News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 15 January 2014

The news is brief this week, so maybe it’s a good time to remind you that Cohort 11 of the (6 month) Postgraduate Certificate in Shared Services starts in Feb in London. Click here for more details. There are 26 students on the current programme.

Email me for details of what the time commitment is and the fees if you are interested, or please forward this email onto a colleague who might be.

The main news is that there is £1m on the table to be shared across 10 local authorities willing to venture into “Delivering Differently”…its not strictly for collaboration, but is still worth considering in a collaborative context…

Central and local government team up to improve local service delivery

Local authorities can now apply for support to help them deliver services in more innovative ways. Read more >>>

There have been a growing number of shared legal services developed between councils, but maybe this is the first one between two Fire & Rescue authorities…

Legal collaboration between council and Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority

Two Buckinghamshire local authority legal teams have applied for permission to set up a collaborative law firm - among the first in the United Kingdom to do so. Read more >>>

Finally I had to get this US councils’ shared service project into the news, if only to say it feels a bit of gamble…

Las Vegas favours shared services with North Las Vegas but not if it hurts

Las Vegas officials say they’re willing to help their neighbour North Las Vegas avoid financial catastrophe, but not at the expense of their own residents. Read more >>>

News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 8 January 2014

Happy New Year and an important reminder to councils that there is still time for you to add to, or update your shared service projects on the Local Government Association Shared Services map. It is an excellent source of support information for you to use. So put your project details in, and draw information out.

You can add and update your projects on the map by clicking here. You really don’t want that call from your CEO or Leader, demanding to know why your council’s shared service projects are missing from the 2014 Map when it is released in the national media in a couple of months.

Down to business! Over the last couple of weeks, local government have been releasing plenty of news on their activities…

South Hams and West Devon councils save money with new leadership model

South Hams District and West Devon Borough Councils, which have saved £6million through sharing services, are planning to save even more by adopting a new management structure. Read more >>>

 

Councils urged to bid for funding to develop new delivery models

A new £1m fund has been launched to enable local to develop new delivery models to transform public services. Read more >>>

 

London boroughs agree pension collaboration

London council leaders have agreed a collective investment vehicle (CIV) to manage the capital’s local government pension scheme. Read more >>>

 

Tri-borough shared ICT framework offers savings to London authorities

Three London councils have agreed a shared framework to deliver IT services and resources in order to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Read more >>>

 

Local government's future: shared services & clever economics

Recent Autumn Statements, Spending Rounds, and Budgets have not been happy occasions for local government, but last Thursday provided some positive news for the sector. Read more >>>

 

New Partners Making Northants County Council Budgets Go Further

With the ongoing financial pressures the county council faces it’s been necessary to re-think the way we do things at County Hall. Read more >>>

 

Council workers believe Shared Services Partnership has led to 'takeover', report finds

Council workers believe the Shared Services Partnership has led to a 'takeover' of Weymouth and Portland by West Dorset, a report has found. Read more >>>

 

In the HE sector they are still struggling with their shared service agenda – and still not sure yet what it actually costs to put a student through their system, and therefore what savings can be made through collaborative working…

Benchmarking helps universities understand how they're performing

When we worked with Ian Diamond on the Universities UK (UUK) report Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education, we asked universities about the challenges they faced in achieving efficiency and value for money, and what factors can help to overcome them. Read more >>>

 

In the Blue Light space the collaboration activity gathers pace, possibly in expectation of the £195m transformation fund that will come into play from April 2014…

 

Dorset Fire and Rescue set to combine with another service

Dorset Fire and Rescue could be merging its services with Wiltshire and Swindon in a bid to cope with funding cuts. Read more >>>

 

Hertfordshire Constabulary signs Memorandum of Understanding for cost-cutting shared services agreement

Hertfordshire Constabulary is set to merge more of its back-office functions with neighbouring forces as part of a cost-cutting drive. Read more >>>

Developing your collaborative leadership skills - where to begin?

The one thing that binds all leaders together across the public sector is the challenge of managing rising demand with less money.

 

Whilst local government has ‘by and large’ met its efficiency saving targets to date (mostly through efficiency drives linked to ‘tough it out’ strategies) the reality is that continuing along this path will yield diminishing returns. 

Good news, bad news… 

I will give you the bad news first. According to Sir Bob Kerslake, speaking at a May 2012 conference of Directors of Adult Social Services, 70% of the planned cuts in public services are still to come. The good news is that collaboration can be one of the key ways of managing further cuts. 

So it is important, that with the pressure on funding intensifying, a new cadre of public sector ‘collaboration leaders’ emerges who can lead on partnerships, alliances, shared services and even the many mergers that will occur. 

