Responding to Recession – Running faster won’t deliver the answer!

There is an overwhelming and growing movement in the public sector that change is needed to cope with the bleak financial deficit that sits around the corner – please excuse me but we’ve all known that it’s been coming!

What’s surprising me even more though is the emerging view that we simply need to repeat more of what we are doing in organisations to get us through! To be fair, it’s not said quite like this in either my coaching, or wider organisational work. But what I am seeing and hearing, is simply a description of doing more of the existing ways of working. The only perceived difference is that it needs to happen in a compressed window of opportunity. Now surely there is something to learn here? - that if we haven’t succeeded in key strategic policy changes before, then working in the same way but much faster is not the answer!

I’m sorry but simply adopting a ‘running faster’ and ‘more of the same’ approach is not going to deliver the cost efficiencies that are being called for. The only way that the major financial challenge across the public sector is going to be addressed is through workforce rationalisation. In the NHS alone, 70% of its costs are attributed to staffing.

Please do not mention you are going into a ‘service review’, ‘programme management’ or ‘service redesign’ phase at this stage in the recession – you should have been there already. These approaches are not going to deliver the changes needed within the timescale laid down. They are assets we can call upon after the immediate financial crisis has been responded to.

The recession is forcing all of us who work in the public sector to deal with the emotional consciousness of organisations – the very thing that can sabotage our best laid plans. It’s where we’re most uncomfortable – but it’s where we will deliver on the financial challenge.

Running faster on this one will not win the race for us! We need to find breakthrough strategies unlike anything we’ve seen before……