When Power Forgets the People

In this article, Prof. Donna Hall and Andrew Laird recognise the challenge now faced by public service leaders and set out a positive set of “shifts” to re-establish trust and partnership with citizens and communities.

Local and Mayoral election results on 1st of May revealed the exasperation of the public. Many clearly felt that those who have held power have not been listening to them or paying attention to their needs.

This has led to a breakdown of trust between the citizen and the state. Faith in public services has eroded. The social contract has worn thin.

People are expressing themselves by rejecting mainstream political parties or simply not bothering to vote at all. Electoral turn out in England has been declining for the last 40 years as people feel disenfranchised.

Many public service leaders know the current system is not meeting the needs of the people they serve. They see it and are ready to challenge it.

It’s not hard to see how we ended up here.

At a local level, Counties, Unitaries and Metropolitan Boroughs now spend nearly 80% of their budget on demand-led services such as children’s and adults social care and temporary accommodation. These are essential services - but the majority of people aren’t directly impacted by them and therefore have limited appreciation for the efforts that are made. As demand-led costs escalate, some councils are becoming more inward looking in an effort to avoid bankruptcy. As this trend continues, any positive relationship that might have existed between the public and the council risks being lost.

People who need support (even a bit) to get back on their feet, or to deal with a particularly tough time, often find they have to tell their story repeatedly to different parts of the public service system. These parts of the system usually focus on a specific presenting condition (e.g. a health condition or a person’s housing situation). Rarely do busy professionals have the time to build meaningful, trusting relationships or understand the underlying context of the person’s life and therefore provide the hep they really need. This leads to frustration and resentment rather than trust and appreciation.

People are also tired of political leaders (and some public servants) at a national and local level telling people how good or bad things are. “Deliverology” approaches where aggregate numbers are used to demonstrate improvements in particular services often bear no resemblance to an individual’s lived experience. People don’t want talk or statistical claims, they want action and /or help which will improve their lives. The right focus group tested opinion on whatever the issue of the day is will never deliver that.

This has been building for years…

This is not new! The 2016 Brexit vote was the forewarning that trust was eroding. The thing we missed was that it wasn’t just the erosion of trust between politicians and the public, it was also the erosion of trust between public services and communities.

We need to fundamentally rebuild trust at the national and local level. We need to draw up a new social contract. What’s the role of the state? what’s the role of the citizen? and what is the role of businesses and the third sector? How will they work together as a dynamic partnership to make places better.

Rewriting the social contract between citizen and state, between rulers and those they rule was first explored by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. Rousseau’s little book led to the French Revolution and unprecedented social change in France and across the rest of Europe. Citizens were not passive recipients of rules set on high; they were the people who made communities and gave rulers the mandate to rule. This foundational principle has been lost. The gap between political leaders’ views of governance, of the role of both national and local government and what people need in local communities has never been so cavernous as it is today.

We need a new vision for the future of our communities; we need a fundamental shift in thinking. It needs to be as compelling and as outrageously challenging as Rousseau’s social contract. Since its creation in the 16th Century, local government has always had the challenging job of stitching together the complexity of Westminster departments at the place level and of responding to the differing needs of local communities. Mayoral Combined Authorities and Integrated Care Systems have deepened importance of a distinctive place-based approach.

The latest Devolution Bill will see the creation of new Strategic Authorities with a wide (and emerging) range of devolved powers under an elected Mayor. This is very welcome – but these regional-level structural changes alone will not bring about change that is needed.

The real answer lies in a new, more radical approach to the leadership of a “place”. One where everything starts with the person not the service or the institution. It’s an approach where the walls of organisational and service siloes are smashed, removed and forgotten.

Public servants want to be liberated!

“Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains”. Rousseau

You could easily apply this to public servants.

They enter public service wanting to do their very best and to help the public have better lives. But the chains of individual public bodies seeing the world through their own lenses, of “intervening and prescribing” or “assessing and referring” their separate formulaic solutions without knowing the person, the family, the community need to be released. As well as a social contract with citizens, public bodies need a new understanding with frontline teams, giving them the freedom to innovate.

