Speak Truth to Power

The only thing we need fear is fear itself? It’s a statement that chimes well with one used in counselling for bouts of anxiety, “feel the fear and do it anyway”.

What is it that makes people fear their boss, their employer, the ‘organisation’ and what impact does this have on innovation, creativity and change?

French and Raven identify five types of power that may start to build a picture of what we are up against. Let us take the five elements of power one by one:

• Reward power is the power to give people what they want and ask them to do things for you in exchange. An employer or senior may use this to offer a pay rise or promotion in return for ‘good performance’.
• Legitimate power is the power coming from a higher power source often with coercive (e.g. sack, dismissal, investigation) power
• Referent power is what ‘leaders’ of groups can have. This is the power from another person liking you or wanting to be like you.
• Expert power is the power of knowledge and skills that someone else requires.
• Coercive power is the power to force someone to do something against their will. This can also include the withholding of rewards or expertise or the threats of social exclusion.

Knowledge of these types of power may understandably contribute to the feelings of fear each level of the organisation has of ‘stepping out of line’. Maybe it also contributes to a collective failure to really speak truth to power – we know where things are going wrong, we want to try something different yet we fear ultimately making the change or taking the initiative. Local Government is no different and if anything in a large organisation these elements of power can be far more pronounced. It may also be a reason why as a model large organisations can be particularly ill suited to change, innovation and creativity.

A tutor at the Open University who introduced me to French and Raven’s model outlined how in his workplace his acquisition of expert power, which his employer required, gave him a useful tool to challenge other forms of power in which he believed he was weaker.

Maybe collectively we can suggest ways we can address issues of power to bring about changes we want to see. How ready are we to speak truth to power?

The Rise and Rise of the Private Sector…

At the cost of sounding unnecessarily incendiary the talent appears to be in the private consulting sector or at least that is the impression given – you want to improve your services and reduce costs as a local authority so you ask the private sector to come in and advise. You don’t ask another public body; arguably the skills are not there.

The private sector have gained considerable knowledge and expertise of public service work over many years and are well placed at a time like now to capitalise on the potential contracts that will flow (see article). Deborah Orr’s reflections on public debt and how the opportunity to review public services is also worth considering. Whilst people may fear the cuts it may help expose inefficiencies that may rightly need addressing and maybe part of the reason why people have voted in a way that made this coalition government a reality.

The private consulting companies are coming in to ask the fundamental questions that the public sector should have been asking itself long before any financial collapse. Is it not a key sign of the poor culture of public services such as those delivered via local government that apparently no such fundamental root and branch analysis has ever taken place or taken place on a consistent basis? And this maybe goes to the heart of the problem – could many parts of the public sector be depicted as a sick patient protected over years and years, imagining itself into a state of ‘improvement’ through audits and reviews largely of its own making. Is this crisis already exposing with the assistance of private consultants the excessive ‘fat’ of public agencies? Is this not in itself shameful?

If as I suspect many (if not publicly but secretly) are grateful for this opportunity to do some clearing out maybe it’s not the cuts themselves that are the concern but how things will end up looking. Is it as some or many suspect that the private sector will benefit greatly from what ends up happening or will social enterprises, mutuals and smaller localised initiatives have a fair share of the cake. Experience from the externalising of leisure centres that started to take place in the 1990s suggests that eventually the market consolidates into a dozen or less key players who swallow up smaller rivals. Will social or local enterprises really emerge to challenge the bigger private (consulting) firms? Recently Tridos bank announced that a £3 million social investment fund created to make equity investments in social enterprises was unable to fund enough organisations which met the qualifying criteria. It made only one investment in two years.

Have years and years of being looked after by the state in jobs that paid relatively well and which were not so demanding taken the edge off whole swathes of public sector staff. I was recently talking with someone in another authority about the opportunities to form an enterprise and deliver their service through this route but got the distinct impression that whilst this sounded exactly what they would have liked to do it was the risk, the lack of know how and lack of support that would ensure that they would stick around in the public sector for as long as possible despite the unhappiness they felt for how mediocre things were. They were going to stick around maybe in the hope that some form of miracle would happen or at worst they would at least be able to claim the relatively good salary and terms/conditions in exchange for an unsatisfying job. How many more public servants, particularly in local government are like this?

It appears that this time the crisis won’t allow any form of status quo to remain. And whilst the coalition may talk about localism and the emergence of mutuals and social enterprises I think they and others maybe disappointed in the short term. It is very likely as the references above suggest that the real winners at this stage will be the private companies and that maybe at some later stage as the market matures we may see the emergence of new forms of more democratic and equitable enterprises.

In the short term the future of local authorities is likely to be in the hands of a small elite of officers/members with more and more services shared, externalised or just stopped. The private sector will definitely benefit, its methodologies are what we are all going to be using far more now than before and it is likely that as the coalition envisages the public sector will contract and a reinvigorated private sector will emerge. On one level this maybe no bad thing if it disrupts inefficiencies in the current system. But what we all need to be wary of is that it does not itself become a new oppressive system.

