Success

How will you know today, at the end of the day, that it was successful?

Mess and diversity

I have a theory that the reason why some organisations struggle with equal opportunities and diversity far more than others is down to their comfort with mess.

In my view, the World is a messy place, full of unique, awkward & quirky people making what appear to be random decisions. People being different (from each other, from themselves the previous day or from the ‘norm’) is what makes the world revolve and evolve.

This also means that the world will never be square, ordered or uniform – it will continue to be round, haphazard and diverse.

How would you describe your leadership – square or round?

What would others say?

Challenging assumptions

A city probation service was once reviewing the structure of their offices and concluded that many of the outlying offices should close and instead the clients could visit their main office in the centre. The probation officers raised objections, asserting that their clients preferred to visit offices in the satellite towns. The executive team put this to the test and asked the clients what they preferred. The clients said that they preferred the proposed new arrangement as they could plan shopping trips around such visits and indeed the public transport routes favoured a city centre location.

What assumptions are being made in your organisation?

How might you challenge these?

Managing priorities

I knew a manager once operated by what he called the “Vesuvius method of time management”. In his office he had a large round table on which were piled various notes, memos, articles and reports. His belief was that the important items would rise to the top.

Another ex colleague of mine said that his approach to time management was to do the things that he liked best, first.

How do you decide what you do first?

How do you get across to your staff what you want done first – especially when you are not there to tell them?

2500 years and counting...

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

(Sun Tzu - Chinese General and Author, b.500 BC)

Great quote - an earlier version of my stractegy/strutegy idea perhaps?!

A bonfire of targets?

It seems that, suddenly, it is becoming possible - perhaps even fashionable - to challenge the whole culture and edifice of target setting in the public services. I can only say 'hooray'! For far too long, the public services have been slaves to aiming at the 'shadows on the wall' rather than doing what they should and want to be doing which is achieving robust social outcomes for the people they serve.

An excellent article by John Seddon appeared in the Guardian 2 days ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/07/steve-bundred-public-service and it is well worth a read. The comments too are worth reading as well - especially one by Redshrink who makes a connection to the commercialisation and commodification of public services. (That is next battle ground in my opinion.)

STOP PRESS: Another great article today (15 July 2009): New Labour's great mistake is to think we are all automatons - by Jenni Russell. The party's robotic calculus ignored the fact that public services are about people's real, social and emotional needs...

STOP PRESS (2): And the debate continues...

I have also added below an article I wrote six years ago. I have done this to evidence that all these arguments about targets are not new. But (as with electoral reform: http://vote4change.bluestatedigital.com/blog/entry/thousands-supporting-vote-for-a-change/) its time might finally have come!

(Note the irony of the quote below from James Strachan - then Chair of the Audit Commission - the people that John Seddon is challenging in his article)

STOP PRESS (3): And the debate continues from the LGA with a report announced today - as described on the BBC website: Needless bureaucracy is costing councils in England £4.5bn a year - money that could be spent on vital local services, according to a report


STOP PRESS (4): And so it goes on with the results today of the investigation into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust: The independent inquiry claimed the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust had become driven by targets and cost-cutting.... Hospital patients were left "sobbing and humiliated" by uncaring staff, an investigation into one of the worst NHS scandals in history has found. Full BBC Story - click here. When is this going to stop...

21st Century Target Setting

Introduction

Many public service leaders and commentators are expressing increasing disquiet about the current approach to target setting for the public services.

David Batty writing in the Guardian (26/4/02) about the Victoria Climbié Enquiry entitled his piece ‘Performance targets compromise child protection’. Onora O’Neill speaking in the BBC Reith Lectures last year said ‘our revolution in accountability has not reduced attitudes of mistrust, but rather reinforced a culture of suspicion… we are galloping towards central planning by performance indicators reinforced by obsessions with blame and compensation’. A Telegraph headline of 19 December 2001 said ‘NHS patients were duped in waiting list fiddle’. Simon Caulkin in the Observer (5/8/01) declared that management ‘being tied to set goals is so often meaningless’ and can ‘lead to disaster’.

