An overview of core thinking from the Public Service Transformation Academy and RedQuadrant

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The future of
commissioning
and public service
transformation
Public service
transformation
academy

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Introducing myself
www.linkedin.com/in/antlerboy
@antlerboy
Please connect!
Please note I’m independent of Government
and speaking on a personal basis.

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Purpose – goals
To make the world a better place, we help people to transform the way their
services, organisations, and leadership are experienced
We:
• help the public sector transform itself to be a beacon of excellence
• work on ourselves to change consultancy forever
• help people to save money and improve their business
by giving them the skills to work on the business for themselves
Big, hairy, audacious goals:
Consultancy how it should be done
Transform the public sector
• People able to make better choices about the
public services that help them to achieve their
goals in life
• Public service a cross-industry exemplar –
provide the benchmark (our public sector
clients are featured as Harvard Business Review
case studies for all sectors to learn from)
Transform consulting
• No more complicated than it needs to be
• Network consulting
• Authenticity, value-adding, humanistic,
non-manipulative
• Focused on positive experience of
services, organisations, and leadership
To change consulting
To change public
service delivery

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Most things out there are bullshit
• Most systems leadership is bullshit
• Most commissioning is bullshit
• Most transformation is bullshit
• Most performance frameworks…
• Most excellence models…
But not everything…

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Five principles for the future of commissioning and transformation
1. Citizen world: listen to and deal with demand – but don’t stop there! Your job is to do yourself out
of a job
2. Service world: focus less on how limited funds can provide services, and more on how the resources
you have and can influence and achieve real outcomes
3. Management world: think ‘freedom within frames’ and embrace the realities of complexity
4. Leadership world: take responsibility for all the outcomes – the actual experience of all the people
in your organisation and all the people in your community
5. Learning world: accept nothing less than real-world feedback!
I’ll explain these five principles – and the five worlds they come from

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RedQuadrant system transformation approach

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* WARNING *
•No learning in the room
•No outcomes in the room
We are in ‘workshop world’ here.
Fortunately, we have the wisdom of the people in the room.
And we know we don’t have the answers.
Until something is proven in the real world, you never really know.
If we take responsibility for learning about outcomes, we will get there

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CITIZEN WORLD
PURPOSE – NEED – DEMAND

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What is a service?
• A service co-creates value with and for the customer
• Our mission is to reduce the effort, time, cost, steps, process…
FROM customer need
TO positive outcome

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demand
control
needs

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SERVICE WORLD
Resources to outcomes, not money for service

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Whole system – partners and suppliers
'Commissioning is deciding how to use the total resource available in order to improve
citizens’ outcomes in the most efficient, effective and sustainable way'
Inputs
• Finance
• Capital
• Workforce
• Markets
• Citizens
• Communities
Outcomes
• Community and
place outcomes
• Citizen outcomes
and experience
Commissioning is
the most efficient,
effective and
sustainable route
Model from Richard Selwyn – download
‘Outcomes and Efficiency’ free at http://goo.gl/r12UeL

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Fundamental questions
1. What is the system (part of the system) we are investigating?
 Understand key issues in delivery today (what’s wrong – what might be causing that)
2. What’s the underlying purpose of the system?
3. What is the actual activity to be delivered to achieve the underlying purpose?
 What are the options for delivery of that activity?
 What organisation and support services would enable delivery of that activity?
 How could that activity best be governed and managed?
4. How do we get there?
5. What have we learned?

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MANAGEMENT WORLD:
THE REALITIES OF COMPLEXITY
Freedom within frames

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Four dimensions of complexity: freedom within frames
Responsibility for outcomes and responsibility for learning; not blame
Partners and
suppliers as
a system
The organisation
is a living thing
Wicked, messy
problems in the world
Human psychology
(how people really act)

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LEADERSHIP WORLD

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How can we take
responsibility
without taking blame
without disabling
ourselves?

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it isn’t
about
you
The quality of what
you get depends on
the judgements your
team make about
you and their
experience.
Therefore the quality
of what you get
depends on how
good you are at
sensing what’s in the
hearts and minds of
your team.

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You never understand
an organisation until
you start to try to
change it

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LEARNING AND CHANGE
Remember: no learning without planning

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Transformational learning
• Single loop: doing things better
• Double loop: thinking about the problem differently
• Tripe loop: changing our identity
From Argyris
Identity
Thinking
Actions
Results
Single loop learning
Acting – changing behaviour
Triple loop learning
Transforming – changing our perceptions
Double loop learning
Reframing – changing our thinking

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No learning without prediction
• Think massive, start very small.
• Start changes
 in service world – how you meet demand
 in citizen world – help people to help themselves
 in management world – create the freedom within limits that liberates workers to be the best
they can be
 And in leadership world – learn how you, as a leader, are shaping the culture
Take responsibility for all of that, however great or sh*t it is. Make your best prediction about how your
changes will land – their impact on people in the organisation and those receiving services.
And as you start to makes changes, and it turns out different from your prediction, think about why that
is. Then you’ll be working in learning world too.

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How to stop things turning out sh*t
• Accept you don’t have all the answers
• To get more power, give up control
• To deal with complexity: collaborate; enlist discretionary effort; be honest
• Listen out loud, ask good questions, co-design, start from strengths
• Hierarchy, accountability, limits, plan
I’ll explain a little in the panel session…

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What do we NOT talk about?
Power• The rules of the game
• The effort and learning it takes to stay dysfunctional
• The power of community
• The power of perspective
CAN we talk about those things?

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I welcome follow-up and conversation!
Benjamin P. Taylor
Chief Executive, Public Service Transformation Academy
& Managing Partner, RedQuadrant
+44 (0)7931317230
benjamin.taylor@publicservicetransformation.org
benjamin.taylor@redquadrant.com
www.twitter.com/antlerboy
www.linkedin.com/in/antlerboy
www.publicservicetransformation.org
www.redquadrant.com