Core Capabilities of System Leaders

For full article on System Leaders click here

Though they differ widely in personality and style, genuine system leaders have a remarkably similar impact . Over time, their profound commitment to the health of the whole radiates to nurture similar commitment in others. Their ability to see reality through the eyes of people very different from themselves encourages others to be more open as well. They build relationships based on deep listening, and networks of trust and collaboration start to flourish. They are so convinced that something can be done that they do not wait for a fully developed plan, thereby freeing others to step ahead and learn by doing. Indeed, one of their greatest contributions can come from the strength of their ignorance, which gives them permission to ask obvious questions and to embody an openness and commitment to their own ongoing learning and growth that eventually infuse larger change efforts.

As these system leaders emerge, situations previously suffering from polarization and inertia become more open, and what were previously seen as intractable problems become perceived as opportunities for innovation. Short-term reactive problem solving becomes more balanced with long-term value creation. And organizational self-interest becomes re-contextualized, as people discover that their and their organization’s success depends on creating well-being within the larger systems of which they are a part.

There are three core capabilities that system leaders develop in order to foster collective leadership.

1. The first is the ability to see the larger system. In any complex setting, people typically focus their attention on the parts of the system most visible from their own vantage point. This usually results in arguments about who has the right perspective on the problem. Helping people see the larger system is essential to building a shared understanding of complex problems. This understanding enables collaborating organizations to jointly develop solutions not evident to any of them individually and to work together for the health of the whole system rather than just pursue symptomatic fixes to individual pieces.

2. The second capability involves fostering reflection and more generative conversations. Reflection means thinking about our thinking, holding up the mirror to see the taken-for-granted assumptions we carry into any conversation and appreciating how our mental models may limit us. Deep, shared reflection is a critical step in enabling groups of organizations and individuals to actually “hear” a point of view different from their own, and to appreciate emotionally as well as cognitively each other’s reality. This is an essential doorway for building trust where distrust had prevailed and for fostering collective creativity.

3. The third capability centers on shifting the collective focus from reactive problem solving to co-creating the future. Change often starts with conditions that are undesirable, but artful system leaders help people move beyond just reacting to these problems to building positive visions for the future. This typically happens gradually as leaders help people articulate their deeper aspirations and build confidence based on tangible accomplishments achieved together. This shift involves not just building inspiring visions but facing difficult truths about the present reality and learning how to use the tension between vision and reality to inspire truly new approaches.

Much has been written about these leadership capabilities in the organizational learning literature and the tools that support their development.3 But much of this work is still relatively unknown or known only superficially to those engaged in collaborative systemic change efforts.

Author: Carnegie Trust

Over the past two years the Carnegie UK Trust’s Neighbourhood News initiative has supported five leading local news projects with £10,000 each to deliver community news in new and innovative ways. The Trust’s new policy summary draws on key findings from Neighbourhood News and sets out a new agenda for the future of local news in the UK. The policy summary provides 11 recommendations for how government, regulators, funders and other local news providers can support community-led local news.

Click here to download the policy summary (PDF).

The full evaluation report is also available here.

For more information please contact Lauren Pennycook, Policy Officer at laurenp@carnegieuk.org

Author: Ecology Centre

Kinghorn Community Land Association and the Ecology Centre

Kinghorn Community Land Association (KCLA) was set up by the people of Kinghorn to give our community an active role in ensuring a sustainable future for land around Kinghorn Loch and to secure the future of the Ecology Centre. Supported by the Scottish Government’s community right to buy scheme, KCLA have quietly prepared for a time when loch side land might become available and could be secured through community ownership.

KCLA are delighted with the news that The Ecology Centre have successfully purchased the land at the East side of the loch. Kinghorn Community Land Association had registered an interest under the Community Right to Buy in the 5 acres of land and were therefore given first option to buy.  They relinquished their option so that the Ecology Centre could buy it (as we were required to have ownership by the Big Lottery to receive Growing Community Asset funds to build our new Centre on it).  The Ecology Centre received funding from the Scottish Land Fund to purchase it, this was concluded in July.  We have just heard that the Big Lottery are awarding us £920 000 to build our new Centre (from Growing Community Assets programme) and to contribute towards revenue costs for the first five years.  The build with begin in January. Work is already underway with tree planting, the erection of a composting toilet and other projects.

