Note from a network discussion: Beyond command and control
NOTES OF A BETTER WAY DISCUSSION ON 12 NOVEMBER 2019 WITH PROFESSOR JOHN SEDDON, FROM VANGUARD CONSULTING
John Seddon’s latest book Beyond Command and Control explains what is wrong in prevailing models of services to the public: a system of control with budget management at its heart. Those who are employed to provide help are constrained by unit cost controls, eligibility thresholds, specialisation of function, and activity targets. The consequence is that help is not provided ‘right first time’ and failure demand (a ‘revolving door’ for many users) is generated in huge quantities – comprising 90% or even more of all service activity. This, according to John Seddon, is the true story of why costs are rising in the public sector and elsewhere and why services are failing to improve. The book looks at examples from utilities, banks, insurance and financial institutions as well as services in other sectors working with people with complex needs.
Managers currently focus much of their time on staff performance but should instead focus on the system as it is this that prevents staff from doing a good job and indeed the job they generally want to do. Digitalisation of services often makes things worse and often drives change rather than supporting it – it should be the last thing to do, not the first. The system of control needs to change and this requires three things:
Knowledge of demand which can only be gained if leaders study for themselves what actually happens to real people in the system;
A rigorous focus on the work which produces value for the customer/beneficiary, and cutting out everything else;
Achievement of purpose in customer terms.
Change requires no plan – change is emergent, the scale and speed of the change cannot be known in advance. The leader’s job is to study and change the system of control, and when this is done well the results speak for themselves. Workforce motivation and productivity increase when the workforce is given responsibility and flexibility, the services improve, and costs fall.
In discussion the following points were made:
1. Command and control exacerbates and creates inequality
Command and control systems embed and reinforce inequality. Prescription and standardised forms of service delivery impact most negatively on those who are socially excluded or who have the most complex needs, excluding large numbers of people, and maintaining them at the margins of society. First, the un-user friendly nature of many services makes it harder for them to access them and, second, when they do their needs are most likely to remain unmet, universal credit being one example. This may help to explain why efforts to tackle service inequality which focus on a presentational shift in staff behaviour and advertising to make themselves more welcoming to the so-called ‘hard to reach’ have often achieved much less than hoped for: the systems of control themselves need changing.
2. Funders, commissioners and regulators make things worse
Funders and commissioners and regulators reinforce the problem when they focus on top-down measures and compliance with standard specifications. This accounts for the striking examples of institutions failing their users which have nonetheless passed inspections with flying colours. Characteristically, when services are failing, command and control practices by funders and regulators increases, making the problem worse.
Measures have value but should always be based on what users of services genuinely want from that service. The best tactic is to ask how we would know whether we are doing a good job and then measure that.
3. Marketisation of public services is part of the problem
Marketisation of public services produces a focus on targets, unit costs and outputs, often the wrong ones from the service user viewpoint. This makes it harder to achieve right-first-time services (let alone undertake preventative work). But this model is showing increasing signs of strain in public service delivery, with well-known failures, and we can push back on this collectively and at operational level by collecting evidence about what is genuinely works best for users of services and about the inefficiency of excess costs caused by failure demand.
Marketisation has also produced a tendency towards larger and larger service contracts, in the misguided belief that this can achieve economies of scale. But this does not reduce cost and pushes aside locally responsive services, which are more likely to address need effectively, as was documented in an earlier Vanguard/Locality publication: Saving Money by Doing the Right Thing: Why ‘local by default’ must replace ‘diseconomies of scale’.
4. Command and control can lead to seeing people as ‘other’and seeking to impose norms
Command and control models can reinforce the tendency for service delivery organisations to see people in difficult circumstances as ‘other’, to focus only on their problems and deficits. Because they push toward standardisation, the operating model can seek to impose ‘norms’ on people who are genuinely different, rather than build in flexibility to appreciate and respond to these differences.
5. Charities are being pushed away from their mission by command and control
Many organisations in the charity sector have themselves adopted command and control models, and this produces huge tensions between their operations which are constrained by numerical targets and cost constraints, and their underlying values and mission, which at best is informed by user experience and expertise
6. Contracts can be challenged – be brave
Many charities have become complicit in a funding system which insists on compliance with command and control. If they want to work with the State this is often seen as unavoidable, though it is possible to challenge it, as one of the participants had successfully done, mid contract, by showing how the measures were not working for their clients.
