Envisioning the next chapter in public service

Summer 2013 One day Courses: Wales and South West

Develop yourself and become a better leader on one of our courses this summer.

Becoming a 21st Century ADAPTIVE LEADER – Heighten your leadership ability to enable and empower your people, drive innovation, and facilitate crucial connections between people, initiatives and opportunities. 

Enquire click here or email: events@dewcadre.onmicrosoft.com

Introduction to Mission Critical Intervention Teams (Foundation Course) – Tackle your organisation’s “big ticket issues”. Learn more about these “unique entities” and how they can generate profound transformation within your organisation. Includes an overview of the concept, philosophy, methodology, approach, tools and techniques. 

Enquire click here or email: events@dewcadre.onmicrosoft.com

Effective Change Portfolio, Programme, Project Board Governance – Learn how to improve Board Governance and Communications. Improve the leadership, stewardship and overall delivery success. Learn how to spot the signs of a dysfunctional Board and how to address them.  

Enquire click here or email: events@dewcadre.onmicrosoft.com

We have the best public sector core values in the World… Time to deploy them and shape new sustainable value propositions

These are seminal times. Public Sector organisations are facing an unprecedented period of change with challenges that are beyond party politics, beyond management versus trade union, and beyond manager versus worker. Despite austerity measures and thousands of job losses the National Debt continues to rise. Public Sector Debt increased last year by £111,000,000,000. Throughout December it rose by over £37million every hour.  The challenges simply cannot be addressed by conventional 20^th Century measures. Leaning your organisation or applying traditional HR measures won’t be enough. Organisations need to seek out innovation and agility in all they think, say, and do. In order to do that, they need to:

1. Acknowledge the current approach isn’t working;
2. Refocus on their core values; and
3. Work together, to design, develop and implement new “value propositions”.

Here are two very different “value propositions” for local government:

The way things are now:

In order to meet the financial pressures we have no option but to cut jobs, stop recruiting, and cut services.  We cannot change our basic organisational design and operating model which has always been based around a five day working week. Despite knowing that our current pay bill is unsustainable we will continue to pay those employees who aren’t affected by job cuts, overtime, allowances and pay enhancements. Traditional measures such as a pay freeze and recruitment ban will be enough provided we also cut expenditure on some services. We won’t look beyond our own boundaries and will try to find our own way through the challenges we face. We need to batten down the hatches, make the savings and try to weather the storm. Not a good fit with our values but this is the way it has always been done. It is what we do during periods of economic downturn.

How things might be:

We return to our core values of equity, fairness, and inclusivity… of valuing our people and keeping the citizen at the heart of what we do.  Using those core values as the starting point we realised that letting hundreds of our fellow employees lose their job wasn’t fair, wasn’t equitable nor was it inclusive. We also realised that closing libraries, public toilets, and other local services wasn’t in the best interests of our communities and the Citizen. We had to look for a different way of addressing the challenges we faced. Merging with an adjacent authority would provide us with greater critical mass and efficiency opportunities. Sharing jobs rather than losing them would be critical in a time of recession. No employee should lose their job and as a result we looked at job share based upon 4 days on and 4 days off. We wanted a public service that was available fully not just Monday to Friday. The job share rosta system meant that public services were now available for an additional 90 days a year. Our culture is now one where we all try to find better ways of doing things. We are constantly looking to make use of new technology. It has meant sacrifice and hasn’t been easy but we can genuinely say we are all in this together and take pride in the fact that our colleagues still have employment, their homes and families are protected. Services are protected and enhanced and we have spread the socio-economic impact of public sector employment across the community. Looking back, the solutions were staring us right in the face – all it took was a reality check against what we stood for and the courage to try to bring those values to life.

It is time for a new approach, pursued by courageous adaptive leadership that dares to challenge the status quo and uses the corporate values as a basis for bringing about change, winning hearts and minds, and bringing about new value propositions that bring our precious public services closer to the people they are there to serve.  