The Ecology Centre is a community based charity which was established as a non-profit making organisation in August 1998. The organisation came into being through an advisory group set up by people from the local community and residents of Craigencalt Farm. The purpose of the organisation, known then as Craigencalt Ecology Centre, was to develop and manage the Kinghorn Loch site for community use.  In 2006 a decision was made to change the name of the organisation and today we are simply known as The Ecology Centre.

The Site.  In the early days, the site itself was relatively undeveloped with a small area of Community Woodland and an Organic Garden. A workshop programme also operated from the site. With the help of a small group of volunteers, the site began to develop. Pathways were established, the pond and marshes recovered and the community woodland expanded. Today The Ecology Centre is a well-managed area of biodiversity and a haven for natural wildlife.

Volunteers and staff.   As the site grew, so did the need for additional volunteers and staff to help with the day to day running of the Centre.  Today we have an army of volunteers who regularly attend the Centre and help with the many and varied tasks around the Site.  We employ 11 members of staff as well as providing employment training opportunities through Project Scotland and Community Jobs Scotland.  We also accommodate school and college placements.

Education Programme.   Education has always been at the heart of The Ecology Centre.  Demand for educational visits has grown and we now work with hundreds of school children each year helping them to understand the importance of and how to care for our environment.

The Ecology Centre Enterprise – “Out of the Wood”.   In 2006 The Ecology Centre Enterprise was established as the trading arm of the charity. The Out of the Woodworkshop produces individual, hand crafted, high quality and good value wooden products. All the profits raised from the sale of these goods are fed back into The Ecology Centre. We are experts in the production of outdoor classrooms and playground equipment. View our online catalogue to browse our log seats, wooden benches and outdoor seating products.

Relevant links for the Ecology Centre:

http://www.theecologycentre.org/news/news.php?id=110
http://www.theecologycentre.org/news/news.php?id=107
http://www.theecologycentre.org/news/news.php?id=104

Author: Senscot

Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust, a new independent charity aiming to transform how Scotland’s third sector uses and thinks about its finances, was launched last week. The trust’s first initiative is a specially designed new savings account to be introduced at today’s Glasgow Social Enterprise Trade Fair.

With a lack of Scottish-focused banks offering any longer a transparent way for people or third sector organisations to invest in line with their values – and with the existing financial framework failing to adequately meet the needs of charities and socially focused organisations – the trust is setting out to create radical change.

It plans to help independent charities and socially beneficial organisations to harness their collective assets, strengthen their financial expertise and gain access to financial services tailored to their specific needs.

The new Anchor Savings Account – provided by Airdrie Savings Bank, Britain’s last independent savings bank – offers a fresh and tailored focus for third sector savings. By connecting hundreds of separate accounts beneath one umbrella, the pioneering account will increase the impact of the sector’s shared financial clout.

“Scotland’s third sector, which does huge amounts of public good, desperately needs access to a financial infrastructure that matches its values and ways of working. For charities and socially beneficial organisations, the current financial system is broken beyond repair – leaving them hampered by scattered resources, unsuitable products and unmet needs,” said Deirdre Forsyth, Chair of Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust.

“By acting together and harnessing its collective assets – and by strengthening its understanding and knowledge of socially responsible use and management of money – the third sector can use its substantial financial resources to invest in its own future in alternative and better ways than is currently possible.”

Scotland’s third sector includes an estimated 45,000 different and richly varied organisations. Its investable assets have been calculated to be approximately £3.8 billion, according to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations – but these substantial resources are currently spread across financial institutions that are mostly uninterested in the third sector’s work or needs. If just one per cent of these assets were invested more strategically, it could transform the sector’s economic independence and its influence on banking practices.

Malcolm Hayday, former INAISE president and Advisor to Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust, said: “By building a common, collective and shared wealth there is huge scope for organisations to invest in and support the development of the wider third sector – recycling its investment resources and creating significant benefits for its crucial work for society, our environment and people’s well-being. In the sector, we focus on the positive impact of everything we do except when it comes to our financial reserves.”

Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust cites evidence of widespread third sector dissatisfaction with current financial services. This includes recent research for Charity Bank, which revealed that although 65% of respondents believed that loans can benefit charities’ work, only 31% of those approaching a high street bank for a loan took one, 29% were declined and 40% could not take up offered loans because of onerous terms.