7. Change to the commissioning model is starting to happen
There are some tentative signs of change in commissioning. The Welsh Assembly has adopted a policy for working with people whose lives have come off the rails: starting with understanding what matters to them. In Gywnedd this is leading to changes in commissioning practice. An instance is given in John Seddon’s book:
Julie, head of adult services in a county council, describes the change as moving from asking “What’s the matter with you?” to “What matters to you?” Asking the former leads the service down the path of prescribing a set of predetermined service-driven solutions to a problem. The latter leads to a conversation about what a good life looks like to an individual citizen. That conversation may take two hours, two weeks or even two years to answer fully, but the important thing is to get a complete picture of the citizen and his or her requirements in their own context.
We need to build confidence that we can change commissioning for the better – shifting practice away from low cost procurement into commissioning informed by good knowledge and good local relationships, where all parties can be more honest with each other, especially when things are not working as well as hoped for.
For those in commissioning roles at mid-ranking levels it can be very difficult to challenge orthodox practice. In the NHS for example a continuing stream of standardised top-down targets and regulation makes it very hard to take account of different local circumstances.
One tactic would be to encourage curiosity among those in senior commissioning and strategy roles, so that they take time to study properly and see for themselves what is really going on. We discussed one example where this is working well, partly because of good relationships between commissioners and contractors, and partly because the commissioners had good knowledge themselves of users and the services. It can be more difficult to influence procurement where the account manager and procurer are different.
8. Ask the question ‘Why?’
These practices are so widespread that they can seem unchallengeable and overwhelming but one technique used by one of the participants in her own organisation is to ask the question, ‘Why?’ This encourages reflectiveness about what the purpose of different actions is intended to be, which then allows you to judge whether this is what was intended and whether the measures to deliver this purpose are working.
9. Seek 'better practice’ not best
We should avoid talking about ‘best practice’, and instead talk more about ‘better practice’ – and remember that this always begins with studying and acquiring knowledge in your own area – simply lifting practice from elsewhere may result in just another standardised delivery process.
10. Community development principles provide a model for listening to users about what works
We should also remember well-established community development principles, such as those advocated by Robert Chambers in the context of international rural development (putting the last first, finding out what people in poor communities themselves suggest and can do, rather than imposing solutions invented and controlled by privileged professionals coming in from outside).
11. A ‘whole systems’ approach is needed for complex issues, requiring collaborative leadership
Single organisations on their own can rarely develop services capable of tackling complex problems, and what is needed in order to develop meaningful responses is an alliance of agencies prepared to work together, and study together, looking at the system as a whole that delivers, for example, health, or homelessness.
12. Shifting the narrative
It is necessary to shift the narrative because the dominance of this model is a major barrier to change. It should be possible to build a direct, powerful story that explains what failure demand is and why it is so damaging, how we could run things differently and the benefits that would be produced. But it is difficult to do so. Most journalists and most of the media have accepted the command and control narrative as an article of faith. When there are national scandals about public service failure the underlying reasons are rarely discussed, and it is always tempting to ascribe blame to individuals rather than to system failure.
Moreover, the impetus to run things differently rarely comes from rational discussion, and more often from direct personal encounters with what is really happening, which profoundly shake people’s assumptions, and produce the energy needed to make change.
It would be useful to tell the stories of how leaders have tried to move beyond command and control, the obstacles they have faced, and the tactics they have used to overcome them.
It would also be powerful to tell the story ‘the other way round’ ie not through the eyes of managers but through the lived experience of service users.
13. Influencing the system
The Better Way network has some channels to influence practice at national government level, across the political spectrum, and we should make use of them, starting with the Call to Action for a Better Way launch at the end of November 2019. At the least we should be encouraging Whitehall to stop doing things which make the system of command and control even worse.
In his previous book The Whitehall Effect John Seddon documented the public service failures of government, and pointed to remedies, but it has proved extremely difficult to bring about real change at this level. Having said that, there have been times when profound change has been achieved across government, and the current reliance on command and control thinking need not be permanent.
14. Change starts with us
For some of those involved in the discussion, their focus was on what they can do directly in their organisation to change the system. For others, there was interest in how to counteract the dominant narrative and a belief that now might be a turning point. We ended by talking about the final Better Way principle:
‘Changing ourselves is better than demanding change from others. The best starting point is what we ourselves can do, putting the common good first and our vested interests last. The more we achieve, the more others will follow.’
We can seek to influence people within our reach, including those ‘just above us’: senior managers, funders, and so on, as well as colleagues within our organisations and networks. In so doing we can use human stories, translate the messages in ways that can be quickly understood, and encourage people to study for themselves.