Update...

After an incredible week of hundreds of emails asking for more and saying well done, I just wanted to update everyone and answer some of the points missed in the programme. I hope this helps.....

This idea started 10 years ago for me, when at the LSE I met a guy called Ricardo Semlar. He owned a company of 4000 staff, made everything from ship pumps to Social Services, all without a single manager in sight. It was remarkable. No plans, strategies, KPI's or anything like that, other than "15% profit, number one in the market, and best quality"..... oh and letting the employee free rein to do it their way! 

He offered an alternative from the ‘machine’ idea of an organisation with people as cogs and not humans. He did it intuitively, not as a result of theory or as a management consultant. Soon after this I discovered Complexity Theory or Human Systems thinking, which in simple terms explains how we ‘operate’ as people, in our systems, life and how this particular organisation stayed together and worked.

So why Public Sector? I started BGCBC over two years ago when the CEO Robbie Morrison invited me in to talk to the Senior Management. They were looking to change the way Public Services operated, whilst improving performance with ever decreasing finances. My theory, tried and tested in business, we thought could do the trick and it did, with amazing results. 

I started with all the Senior Managers, then as an experiment to prove it can be done, Alan Reed volunteered his department, Environmental Services, for the change and this started last October with BBC One in pursuit.

This was NEVER about getting 'rid' of managers (people), only management (the thing they get paid to do). If you get frontline staff to realise that they know the job best, that they can change it to do things better, then the results are amazing. Despite the impression from the programme it took two months to gain trust from the staff, to get them to understand they can change the ‘system’ and deliver a better service to the people of Blaenau Gwent. After all, most if not all of the staff were from the Borough, and customers themselves. 

There are now no 'managers' left in Environmental Services, only a few leaders, and they change according to experience, responsibility, project and needs of customers and councillors.  The money saved by this experiment was/is being invested for the most part back into frontline services. This, is after all, is the main purpose of the whole programme.

You also have to remember that the Binmen and the Garage bosses, were the product of the BGCBC system. They have behaved and acted this way, I suppose, simply as that was what the system expected. They are the product of the way the organisation was structured. They were/are not naturally managers, they became managers because the organisation expected them to and indeed the staff wanted it. They saw only one way of organisation. I showed them that there is an alternative. 

The Binmen have now come on-board and after five months they are now ‘self-managing’, looking to improve services their way and helping to achieve a huge recycling target.

I also have to add that as the ‘Expert’ in all this, I never got paid a penny. I did this to prove to everyone, Councillors, Unions, Academics, more than anyone that if you ask the staff, trust them and let them do it their way to please the public, it is more effective, less expensive and much more efficient. 

Organisations are about people. Leadership is about people. Good leaders sell passion and trust others.  

Thank you everyone who has responded. Its great to have others thinking the same way...

Paul