With many UK social investment schemes underpinned by a focus on private investor returns rather than social, environmental and wider economic benefits, third sector organisations can also struggle to meet increasing expectations that their business decisions should be ethically based.

Another problem is that while a key third sector role is to act as society’s social antennae – identifying new needs, and inventing and testing new social solutions – such work is traditionally unbankable, often being viewed as too experimental and risky for commercial and even many social funders. Yet the sector needs supplies of relatively small amounts of high-risk investment, as well as micro loans and unsecured loans, to incubate new generations of start-ups.

Although the social finance market within the UK – and especially Scotland – is relatively small, since the financial crisis it is gaining recognition as an important funding source for third sector organisations, including the supply of early stage investments and start-ups, fostering innovation and supporting community-based investments. But as the third sector’s resource needs increase – and as its requirement to invest in its own future becomes more acute – its members will need to act together more whenever possible.

As it explores the third sector’s appetite to work across Scotland in a new, more cooperative way on finance, Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust’s own long-term future will depend on the response of the sector. The Anchor Savings Account allows organisations to choose to donate a proportion of earned interest to the trust – allowing the charity to become self-sustaining following an initial period of grant funding. Discussions are underway with several organisations to act as early standard bearers for the new initiative.

The trust has been established with a founding Board and team with extensive experience of social banking institutions and the third sector, founded by several organisations – Senscot, CEIS, Penumbra and Ekopia – and chaired by Deirdre Forsyth, Chair of ScotWest Credit Union. It is registered as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) and is to be owned and managed by Scotland’s third sector.

During an initial two-year implementation phase, the trust will build its membership amongst Scotland’s third sector organisations, from which a new board will be elected in late 2015.

Author: Carnegie Trust

A new report by the Carnegie UK Trust has highlighted the importance of well-designed public spaces, such as parks, town squares, local streets and community gardens to people’s health and wellbeing.

The findings come as the Trust announced the overall winner of its first ever Carnegie Prize for Design and Wellbeing, Auchencairn Link Park, a community led project based in Dumfries and Galloway. The prize has been awarded in partnership with the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) and the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA) and celebrates projects where local communities have played a leading role in improving public spaces in town centres through high quality design and architecture.

Auchencairn Link Park is a community led project to transform wasteland at the centre of the Dumfries and Galloway village of Auchencairn into a thriving community garden and learning spaces has today been announced the overall winner.

Martyn Evans, Chief Executive of the Carnegie UK Trust, explains more: “There is a clear link between the quality of our local environment and our wellbeing. Our intention with the Carnegie Prize for Design and Wellbeing was to shine a spotlight on the important role that well-designed, community-led, public spaces can play in supporting good mental and physical health, providing places for people to come together and facilitating local enterprise and regeneration. Our 5 inspirational prize winners and the overall winner do just that.”

“However well-designed community led public spaces should be the rule not the exception. That is why today we set out 5 actions that policymakers can take to ensure that more communities have access to good quality public spaces.”

“Community-led design is both a means and an end to improved wellbeing and is a particularly valuable tool in helping tackle deeply rooted health inequalities. More support for projects like those highlighted through the Carnegie Prize should be a key component of a preventative approach to health improvement.”

“Communities need better access to funding and support to turn their design ideas and aspirations into reality. Local and national governments need to support and encourage community creativity and participation. Community led public space projects should be central to town centre regeneration efforts and the link between good quality public space and improved social and economic outcomes should be clearly reflected in local strategies and plans.”

The Prize which was launched in March 2014 was open to community led townscape improvement projects across Scotland and Northern Ireland. The 5 winners (four from Scotland and one from Northern Ireland) who received a prize of £2,500 each were unveiled at the RIAS convention in May. The Auchencairn project will also receive an additional £1,000 in recognition of their outstanding achievement.

Iain Connelly, President of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), said: ”I was delighted to be involved in the judging for the Carnegie prize for Design and Wellbeing. There is no doubt in my mind that good design most certainly does make a difference – and potentially, a significant difference – to the lives and wellbeing of communities and individuals across Scotland. Good design doesn’t have to be expensive, so it shouldn’t be seen as an extra. Rather, it should be present in everything we do, for every project, however big, however small.”

Margaret Burns, Chair of NHS Health Scotland said: “We welcome the findings of the report which show the important role well-designed, community led, public spaces can play in supporting good mental and physical health and tackling inequalities. Empowering communities to help shape how public services are planned and delivered, is beneficial for everyone’s wellbeing.”

