'Total Place pioneers' start with people not money

Thursday, February 04, 2010

As public services face the challenge of 'better for less' it seems like Total Place is the only show in town. But as the programme's 13 pilots plough on, Suffolk is ahead of the game, reveals Lynne Haig

With financial pressure continuing to build on the public sector following the recession, organisations must find new ways of improving outcomes with fewer resources – and, rightly, the potential of partnership working is being explored in more depth now.

The challenge for the Total Place pilots is not only to work with partners to identify efficiencies within particular themes, but to sustain and scale those changes across public services so that they become "how we do business around here". This requires new relationships between partners locally and a new partnership relationship with Whitehall. Fundamentally, it means rethinking leadership of public service. This leadership challenge is being met in Suffolk, a forerunner to the Total Place programme.

The public management model of targeting, performance management and command and control has, without doubt, taken us a long way. However, we've reached a point of diminishing returns. Much public sector resource is spent on the most intractable social problems and it is in these areas that we seem to make the least sustained progress. Current methods of addressing these problems with national and local targets and a stream of policy initiatives and ring-fenced budgets are likely to prove unsustainable in harsher economic times. Instead, a common purpose across the whole system of public service is needed and, with it, a shift from metric management to whole-system leadership.

The Lives We Lead, a pioneering initiative in Suffolk and forerunner to the Total Place programme, took this whole-system view and focused on developing the conditions to sustain a new kind of leadership based on shared purpose, collaboration and trust.

Each Total Place pilot has approached the challenge in its own way and the success of each remains to be seen. However, the Suffolk initiative differed from the Total Place pilots in a significant way. Rather than start from the position of "show us the money" – the mapping of financial resources flowing into and through public sector agencies in the place – Suffolk started with people, citizens and colleagues, and focused on developing the relationships to sustain change.

Revisiting Suffolk 10 months on from the initial intervention, it appears that a culture shift has been sustained, has gathered momentum and tangible service improvements are being realised.

The Lives We Lead initiative had at its core a leadership collaborative of 22 public, private and voluntary sector leaders who joined forces to find ways to improve quality of life for people in Suffolk.

From the first tentative meeting in January 2009, to the New Horizons Summit (an event held in October to galvanise support from 300 business and community leaders and marking the beginning of the next stage of Lives We Lead) the focus has been on creating a foundation for effective whole- system leadership through trust.

The leadership collaborative set out to engage directly with citizens to gain new insights into real life needs and challenges and to understand the ways in which services as they were currently provided helped – or hindered. They supported one another as peers to challenge the status quo and also to admit that these are difficult issues and as leaders they didn't always have all the answers.

Through sharing challenging and, at times, uncomfortable experiences, they developed a deeper degree of trust and professional friendship which allowed them space to innovate, take risks and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Differences in perspective were identified and a common ground of aspiration and innovation was found.

Ten months on from the first leadership collaborative meeting, Suffolk's leaders have mapped £4.8bn of the public expenditure in the county, but the potential of pooled budgets is just the starting point. The next and most exciting stage is about collaborating to remove barriers, leverage resources and respond to specific local challenges.

Initiatives are already under way to raise skill levels across Suffolk, with a cross-organisation team starting from the assumption of pooled budgets and collaborating to identify innovative solutions. These changes are on target for implementation in January. Partners are reviewing the frameworks and bureaucracy around partnership working and challenging Whitehall to revisit statutory requirements where they add more cost than value to Suffolk outcomes.

A collaboration across the police, health and local authorities is identifying ways to improve the effectiveness of their support to the most vulnerable families. An innovative approach is being developed in collaboration with the public, private and third sectors to promote apprenticeship and offer work experience to those who find it most difficult to get on a pathway to employment. A target of 10 green social enterprises has been set to promote the green economy and create jobs.

Local government review debate hasn't distracted local government leaders. Instead they are moving forward together to develop a Suffolk solution, recognising that radical efficiency comes not from mapping the money but from re-imagining services and organisation and designing those around citizens needs.

There are many more examples of innovation and efficiency emerging, but perhaps the most striking outcome in Suffolk is energised, optimistic and collaborative whole-system leadership ready to face the gritty challenges ahead and with a shared purpose to improve the lives of the people they lead.

Lynne Haig is a director at Taylor Haig strategic change consultancy