We Need Leaders in Commissioning
Chief Executive THOMAS
I am intrigued by the two schools of strategic thinking that are emerging within public sector commissioning. One is very rigid and transactional – fuelled by a management of narrow vision; the other is flexible and transformational – energised by leaders. Commissioning has tended to appoint the former but the days for this type of management are numbered. A new type of leadership is required that has understanding of how to bring about change. There is an ever-growing demand on public services to deliver improved results in the face of many competing agendas. Getting procurement right is important. It’s about improving the delivery and cost effectiveness of quality public services to the public. Yet commissioning has the potential to stifle growth if we don’t pool our thinking creatively. Blockages can be created by an “orthodoxy” that fails to make use of good ideas and give innovation a breathing space.
Competitive procurement can also become a paper exercise that is flawed and misleading. In other words it looks good on paper, but how effective will the service be on the frontline? And how equipped are some of our commissioners in their analytical skills to evaluate what’s really going on?
Traditional commissioning has placed an over exaggerated belief in the paper exercise of data – facts and figures. Managers have become subservient to this type of functionality. Yet statistical analysis is open to manipulation, as the current economic crises remind us. The glaring weakness is a lack of leadership in commissioning that has become heavily burdened with transactional professionals who are not transformational. Obviously, the careful use of good data can support good judgment but it has its limitations. It fits well with a transactional concept that is based on a mutually beneficial exchange of information. However, transformational leaders go beyond the transaction and ask the question “what is value?” They try to understand what motivates the change process that can increase value and then work to fulfil that need.
In tandem there has been a huge leap in developing the clinical governance of drug and alcohol treatment coupled with improved systems. Yet we have still not grasped how to really liberate the chronic excluded. We still have overcrowded prisons and more people addicted to substitute medication than those in total abstinence recovery. We still have significant groups of people outside the system and disenfranchised. We still have poverty that transcends income poverty, poor housing, high crime, difficulties in relating to people, dangerous alcohol consumption, knife crime in our streets, poor literacy and numeracy and the list goes on. And yes of course we are still wasting money that could be utilized more effectively in the liberation of people trapped by the system.
This is an opportunity for commissioning to seize the moment and transform itself. The new type of leader required for commissioning needs to have a robust intelligence about development cultures and the complexity of people. This becomes the starting place where we construct our systems.
Public sector commissioning can learn from our failed banks; overstated assumptions can be misleading. This is a time for a leadership that can see beyond the bogus cultures of data and test them with credible methodologies. The solution to many of our community problems can be found in the empowerment of indigenous cultures that are on our doorsteps. Greater investment in the development of new ideas that allows breathing space for creative thinking to transform current services is needed.