The Trickle Down Effect

I’ve been working with several clients over the last year where there is an issue about how the team leading various things are behaving, or not, as the case may be. Reports of people in middle or senior (one rung down from the top) are not taking initiative, responsibility or independent action.
Where they are waiting for someone to tell them the next step, or waiting for “orders from above”. This really isn’t surprising when we stand back and look at the way the public sector is managed. Whether it be in the education, health or local government sector, the regulatory burden is huge in the UK and beyond.

There is a strong history of financial turnaround in the NHS, now sadly moving swiftly into education where the emphasis is on grip and control. There is a quality and performance by numbers mentality too, which means hit this target or else, at the expense of everything else, and it sometimes feels each week as though there is a new goal post appeared on the pitch, never mind the fact that the ones that are there are constantly moving.

Telling people what to do does get action, but for a short, sharp burst of activity and output. So turnaround can only last for months, not the years that some places get. Or chose any other focus and apply turnaround type mentality to that, forcing senior leaders to look over everyone’s shoulders to make sure things are done. It is my experience that the more the top team are pressed for deadlines, controls, outputs at speed, the more that “trickles down” to the next layer, and then lo and behold everyone is waiting to be told what to do and we have lost independent thinking and action.

We need to find a way to make earned autonomy http://prosperosworld.com/earned-autonomy-the-future-of-public-services2011/ a real live thing that works so that those who are near to decisions that need making can make them, in the certain knowledge they are supported from above, be that their line manager, the board or the centre of government.