Dr Ian Bogle, retiring from five years as Chair of the BMA in June 2003 said 'I am absolutely appalled by the cheating going on and by the Government having put human beings in such a position that they feel that to preserve their jobs [they must do it]. The pressures are obscene and the Government should be ashamed of itself for the consequences.'[1]

And recently (and strikingly) James Strachan the new Chairman of the Audit Commission went on record to say to MPs: "The problem we have faced time and time again is the slavish devotion to targets, many of which have not been set very intelligently. It's a surefire way of not getting improvement in public services. People see targets set by government, monitored by them, and with responsibility for their validation. There is a real danger that people will not believe them," [2]

It seems therefore that people are becoming increasingly aware that the current performance management regime is not delivering the hoped for improvements in outcomes desired by the Government, the staff and managers who work in the public services and, indeed, the public themselves. This article is about another way – a way whereby the various levels of Government can still hold the public services to account for delivering results – as they most surely should – whilst tackling some of the difficulties with the current approach. As the voices for change become louder – it is vitally important that we do not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ and reject target setting in all its forms. What we need is an evolution of thinking & practice – although that is not to say that some of the new ideas necessary should not be radical in their own right.

Targets and performance management are now so pervasive and influence at a very deep level how we conceptualise achievement in the public services – it is difficult to remember – what was the problem that performance management was meant to be solution for? This article will begin with an overview of the arguments against target setting and performance management in its current form. Further into the article, the way forward to a 21st Century form of target setting is outlined.

It is hoped that this article will not only add to the clamour for a change in performance management practice but also offer some practical ideas for what is now required.

The key arguments

To summarise briefly the key arguments against target setting and performance management in its current form:

• Targets are rarely set with anything other than a nod toward a statistical analysis of trends in performance of the system or service in question and there is little awareness of natural and special causes of variation in performance day-to-day, month-to-month, year on year. This can lead to reacting to changes that are merely part of an ordinary variation and sometimes not reacting when one is called for. Also a lack of dynamic statistical analyses can generate unrealistic targets.
• Outcomes are difficult to measure – by their very nature – so instead performance indicators (PI’s) are defined and targets set accordingly. These PI’s then become the objects for achievement rather than the outcomes themselves.
• Partly because targets are usually imposed (rather than developed in collaboration with the service providers and users) and partly by their very nature, targets can unfortunately foster ignoble or perverse attempts to hit the targets by whatever means are required (as past news stories around hospital waiting lists would appear to illustrate).
• Target setting and performance management only works when the system that is (or is not) delivering to target performance is understandable and understood such that interventions can be made that will change performance in the right direction. Without such understanding – requirements to improve performance can degenerate into ineffective exhortations to work harder, faster or better etc.
• Target setting and performance management introduces a level of fear into work – a fear which can damage service delivery. Sometimes target setting is perceived as a form of bullying. When targets are not met – it is unfortunately too often the case that individuals are held culpable when in most cases it is the system itself, which has failed (in usually many places). Targets tend to foster ‘quick fixes’ rather than system (or ‘stay’) fixes.
• By focussing public servants and services upon targets and inspecting or appraising them against those targets – the targets become hugely important. When the targets do not reflect the local needs and wants of the public – target setting can distract people from giving the levels of service that they wish to give and the public want.
• Target setting and performance management can become a substitute for visionary and inspirational leadership. Management can too easily descend into ‘bean counting’ the PI’s and ‘double thinking’ leadership that pretends that all the targets really do matter – when in truth only a few key ones are of critical importance.
• Inspecting services against targets is too late, expensive and ineffective – it is in effect allowing services to deliver ineffective services rather than encouraging them to create systems for continuous improvement. Targets can foster ‘downstream’ measures of quality whereas it is much more effective to focus ‘upstream’ and assess where in the chain of actions things go right or wrong.
• Targets are by their very nature time focussed – often on a very short timescale. Most of the systems and issues wrestled with by the public services take years – if not decades – to come about. Improvement needs to work on that same timescale. In other words it’s a bit like having a speedometer that tells you what speed you were doing half an hour ago.
• The resources that go into setting targets and then responding to being held to account for the achievement of those targets are all resources that could be spent on delivering services and achieving outcomes. Balancing quite how many resources should go into setting and assessing against targets is a very hard task.
• Target setting and performance management often pitch one organisation against another, one individual against another when partnership and collaboration would be a much more effective strategy. Many local partnerships – endeavouring to make ‘joined up government’ work on the ground – find that the targets set by different parts of Whitehall make their task harder rather than easier.
• People – the public, the public service professionals, the politicians - know all these flaws above and as a consequence – because of the overarching importance attached to targets in their current form – become dissociated from their work and often lose their inherent ability to be passionate, creative and committed to their work and what they are trying to achieve.

