Chris Elliott, Head of Transformation at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and High Peak Borough Council shows how to make the most of a joint chief executive, how to bring services together to save costs and how to best spread best practice.
- Both excellent councils, semi-rural market town environment. Similar population, adjacent boundaries.
- But different counties and government regions!
- It ‘feels’ different. Everyone has to work differently. Greater emphasis on people. Challenging every activity.
- Double the number of members!
- Was considered a takeover at one stage but no longer
- Cultural differences
- Flexibility is key
- More secure by the day
- The role of management – the tiers of management – what should the be doing? Directors, Heads of Service, Service Managers. Strategic, transformational, operational
- Enablers – IT, procurement, change. Also legal, HR and comms.
- Methodology, toolsets and quick wins
- Resource strategy alignment
- Got external consultants to produce high level business case
- Programme began quickly (be quick and be bold!)
- Potential projects mapped in terms of difficulty and transformative impact
- Member led initiative – concordat – 2 pager – and governance. Need for scrutiny and reality check
- Sense of urgency driven by budget issues. Message to staff – support this or there may have to be compulsory redundancies.
- Importance of engaging stakeholders
- Situation now: joint CEO and Snr m’ment team, joint ICT, procurement and transformation teams, joint property services, joint environmental health team, joint grounds maintenance service.
- Measures: VFM, customer service, public recognition and satisfaction, improved quality of life for residents
- Observations:
- exception processes everywhere
- Measuring the wrong things
- Make waste visible
- Help people to let go
- ICT is a barrier – or is it? – Now at 35% shared IT systems. 80% by next year
- Management competency
- Use lean leanly
- Procurement = 50% of budgets
- Simple is better
- Service heads have to own transformation process
- Don’t create IT wish list
- Pain is inevitable
- Two councils = easy benchmarking
- Don’t forget the supply chain
- People first
- Think process not tech
- Be ruthless with waste
- Make status quo unacceptable
- Kotter – 8 reasons transformation projects fail
- Grow your own, be prepared to learn
- It’s easy to complicate things
- Know when to stop
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Thanks for the live blogging today Dave, excellent job
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Thanks Russell – never sure how useful these context-free bullets are. But this is an interesting agenda and it’s good to spread the word.
A very timely agenda, and I’m sure many people find the bullets useful in lieu of attending the event