You will recognise them in pioneering new ways of collaborative working developed to lead service improvement. A good illustration of this in practice is the Tri-Borough Partnership in London¹. Writing in the Guardian the council leaders stated that: 

‘We are clear that the tri-borough project should not replicate old fashioned approaches to service delivery, effectively rationing services. Instead, we have adopted a commissioning model where the desired outcomes are agreed and then management seeks to find the best solution using a combination of private, public and third sector providers.’ 

The resignation of Cllr Barrow, leader of Westminster Council in March 2012, has not slowed the progress of the project either. Illustrating that the collaborative leadership has been able to build a sustainable cross-boundary relationship, in a sense leading beyond the authority of their organisation and sharing power, responsibility and accountability to make it work.

What are the academics saying?

The concept of collaborative leadership is not new. Academics have been researching this for many years and their findings are insightful. 

According to Chrislip and Larson (1994)² ‘…..leaders are those who articulate a vision, inspire people to act, and focus on concrete problems and results.

[But]…collaboration needs a different kind of leadership; it needs leaders who can safeguard the process, facilitate interaction, and patiently deal with high levels of frustration. Collaboration works when…leaders …keep the process going.’

Linden (2003) identified four main qualities that distinguish effective collaborative leaders from those who weren’t effective:

1. They combine tremendous persistence, energy and resolve with a measured ego.

2. They are passionate about the desired outcome.

3. Collaborative leaders pull others rather than push them.

4. Collaborative leaders think systematically.

Other factors shaping the development of collaborative leaders is the recognition that old style leadership attributes, which work well within an organisational context, seem inadequate when addressing complex ‘wicked problems’ with high levels of ambiguity.

Austin³ (2000) predicted an ‘age of alliances’ seeing the notion of leadership widening to embrace collaborative skill sets. Brooks (2008) talked about a new type of ‘new public leadership’⁴ defined as:

‘A form of collective leadership in which public bodies and agencies collaborate in achieving a shared vision based on shared aims and values and distribute this through each organisation in a collegiate way which seeks to promote, influence and deliver improved public value as evidenced through sustained social, environmental and economic well-being within a complex and changing context’.

So what must you do well to become an effective collaborative leader?

Linden⁵ (2003) found that collaborative leaders are able to:

● Create excitement about the collaboration’s purpose

● Be effective at getting the right people around the table and keep them there

● Help them see common interests and benefits possible through joint effort

● Generate trust

● Help design a transparent, credible process

● Focus on the win-win to meet three way interests

● Make relationship building a priority for the group

● Ensure senior champions are in place

● Engage everyone in collaborative problem solving

● Celebrate small successes and share credit widely

● Provide confidence, hope, resilience

Yes a long list, but nevertheless a useful checklist for aspiring collaborative leaders.

Are you a spanner?

Linden’s view of collaboration leadership is supported by the research work of Pawlowski and Robey (2004) which evidences that three brokering practices are required to lead and facilitate any successful cross-boundary activity: connecting, grafting and dealing⁶.

They see the collaborative leader as a broker who first connects people by communicating and reinterpreting the expectations of partners until they are acceptable to all.

 

Then they graft their personal leadership expectations onto the partners’ expectations to avoid potential conflicts and extend the knowledge across boundaries.

Finally, the leader, as broker, facilitates ongoing interaction and ensures continual dealing between the partners.

But where do I start now, I hear you ask?

Well according to Lord Michael Bichard⁷, a good starting point for current leaders is to stop talking about public services and start talking about services provided for the public good⁸. 

Shifting your focus from improving your institution to improving the services provided for the public good will open the possibilities of collaborative working with others to deliver that goal.

Once this rubicund has been crossed, you will be on the path to develop your collaborative leadership skills.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 See Tri-Borough Proposals Report: Bold ideas for

challenging times. (2011)

2 Chrislip, D & Larson, C (1994) How citizens and civic

leadership can make a difference. P42

3 Austin, J (2000) Principles of partnership. p44

4 Brookes (2008) The public leadership challenge. ESRC

research report. P1

5 Linden, R (2003) The discipline of collaboration. Linden

describes the three way interests as needs of the

partners, the needs of product or service and the needs

of the relationship between the partners R-L. et al. (2012) Collaborative Knowing: The adaptive nature of cross-boundary spanning. p466

7 Sir Michael was former Director of the Institute of

Government and Chair of the Design Council

8 Lord Bichard writing in the Local Government

Chronicle 31/05/12

2012 - a ‘tipping point’ for public sector shared service activity?

There is a rumour going around that 2012 is a ‘tipping point’ for public sector shared service activity to accelerate in a big way.

Some support can be found in the sudden growth in Blue Light shared service activity across the UK, the creation by the minister, Carl Sergeant, in Wales of six collaboration sub-regions and the publication of the HEFCE Collaborations, Alliances and Mergers report.