A way forward

This article is not just be about what is wrong –set out below are some practical proposals about what needs to happen to deliver sustainable social results, continuous improvement in those results, value for money and accountability. These proposals have been assembled into a 20 point plan for change:

1. There must a more widespread use of statistical process control[3] and general statistical methods to really understand how public service systems operate. (At the very least – matrices of performance data with more than nine cells should be banned in favour of performance data being presented graphically.)
2. The aim in monitoring performance should be to understand and seek to control variation in performance – as far as is possible in the complex systems that contribute to social outcomes. It is vital to avoid responding to variations which trend analysis shows are merely ‘ordinary’ variation and to ensure there is a response to ‘special’ causes of variation.
3. When considering what may be causing the variations in social results, practices need to be boosted that affirm the need to search truly creatively and rigorously – without (moral, historical, political etc) assumptions. Coupled to this is must be stressed that aiming for ‘what works’ is not a utilitarian recipe for focussing only on ends and forgetting the means to get there – often the public remember the means far more than the ends!
4. There needs to be far more education for the practitioners, managers, politicians and media in understanding variation and system improvement.
5. Government and management at all levels need to involve practitioners, users and other key stakeholders far more, in the search for PI’s that come closer to assessing progress towards desired for outcomes
6. We need processes / events / conferences / meetings / written communication / website bulletin boards to achieve much greater understanding and commitment to the outcomes being sought
7. Key leaders need to assert every opportunity to emphasise that PI’s are indicators – nothing more nothing less!
8. The balance between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ target setting needs to shift more towards trusting and allowing the front line organisations – who are delivering the outcomes – to set their own targets. They must then be held to account for meeting their own targets and being committed to continuous improvement, contributing to outcomes and putting in place leadership and systems that deliver ever better results for their users and other stakeholders.
9. More research is needed to help each system to understand itself – informed by statistical understanding of variations in performance, the wit & experience of all those involved in providing the service and comparisons to other organisations. Under the title of evidence based practice – more is needed to find out just what are the actual mechanisms or interventions that actually deliver results. What are the differences in practice that really deliver different (and better) results?
10. When anyone – as a politician, manager or practitioner – intervenes in system, it is vital to understand what are the aims and evaluate the result against this. Knowing whether the result was achieved or not is also not enough – one has to understand why it was or was not achieved – reflective practice must be the order of the day. This is as much a proposal for government ministers as it is for doctors as it is for waste recycling managers as it is for crown court judges. Everyone needs to know (and have measures to validate self knowledge) – ‘is what I am doing working and indeed – am I doing it better than last year’?
11. It must never be forgotten that probably most of the systems that deliver social results are extraordinarily complex and it is rarely the case that one individual (the senior manager or director or middle manager) has all the knowledge required to make the best possible decision. The ‘manager’s right to manage’ should be interpreted as the manager’s right to ensure the system is well managed – by all those involved. In our increasingly complex world, participative management is not a ‘nice to do’ but a ‘need to do’. Whole system approaches need to be more widely used.
12. To repeat and emphasise one of Deming’s (see the acknowledgements below for a reference) fourteen points – drive out fear! In a workplace – fear can lead towards unforeseen and negative consequences.
13. Everyone knows that quick fixes do not work – just as it is widely known a rush DIY job will eventually (if not sooner than that) come round to haunt the DIYer. Leaders must do all that they can to encourage the use intelligence, resources and skills and so engender a culture of practice that is increasingly and robustly working towards stay fix approaches to improvement being the usual approach.
14. There needs to be more recognition that often positive social outcomes cannot be measured in only quantitative ways – a person, a community, a town or country might just feel or look different. At a subjective level – it might be recognised – but at an objective level it cannot be bottled or counted. Simply people saying – ‘its better round here now’ – might be the most profound result that could have been achieved. In other words our indicators of performance and achievement must be a balance of the qualitative and quantitative.
15. We need far more hands on inspirational leadership from every echelon of the public service – leadership that co-creates a vision of the results we need and the commitment to achieve these – working together across the divides between national and local government, different agencies, the statutory and voluntary sectors and (most importantly) between the public themselves and the public service practitioners and managers.
16. Often far too many resources are put into making small improvements in existing service delivery systems where what is required a radical overhaul and replacement – where quality and a profound commitment is built in from the start – rather than bolted on at the end. We need more courage to stop investing in ‘tweaking’ and inspecting existing organisations and more investing in designing new and imaginative forms of service delivery – co-designed with the public, underpinned by electronic means of service delivery and run on the energy of public service commitment.
17. While the argument about whether targets work or not will rage on well past this article, it is now well established that short term targets do not work very well at all. The society that we have now is the product of generations and historical trends – there are no short term methods for the sustainable reduction in gun crime (for example). Obviously Governments are driven to improve matters – and are held to account for delivering those improvements – but the promises made need to be visionary and improvements in crime, education, health, the environment etc – all take time. The media in particular needs to understand this.
18. Whatever efforts we put into system and service improvement, we must measure the benefits of those efforts. The resources consumed by preparing for and responding to inspections need to be measured. The time it takes to measure progress against targets needs to be measured. The amount of resources used to analyse the system and deliver stay fix improvements also needs to be audited. But above all – public service organisations need to have far more robust systems for assessing the costs of not investing in improvement – as these costs are often overlooked and skew the appraisal of whether it is worth investing in a new form of service delivery or system improvement.
19. Problems ensue when different parts of Whitehall impose targets that do not add up on the ground. As many frontline practitioners know – delivering genuinely joined up services on the ground is seriously hampered by the apparent lack of coordination at the most senior levels of Government. Efforts are being made (the Social Exclusion Unit stands proud in this respect as mentioned above) – but efforts need to be redoubled again and again.
20. Finally there needs to be ways to move beyond ‘bean counting’ and beyond the presumption that targets can whip the public services into shape. All dimensions of the public services need to pursuemeasurement that helps services to improve - demonstrably

