decision making - H4 Consulting

evidence base camp

Policy work is resource intensive, especially the time-consuming effort to gather, analyse, and keep up with all the relevant research, data, trends, and emerging practice. A lot of this groundwork in many policy domains is common across jurisdictions and contexts, so similar work is repeated in similar ways by similar…

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ministers without agency

Sometimes ministerial positions are created without dedicated departmental resources. Ministerial portfolios signal that a government is concerned about a particular issue or constituency. But, without legislation to enable action, and dedicated resources to take action, specialist Ministers can struggle to be effective champions for their portfolios. Public accountability and high…

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great expectations

Individuals contribute both resources and effort to maintaining a safe society, fulfilling their end of a social contract with the state. Goals have much in common across different communities, but expectations of what, when, and how individuals and states contribute will vary with the local context and environment. When there…

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limited discretion

Many public programs are designed centrally, but implemented locally, and public trust can be diminished if rules seem to be inconsistent or opaque. Local managers are not always clear how much discretion they have to adapt programs to local needs. Some apply their understanding of the rules strictly, while others…

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rules and engagement

Hierarchy is not what it used to be. Discipline is out of favour, displaced by more fluid concepts of engagement. There are good reasons for this shift. The dangers of blind obedience, or demands for it, in publicly funded work are well-known. But, especially in high-risk settings, unity and consistency…

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a matter of trust

Ministers are typically responsible for, or at least influential in, appointments to senior publicly funded positions, like agency heads. For senior roles, successful appointees need to be competent administratively and politically. Politicians tend to be skilled at assessing political competency, putting their trust in candidates who share their vocabulary and…

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trickle-down findings

Public funds are a major driver of academic research, but it takes a long time for the benefits of most research to trickle down, if it ever does. Academics are mostly engaged in speaking to each other, often in ways that exclude practitioners and the public. Non-academics who find and…

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source of authority

People working in publicly funded organisations make decisions every day, often without fully understanding the source of their authority. Workers tend to learn and follow soft rules handed down by colleagues, but many rarely consider the hard rules that enable and constrain their work. Workers who, like unqualified drivers in…

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hit or miss

The services people need from publicly funded organisations vary by type and intensity. Services designed for people who need less intensive support tend not to work well for people who need more support. When there are not enough intensive services available for the people who need them, it’s tempting to…

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do not stop

For the workers providing public services, an announcement that departmental responsibilities will be restructured brings uncertainty about how work already in progress will be affected by Machinery of Government (MoG) changes. Some workers misinterpret uncertainty as withdrawal of the authority, and obligation, to act. They perceive current directions to have…

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aggregation vs innovation

Publicly funded organisations seeking to maximise both insight and efficiency may want to experiment with generative AI. But many publicly funded organisations are concerned that instead of generating genuinely new insights, generative AI will draw on existing information and insights that reinforce the status quo rather than improving it. Even…

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out of bounds

Routine decisions by political leaders are typically informed by, and selected from, a set of options prepared and presented by policy workers. By including or omitting options from the set presented to decision makers, policy workers can intentionally, or unintentionally, shape the field in which decisions are made. This means…

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the weight of evidence

There are almost always competing views about how public resources should be used to address a specific public policy need. Sometimes those different views arise from very different frames of reference, based on entirely different types of evidence and analysis. Making decisions that reconcile those differences, informed by valuable insights…

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augmented reality

Publicly funded organisations tend to be large and complex, casting large and complex digital shadows. These shadows grow rapidly, as large workforces generate masses of new data every day and the sheer volume of data becomes a barrier to finding useful information. These looming digital shadows can be overwhelming for…

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what lies beneath

People working in publicly funded organisations tend to have clear views about how they want to make the world a better place, but often find it difficult to describe exactly what they plan to change, and by how much, within a given timeframe. Vague goals make it easy for people…

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vertical leadership teams

Publicly funded organisations are often large and complex, with leadership teams stretched across operational and corporate functions. Processes to delegate work and escalate issues help leaders to focus on just the things that need their attention. Workers learn on the job to solve or escalate thorny issues through a combination…

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relative merits

People expect public appointments to be based on merit, but different merits matter for different roles. Most appointments in publicly funded organisations use obligation-based frameworks, emphasising the responsibility to do specific things. But leaders who rise through the ranks under this framework are also accountable in the rights-based framework for…

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improvisational capability

Planning responses to an uncertain future can be time and cost intensive, especially for complex organisations. Formalising routines for responding to predictable crisis events, like fire drills, helps publicly funded organisations to be efficient, consistent, and effective. But relying too much on predefined routines leaves organisations and teams without the…

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coach rather than do

Many publicly funded organisations create Program or Portfolio Management Offices (PMOs) to help improve performance by coaching and coordinating across many project delivery teams. But people working in PMOs often feel pressured to get involved in work on individual projects, leaving less time for coaching, tactics, and training. When the…

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tailoring (public) services

Standardised public programs and services are a bit like ‘off the rack’ clothing, which meets the needs of most people at relatively low cost, while higher cost targeted programs offer smaller batches of clothing for people who need less common sizes. But some people have needs so distinctive that, even…

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social cohesion vs diversity

There is often an inverse correlation between perceived social cohesion and perceived diversity, but publicly funded organisations strive to mobilise the benefits of both: social cohesion for teamwork and solidarity; and diversity to foster new ideas and innovation. Too much diversity of opinion can paralyse action and lead to unhealthy…

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the doneness spectrum

Publicly funded organisations strive to do complex work efficiently. They often break long, complex processes into sequential production lines where everyone works on one piece of the puzzle at a time, with little visibility of the final product or the other steps in the process. Mistaking an individual task for…