Industrial Age Machine to Digital Age Living Organism

TRANSFORMATION PRESENTATION: If you are interested in transforming your organisation, harnessing its full innovative potential, and making it more agile and naturally adaptive, then come along to this inspirational talk by John Dew OBE.

Click and enlarge to read the full event flier below:

The event will be held at the Atrium in Cardiff on the 30th of January 2013. You can also read more about the event here: Re-engineering your public service DNA

Season’s Greetings and a message of “hope and fairness” for our precious public services…

“Reflecting on the last year so much has happened. For Dew Cadre we have undertaken global research that has culminated in the finalisation of our second major publication “A Guide to Mission Critical Intervention Teams”. The book will be available for purchase in January 2013.  

Across our country, 2012 was a year of National Pride, as we celebrated Her Majesty the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. As a nation, I think we shocked ourselves at the exceptional way we delivered the “Greatest Show on Earth” – The 2012 London Olympics & Paralympics. Despite these highs, our Nation continues to experience some tough economic conditions. Sustained austerity measures (that are sadly both inevitable and essential as we try to reduce our National Debt) are now really beginning to bite hard. Our efficiency effort so far has taken pretty much all of the low hanging fruit. What lies ahead are some very, very tough and painful decisions that will affect thousands of public sector workers, their families and the communities they serve. 

At the start of the year, we indicated that we didn’t believe the austerity measures across the public sector would be enough to tackle the National Debt. We highlighted the stark reality that our public sector pay bill was unaffordable and that we would need to borrow much more to honour it. In fact, we forecast that it would continue to rise dramatically. Sadly, our forecast proved to be very accurate indeed - within just £5billion – as the debt rose to over £1.070trillion. We have continued to highlight the need to rebalance the public sector pay bill and to deploy more equitable employment models. 

In Wales, over 12,000 public sector jobs were shed and many more will be lost over the next two years. Perhaps as many as 40,000 public sector jobs will have been lost in Wales by 2015.  That is one in every four jobs. The simple truth is, we need to look at new and novel ways of spreading the socio-economic wealth offered through public sector employment. If we don’t, then tens of thousands of families will suffer, homes will be lost, couples will divorce, families will split-up, and people who have lost their livelihood will suffer from illness and depression. The downstream cost to society, our welfare and health systems will be unimaginable. We simply cannot rigidly adhere to old employment practices and stick with a system where some lucky ones stay in employment and the others are cast aside to fight for survival during a period of sustained recession and austerity.  

Our Public Sector Leaders (including Unions) need to rebalance the pay bill in order to help reduce the debt but, they need to do so in such a way, that protects jobs, livelihoods, homes and families. They need to look at new employment models that spread the employment opportunity equitably. 

Christmas is a time for reflection, and a time for giving and not receiving… anyone who is in the public sector now and still has a job but is receiving pay awards, bonuses, overtime, and enhanced remuneration packages they need to think carefully about the fact that someone will definitely be losing a job as a result. 

The impact is already being felt by public sector workers who have lost their jobs. Many are struggling to make ends meet and are turning to charities to help.  That is why, this year, rather than sending cards and giving hospitality gifts we have decided to sponsor a local charity that helps provide food parcels to families that are going through some tough times and need support until things improve for them and their families. 

On behalf of the Company, I’d like to wish each of you a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy 2013. We hope that a big debate next year, about how we can sustain our precious public services and how we can maximise employment opportunity as we try to rebalance the public sector pay bill, will finally lead to progress that is fair, equitable and sustainable. We see a future that doesn’t involve 40,000 public servants being made long-term unemployed!” 

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

John Dew

Dew Cadre is committed to corporate social responsibility and as such we wanted to give something back this year. We decided to make a donation to Bridging The Gap.