• leadership that inspires such improvement
• an end to parochialism
• supporting the public services – with all the energy and commitment of those who work in them
• really, really listening to the public and acting on what their informed judgments are telling us about what they want improved and how to go about it

Conclusion

This piece has not been written as an academic exploration of the pros and cons of target setting and its associated performance management protocols, referenced to books and journals. It has been written in somewhat polemic terms to carry on and ignite more the debate about targets and their value to the public.

Old fashioned accountability around annual reports was never enough. Target setting of the kinds we are appear to be suffering from now are not working. We now need a third way – as outlined in the 20 point plan above.

Jon Harvey (30 June 2003)

Acknowledgements

Much of this analysis above is not new and can be traced to the work of W. Edwards Deming. Deming was one the key progenitors of the modern quality movement and remains hugely influential to this day. An internet search on his name will yield numerous websites dedicated to communicating his philosophy as set out in his is famous ’14 Points’ (see Out of the Crisis, 1986).

[1] (Full report http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,11032,987365,00.html) 29/6/03

[2] (Full report http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,11032,871947,00.html) 10/1/03

[3] See ‘SPC in the Office’ by Mal Owen & John Morgan. (June 2000) Greenfield Publishing; ISBN: 0952332841) for an accessible explanation of SPC and how to apply it to performance.