Phoebe Marshall, Auchencairn Community Garden (overall winner) said: “We are delighted with the recognition of our work with the community. Throughout, this project has been about people, and whilst community workshops and work parties are not always the simplest way to create a garden, it is an approach which creates great experiences, knowledge, new friendships and a beautiful space that will be used by the whole village for a range of activities.”

”The project has really brought the community together and we are immensely proud of the energy and enthusiasm local people have given to transform Auchencairn Link park from a disused field into the lovely garden that it is today”.

Last week, a Europe-wide petition against TTIP, the controversial and aggressively neo-liberal free trade deal between the US and EU, reached 1 million signatures. More than 180,000 of those were from the UK. Another petition here in Scotland, calling on the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to oppose TTIP, gained almost 25,000 signatures.

Opposition to TTIP is growing at an astonishing speed as the public discover how it threatens democracy, social justice, public services and national sovereignty.

TTIP is facing particularly widespread criticism for the threat that it poses to the NHS – particularly by ‘locking-in’ privatization. But it’s also a threat to other public services in the UK, and we believe that here in Scotland it could have an impact on Scottish Water if it ever wanted to renationalise its troublesome PFI projects.

Around half of all waste water and about 80% of waste water sludge in Scotland is treated in works operated by PFI companies, under contracts signed with Scottish Water in the late 1990s. Some of these projects have been heavily criticised for mechanical failures, leakages and bad smells and Scottish Water has had to spend millions of pounds over the years to try and reduce these problems.

The treatment plant at Seafield in Edinburgh, for example, has caused many problems for local residents for a number of years from bad smells. This plant is operated by multi-national waste company Veolia under a 30 year PFI contract signed with Scottish Water in 1999.

Scottish Water has suggested in its business plans in the past that it would try and bring the PFI projects back into public ownership.

However, this could be stymied by one of the key features of TTIP: the investor-state dispute mechanism (ISDS) which allows multi-national companies to use international arbitration courts, outside of national legal systems, to sue countries if national policies threaten profits (or, crucially in this case, future profits). It’s this mechanism that we believe could be used to stop Scottish Water bringing its PFIs back into public ownership, through the companies involved suing the government for compensation for lost profits if contracts are not renewed. The cost of this compensation could be enough to put Scottish Water and the Scottish government off renationalising those PFIs.

There are many, many examples from other treaties of companies using this mechanism to sue (or even just threaten to sue – which can sometimes be enough) governments over lost profits. Just this week, Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) released new research showing the extent to which the inclusion of these special rights for investors in previous trade treaties has allowed corporations to sue European governments in secret courts (and how much taxpayers are footing the bill for this).

Their research identified 127 known ISDS cases that have been brought against 20 EU member states since 1994. Despite information on these secretive court cases being hard to find, the facts that FoEE was able to undercover illustrate the enormous sums of money involved in these cases. The largest known amount to be awarded by a tribunal against a state was 553 million euros (in the case of Ceskoslovenska Obchodni Banka vs Slovak Republic) and the largest known settlement was 2 billion euros, paid by Poland to Eureko, a Dutch insurance company.

Veolia, the operator of Seafield treatment works that I mentioned above, also has form when it comes to using ISDS to claim compensation for lost profits. Since 2012, Veolia (which is headquartered in France but has many offices around the world) has been suing Egypt based on the bilateral investment agreement between France and Egypt for an alleged breach of a contract for waste disposal in the city of Alexandria. The city had refused to make changes to the contract which Veolia wanted in order to meet higher costs – in part due to the introduction of a minimum wage. Also, according to Veolia, the local police had failed to prevent the massive theft of dustbins by the local population. According to media reports, Veolia wants 82 million euros in compensation.

Last month, the Scottish Parliament European and External Affairs committee of the Scottish Parliament started an inquiry into TTIP. We gave written and oral evidence to the committee, highlighting our concerns about a range of problems with the trade deal, including the ISDS mechanism and the threat that it poses to public services and laws to protect workers’ rights, the environment and public health.

