The (now defunkt) Office of Government Commerce used to be pretty hot on Business Change. After all, it was the thing so often perceived to be the problem: a lack of engagement between technology folk and 'the Business'; poor 'Benefits Realisation' and so on. But I think it's more complex than that: there was something more fundamental wrong and it's exemplified in the idea of Business Change itself.  I believe that the term Business Change is used, broadly speaking, with an underpinning model of thinking (pl forgive geeky equation) that looks like this...

And I don't think this is healthy: it encourages the fatal notion that - if the bits on the left-hand side are defined clearly enough at the beginning of a project - all will be well and the desired bit on the right will materialise at the end. I think it has been conclusively shown that it mostly doesn't.

I have experienced a number of attempts in government organisations to turn the management of change - which is, at heart, a subtle human skill - into a mechanistic process. (I have even seen a Business Change mouse-mat with a 20-box diagram on it.)  I don't believe this works and I am concerned that the processey mindset in which it is rooted still breathes.

I believe the term Business Change is bankrupt and perpetuating old thinking. I've stopped using it.

Complexity Thinking

There's more of Jurgen's non-Death by PowerPoint erudition on SlideShare. With thanks to information uber-Maven John McCubbin (and Richard House before him) for spotting this.

Analyst: Government’s digital leaders’ network shouldn’t be using post-it notes

It's a story about an analyst who, having read a post on the Government Digital Service blog - First Digital Leaders’ meeting, said this...

“Why did they have a physical meeting? This could have been done far more effectively using digital tools – communication and collaboration tools that would have taken ideas and automatically captured them, rather than the joys of Post It notes and pens,”

Earlier in the day, having read the same post, I had tweeted this...

First Digital Leaders meeting j.mp/HhbLu6 I have a good feeling about how this stuff is happening @govuk #ukgovit

— Mark Foden (@markwfoden) March 28, 2012

 
So how was it that we came to such different views?

Here's what I think happens when we get involved with a Post-it exercise at a meeting...

• We get engaged, immediately, in the task.
• We get to focus on the things we personally care about, which lets us get things off our chest and makes us feel involved.
• We get to stand up to stick the Post-its on the wall (or wherever), which is always better than sitting motionless on our bottoms.
• We bump into other people, randomly, which starts conversations that will perhaps develop into useful relationships.
• We experience hugely valuable, non-verbal communication.
• We get to connect, first hand in a very personal way, with people and their ideas.
• We can move Post-its around readily, which means themes can be identified quickly.
• We take away with us a colourful, unique and memorable image that represents the contribution of everyone.
• We become part of a shared experience.
• And probably a load of other stuff too.

Some of this is possible using digital tools, but not all and certainly not in the 20 minutes or so that Post-it exercises take. Doing this kind of thing, particularly in the early stages of forming a new group, is enormously valuable. Of course the conversation will continue online afterwards but it will be a very different one because of the experience of the physical meeting.

I am a HUGE FAN of digital tools but the suggestion of using them in lieu of the useful meeting these folks clearly had is, to me, unutterably daft.

Never underestimate the power of the Post-it.

Quite often I go to big meetings to do with changing things. Almost invariably these meetings have lots of people sitting on chairs in rows - sometimes for hours. The people at the front talk; and the people in the rows (mostly) listen.

I struggle to think of a worse way of promoting change.

Change in organisations is about encouraging people to work with other people to do things differently. If we sit them down - doing little but (if we are lucky) listening and pretty much isolated (because rows are like that) - we just can't expect them, immediately afterwards, to leap up and start dancing a new dance.

Of course change programmes are made of more than just big meetings; but it really doesn't help if the set pieces send exactly the wrong message.

We only change our behaviour when we feel something - inspiration, commitment, connection, fear. We don't change just because we know something new or even because someone else is excited. Big meetings can be big opportunities to share understanding, to initiate connection and... to stir feeling.

We should use them differently. We should make them the change we want to see.

(Here are some ideas.)

We believe that the Government's approach to IT is very clearly changing for the better and G-Cloud is a good example of the positive stuff that is happening. Moving to cloud-based services is absolutely the right thing to be doing; but what is really encouraging is the way that it is being done. G-Cloud has a refreshingly open inclusive approach and, crucially, is working in an incremental, learn-by-doing, non-big-expensive-bang kind of way.