Change alchemy: Honouring the past

Change means a break with the past. Even though such change is necessary, it is a wise leader who recognises all the efforts that have gone on before. Adopting a ‘year zero’ approach is unlikely to help build consensus and motivation towards a new future.

Being able to show the links the past with the present and the future will help to smooth the way towards that future.

How do you honour the efforts and achievements of the past?

Who makes the decisions round here?

Managers make decisions – that is what they are paid to do. That is what they should do.

This is often known as the manager’s ‘right to manage’

Could it be that instead it is the manager’s right to ensure that the right decisions get made?

What are you doing to ensure that your staff make the best possible decisions?

(Or are you making all the decisions?)

Michael Jackson, passion, and box ticking

We will probably soon be observing an expression of public grief about the tragic death of Michael Jackson that could well match, or even excede, that of when Princess Diana died. Now doubt large quantities of creative energy & financial resources will now be expended on paying tribute to the talent and life of Michael Jackson. The news is reporting today that copies of his albums have sold out in shops across the World. Factory runs will have been rescheduled to produce 1000s of t-shirts, calendars and books, I suspect.

This is not meant to sound cynical. Along with millions of people I too am sad at the passing of his creative genius in both music and dance (as Germain Greer chose to highlight). And I appreciate the need to grasp at some of his magic through photographs, CD's and memorabilia.

But all this has got me pondering about passion.

How many organisations can hope to get even a smidgeon of the passion, loyalty and verve that Michael Jackson provoked in his lifetime and now in his death? How many chief executives appear on T-shirts, how many Annual Reports are sold out, how many poems are written about the company procedures? How many company songs are sung more like John Redwood singing the Welsh National Anthem than the people spontaneously singing Jackson's songs outside the hospital where he died?

Daft questions of course - but I am left wondering whether in the pursuit of the rational, the logical, and the detail something has been lost? Have organisations now become so organised... proceduralised, quantified and target driven... that passion has been left out of the equation? Where is the poetry, passion and verve in most organisations?

I suspect it is still there albeit buried under box-ticking protocols and well researched (but essentially dry and dessicated) business plans.

For me the mark of an exceptional leader is one who can balance the need for organisation with the need for passion.

Therein lies much success, I suspect.

Change alchemy: Safety

Not losing face is so important to us that we often even help our enemies to avoid it.

Any change carries with it an implicit threat that those who designed or practiced the past must be wrong and therefore lose face. Therefore it is vital to make it safe for people to change and give up the past.

In other words when people attempt to practice or think in the new ways there should be only praise and no punishment. Experiments may go wrong but the good intent must be honoured

Do the leaders in your organisation maintain face by changing or not changing?

How can you make it safe to change?

Change alchemy: Targeted communication

I have yet to visit an organisation which does not have a ‘communication problem’. If change is underway then these problems are magnified.

With regard to managing change, therefore, it is always a wise thing to do far more education, communication, involvement, engagement and consultation than you really think is necessary. Even then it probably won’t seem to be enough.

It helps to target your consultation, communication and education – different groups of people will have different needs and objectives. With shrewd planning, less can be more.

As a leader, how do you help people to be committed to a change, how can you make sure they understand what is happening, and how can you allow them to shape at least part of the future?

Change and grief

Usually grief is associated with someone dying or dealing with the end of a long term relationship. Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ book On death and dying (1969) is well known and her ideas have been extensively applied to work around managing change in organisations

When a change is proposed, the reaction of many people is not dissimilar from a grieving process. But what are people grieving for?

In my view – what people are missing is the future they thought they were going to have and the certainty that they had around their place in that future.

This suggests that managing change is very much an emotional process as well as everything else.

As a leader, how will you handle that emotion? What ‘rites of passage’ will be needed to help everyone ‘move on’?

Open Space

Open Space was developed by Harrison Owen. According to Harrison, the idea came to him after an ordinary conference he spent a year designing. He left thinking to himself (and the evaluations proved it) that the best bits of the event had been the break-times when the participants had networked and exchanged ideas with a wide range of people. He resolved to create a conference process that was, in essence, one long coffee break!

