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The cuts have been made, the services reduced, the headcount slimmed. Now comes the hard bit – innovation, say Stephen Taylor and Lynne Haig You've sliced the salami. Better still, you've looked hard at its overall shape and carved off chunks here to avoid chopping there. Now, what future? Not, surely, a gaunt version of the past. There is considerable discussion about ‘commissioning', but much muddle about what it actually means. Some say it is just today's label for best value or compulsory competitive tendering. Others understand it to mean parcelling-up as much as possible of what the council does into a contractable package, and finding someone other than the council to do it, on the assumption – or at least, with a prayer – that it will then be cheaper. Another view has it as the door to the Big Society – if social enterprises, community groups, worker co-operatives or volunteers rather than council staff do the work, then a step has been taken towards changing the dependency between citizen and state. Yet a further interpretation has the commissioning council as the route to community budgets, providing the opportunity to look with partners via a public service board at the sum of local public expenditure, and collaborate to spend it better. And lastly, there is the political stance which a small public sector is good, per se, so anything which reduces the council headcount and payroll is inherently desirable. All these interpretations at least acknowledge a new business model. The need for ongoing, large-scale day-to-day operational management of staff and activities falls. The need for translating the local intent into cross-organisational action which can deliver it, and then securing that action, rises. Members of the top management team become corporate leaders, collectively implementing the ambition, not directorate heads separately running services. Councillors become first-class leaders of their place, not second-class managers of their organisation. In practice, for many councils, this is evolution rather than revolution. They are on the journey, although the magnitude of the shift in methods and mindset is only beginning to become apparent. But all this misses the heart of commissioning. The word is misleading. If my budget for, say, environmental health has been approved, haven't I been commissioned? The heart of the concept is not procurement. It is innovation. The question is not, ‘How can we do this work cheaper?' but, ‘Is there a better way to pursue this goal?' Suppose, for example, that one ambition is a reduction in drug and alcohol abuse. The starting place of the inventive council is not how to chip cost out of present activities or find someone who will do the same for less. The starting place is to garner fresh insights into the causes and circumstances of abuse by engaging with many different perspectives about it. Such insights generate ideas about what would be better than now. These might include, say, providing a meaningful use of time for abusers who have completed a treatment course, but are likely to slip back if their days are not filled. This collaborative approach also builds mutual understanding and trust, so that the ideas can be quickly put to work. For example, in London, a borough commander and the chief executives of the voluntary sector support organisation, the hospital trust and the council went in mufti together to A&E late one Saturday night. They came away bulging with ideas about how the local ‘frequent flyers' could be better handled, and vowing to make sure those ideas didn't run into the organisational sand. But, how to make that way of thinking standard practice? Services atrophy around measures, procedures and habits, which increasingly distance them from relevance to changing need. In recognition of this, the public sector is now awash with programmes, which at least have the benefit of defined aims and resources, and a time limit. So why have many programmes actually made things worse? Because they assume a solution to a systemic wicked issue, then use an iron hand to implement it, disregarding evidence which does not fit as a distraction from the job in hand. Remind yourself that PRINCE stands for ‘projects in controlled environments' – precisely what these are not. The programme approach does not provide a feedback loop from what is actually happening on the ground. Its governance is concerned primarily with keeping events on track and on time. All this prevents adaptation along the way to capture the learning from experience. By contrast, the inventive council constantly evolves what it does in the face of data which questions its assumptions and methods. Its watchword is not ‘control', but ‘discover'. Alongside those who provide services on the ground, and those who receive them, it endlessly prototypes and tests new ways to get things done. Working this way, it readily spots activity which does not contribute to results. Its suppliers are partners, not just contractors. Its users are citizens, not just customers. It makes phrases like ‘citizen-centric' and ‘co-creation' a reality, not rhetoric. The value of the inventive council is, therefore, fourfold: a clear line of sight between intention and action a built-in incentive to find better ways a leaner and more flexible organisation a natural platform for collaboration. Necessity drives invention – and invention will get us beyond salami. Stephen Taylor and Lynne Haig are consultants with Taylor Haig

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WHITEHALL

Now for the hard bit

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