Failure Demand...the hidden cost of doing the wrong thing well

When systems are designed around trust and relationships, they create change.

Sophie Coles argues that great public services are about continuing to challenge ourselves that we are doing the right things.

After 20 years working across public services, I’ve seen a pattern that’s impossible to ignore.

We’ve built systems that keep people busy rather than systems that help people live better lives.

Everywhere I’ve worked, from the NHS to social work; adult services, children's services, housing...the same thing appears in a different disguise: layers of process, approval, assessment, referral… and then more assessment.

Each layer justified, each with its own spreadsheet, tracker, or workflow; but few of them actually help anyone.

John Seddon called this failure demand; demand caused by a system’s own failure to meet people’s needs first time. And once you learn to see it, you can’t unsee it.

I think back to a time spent with a consultant who was brought in to our local authority to work on a wide range of programmes. I was managing a social work service at that point.

He came in and asked a deceptively simple question about our care plan approval process. 

We explained that every care plan (and there were hundreds a week across our management team) following a social work or occupational therapy assessment, had to be manually authorised by a manager before being sent on to another department to action. They sat in our inbox until that approval process took place....and then their inbox.

He asked, “How many do you approve?”

We said, “About 95%.”

He paused and raised an eyebrow. “So why have a process that adds days of delay and managerial workload to something you nearly always approve anyway?”

That was the moment it hit me; we were running a system designed to protect the organisation, not to serve the people.

Prof Donna Hall, CBE wrote in a recent article with the MV Chief Executive, Andrew Laird, about the same phenomenon in Wigan, at the start of The Wigan Deal:

“We discovered that 80% of multidisciplinary cost spent on families whose children were on the edge of care was on repeated assessment and referral… £500,000 per year per family on multiple assessment processes which were not providing any actual help.”

That’s the cost of failure demand; not just in money, but in hope, energy and trust. We measure, monitor and re-assess people instead of walking alongside them.

The alternative?

A radical approach to place leadership; the kind Hilary Cottam describes as Radical Help: building real relationships, providing a single key worker who can draw on specialist help when needed and rebuilding systems that trust people rather than control them.

Because when systems are designed around fear and compliance, they create work. When systems are designed around trust and relationships, they create change.

If you work in public service, ask yourself this:

How much of your time, or your team’s time, is spent on actually helping people? And how much is spent proving to the system that you did?

For more on MV's work on Radical Place Leadership click here.

This article was originally published as a post on LinkedIn.