Just like a coffee break at an event – you get to talk about the most important things – things that you choose (rather than have chosen for you). You also get to move around and dip between various conversations. Unlike coffee breaks, in an Open Space event you get to know what everyone else is choosing to talk about so that you can join in, as you wish.

An Open Space conference begins with a clear overarching theme and with all the participants usually sitting in a large circle. The rules and principles of the event are explained to every one by skilled facilitators. (One rule, for example, is the Law of Mobility: if you enter a discussion, stay only as long as it is proving to be worthwhile to you. When it stops being worthwhile, move away. One of the key principles is ‘Whoever comes is the right people’ meaning that meetings of one, ten or fifty are equally valid and you work with whomever turns up.) The participants are then invited to suggest an issue that they feel passionate about. After a pause, people come forward, the agenda is built and the event comes alive.

Over the course of one, two or three days, meetings are held, decisions are made, information is recorded and exchanged (having computers and printing facilities on site is a very helpful) and all in all a great deal of work is achieved. Participants have often commented that sometimes months of work can be done in the space of a few hours using this approach.

Open Space is ideal when various interests of different groups are largely unknown and there is a great need to forge some connections between key stakeholders. Open Space allows themes and issues of common interest to emerge in a wholly bottom-up way. It may appear ‘too open’ for some - but it has been shown to be most useful & productive. This is mainly because Open Space is driven by what concerns people the most.

Further information:

http://www.openspaceworldmap.org/

http://www.openspaceworld.org/english/openspace.html

Open Space Technology – A User’s Guide (second edition) by Harrison Owen Published by Berret Kohler 1997

The vision thing - dreaming not smarting

What do you want to achieve? I find it useful to apply the ‘DREAM’ (rather than SMART) framework to my goals:

• Deliverable – how, when, who etc will bring this goal about
• Real – how is the world going to be different when this goal is realised – how will things look, sound, feel... Different?
• Ecological – how does this goal balance with other goals or parts of your life?
• Affirmative – make sure the goal is phrased in the positive rather than the negative
• Mine – whose goal? This has to be your goal – “what am I going to achieve”

Change alchemy: Inviting people to the future

• Leading change is seen by many as daunting mixture of alchemy, tenacity and luck. What are some of the critical ingredients to add to the crucible?
• Having a clear and communicable vision of how the world (organisation, context) will be different is essential.
• Describing what people will be doing more or less of, how systems might change, how decision making will change will help put shape to the future.
• Done well it will draw and invite people into this future.

• Are you managing a change at the moment?
• Do you have a future vision which is
• justifiable,
• positive,
• meaningful,
• attractive and
• relevant?

What do you fear?

• Are you a fearless leader?
• Are you more or less fearless that your colleagues?
• What do you fear?
• Is that getting in the way of you becoming an even greater leader?

The real you?

• When you are at work, doing what you do, managing people, leading people...
• How much of the time do feel like the real you...?
• 10%, 62%, all of the time?
• Do you feel like you are acting out a part that has been given you, or saying things that you would not say if you were the real you...?
• Would it be better to be more like you at work or not? 

The power of twitter

I am feeling empowered by the new media this morning - my tweeted question to Sir Liam Donaldson concerning H1N1 Flu was asked by Jon Snow on Channel 4 News last night!

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/swine+flu+pandemic+declared+/3206617

(about 1.55 in)

So twitter works!

Chairing skills

Prompted by the fact there are probably going to be lots of new Chairs of various local government (and other) committees appointed over the next few weeks, here is my checklist of what skills an effective chair needs to use - wisely and appropriately: 

• Listening – really listening to all that is being expressed by the people present, verbally and non verbally
• Designing – creating agendas that are focused around clear objectives and shaping the ‘process’ of the meeting so that these objectives are achieved elegantly
• Negotiating – earnestly looking for ways to make sustainable decisions and build consensus around those decisions
• Adapting – to the various people in the meeting and handling the diversity of different styles & preferences well so that all can make the contribution they wish, to achieving the objectives
• Allowing – making sure there is the ‘space’ for innovation, reflection, theory and action to be blended into producing the best decisions
• Arranging - ensuring the physical layout for the meeting is appropriate, comfortable, spacious and interactive
• Reviewing – regarding the meeting as process which should be critically examined on a very regular basis to ensure the meeting style, agenda, timing (etc.) are all fit for purpose, and having the confidence & courage to change where required