Great too is the change in attitude to small companies: there are hundreds on the G-Cloud framework including us (big smile). It's a huge breath of fresh air for us to be able to contract directly with Government (soulful violin starts up in the background) as it's not always been easy to maintain our independence, and work in the way that would like to, in a marketplace dominated by big firms.

We will be doing our usual helping-out-with-change-management stuff: for details - and an opportunity to listen to Bananarama and the Fun Boy Three from 1982 - take a look at the description of our service. Hurrah!

ITU Live - SMEs, Agile and the Public Sector in this Age of Austerity

It's an hour long and there is no singing but there's some useful natter covering what the Government is doing to embrace smaller companies; and what 'agile' is and what it might do for the public sector.

I really don't see it this way.

The problems of government are complex (see my stuff about complexity) and it is not possible to predict how interventions will turn out. We should absolutely, absolutely not be gambling. We must not take big new ideas and build them into big new solutions.

We must be incremental. Obsessively compulsively so. We must take these big new ideas and develop them through experiment. We need to take small risks fast and be connected with the outcomes so that we can adapt instantly. And this won't at all feel like 'learning from failure'.

I remember some wisdom of (my esteemed colleague) Vince Grealy who is a talented orienteer. He said once that really good orienteers are not necessarily the fastest runners or the best map readers; they are those who spot when they have gone wrong soonest. Running 20m the wrong way and doubling back is a blip: not noticing for 200m is a failure.

The risk (if there is one) is in adopting this new incremental way of working. It's about having the courage - and the political skill - to take action without having all the answers. To do this senior folks will need to give up the illusions of certainty and control that come from traditional set-piece projects. This will feel very uncomfortable for many.

So, I'd say: take small risks and don't fail... but do loads and loads of it very fast.

What do you think? Do please leave a comment.

Governments are facing new, game-changing complexity. They are dealing with increasingly pressing and diverse problems: from improving public services, to ensuring national security, to dealing with the global financial crisis. Each problem has its own specific set of issues; but now, in a world of mounting complexity, these issues interact and it is near-impossible to manage them separately. A focus on applying the right technical solution for each problem in isolation is unlikely to work. The real challenge is to develop cultures that will enable people in government to make sense of, and deal with, complex situations in appropriate, holistic ways.

The new challenges

The new challenges of government can be considered in three areas: Complexity, Culture and Community…

Complexity

The challenges of government are not just getting more complicated; they are getting Complex. Complexity is different. In Complicated situations, cause-and-effect can be predicted: in Complex ones, because these situations are too new, too dynamic or too uncertain, it can’t.

Complicated problems can be solved through clever analysis and the use of existing practice. Whilst we will still have Complicated challenges (best dealt with in traditional ways) the bulk of critically important ones now facing Government are Complex and need different treatment.

Crucially, applying Complicated solutions to Complex challenges is likely to be unfruitful and possibly counter-productive. A different approach is needed if government is to thrive in the 21st Century.

Culture

In the past when things were just Complicated, we were able to hire experts to think our way to a solution. This doesn’t work when things are complex. Why?

Look at a stark example from the UK National Health Service. The UK Department of Health spent billions on an IT project to manage patient health records, which has now been abandoned…

"The Department of Health is not going to achieve its original aim of a fully integrated care records system across the NHS. Trying to create a one-size-fits-all system in the NHS was a massive risk and has proven to be unworkable.”
Chair of UK Government Public Accounts Committee

Complexity was at the heart of the failure. The programme was too ambitious, requirements were too diverse, suppliers were too hard to manage, stakeholders were too unsupportive (and so on). The approach was essentially a top-down, analytic one: hire some smart people to work out the answer and then build a system to implement it. But Complex problems don’t need more expertise or better answers; they need a culture of dealing with complexity. When things are Complex, Government has to be flexible. It must be able to design and build systems whilst, at the same time, trying to understand and change them: perhaps like learning a musical instrument whist trying to make a living from playing it.

