costs – flowingmotion

What will happen if we cut by 25%

Yesterday on Twitter, there was a lot of chatter about impending cuts. If we cut this, then this bad thing will happen. Today, we heard that if we reduce a budget by 25%, we will get more terrorism. All of this may be true, but it illustrates a fundamental error in managing public services (and public servants).

Lead by substance not by budget

Don’t conflate the service and the budget! Simply don’t allow the conversation.

Ask only this – what do you want to do?

Never allow a public servant to talk about the budget. Their job is to deliver a service. Talk about the service. The budget is your responsibility.

Overcoming objections

If you try this, st first you will get a lot of reverting to type. These will be the typical excuses/worries/concerns.

It is important to do X, but that person over there won’t do Y, so I can’t do X (and I can throw a wobbly). Persist in keeping the conversation about X. What do you want to do? And why? Understand fully what the person believes is important. Pay attention and let people see you pay attention.

It is important to do X but I cannot do it without an assistant Y. Keep the conversation about X. Y is budget. Understand X fully. If X is important and well thought out, you’ll find budget. But X will fail anyway if it is poorly thought out and more to do with assistants than goals. Don’t say the last two sentences aloud. Just keep the conversation about X and about what the person believes to be important. Pay attention! They know what they are talking about and after all they are going to do the work!

I won’t talk about this at all. Unspoken here are two thoughts. If I suggest something, you will make me do double work with half the budget. Or, I might suggest a lesser project than my colleagues and lose out in the status stakes. Simply state that you want to know what is important to the person and to make sure their projects are on the table because everyone else is making their bids. Sadly, if you have a reputation for stabbing your staff in the back, you might take some time to develop trust. Leave you knives at home from now on! You have to be sure that you will too. Stab anyone now and no one will trust you ever again.

Being patient

This exercise will take time and a lot of one-on-one’s. But if you have the patience, your patience alone will communicate that you are dependable. You will find out what is important and everyone will understand they are responsible for conceiving a quality service that is needed, doable and credit to the service providers and the organization at a whole. They have it all in their head. Everyone does. We all know what we want to do and we all have our pride.

Being prepared

Now for the hard work. You must have done your homework. You must have gathered together and fully analysed three sets of data.

The general regulations, law and physical constraints of your work unit. You need to model the work of your unit on a spreadsheet. It’s likely that you will have outputs in rows and inputs in columns and have sets of calculations at the top, bottom and side of your table. You must know what is generally required of your unit and be able to slot in numbers quickly so that you can assess the impact of any one plan on all other plans at the touch of refresh button. You will be assessing a lot of scenarios before you are done.
You must know the past performance of your unit and what is likely to happen if you carried on without changing anything. Do the analyzes yourself. The accountants in your organization might have strange ideas about how your unit works.
You must know your costs. Forget managing your budget if you don’t know your costs down to the last penny.

Now to work!

When you have all this information on hand, you can honor your promise. You tell your staff to work out what should be done and you will look after the budget.

If their ideas are not economically (financially) viable, then you will tell them and they will have to think again.

But they don’t have to worry about money. That’s your job.

And whatever you do, don’t allow the agenda to be driven by the budget.

First define the service. Then ask if it is economically possible.

Don’t conflate service and budget. Don’t allow the conversation.

You will be surprised how much can be done with less money. And if you have to tell your political masters that less will be done, at least you will have all the numbers to hand.

But if you can’t deliver a good service on less money in a way that is far more enjoyable for your staff, I will eat my hat.

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Should we hire management consultants?

I’ve worked as a management consultant all my life. Maybe that qualifies me to write this post. Maybe my experience disqualifies me. This is what I think. Much as I welcome the business and interesting assignments, hiring consultants can be a bad sign.

Think of it like this. When I go to see my GP (family physician), I expect them to refer me to ‘consultants’ or specialists for rare conditions. It makes sense to see someone who works all day and everyday in one field.

But think of the reverse. Imagine going to a specialist hospital and having the leading specialist refer you to a GP. Now that is back to front.

Sadly, often management consultants are not specialists. They are often young, inexperienced and unqualified. Why then are they used to advise experienced managers?

Why do we hire management consultants?

There can be many reasons. But one of the obvious, of course, is that managers don’t know what to do. Not knowing what to do is not a crime. We all read. We all go on courses. We are learning all the time.

But when consultants aren’t specialists being hired to do specialist tasks, there is often a very specific malaise in the organization. And the malaise may be this. The managers are doing work one level below their appointment.

The senior managers, for example, are planning budgets and developing working procedures and checking efficiencies. They are supposed to be looking ahead and anticipating the obstacles of 5 years time that we need to start solving now. The middle managers will plan the actual work and review its efficiency. The junior managers will make sure the work is done and tweak procedures to fit the specifics of the moment.

In military terms, senior managers don’t go to war; they don’t necessarily plan this war. They plan the next war.

In turn, the top managers might be solving the problems of tomorrow when they should be deciding what business to be in and what kind of organizational structure and business model is required to succeed in that business.

In military terms, they assess which of our allies of today will be our enemies of tomorrow. They anticipate innovation in weaponry and have the right research and development going on at military universities. They look into the future that we cannot see.

Of course, senior managers should understand how middle managers draw up budgets just as generals must know what is happening to colonels and troops on the ground. They should know how well things are going. When they walk into a work site, they should understand what is happening as a general should be able to comfortably go out on patrol. They need to understand the organization from bottom to top, but they must do their own jobs not someone elses. If no one is steering the ship of the organization, we will go to sea without maps, food, fuel and skills.

The sad reality of consulting

When we hire consultants, the excuse that we often give is that our subordinates are not up to their jobs. Let’s do some thought experiments.

In a well-run organization, when the boss is away, (when we are away) can somebody sit in our chair and makes the decisions we would ordinarily make. If not, its not surprising we think our subordinates are incompetent. We don’t let them see the world from where we see it.
When we are away, are our subordinates able to do more work and make better decisions than when we are around?
When our incompetent subordinate is away, do things run better or worse?
When our incompetent subordinate is away, is one of his or her subordinates automatically taking over his or her responsibilities? And if not, why not?

Specialist work that occurs rarely is legitimate work for a consultant. Doing a senior managers job is not. And the test is whether the senior manager can state whether they have assessed the obstacles the organization will face over the next five years and what they are doing to ameliorate the difficulties.

They may be more comfortable doing month-to-month management, or even day-to-day management, but while they are doing their juniors work for them, the work of leadership is not happening. A simple solution is to move the senior managers to another building where they cannot interfere quite so readily. Limit the email and telephone contact upwards with daily meetings at a set time.

Very soon they won’t need a consultant at all.

Tag: costs

Talking cuts? Don’t. Talk service.