The cherry and the cake

Recently colleagues have been discussing approaches around behaviour change. It is certainly an area of great interest across the public sector and much has been made of its efficacy? Recently at a presentation on ‘nudge nudge think think’ (see www.civicbehaviour.org.uk/policy_briefings/ ) the case was again made for the efficacy of such an approach packaged as ‘robust’ and ‘scientific’:

• door to door canvassing led to 10% increase in kerbside recycling
• a 6% increase in household food recycling as a result of residents getting ‘smiley face’ feedback on how their street was performing

Whilst the headline findings appear to show changes there are questions that remain:

• is it not the case that when people are given attention, at least for a short period, they largely respond favourably – what’s scientific about that?
• how long can you keep behaviour change interventions going before they lose their edge?
• if these campaigns do not deal with the substantive issues, are we wasting effort on what looks good without addressing what really matters?
• is it the case in many communities that they feel that no one in power has really done anything for them (debt, unemployment, drugs) and so why should they do anything in return, hence resistance to any forms of behaviour change (the recycling bin at the back of my flats is one image of a campaign that has failed to ignite).

My observations of living in a vulnerable community is one of worklessness, drug abuse, debt, family breakdown, long term unemployment, lack of sufficient education and skills. In this environment behaviour change approaches may only ever be nice additions which fail to address the more substantive issues. A report, ‘The End of Regeneration? Improving what matters on small housing estates’ from the Young Foundation makes the case for a more in depth and sustained approach with examples:

• Harlem Community Zone adopts the ethos ‘whatever it takes’ and runs community centres, parenting classes and three schools with a strong focus on literacy and numeracy skills
• The Place2Be is a children’s counselling service for children who have difficult home lives such as parents with drug or alcohol addiction or parents separating
• Peer to Peer motivators which train volunteers aged 19-25 to work with NEETs to help them overcome barriers preventing them from pursuing education, training and employment
• Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme that set up a local football team that involved teenagers on an estate who had been identified as at risk of offending. The outcome of a six month programme was that young people on the estate were comfortable travelling off the estate to train which helped to break the ‘estate mentality’
• Think Family is an approach to co-ordinating support from children’s, young people’s and adults and family services for the families who are most in need.
• Framework Housing Association provides tenants with support services to help them sustain their tenancy – these range from help with basic life skills such as setting up a new home, budgeting and accessing local services to help with personal problems such as drug and alcohol addiction
• Growing Roots, Strengthening communities was a five year initiative from Canada that gave grants to resident led groups that undertook projects such as improving community gardening, offering parenting classes and developing neighbourhood associations. Investment was made in leadership development for residents so that they would have the skills to continue with the initiatives once the funding dried up

Maybe our resources and time can be better spent on addressing the substantive issues contained in the proverbial ‘cake’ rather than worry too much about the cherry?

Something most definitely needs to be done, we can’t continue to have a situation where ‘problem’ tenants are moved onto estates and then local residents have to deal with the fall out and make a case for their removal because public agencies currently feel unable to manage this.

‘Yes, but…’ vs ‘Yes, and…’

I think we may hear a lot of ‘Yes, but…’ in forthcoming days and months. Typically the conversation about a new, innovative or different idea that may improve a service is ‘Yes, BUT…’ and the ‘but’ then leads into one or many reasons why the idea cannot happen which leads to no change.

Yes, but the culture of the two authorities are not the same so we cannot really explore shared services
Yes, but the regulation means we cannot do that
Yes, but the contract we signed means we cannot do that
Yes, but they are in the in-house supplier we agreed to work with
Yes, but we have to use the so and so recruitment portal because that is what we agreed
Yes, but they have a strong lobby and now is not the time to rock the boat
Yes, but we are already too far down the process of re-tendering to do a re-think on the service as a whole
Yes, but they do not have the necessary skills and knowledge
Yes, but only qualified people can do that job
Yes, but the risk however small has to be taken into account and for that reason it will be difficult to do…

then there is the ‘Yes, and’ approach

yes, and what about looking at best practice in shared services
yes, there is regulation and we can see how we can get the service we want and meet regulatory requirements
yes, and…

Will the forthcoming weeks and months and years become a battle of ‘Yes but’ vs…‘Yes, and…’ – what do others think?

The State vs the Citizens

Increasingly I have become fascinated by the exercise of power by public bodies. At a recent talk on commissioning and personalisation a member of the audience suggested that as long as the local authority is by far and away the biggest purchaser of care related services it will make it very hard for personal budget holders and self funders to go direct to the ‘market’ as the ‘market’ will remain underdeveloped. For all the emphasis on user choice and citizenship models it appears that for now and maybe for a long time to come it will be the professional gift model that prevails.

The case seemed to be that public bodies such local authorities had become the ‘Tesco’s’ of each local area either delivering services themselves or purchasing services from a few larger suppliers at the expense of developing a real market place.  For prospective purchasers of services it can mean a very small or non existent market to choose from. As one person commented, “people have the money but bugger all to buy”.

At another recent talk led by social services staff there was much talk of moving from a ‘professional gift’ model to a ‘people first/ citizenship’ model. I expect social services departments up and down the country are giving these talks. What if what they are presenting is all show and no substance? What if they have no intention to substantially change how things are done, citing for example issues of safeguarding as a major barrier? If choice for users is so limited, what do we do? One local authority officer, from Hampshire County Council, was keen to stress the scope for personal assistants and micro-providers to emerge and that he was focusing energies on this type of ‘business development’. An audience member seemed to believe that this was the exception as opposed to the rule.

The case for user choice and personalisation seems to be a strong one. There appear to be some very good case studies to back moves in this direction. It is said that there is no going back to the older models of institutionalised or top down care, but how far have we to travel to realise the new vision?