Gary Bandy's presentation to the CIPFA Audit Conference 2013 considered performance challenges from the point of view of adaptive problems, ones that need to be addressed through leadership and collaboration rather than scientific management.

1. Recognising the
Performance Challenges
Gary Bandy
22 May 2013

2. 3 years as finance director

4. Since 2005 ...

5. some health work ...

6. more recently, policing ...

7. some teaching ...

8. and I wrote a book.

9. I am not going to talk
about graphs of doom

10. “If keeping someone’s attention in
a lecture was a business,it would
have an 80% failure rate.”
—Dr.John Medina,Brain Rules

11. Adaptive problems

12. “The rational approach to
managing organizations always
competes with, and can be
dominated by, continually
changing, grounded, ad hoc,
trial-and-error approaches—that
is, by muddling through.”
—Jones and Pendlebury (2010: p28)

13. “Today’s problems come from
yesterday’s‘solutions’.”
—Peter Senge,The Fifth Discipline
“The easy way out usually leads
back in.”
“Dividing an elephant in half does
not produce two small elephants.”

14. Technical problems

15. Critical problems

16. “Some problems are so
complex that you have to be
highly intelligent and well-
informed just to be
undecided about them.”
—Laurence J.Peter
Adaptive problems

17. Tightening our
belts is not
going to be
enough

19. Is it a technical
or adaptive
problem?

21. “Your goal shouldn’t
be to buy players.
Your goal should be
to buy wins.In order
to buy wins you
need to buy runs.”

22. Competition challenges

23. Only one product is
the cheapest.The rest
compete on design.

24. Markets rely on failure

25. Public services can’t
tolerate failure

26. The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

27. “You can’t treat electricity
like oranges. It’s the lifeblood
of society.”

28. “A free market is goddam
expensive to customers.”

29. Public value challenges

30. Strategic Triangle
public value aims
operational
capacity
authorising
environment public
manager
—Moore, Creating Public Value (1995)

31. operational capacity ≠ organisational capacity
organisational
operational

32. operational capacity ≠ organisational capacity
operational
organisational

34. “Financial performance is
understood as the means to
an end rather than an end in
itself.”
—Moore, 2003

35. Public value scorecard
Measures of creating
public value
Org vision & mission
Strategic goals
Outputs that create
outcomes
Org outputs
Productivity
Efficiency
Financial integrity
Staff morale & capacity
Org learning &
innovation
Funder relations
Volunteer relations
Relations with govt &
regulators
Reputation
Credibility
Measures of expanding
support & authorisation
Measures of building
operational capacity

36. “When a measure becomes
a target, it ceases to be
a good measure.”
as re-stated by Marilyn Strathern
Goodhart’s Law

37. Accountability
challenges

38. Accountability Triangle
manager/
agent
auditor
owner/principal

39. —Evans, 1999
“Governments try to avoid accountability
to the maximum extent, that is, they try to
avoid public exposure of their blunders
and misdeeds and rewards to friends,
because such exposure may erode public
support, or at least public acquiescence,
of their holding office.”

40. People want more transparency
from their governments

41. Participatory Budgeting

42. Armchair auditors

43. “Information, while the
essential ingredient of account-
ability, alone does not ensure
accountability.”
—Funnell, 2003

44. What might this mean for auditors?

45. You’ve got to produce
audits from the money
you’ve got

46. You want to
adapt and
survive
© Natural History Museum

47. What can be done?

48. “problem-driven,
iterative adaptation”

49. Auditees changing to
meet their challenges will
change what you do

50. Objective? Extinguish
fires or save lives

51. These save lives!

52. From commissioning
a street cleaning service
to commissioning clean streets

53. Community Budgets:
complex families in Little Hulton
£0
£40,000
£80,000
£120,000
£160,000
Now Future?
Welfare Benefits
Planned
Reactive

54. So, what is the challenge?

55. Contact me
gary.bandy@mac.com
07871 389500
www.garybandy.co.uk
@garybandyuk