Culture is important. Government organisations need to be more responsive to their operating environments; they need to be more agile. Sub-units, that were previously separated for efficiency reasons, must interact spontaneously and not because they have been told to. Individuals at all levels must take more responsibility and their managers must enable (rather than control) them as they do that. Organisations must think and operate more as networks and less as hierarchies. All this means a significant change in behaviour: a change that will feel as uncomfortable as writing with the wrong hand. This new approach will not be brought about by altering structure or processes or technology.

These ideas mostly run against the grain of the way governments are structured and managed: behaviours, beliefs and ways of doing things would feel very different. On top of this, whilst Complexity is turning things upside down, the Complicated stuff hasn’t gone away either. Everything needs to be juggled at the same time: Government needs to grow new ways around old ones and everyone involved must understand why different situations need different approaches.

A new culture is needed.

Community

The make-up and functioning of government communities also presents a significant challenge. To create a culture of dealing with complexity it is necessary to nurture a community of staff that appreciates how to deal with complexity. It is often difficult for government cultures that have grown up with strict rules and complicated procedures to make this shift. In IT, for example, working in a complex way can bring significant, unexpected change. This can create headaches for security teams, support services, policy people and administrators. These problems cannot be designed away, since they are required by the nature of the complex situation themselves. So it is crucial to involve those likely to be affected right from the beginning. The distinction is that when it’s Complicated you need to build teams to solve problems: when it’s Complex you need to grow communities to improve situations.

What to do?

Encouragingly there are plenty of smart and influential people involved with Government who understand these issues and are pioneering new solutions. Take a look at Tim O’Reilly talking about his vision of Government as a Platform. O’Reilly sees a need to develop open infrastructures – particularly IT ones – to enable individuals, companies and social enterprises to participate much more in government and so provide the innovation, diversity and energy needed to deal with Complex situations. Of course this is not going to be a binary flip: governments will need to develop these collaborative ways and have them co-exist with the more traditional ones.

This approach has perhaps three components: Experimentation, Collaboration and Openness …

Experimentation

To create something big and Complicated - like a new road system – then of course the right thing to do is turn to engineers and other professionals who do this kind of thing for a living. To do something big and Complex - like changing the way an organisation works - don’t do the same thing. There is too much uncertainty, too much dynamism and too much complexity. Instead, focus on the Small - lots and lots of fast, iterative Small. The more experiments, the better, as long as open and non-punitive feedback is encouraged as well.

The point is to succeed or fail fast, and often, and do it in small ways that don’t have consequences should things go wrong. This way we can learn and progress quickly. If we don’t, we are prone to missing opportunities and making big, expensive mistakes.

Collaboration

In Complex situations traditional means of coordination, through organisational hierarchies, are not responsive enough. Organisations need to be more spontaneous; when faced with a problem or an opportunity, people need to be able to respond themselves rather than wait for managers. This means people must have the facility both to identify the others they need to work with and then to coordinate that work effectively. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress are transforming interaction and cooperation in our private lives: there is a huge opportunity to use similar tools within organisations to transform our work lives.

Incorporating social capabilities into work tools and creating the culture to use them effectively will take time but is critical to future success: see the recent McKinsey reportThe rise of the networked enterprise or the Forbes article Social Power – The coming corporate revolution. There is currently huge emphasis on creating tools to store and distribute information but, in dealing with Complexity, it is more important to connect People with People than it is to connect People with Information.

Openness

Complexity creates enormous and pressing demand for new capabilities. It will not be possible for government departments to provide everything everyone wants. It is therefore essential that they reach out to both their “customers” and their partners to help understand and deliver novel ways of doing things. To do this effectively there is a need for both new infrastructure and a new culture of outward looking, collaborative staff.
The iPhone is an example of this kind of thing. Apple provide a robust technology infrastructure and facilities for anyone with the skills to create applications for it – there are now nearly 500,000 iPhone apps that Apple could never have created themselves. The same approach could be taken in government to empower partner organisations, internal teams or even gifted amateurs amongst the staff to bring innovative ideas to life.

This thinking is developing in the UK. For example, some local councils are partnering with a social enterprise called Fix My Street - a service that allows citizens to report on problems like holes in the road, graffiti and illegal dumping of waste using a website and associated mobile applications. The initiative is reducing clean-up times and increasing satisfaction of local residents.