A Radical Place Social Contract:

So what can be done about this?

We have suggested a set of “shifts” which local leaders and their place partners may wish to consider and/or adapt to their local context. These very much draw in the excellent work and thinking of others and as such there is more we could have added to this list - but the following five are actionable right now.

From New Public Management to relational working 

New Public Management is an expensive busted flush - but it still runs rampant across UK public services. Some still consider this way of working as ‘running a tight ship’…But having a ‘tight ship’ doesn’t mean it is sailing anywhere useful! Under NPM, when the pressure's on, often the only response these siloed services have is to raise thresholds and send people away until their situation deteriorates.

Relational working, like the amazing work the Changing Futures Northumbria team are doing in Gateshead, focuses on the needs of the person and using common sense to support them. “Start somewhere, go anywhere” is a phrase Mark Smith uses to capture the flexibility.

We have previously written about the emerging financial case for relational working here: The Public Money That Fall Between the Silos.

From organisational-focus to place-focus

As the non-demand-led resources available to councils diminishes, it’s time to redefine councils as proactive convenors of a whole place and its public service institutions, physical and social assets.

The Wigan Deal and the more recent work Mutual Ventures have been doing on Radical Place leadership with Brent and South Ayrshire have shown what is possible when the leaders of a “place” get together and decide to reimagine themselves as convenors and enablers and (critically) allow staff to work differently - Case Study: Brent Radical Place Leadership.

From control & reduction to empowerment & abundance

Courageous local leadership rather than “running a tight ship” at the political and managerial levels is needed. Empowering managers and frontline teams to collaborate, utilise local assets and to work with (and for) communities. The bonds of community, of family, of the millions of inventive, resourceful, determined, bold but humble, knowledgeable, grassroots community organisations are those we should build up. There is an abundance of ideas and capacity within communities and frontline staff teams which can be tapped into if public body leaders accept a convening/enabling role.

We would argue, through our Radical Place Leadership approach, that Integrated Neighbourhood Teams which can work beyond organisational KPIs and help people in innovate ways are worth exploring. You can read more about this here.

From opaque & hidden functions to shared missions/goals/priorities 

There is a need to shift the relationship between the citizen and state from parent-child to equal partners. Citizens aren’t just passive recipients of remotely commissioned silo services. The power of shared purpose can work wonders on bringing all public service and community institutions and individual efforts together to be more than the sum of their parts.

A great recent example is in Sheffield where the City Goals have been developed by a wide range of local organisations and people and convened (but deliberately not led) by the council.

From failure avoidance to testing & learning

“Test and learn” has been adopted as a guiding philosophy by key people in central government, including Ministers Pat McFadden and Georgia Gould. This involves testing new policies or service delivery methods on a small scale before wider “growth” of the idea. This approach of quickly testing what works—and what doesn’t—through real-world experimentation, evaluation, and iteration is now essential, particularly at the local level where the rubber really hits the road.

Re-establishing trust between public services and communities will not happen by simply avoiding obvious or attributable failure. In fact, that approach is what has caused much of the erosion of trust. Like with any relationship, being transparent and open when you are wrong is the surest way to build trust.

See Nick Kimber's Test Learn and grow principles here.

Let’s do this!

Developing a compelling and coherent overarching Radical Place Social Contract in each of our council areas with NHS, police, schools, doctors, hospitals, citizens, community and voluntary groups should be the new top priority. Not a project or a pilot - Just the way we all work with residents every day.

Through the shifts suggested above (and others you will think of), we can also reimagine public services as a career route of choice for young people with passion rather than something they regret after a couple of years and leave because they are unable to make change happen.

The urgency for change is palpable. Many public service leaders we speak are refusing to accept the status quo. If this sounds like you and you are interested in finding out more about Radical Place Leadership then we would love to hear from you  - andrew@mutualventures.co.uk

Andrew Laird, Chief Executive Mutual Ventures

Professor Donna Hall, CBE, former CEO Wigan Council.