Organisational Effectiveness - do people make a difference?
Author: Eric Thompson
Eric Thompson highlights the focus on people in developing long term sustained improvements in organisational effectiveness from a pilot study running in local government.
Savings from organisational effectiveness
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has emphasised the importance of organisational effectiveness in government "...15% savings...are not unrealistic..."by telling a Commons Committee that 15% savings from the “Total Place” concept being piloted in a number of local government areas was not unrealistic. The Total Place pilots are looking at services from the citizen’s perspective. By looking at ways to get the various agencies that contribute to the delivery to work better together, and share resources, the potential savings have come to light.
It looks like this is going to be the way forward for local government in the UK since the Conservative party have confirmed that they would retain this approach if returned to power in the general election that is expected this year. The Shadow chancellor George Osborne, writing in the March 2010 issue of “Public Servant” confirms the intention to “reform public services in order to deliver higher productivity and better value for money for taxpayers”. Additionally, their deputy chairman Bob Neil has confirmed that they would retain the Total Place initiative.
The impact of people
While enough information has emerged from the pilots to justify the headline savings figures, the majority have yet to be concluded. However, an interesting report has emerged relating to a precursor study to the Total Place initiative which is being run in Suffolk. 'Total Place pioneers' start with people not money.
While in many of the studies involving organisational effectiveness there has been a focus, perhaps not surprisingly, on mapping the financial spend, the Suffolk study has started “with people, citizen’s and colleagues and focused on developing the relationships to sustain change”. The premise behind this trial is that to create long term sustained change it’s the people involved, their relationships and the trust developed between them that will make the real difference.
"People make the difference."It is of course too early to report that desired long term sustained change, but the signs are good. The participating agencies have been able to learn to work together to create a shared purpose and to collaborate together, sometimes sharing budgets, in an attempt to redesign the service delivery to focus on the needs of the local citizens.
It would appear that, at least in Suffolk, when it comes to realising organisational effectiveness, and the imperative of making substantial budgetary savings, that the route to ensuring that those savings are sustained is to be through people.
People do make a difference.