What change management tools can delivery strategic solutions for managers to cope with sea changes in their sector? In UK public services there are unprecedented pressures and demands; how can managers turn the tables on the drive towards cuts? Here we discuss the second wave in our three waves of C-change framework.
Can we equip leaders and managers with strategic change management tools to challenge austerity measures?
Change Management Tools: Strategic Solutions to Make Things Happen
What strategies can be used to implement and manage sea- changes? The strategies for change are a response to the seeds of change – the type and nature of change that is required. These 9 strategies offer a practical approach to managing the sea change. The strategies can be grouped into three sections.
Strategies to place the customer centre-stage:
- Customer driven: Making customers an integral part of how we evaluate, design, deliver and evaluate services.
- Choice: Building choice into public services within a context of constrained resources.
Strategies to encourage different thinking about service delivery – reflecting higher customer involvement, better outcomes and lower costs:
- Choosing to nudge – using behavioural science and psychology to nudge desires behaviour
- Coping, curing or challenge: Focus on early intervention and prevention strategies – the game changer
- Co-production: Engaging the latent resource and capability of customers.
Strategies to organise and resource the first five elements:
- Constrained resources: Increasingly public services will be judged by how they respond to cost pressures. That will require a much more flexible approach to managing resources. When there is constraint on resources, resourceful solutions are needed. Six techniques can be applied: restrict, release, focus, share, shift and synergise.
- Collaborating: Making sense of working better across public services in a more integrated manner. These change managemnet tools will require sharing resources, people, places, budgets processes, management teams, expertise, information and knowledge.
- Corporate Forms: Understanding new models of organisation and ownership appropriate within the public sector.
- Commissioning Intentions: Towards a more integrated approach. Commissioning is a critical strand of public service delivery. What features would enable more integrated commissioning strategies?
Change Management Tools: Getting the Blend Right
The final three strategies move the focus towards how to organise to enable the first 5 strategies. The first step is to increase collaboration and integration across public services. Next comes the exploration and development of new models of organisation and ownership within public services. The final element brings the other strategies together through integrated and collaborative commissioning strategies.
The change management tools equip managers with strategic solutions. It is likely that the greatest impact will be when leaders and managers blend and deploy the different strategies in flexible ways.