John Copps says that successful design and delivery of public service reform depends on a understanding of relationships between users, professionals and policy-makers.
Public services are all about people.
And for any service to be effective - be that in healthcare, social work, libraries, justice or education - there needs to be strong relationships between all those individuals involved.
Another way to describe this is that successful public services are relational.
Simply put, 'relational' means valuing and putting human relationships at the centre of everything we do. It means recognising that successful outcomes rely on trust, respect and understanding each other.
A focus on relationships needs to cut three ways - between users of services, between professionals delivering services, and between policy-makers in central government.
When designing and delivering new policy, successful public service reform requires overcoming any disconnects in these relationships. How can this be achieved?
Designing reforms
Whilst much of the money and power to drive change is centralised in Whitehall, the actual business of delivering public services and insights about what works is held locally.
Better relationships between central government and local services is the only way to join these dots.
Good policy making comes from understanding and listening to the experiences of users and practitioners, and using to guide change. 'Co-production' and 'the voice of the user' are the watchwords, and should be built into the process of development and testing of new ideas.
What is striking about this approach is the humility it requires. Rather than policy makers thinking they know best, the way to success is to look at issues with a humble desire to better understand what happens on the ground.
Delivering public service reform
Once in the process of implementation, a consistent feature of the most successful programmes is trusting relationships between central and local partners.
To understand why this is so important to 'getting things done' depends on knowing that the different parts of government do business in very different ways, with different cultures, decision-making processes and skillsets. This means that that empathy, experience of both approaches, and an ability to overcome differences, is the key to running effective programmes – and more important than hard project management or financial skills.
Relationships matter most
As the General Election approach, it is easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of new ideas and politicking - and forget some of the other things that really matter. For me, relationships are a crucial enabler and the key to successful public services reform. I think this a lesson that no-one designing future policy can afford to ignore.
To read more about the important of relationships in public services click here.
Download Mutual Ventures’ free resources on 'Relational Project Management' approach here.