The Scottish government wants the NHS in Scotland exempted from TTIP. We don’t believe that this goes far enough – and we think that the people who have signed the petitions would agree. If the Scottish government is to protect Scotland’s much loved public services and safeguard laws designed to protect workers, public health and Scotland’s natural heritage then it must go further and oppose the trade deal entirely in its current form (as indeed the SNP MEP Alyn Smith has said that he does) as well as demonstrating a robust counterweight to Westminster’s enthusiasm for it. Only that will really address the concerns of the one million citizens across Europe opposed to TTIP.

Author: Wordbank

The Evergreen is the inaugural project of the Word Bank which itself is a project of Edinburgh’s Old Town Development Trust

Celebrating the local, the work of writers and artists and the importance of community, The Evergreen will produce four publications of new writing alongside an extensive 2-year learning and events programme.

In 1895, following the example of Allan Ramsay, Patrick Geddes and colleagues produced their Evergreen calling for ‘a return to local and national tradition and living nature’.

Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust, in partnership with The University of Edinburgh and others want to amplify this call for the 21st century.

The Evergreen will establish community-led cultural projects as an integral part of the Word Bank.

The project will actively involve and support the whole Old Town community and encourage a literary and cultural tradition where everyone contributes to the on-going story of the city.

Geddes wanted to move away from what he saw as the ‘decadent culture’ of his time which was epitomised by self-interest – ‘The rule of conduct “Each for himself”,  which is held good enough for beasts, has little relevance to human intercourse and social action’.    

Self-interest and the drive for personal and corporate profit still drives our culture, locally, nationally and beyond. The Evergreen offers a chance to re-think existing models of community aspiring to approaches that will serve us all better.

In that spirit, the Trust wants the widest possible collaboration in the project and invites anyone interested to get in touch, especially those wioth contributions to the first Evergreen books, which will be published in 2014.

Contact: Elizabeth Eliott or Sean Bradley wordbankevergreen@gmail.com

Three major sets of announcements over the past fortnight.

First Minister’s announces new ministerial line up 21/11/14 – read  here

First Minister’s announced her programme for government 26/11/14 – read here

Key points from the Smith Commission on new powers for Scotland 27/11/14– read here

Carluke High Mill –  watch a short film about the mill here

Brief history

The High Mill stands at the top of Chapel Street, which used to be called Windmill Brae. The Mill tower was built in 1797 by Mr David Dick, on land he leased from the local laird Captain Hamilton of Kirkton and Fairholm. The mill must have been successful, as it was mentioned in an advertisement of 1817 which extolled the virtues of Carluke in the hope of attracting people to the Town. Certainly David Dick became a man of some standing in the town, as he was appointed Baron Baillie in 1815.

For some reason, however, plans to build a courthouse in the town never came to fruition. Some years later, David Dick handed over the running of the Mill to two of his sons, James a millwright engineer, and William a miller. They converted the mill to steam power and added several structures to the original tower, including the threshing mill. The family tradition of milling continued right into the 20th Century.

However the mill fell into disuse about 1930, having been converted to gas power by James Dick only fifteen years earlier. As a mechanical mill as opposed to a water driven mill it holds the interest of various organisations within the United Kingdom and beyond. The internal machinery was removed from the mill in 1999 and placed in safe storage. This machinery has been described as “the most complete [set of working parts] to be associated with any Scottish corn-grinding windmill”.

Funding

The Steering Group with the guidance and support of the Strathclyde Building and Preservation Trust has been very busy this year working on the plans to identify a potential funding strategy for the work required. We have been in negotiation with Architectural Heritage Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund, Investing in Ideas and Historic Scotland. These National groups have all shown a high level of support for our project. Representatives of the High Mill Steering Group have also been in contact with representatives of South Lanarkshire Council.

The Architectural Heritage Fund has pledged a sum of money to the project, although the terms and conditions mean that it needs to be match funded elsewhere before being allocated to specific costs. The national organisations have a critical issue they require to be clarified; this is that the land owner of the site is asked to submit at minimum a letter which confirms that they agree in principal to the plans put forward and the regeneration work.

These longer term plans include the purchase of the land by Carluke Development Trust on behalf of the residents of Carluke. Key discussions have been taking place across this year between both parties and the current owners have demonstrated interest in this vision of a regenerated High Mill to happen. The negotiations however, have reached an impasse and we feel we need to consider an alternative to relying initially on funders providing the income for land purchase.