EVENT: Re-engineering your organisation’s DNA

Your organisation is a living, breathing, evolving organism just like anything found in the natural world. A large percentage of DNA is standard across the entire natural world but how it is ‘read’ (transcribed) is what dictates the differences that make a species uniquely suited to its success. Organisations can be seen in the same way.

The DNA of any organism is what defines it as an entity and provides the blueprint for its suitability and ultimately its survival.

On a Human level, whilst we have made huge advances in the mapping of our Genome we have yet to master manipulating our DNA. We have however, developed thousands of ways of adapting to our environment and the challenges we face, making us one of the most successful species on the planet. If we could adapt the very ‘building-blocks’ of ourselves then we wouldn’t need to develop coping mechanisms (warm clothing for exploring the Arctic, for example) even though we’re now very skilled at doing so.

“If we could rapidly change our DNA this would be a huge advantage even if some of us might look a little strange at first!”

Organisations on the other hand, have a unique advantage, because they are able to change at will, much of their DNA, with the right ‘engineering’. Despite this capability, many organisations simply aren’t re-engineering their DNA fast enough for the highly dynamic 21st Century environment they now operate within. As we journey further into the uncharted waters of the Digital Age, in highly volatile “perfect storm” conditions, they continue to use coping mechanisms such as proverbial ‘warm coats’ to try and weather the storms that Wales, the UK and the wider World are now exposed to. 

Dew Cadre has been investigating how organisations across the globe and across all three sectors have been trying to adapt and evolve. They have been trying to identify the “genetic code” for organisational survival and, acting as ‘genetic engineer’, have sought to develop a means by which organisations can evolve with greater speed and impact… transforming themselves into highly agile, innovative and adaptive entities. 

The results have been startling and this ground-breaking work has the potential to drive unparalleled innovation, enabling organisations not just to survive, but to thrive in the challenging times ahead. 

John Dew of Dew Cadre Change Management Associates will be expanding on the metaphor of how organisations can be genetically re-engineered from within, so that they swiftly evolve from industrial age “machines” into “organisms” that are agile, adaptive, and better suited to operating in a highly volatile digital age environment.

You can hear him speak on Wednesday 30th January 2013 at the Glamorgan University in Cardiff. To reserve your place email your contact details to publishing@dewcadrechangeassociates.com

To find out more about the event click here.

Like vital North Sea oil reserves it is time to tap into the vast pool of creative potential that lies unseen within our public servants!

Many people are increasingly of the view that our public servants are incapable of innovation and of thinking beyond their own self-interest especially when it comes to the challenges we now face in a time of sustained austerity. Recent headlines about strike action reinforces that perception for some and can extend to people thinking that those in the public sector are incapable of radical thinking and are both tired of, and scared by, change. Nothing could be further from the truth… Most of the public servants I know are desperate to make a difference, actually have bundles of ideas, and vast untapped reserves of energy and passion, but sadly… our cultures and management approach thwarts their creativity and energy. I’m convinced that what we need to do in this country is set it free and to make full use of the talent, skill and entrepreneurship that exists in our public servants.

For years now I have been working in “change project land” and it never ceases to amaze me how creative, energetic, passionate and truly innovative multi-disciplinary groups of people can be. I know from researching, developing, and leading High Impact teams that when you bring a diverse group of people together to tackle a complex issue, instilling in them a sense of urgency and purpose and truly liberate and empower them to get to grips with it - the results can be incredibly profound!

Below are a few PowerPoint slides (an extract) of the “themes and messages” that emanated from such a team tasked recently by Dew Cadre with looking at public sector transformation. 

I can tell you all now, that there is a vast pool of talent in the public sector (a vast unseen reserve of energy and innovation) that isn’t being exploited to anywhere near its full potential. The people I am talking about are, in reality, desperate to help shape a new value proposition and have masses of ideas, courage and passion. Our public leaders (Political and Executive) need look no further than tapping into that pool to find the solutions they desperately need to the 21st Century challenges ahead!