How to reform public services by liberating local teams to do the right thing

A lot of people, including the national political parties, are talking about public service reform. 

But many of the solutions they propose just won’t work. Forcing through efficiency measures, setting targets, implementing digital solutions, ‘engaging with’ the private or charity sectors. All this has all been tried for years now. And services have become even more dysfunctional, not less.

As we discovered in this session on 2nd May 2024, with systems change expert John Mortimer, better solutions are available. In several places, councils have had a go at operating very differently. They set up strengths-based locality working, with multi-agency teams, able to operate close to people in their community, with a simple instruction to discover what individual people’s circumstances actually were, and then to take action, and do the right thing, with the goal wherever possible of helping people to help themselves.

In every case, costs reduced, demand fell, and value was multiplied. 

So, we have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done, and the good news is that it doesn’t take significant resources to do it. But, as the real-life examples shared in the webinar demonstrated, it does require an alternative ‘local by default’ approach and courageous public sector leaders who are willing to take a deep fresh look at what is really going on, and establish a different operating method for their teams.

You can view a recording of the webinar by clicking on the photo below:

The presentation drew on material which first appeared in the 2014 Locality/Vanguard report:

Here is a full set of slides to accompany the webinar - the slides set out the evidence, as well as the practice and policy implications:

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John Mortimer is a Systems Thinker at Impro Consulting. He is an expert in public sector redesign, reducing failure demand, enabling those at the front-line to work together, in service of what most matters to people. He can be contacted at: john.mortimer@improconsult.co.uk