The English Local Government Association map also illustrates that 219 councils are currently engaged in 143 various partnerships, from assets- to-waste and evidences that over 80 of them are up and running, and have made cashable savings of almost £100m to date. So whilst the track record in shared services show they are difficult to do, emerging numbers of councils are beginning to land, cash-based efficiency gains.

Another example to support the rumour is that in the FE and HE sector, in 2011 over £16m in partnership seed-corn grants were released into collaboration projects by the HEFCE, the Association of Colleges, 157 Group and LSIS across 2011.

And, this was before the announcement by the Chancellor in his Autumn statement that the Government will introduce a VAT exemption for shared services, between organisations in Further and Higher Education and charities. The inability for these sectors to reclaim VAT on partnership activity has been a major stumbling block. Now there is nothing to hold them back. Lemming-like they will be racing to find partners on the e-harmony shared service website, registering as a “bubbly, blond learning partner” or under “wealthy university seeks love and fun”.

In addition, there now exists a cohort of professional shared service practitioners who will be able to slap their qualifications on the interview panel’s desk, crush all competition, and win their next job as over 40 shared service practitioners have now either completed or set out on the postgraduate certificate in shared services at Canterbury Christ Church University.

So what of new things in 2012? Well in terms of partnership projects, there is new software emerging that will do away with excel spreadsheets and post-it note process activity. The software takes about five days to fire-up with all the variables that effect a service. Then you can feed it all kinds of staffing, process and financial scenarios and it will spit out options in minutes, as opposed to the weeks or months and huge expense of traditional options evaluations.

Then there is collaborative innovation. Where 2+2=5. The delivery of services in a way we currently cannot imagine. The smashing of silos and formation of least expected alliances. For example in Staffordshire, 1,000 of the County’s staff are being TUPE’d into the NHS to deliver a single, £153m health and social care service. Also look at University of Plymouth and Plymouth Council’s development of a shared ICT service. Tipping point or not, ‘…the times they are changing’.

Is your ball stuck in the shared services scrum?

My colleague Dominic was teaching our programme for the Welsh LGA in Cardiff recently. So no surprises that he chose a rugby metaphor for the politics of shared services. 

A current problem in public shared services is similar to a game of rugby in which the ball is stuck eternally in the scrum between the leadership of the partnering organisations. In fact it is a scrum which frequently collapses, and therefore rarely does the ball come out so that a try can be scored by the rest of the team. In shared service teaching and research circles we call it the “4 by 24 Rule”.

The rule is: It takes about four months to prepare a compelling shared service business plan, but another 24 months for the business plan to either turn into a delivery plan or be shelved.

So what are the key issues academics evidence as the cause of this problem?  

• The most recurrent reason that the scrum collapses so frequently is because of a lack of trust and shared vision between the leadership in the partners. No matter how good the business case, or the project team; no matter how much development money you have in the kitty, if there is a lack of trust and shared vision between the partners, a shared service project will repeatedly stumble or collapse.
  
  SOLACE reported in 2009 that the reason most shared services go wrong is when “expected outcomes are not clearly shared”. And, in CIPFA’s excellent Jan 2010 guidance note, Sharing the Gain, they state that “effective collaborative working is first and foremost a human and political challenge”. This explains why there are so many compelling shared service business cases, lounging un-used on the shelf in Chief Execs offices.
   
• The second reason is that senior managers in the public sector are not equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to solve the “collapsing scrum” problem. It’s certainly not solved by PRINCE2 which does not even have the words “partnership” or “trust” in its index. Nor will benchmarking, or business process reviews solve the problem.

In a year-long research study at Canterbury Christ Church University we identified the top 20 key shared service skills and pieces of knowledge, that someone like you needs if they are to be successful in developing a shared service and stopping the collapsing scrum problem. In order of importance, skills in PRINCE2, benchmarking and business process review come in 13^th. The top three requisite skills or knowledge are:

1.       Building and sustaining strong trust across leaders’ relationships in multi-partner collaborations

2.       Creating a positive shared vision for a partnership that may be drawn from a range of partners of unequal size and authority

3.       Understanding how to support decision makers in creating policy for selecting appropriate in-house services to share

Learning these skills is a key part of the Post Graduate Certificate in Shared Service Architecture at Canterbury Christ Church University. Open to senior managers across the public sector the outcome of the certificate is a significant reduction in collapsing scrums, more shared service “tries” and a key qualification on an aspiring manager’s CV when the job cuts start to bite. Over 700 leaders and senior managers have been through the first module of the postgraduate certificate and over 40 of them have continued their studies and have graduated with the full certificate and become recognised as Shared Service Archtiects.

You can find out more about the Postgraduate Certificate in Shared Services at http://www.sharedservicearchitects.co.uk/Find-Out-More-About-Canterbury-Christ-Church-University-Postgraduate-Certificate-In-Shared-Services