Such initiatives have three important features: open technical infrastructure made available to all; open services that enable others to use that infrastructure; and, crucially, open behaviours that create a cohesive, helpful community around the infrastructure that will ensure it is used. And this openness starts with friendly, can-do, inclusive behaviours from everyone involved (and not really the technology): the culture thing again.

The right people

There’s no doubt that developing these new ways of doing things will be a challenge. Altering organisational behaviours takes subtle, thoughtful action by emotionally competent folks with a genuine knack for handling emergent change. Governments will need to look hard and think laterally to find them.

From the inside

People, both workers and managers, who have done well in typically procedural government environments, may not be ideally suited to guiding a transition to more emergent ways of working. New thinking will be needed.
There are people with the right mind-set already in government organisations. Some may not be visible because of the jobs they are in or because they are comparatively junior: they will need to be found, encouraged and perhaps offered different work. Some may be noticeably frustrated: with support and in a changed environment, perhaps their energies can be directed for the good. Those with the best potential may be mavericks or otherwise unusual: don’t ignore them.

It may also be necessary to find a few new people from the outside. The right ones may come from quite different backgrounds and have little experience of the work at hand. They will probably not be easily found through traditional recruitment methods.

From the outside

Many government organisations have established relationships with large providers of consultancy, and that is the natural place to look for help; but consultancies optimised for analysing complicated stuff, designing intricate things, delivering big projects or who are otherwise steeped in Complicated ways of working are likely to find it hard to adapt their approach to handling the Complex. It’s a little like expecting Olympic gold-medal-winning rowing crews to retrain and repeat their success in Synchronised-swimming. Whilst these organisations may have individuals with the right skills, the context in which they work and the way they are managed makes it hard for them to behave in, and support, the emergent ways of working needed to cope with complexity.

Since handling complexity is about organic changes rooted within the organisation there is much less scope for big set-piece technology implementations or organisational restructurings. There is much less money to be made. With big providers, there would always be an urge to convert help for the Complex into more profitable support for the Complicated; and this may not be the right thing. The DNA of these organisations is just not right: smaller organisations that focus specifically on supporting emergent change may be a better choice.

Conclusion

Complexity changes the game of government. To be successful in the future, governments must foster the emergence of a quite different working culture that simultaneously copes with the new complexity and continues to deliver existing services reliably and well. This new culture must combine: an experimental, iterative, holistic approach to tackling big challenges; intensive collaboration with colleagues, partners and citizens; and openness of infrastructure, technology and behaviours. Finding the right people to lead the development of these new ways of thinking and working will be absolutely critical.

As it says on our masthead...

In times of change the learners will inherit the earth while the knowers will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer

If you'll allow me a pinch of counter-rhetoric, I can't help feeling this is wrongheaded old-think.
 
To me, it seems likely that 'Cloud' is the beginning of the maturing of computing into a utility. This maturing will probably take some time, but it is inescapable. It is a fundamental economic tide that public sector culture and government interests will not (in the end) hold back. So, it absolutely makes sense to experiment with these ideas now, even if it is not immediately possible to see how things will turn out. The incremental approach being taken with G-cloud seems spot on.
 
The post talks of the 'public sector not being ready for' G-cloud. It may be that much of it isn't; but it only takes one Department to be ready - one to show how it might be done. If genuine value is demonstrated, others will follow; behaviours, and eventually culture, will change. There is no need for 'selling' or 'being pushy', particularly not 'being pushy'. I would be deeply worried if someone had successfully persuaded Government that this was the way to go (and another farm-sized bet was being placed).
 
The bit about Bill McCluggage caught my eye. I do not know Mr McCluggage or anything of the circumstances of his moving on, so please don't take this as a judgment of him. The paragraph picks on 'tough talking' and an ability to 'drive through' as principal qualities needed to make things change in this situation: but I just don't believe they are. They are (perhaps) needed to deliver big technical programmes; but I don't see the move to utility computing, or the other changes needed to put government IT on its feet, in this bracket. Genuine, transforming change happens organically. It happens as a result of planting seeds, nurturing them and keeping back weeds: it does not get 'delivered'.
 
I see signs of gardening. There is not 'no chance’ for the G-cloud'.

What do you think? Perhaps post a comment yourself, either here or on the original post?

Update: Foden Grealy is now a supplier to the G-Cloud framework contract. Here's what we offer.

Nuff said.