As we witness David Cameron’s latest ‘flip flops’ on key policy areas of health and social care and crime last week, and hear Rowan Williams’ strong comments about the impact of having no clear leadership direction and underpinning values in the current Coalition government, a striking image sprang to mind . Try Googling the words ‘confused picture’ and it’s one of the top four images that pop up. It’s a signpost with the words ‘Confused, Lost, Perplexed, Disoriented, Unsure and Bewildered’ on its posts – all pointing in different directions. It was used recently by several different employees in a
If the term ‘culture change’ has you reaching for the metaphorical remote control to change the channel, you may have heard one too many pious exhortation to change the culture. I’ve heard two apparently contradictory views on culture recently that reminded me of what is at the root of organisational culture.
John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting can be relied upon for trenchant and provocative views and he recently took the head of HM Customs and Revenue to task for talking about and investing in culture change. The point he makes is that if you can get the flow and organisation of
It used to be a one way street. A public sector anxious to learn would look to the private sector to know how to do things better. From the public sector reforms of the 80s where ‘private = good, public = bad’, to the Blair reforms with an increasingly mixed market, the public sector has always had a slight inferiority complex about the private sector. (This perpetuated the myth that there was one homogenous thing called the ‘private sector’ which was uniformly excellent in all that it did…)
But there are distinct signs of the tables turning. There are some real
