Sharing the workflow

How do we maintain anything close to the level of services we have become used to while cutting public spending by 25%? As yet, no one is quite sure but most are agreed that collaboration will be the key. Public sector organisations will have to work together in a way they have never had to before, with each other and with new types of organisation such as social enterprises. Total Place, or place-based budgeting, assumes that local authorities, government agencies and NHS trusts will band together to deliver the cost effective services in a given area, regardless of which organisations own the resources or expertise. The government is also demanding collaboration in procurement and the sourcing of support services such as HR and IT. This implies that traditional organisational boundaries will have to be torn down. Public sector workers will have to see themselves as being dedicated to the provision of a particular service, rather than as employees of the local council, or the NHS. Glacial slowness The trouble is, with a few exceptions, the public sector's record of working across organisational boundaries isn't good. Anyone who has worked on joint initiatives, even between similar organisations like local authorities, will attest to the glacial slowness of getting agreement to any significant action. This is hardly surprising; many organisations have enough trouble working across their own internal boundaries. Public sector organisations often operate in professional and departmental silos. These attitudes are deeply ingrained and usually start at the top. Ask senior managers how well they work with the rest of the team and they almost always talk about themselves and their direct reports, rather than their peers on the executive management team. Directors and senior managers come to the table not as members of the management team but as representatives of their various departments or professions. The suggestion that they should be collectively managing and leading the business instead of just looking at their own bit of it is, surprisingly, a revelation to many managers. Usually, it's not because they are being deliberately territorial, it's just that, in organisations defined by silos and specialisms, it hasn't occurred to them to do anything else. The most effective management teams I have seen are those that spend time working together on business issues. And by that I don't mean sitting around a table commenting on position papers produced by each others' minions. I mean getting together and producing something which the rest of the organisation can work from, be it a strategy, a plan or an idea for a new venture. There is nothing like grappling with a difficult problem and solving it together for building team cohesiveness and trust. That's when you really get to know each other. You can spot the teams that have worked in this way. They spend less time on superfluous discussion and get to the heart of the issues they need to discuss much more quickly. Critically, they challenge each other and are less inclined to skirt around uncomfortable subjects. Developing and leading a cohesive and highly functioning team is only half the battle. The constantly shifting requirements of the next few years will mean that people find themselves in several different teams at once and these teams will be formed, disbanded and re-formed at an alarming rate. Individuals will therefore need to develop their ability to work in teams. The people who succeed in this environment will be those who can drop into a team and become effective quickly. There will not be time for team-building at a gentle pace. Tuckman's forming-storming-norming-performing process will have to be turbocharged. The radical changes in public service delivery will require leaders who can rapidly get cross-organisational teams to the point where they are cohesive and focussed. But this is a long way from the silo behaviour that still prevails in so many public sector organisations. Collaboration between departments can be slow; collaboration between different local authorities or NHS trusts is slower still. Working across the boundaries between different types of public sector organisation and the as yet unfamiliar social enterprises will present a much greater challenge. If there is to be a revolution in the way the public sector delivers services the cultures of many public sector organisations will need to change rapidly. Can this shift in team-working and leadership style take place quickly enough to make the revolution happen? Steven Toft is a director of Crucible, a consultancy which helps organisations to improve performance