The strongest cries from many organisations, and very commonly those in the public and third sectors is that:
“more must be done”
and
“the more can only be done with additional funding”.
The Chancellor on 11th June promised substantial additional resources across a range of services and reduced or limited resources elsewhere. Either position generates challenges in service delivery against the additional resource or the new limits.
The common response to funding constraints is to lose people (often by simply not replacing leavers) or to limit services while history shows that additional funding very often goes to rewarding better the people already in the subject organisation and to recruiting more people. Now, none of that is necessarily wrong, inappropriate or misguided, however it should not (must not) be the first response, but why not?
Money, people and facilities are the ‘what’ factors of production but:
we deploy them through structures, processes, information systems and schedules;
we develop the skills and capabilities of people through education and training;
we optimise the contribution of those individuals and maximise the efficiency of the organisation as a whole through management and leadership.
These are the ‘how’ factors of production.
Before we add resources of any sort we need to evaluate the performance of the organisation (including, or perhaps especially, its leadership and management), its effectiveness in fulfilling its purpose.
Purpose is the ‘why’ factor of production.
We need to recognise that performance results from the interactions of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ factors of production and consider to what extent the various ways in which they are deployed and utilised enable or inhibit performance.
When we have identified and resolved barriers and limitations within the existing arrangements and dissolved them (or demonstrated that they cannot be solved within existing limitations), we can legitimately make a defensible case for additional resources. Those additional resources can then be tailored and deployed most effectively.
To achieve this, the purpose and identity of the organisation, the reason it exists, must be clear (to all parties). Clarity of purpose enables meaningful evaluation of effectiveness (the outcomes and extent to which that purpose is fulfilled) and thereby defines the ways in which efficiency (the yield on the use of all forms of resource) can be measured.
In an economy as mature as that of the UK with 200 year old utilities, mature public services, long-term under investment in maintenance and common deferral of renewals, it is unsurprising that the focus is often on fire-fighting and short-term fixes. These approaches however will not solve the problems but further entrench and embed them because they continue to draw attention away from the chronic dysfunction that is exacerbated by every further change or evolution of technology.
What is needed, urgently, before any further resources are deployed is that:
1: Purpose is clarified for all publicly funded organisations;
2: The facilities, people and capabilities of the organisations are focused on fulfilling that purpose;
3: Effort not directed to the purpose is identified and redirected appropriately (moved or stopped);
4: Those factors that inhibit performance are recognised and resolved, including those activities of management which neither deliver services nor enable their delivery;
5: Transparent performance reporting of the effectiveness of the organisation in fulfilling its purpose is in place.
Any organisation must, over time, generate more revenue than it does cost in order to remain financially viable – and that includes a government. If that is to be achieved there does need to be a revolution in the means and methods of the delivery of public services. That revolution cannot be delivered within an unchanged organisational paradigm.
Einstein is seemingly misquoted as saying:
“The Definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”
But whether he said it or not is unimportant, the sentiment is! Change is needed, the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ must be addressed; money is not the only resource!