“What EXACTLY is it that I’m exploring about collaboration?”
I’ve been asking myself this question because I met three thinkers about the UK Government in the last week, and I felt a bit of an academic amateur as I prepared to see them. The first was Nick Pearce, head of the Institute for Public Policy Research and formerly a policy adviser to Gordon Brown. Second: Professor Keith Grint of Warwick University, who has written and taught prolifically on leadership and systems thinking, especially how you deal with ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems. Finally,Professor Sir Michael Barber, formerly the head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, now of McKinsey Consulting, and involved with target setting and monitoring for the Blair government from 1997 until 2007.
Why have I been feeling like an amateur? Maybe because it’s five years since I worked in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and I feel rusty at the discipline of defining a ‘research question’ and ensuring that my methodology fits what I’m trying to explore. And also because I worry that ‘improving collaboration between different parts of government and the nonprofit sector when they’re working on complex problems’ sounds nebulous.
It was in explaining my project to Michael Barber that I realized there was a particular part of the system for whom I am inquiring. It’s obvious but it’s important. It’s for those who sit in the centre: in the Whitehall department, the devolved government, in the Governor’s office, or the Mayor’s office. The people who do strategic planning, and set and negotiate departmental budgets, who create the frameworks within which local agencies operate. The ones who create legislation, audit regimes and regulation, who direct the inspectors and design delivery structures. The ones who reach for ‘choice’ or ‘contestability’ or ‘guidance’ ‘new organisations’ or ‘the demos’ to influence local actors. Basically, Ministers and Senior Civil Servants, Strategy Units and Whitehall policy units.
This project is NOT, therefore, for the Headteacher, or the GP commissioner, or Director of Children's Services, or the Police Chief Constable, or Prison Governor who need to think about how to collaborate better in their local area. I can see this is ground that has already been well trodden, with some very useful resources out there.
(Some of my favourites are The Partnering Toolbook, Talking the Walk, and other resources from ‘The Partnering Initiative’, which are fantastic, with guidance even on how you have partnering conversations, a sample Partnering agreement, even an articulation of ‘the 12 phases of the partnering process’. Similarly the Leadership Centre for Local Government has published a nifty resource for local leaders on the back of the Total Place pilots, with lots of suggestions and nuggets about how to approach joining up services.)
No, this project is for those who think they are ‘pulling levers’ from the centre. Even that articulation of the role is one of the problems. In these environments there is no clear relationship between cause and effect, and I can feel myself flinching at the mechanistic metaphor of ‘pulling levers’. But it is for those people who are in the middle of the spider’s web, in the, ineptly named, control room, for the ones who try to effect change over a national or State-wide canvas. The ones who often wreak massive damage, with the absolute best of intentions.
The change of Government in the UK, with its change of ideology and the coincidence of a massive funding crisis, mean that Senior Civil Servants and Ministers are doing things differently. On the bonfire are Local Area Agreements, the Audit Commission, targets including for the Police, hospitals and schools, and 150 quangos. In their place? The Big Society. And Cameron’s four principles - choice, contestability, local accountability, and payment by results.
But what does this mean for the Senior Civil Servant? What should those shaping and designing the contours of the system, setting out the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’, watch out for, if they want to promote collaboration? To articulate an anxiety I’ve heard expressed once or twice in Senior Civil Service circles, “So what are we going to do when we don’t have a twenty million pound budget to throw at the Minister’s latest initiative, when we can’t set a national target, or set up a quango, and I don’t have a new unit in our Whitehall department to monitor the target and the quango?” Put cynically, what is the Senior Civil Servant’s role when they don’t have an empire to build?
Michael Barber didn't quite answer that question, but he did give a helpful steer. I’m paraphrasing a bit but the gist of it was this: “People make a mistake when they think you just have a choice between prescription and letting go. You do need to think carefully about what you prescribe and what you don’t prescribe. But you need to attend to how strong the other mechanisms, like the market, or democratic accountability, are that are at play. You may need to blend prescription and devolution but in different aspects of the system.”
Keith Grint said it in a different way. He was arguing that we need ‘clumsy solutions’ to wicked problems. We need to know that we don’t know the answer, and try stuff out, without trying to make it elegant. We need to mix and match. To quote from his paper, “Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: the Role of Leadership” (2008)
[These leaders] make progress by stitching together whatever is at hand, whatever needs to be stitched together, to ensure practical success.
My inquiry, therefore, is focused on how to help Senior Civil Servants and ministers go about their system design, without damaging the desire and the practice of collaboration at a local level.
