So the Government has been given 100,000 ideas of ways to cut public spending.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
And it says about two-thirds of them have come from public sector workers themselves. The BBC is reporting that Prime Minister David Cameron apparently favours those ideas which chime with his Big Society philosophy.
And they also report that public sector unions have described the Government’s Spending Challenge as an “outrage”, seeing it as getting workers to contribute to their own sacking.
I really cannot see what all the fuss is about. Surely every single one of us who works for a company (i.e. not for ourselves) moans on a fairly regular basis about what could be done better. Haven’t we all been caught declaring how much better the place would be if we/you/anyone else but the bosses were running it? All this without cutting jobs! We did it in Blaenau Gwent, in a small service, so I'm sure there are better ideas out there for doing the same, cutting costs, removing waste and saving vital jobs in the process.
So now’s our chance. If we’ve implementing a money-saving scheme, spread the word and see if others can follow suit. If we think we could save a bit of cash, if only the powers-that-be took off their blinkers and allowed us to do it, let’s speak up about it.
As for voting ourselves out of a job, the way I see it we’d all be much more secure if we starting implementing some efficiencies.
How can anyone really argue for the status quo? Of course the big question which remains to be answered is how many of these 100,000 ideas will we see in practice? How much of this will be taken on board? How will we know what ideas are taken are really from the democratic will of the 'can be bothered' bunch?
But in the name of democracy, let’s not knock them for asking.
I have just watched both of the intriguing Ban the Boss progreammes on iplayer. As a 'Manager'/ 'Leader' trying to lead teams of NHS and Social Care staff towards working in a more integrated way - and with a particular passion to emancipate the professionals in my teams from the opressive bureacracies which they work in; where for instance Social Workers can spend up to 2-3 hours doing paperwork after spending an hour with an older person, and where the performance and recording cultures are obsessive and defensive as the consequence of a cultural and organisational reaction to the public inquiries into the perceived failings in childrens services; I am particularly curious to know how the principles such as worker led workplace democracy and trust that Paul promotes could be adopted in this public sector context? I personally have no fears about change as I feel that I could spend the majority of my time doing more useful things at work than I currently am made to do.
ReplyDeleteRobert, great to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteThe principles of Complexity and Human Systems Thinking can be adopted anywhere there are, well humans. What results is huge savings in waste, increase in motivation from staff and people like yourself. Once implemented the solutions come from you, not me or the 'architecture' of Human Systems.
I will write a working paper on the process of implementation in the next few days and post sections on here for you to read. Hope this helps.
If you know there is a problem then as a leader you are already moving in this direction. The solutions...... are already there as well, it just a matter of using boundaries to ensure core direction is not lost.
More to follow.
Thank you for the post
Paul