Carrying out a ‘confidence audit’

In the article below concerning the single measure of confidence for the police service, I suggested that carrying out a ‘confidence audit’ might a productive way forward for any police service intent upon improving how much confidence their local citizens have in them

This short posting proposes how such an audit might be conducted. The outline steps in carrying out such an audit could be follows:

1. Clarify the purpose and scope of the audit at a senior level – involving both the Executive Command Team and the Police Authority
2. Select the team of people to carry out the review (I would recommend a ‘diagonal slice’ of officers and staff from different parts of the service and from all the tiers from frontline to senior management)
3. Ensure that all team members have the necessary support and commitment to take full part in the Audit process
4. Assemble & analyse all the information currently available on how much confidence the local public has in the local service.
5. Carry out some scoping and cross validation with members and representatives of the public (especially including young people) to find out what kind of police service would give them confidence and what they think of the existing service
6. Determine what a ‘high confidence’ police service would be like – including its operational procedures, corporate culture, and organisational structure (using the information gathered above and the creative power of the group)
7. Agree what data needs to be gathered (and how) in order to assess the gap between the ‘high confidence’ specification and the current situation
8. Carry out the data gathering / research process, and analyse the data
9. From this analysis (and with reference back to the existing performance & public perception information) identify where the most significant gaps are.
10. Prepare a summary of the information and outline set of recommendations
11. Convene a big meeting of stakeholders – internal and external – including members and representatives of the public
12. Present the findings to this big meeting and allow full, rigorous and authentic debate about what should happen next
13. Draw together the findings from all this process and present to the Police Authority and Executive Team for review and action

This process is based upon a few key ideas:

• Data gathering is critical so that a ‘scientific’ approach to improving confidence can be used to challenge established practices
• Starting from where the public is at is critical – as it their perceptions which will be tested by the new measure
• Since delivering services which deliver public confidence is a whole organisation responsibility – the whole organisation will need to be involved
• As mentioned elsewhere on this blog – there is a need for ‘stractegy’ rather than a ‘strutegy’ to ensure robust improvements in confidence
• This process must be led from the top of the organisation and so sponsorship needs to begin and end there.
• Creativity is vital so that fresh approaches can be used to ‘reach’ the public
• Delivering public confidence will be as much about identifying what more the police service needs to do as it will be about identifying what less needs to be done – there will be both driving forces to harness and restraining forces to handle & reduce.
• A balance will need to be made between fostering lots of small creative ideas to deliver public confidence and shrewdly prioritising what are the few key things which need to be done at an organisation wide / strategic level.

UPDATE: Feedback from one chief constable on this approach who said:

• Needs to factor in national research in what contributes to confidence as there is plenty of information already available (e.g importance of keeping people informed of progress of cases, making frequent but localised communications
• Perhaps too much emphasis on what comes from a single large meeting to discuss findings
• I agree about the need to prioritise the number of initiatives taken forward, given police budgets likely to be cut by 10% over the next three years. If we are to do something additional, we must be convinced that it will be effective.

To which I replied:

• Yes, absolutely agree on the need to harness evidence based practice in all of this. I am a long time advocate of the need for more evaluation of policing practice – at all levels.
• I take your point about perhaps too much emphasis on the big meeting idea. I guess I tend to go out on a limb with these a little because a) I know they work so well in gaining wide ownership of & consequent action on the issues involved and b) there is a tendency to focus too much on written ‘strutegies’ – where the emphasis is on gloss rather than palpable action (a ‘stractegy’ as I call that). But, as I say, I do take on board what you say.
• And prioritisation will become critical as the cuts begin to bite. You might find this blog post of interest as my ‘one pager’ methodology to help people plan where to focus efforts...