In this case study, people were asking for a clear sense of direction. A clear vision is often required to catalyse action, especially if it translates well into specific tasks.
The greater the depth and breadth of people involved in diagnosing the current state, developing a vision of where the organization needs to be heading, and generating solutions to bridge the gap, then the more chance the organization has of gaining sufficient momentum for change. In this case study, many people were engaged in the analysis, which led to increased interest and energy in making things happen.
The greater the clarity of focus (towards the end user) the greater the chance one has of aligning people, processes, systems and structures to this end. Business-as-usual and change initiatives have to be dovetailed. It is no use if there are 101 initiatives that are not joined up and working with one another.
Processes and standards must support the desired behaviours. An organization cannot strive for a quality service, for instance, if the culture does not support people doing quality things. It is of little value if the customer services assistant is exceedingly pleasant but not empowered to take decisions when the customer needs a decision.
Managers and staff need to be supported through the transition process with the necessary coaching and training. For the organization to become more focused, efficient and effective people have to be doing something different. Speedier rubbish collection will not impress the public if a trail of litter is left after each collection. Not only do these changes have to be communicated clearly, they also have to be followed by the necessary skills development and induction.
Organizations do not change by themselves – not at the speed that is normally required in this world of ever-increasing demands. The momentum is generated first by leadership and then by followership. Leaders at all levels within the organization have to have clarity of purpose, the relevant leadership skills and knowledge to deploy and to see themselves as leading from the middle, with the organization and its stakeholders all around them. Top team alignment is also crucial in times of change.
Case study description
A large local authority was not functioning as efficiently or as effectively as it wanted. It was not being fully responsive to the needs of its citizens or its various communities of interest. We conducted an organizational analysis of the city council to find out what was helping the council achieve its stated outcomes and what was getting in the way of this. The analysis consisted of interviews with directors and strategic managers, and focus groups with middle managers and front-line staff. Leading politicians of all political persuasions were interviewed. A number of key stakeholders such as citizens’ panels, partnerships and the trade unions were also involved. Our report highlighted six interrelated areas in which the council needed to significantly improve its overall effectiveness and thereby reduce internal and external pressure.
The commitment, talent and effort of all those we met were impressive. Many people from front-line workers to the most senior politicians and officers were enthusiastic about the city and what the council might contribute to its life and development. There were clearly many very good services being offered to the city. However, at the same time there was a strong feeling at all levels of untapped potential. The council’s energies were being dissipated through not having a true focus.
Continually increasing customer and citizen focus
The passion to deliver the best possible service to both external and internal customers, colleagues and partners was variable, with many parts of the organization moving forward, but at an uneven pace. The various self-inspection and external inspection processes were prompting the council to streamline systems and procedures for service delivery. However there were many instances cited where ‘customer care’ just was not part of the mindset and where systems, policies and procedures conspired to hinder the achievement in this area.
The interface between front-line services and the centre required particular attention, specifically on how best to commission the providers. Service level agreements, for example, were not fully used, and other mechanisms needed to be installed to ensure there was both a psychological and a written commitment to achieve excellent service delivery across directorates and to the end user.
Clarity and impact of core values and direction setting on service delivery
Everyone had accepted the council’s core values, but that was perhaps because they were commonsensical and there was nothing in them that anyone could contest. However there was scope for them to be revisited, made more specifically demanding and directed towards action in order to realize their potential. There were too many values, and these were neither meaningfully translated into ways of working nor explicitly linked to preferred outcomes or any performance management system. They had been launched with a fanfare some time before, and no investment had been put into their continued dissemination and implementation.
Everyone in the council had a mix of agendas to work to: various corporate policy priorities, service delivery priorities, inter-agency working and development initiatives. Greater clarity was needed throughout the council about what outcomes were being sought and how they could come together at every level. All managers and service heads felt the tension of multiple demands and needed an effective process for balancing these demands and setting personal and team targets.