The aim is to clarify for the potential funders that a future owner of the land is fully committed to the terms and conditions of the funders, who are responsible for issuing public money. One of the issues is the time frame set out by the funders is based on years. Consequently the Steering Group has chosen to campaign to raise funds so that Carluke Development Trust can put forward a proposal to buy the land on behalf of the community.

Our website is here

Author: Professor John Seddon

A favourite game is the one where you ask friends which of our current practices will look most ridiculous and unacceptable in 50 years’ time. In other words, what will be the early 21st century’s equivalent of slavery?

The usual answer is some aspect of our devastation of the environment or our seeming acceptance of grotesque imbalances in the distribution of wealth across the world’s population. Of course, many people already acknowledge these. We may not act to remedy them, but we know we should. My own answer is more parochial, but very rarely acknowledged: ‘The Whitehall Effect’.

For 35 years, successive administrations have set out to ‘tighten up’ and ‘clamp down’ on our public services with the twin intention of ‘increasing efficiency’ and ‘cutting costs’. But because they have all relied on the same disastrous triple-whammy of wrong theory, wrong principle and wrong practice they have, without exception, driven costs up and made things worse.

Whammy 1 – Wrong Theory

Embodying Douglas McGregor’s Theory X (that people – in this case public servants – are idle, dishonest and untrustworthy), Whitehall has sought to micro-manage through regulations, directives, incentives, standards, targets and audits – all of which assume that Whitehall knows how to run (say) a hospital ward, a police service or a housing benefits office better than people who actually deliver and run those services. And all of which assume that people cannot be trusted to do their job. The result, sure enough, has been the emergence of a whole new species optimised for finding ways to work the system – massage the figures, get round penalties, appear to meet targets, do anything, in fact, other than meet the needs of the citizens they should be serving.

Whammy 2 – Wrong Principle

Persuaded by the private sector corporations that sell these things that call centres, back offices, economies of scale and Big IT can work, Whitehall has consistently sought to wring car-factory economies and efficiencies out of services delivered by one lot of human beings to another lot of human beings. The result, sure enough, has been the emergence of a whole new species of humiliated and demotivated public servants who can’t wait to leave or retire.

Whammy 3 – Wrong Practice

Because Whitehall is peopled by politicians with agendas (they should have principles instead) and young policy-makers with one-word ideas like Nudge, Choice and Lean (they should simply gather evidence instead), it is constantly seeking to impose some new and better ‘initiative’ on our public services. The result is a classic case of trying to do the wrong thing righter. Instead, Whitehall should get out of management altogether.

The defence of Whammy 1 is that Whitehall has to micro-manage because, if it doesn’t, we get Rotherham, Mid-Staffs NHS or Hackney social services. But, of course, these tragic failures occurred because staff were looking the wrong way – at targets, ratings, paperwork and appearances – rather than at the citizens they were there to serve. This is a systemic failing caused by over-regulation from Whitehall. Tightening up afterwards simply makes it worse. Free up doctors, nurses, social workers and police officers to deliver the best possible service to the public and they will do a much better job than if you hem them in with constraints and regulations.

The defence of Whammy 2 is that the private sector knows best.  But the private sector has the rudder of profit. It knows how best to make money. So, in public services, Big IT projects (for example) universally make big profits for the IT companies and almost universally fail the citizens they were supposed to serve. Public services should have the rudder of service (how can we meet the needs of citizens?) but instead have the soul-destroying rudder of compliance (how can we get 5-star status from Whitehall?).

The defence of Whammy 3 is that the brightest and the best should be hired by Whitehall and paid to think about improving our public services. In fact they’re paid to find policies that fit the ministerial agenda and they rarely have any experience of the services they’re butchering. We’ve worked with hospital departments, housing repairs staff, benefits teams and many other groups of public servants; remove their regulatory shackles and we have found that they consistently come up with ways to deliver better, more appropriate services, when and where they’re needed. Invariably costs fall.

You need to read the book to understand the extent of the damage caused by Whitehall, but the headline is: The Whitehall Effect drives up incompetence, misaligned services, failure demand and costs. Like abolishing slavery, all that is required is for us, the electorate, to insist that Whitehall get out of managing public services. It’s a crime against the citizen that the Whitehall regime is still trying to command and control public services that it doesn’t understand. It has to stop.

  John Seddon’s The Whitehall Effect is published today.

http://www.triarchypress.net/the-whitehall-effect.html