The corporate policy priorities had a tremendously varied degree of ownership, due partly to the lack of clarity around what they actually meant, and also to a suspicion whether the political leadership and corporate managerial leadership were really committed to driving them through. They did not translate easily into a vision for a better city that employees could rally behind, and therefore the result was confusion and a growing cynicism, rather than commitment.
There was little evidence that people were rewarded or recognized for moving the corporate agenda on, and the lack of ongoing budget provision for these corporate initiatives also indicated a hesitancy when it came to putting money where the mouth was.
A visible and congruent leadership and management style
At all levels, but notably at middle and front line, there were requests for clearer, bolder and consistent leadership. This was seen as particularly being the challenge for political leaders and senior officers in managing the council’s myriad conflicting demands.
Clarity of vision and articulation of the council’s true direction and the way it was to be achieved were needed to minimize confusion and focus people’s minds and resources.
Clearer, bolder and consistent leadership needed to include:
- a consistent and congruent set of priorities;
- processes for managing conflicts of priority and pressure which inevitably occur within complex organizations;
- a demonstrable commitment and accountability for driving the priorities through;
- a set of values embodied throughout the leadership, and used as a reference point for decision making;
- minimization, at the very least, of cross-party destructive tensions.
Corporate leadership was most needed for tackling conflicts between front-line services and the centre. It was also needed for harmonizing corporate policy and the service/functional agenda, and for improving the way change was managed across the organization.
Good management of change was lacking. This was seen as particularly necessary with regards to the major modernizing agenda facing the council. Management needed to start to communicate these changes so that staff felt engaged in the co-creation of their futures, and so that the feeling of initiative overload, where change is endured rather than embraced, was reduced.
It was also noticeable that the roles of different management teams and groups were not always clear. The senior management team and the service heads needed to begin to take a more strategic role, at least part of the time.
Moving to a more consistent performance and enabling culture
There was wide recognition that the council was improving its ability to manage performance, but many wished to see greater consistency and general improvement. This meant a need to establish realistic targets for everyone across all their work, and to review progress regularly against these, ensuring that any changes to plan were discussed and incorporated.
The organization was already moving towards a performance management and competency based framework. Some areas were beginning to experiment with a development process that linked to service plans, team plans and individual plans. This was successfully helping people to clarify key outcomes and contributions from individuals and teams, and this approach promoted greater ownership of the service and the council’s agenda.
For the organization to embrace performance management more fully, the organization needed to begin to address a number of cultural issues that were hindering progress:
- the lack of direction and multiple priorities;
- the overwhelming feeling of organizational complexity;
- the uncertainty of what the city council actually stood for;
- the lack of understanding (in both senses of the word) between the constituent parts of the organization;
- the ‘political’ nature of many of the transactions and relationships;
- the tendency towards a blame culture where valuing, appreciating and recognizing the contribution of others is kept to a minimum;
- the ‘closedness’ of the culture (inability to look outside for new ideas);
- the lack of focus on developing people.
More effective ways of working
There were many ways to improve council working, from making meetings more productive and less time-consuming, through to mastering the complexities of matrix management and having effective information management systems. With the complexity of the council’s task, with demands coming from all directions at all levels, there needed to be a clear (or as clear as possible) way of working a matrix structure to cope with the specialist, cross-cutting and geographical dimensions of service delivery.
There was a real need to accelerate the business planning process, to ensure a performance management system was delivered in a consistent way across the organization and to reduce conflict at the myriad of boundaries within the organization.
Extending the council’s capacity for community and partnership working
Increasingly the role for all staff required greater community engagement and partnership working. Although this was demanding both on workload and skills it also offered greater learning, and interestingly for some was preferable to internal working.
Most managers when prompted could cite examples of good partnership working that had been developed over the previous few years. This was one of a number of areas that the organization could be justifiably proud of. The challenge was for people to have the confidence to communicate this to all the stakeholders and be able to applaud and celebrate success.
The competencies in this new area of effective partnership were real nuggets of success. These competencies needed to be transferred not only to other areas of partnership working but also to where different parts of the council could work more effectively with each other.