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random uncontrolled trials

Complex policy problems can prompt many different interventions, often from many different organisations, all at once. Uncontrolled, uncoordinated, and often unstructured trials make it hard to unpick the effects of interventions, or to make informed decisions about which trials to scale up and which to wind up. Even after extensive…

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(self)interested parties

People who work in publicly funded organisations are influenced by their personal and professional interests, as well as the public interest. People tend to prefer actions that are consistent with their personal goals and values, even if those actions are not the best way to maximise public good. These subtle…

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net capital loss

Public capital goes beyond tangible public assets. It also includes less tangible forms of capital, like natural, human, and social capital. Decisions made by public officials tend to be influenced by financial considerations and overlook potentially substantial costs in other domains, like natural or social capital. When decisions made in…

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super-connecting networks

Connections and collaboration tend to be driven from the top in many publicly funded organisations, by executives and managers who allocate and link work across units. If people in these key roles are not great networkers, then the whole system can suffer from poor coordination, duplication, and missed opportunities to…

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fitting in or fit for purpose

Policy workers often seek to adopt interventions that have proven effective elsewhere to solve local problems. Since no two policy contexts are identical, it is common to adapt imported interventions to fit local circumstances. Without a clear understanding of which features of an intervention make it worthwhile, and which can…

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public value carve outs

Governments traditionally provided monopoly services that the private sector did not, like water supply, public transport, and capital-intensive vocational education. Modern, often complex, markets for public services invite the private sector to compete with public sector incumbents to deliver publicly funded services. But private sector operators may only provide profitable…

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compulsory third party insurance

States insure citizens against the risk of harms by providing services or imposing obligations that reduce or transfer costs and improve outcomes. They may intervene in systems directly or compel citizens or third parties to act to reduce risks. There can be practical reasons to impose social welfare obligations on…

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the policy tortoise

Robust policy work takes time, often longer than politicians and the public would prefer. Stakeholders can be impatient for problems to be solved and reforms enacted without pause for detailed analysis, consultation, or planning. Advocates and partisan advisers are free to offer quick recommendations without considering practical delivery constraints. These…

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RACIng to role confusion

Complex processes and projects tend to involve many parties with different roles, responsibilities, and authorities for relevant activities and decisions. RACI is a common tool for mapping the contributions of each party by assigning them to one of four roles for each identified task. RACIs can clarify roles within structured…

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risk management bias

Cognitive biases affect people’s decisions, including how we assess and manage risk, so many organisations mandate structured risk management processes to counteract those biases. Unfortunately, compliance-oriented technical approaches to risk management can exacerbate the problem by creating dense registers and matrices that give an illusion of control which can, perversely,…

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the power of the pack

Publicly funded organisations tend to monitor and manage internal productivity at the individual level, focusing on the output of workers rather than teams. This incentivises workers to maximise individual output and objectives and disincentivises efforts to improve collaboration and collective performance. When individual team members work as lone wolves, competing…

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corporate vs public accountability

Trust in corporate and public institutions is supported by formal governance structures and standards. In the early 2000s a crisis emerged in business governance, triggered by local and global scandals. Corporate governance and accountability requirements were reformed to better suit modern business practices and risks. By contrast, public governance and…

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returns on public investment

Unlike the private sector, where most goods and services are sold or traded in real time, most public revenue is collected from citizens in advance through mandatory systems like taxation. Publicly funded organisations often encourage workers to ‘work hard’ or ‘work smart’ to provide positive returns on public investment. Neither…

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telling policy stories

The way policy proposals are communicated can affect whether decision makers and stakeholders accept or reject a policy. Policy experts tend to be good at gathering and interpreting evidence to inform policy proposals, but often struggle to make a compelling case for their proposals to people who are not experts.

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thumbs on the scale

Lobbyists are professional influencers, paid to persuade decision makers to act in favour of vested interests rather than for the broader public good. If there is not enough wider public interest in a policy question to offset the targeted influence of motivated individuals, decision makers can form a distorted view…

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breaking the cycle of work and rework

People in publicly funded organisations tend to work iteratively, through many rounds of drafting and rework. A lot of effort is consumed for a lot of people to produce and then refine quick, dirty, or otherwise dodgy early drafts into usable products. Getting it wrong a few times is accepted…

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crisis coverage

Publicly funded organisations are expected to meet high standards for minimising costs, maximising quality and equity, and ensuring probity. This takes time, which is usually an accepted trade-off until expectations shift in a crisis and speed becomes the most important factor. Decisions made in a crisis are often not assessed…

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program illogic

Decisions about whether to continue investing in a publicly funded program should be based on whether the program achieves its primary objectives, and its cost relative to effective alternatives. In practice, stakeholders often defend ineffective programs based on other considerations, like anecdotes about unplanned secondary benefits. If enough people get…

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survival of the fittest

To remain relevant to stakeholders, organisations need to adapt to changes in their circumstances, such as new risks, technologies, or changing expectations. Competitive markets force private sector organisations to adapt, or be replaced by competitors or substitutes. Many publicly funded organisations, by contrast, are functionally immortal. If they fail to…

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truth in publicising

Three major sectors of the economy—private, public, and not-for-profit—all draw from the same labour pool. Each sector appeals to workers for different reasons, like higher financial rewards in the private sector, or higher intrinsic rewards in not-for-profit organisations. The reality of work, especially in the public sector, has shifted away…

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connecting modes of communication

Politicians, people who work in publicly funded organisations, and the public tend to use different modes of communication. Politicians strive for persuasion, public servants focus on exposition, and the public relates to stories. Different ways of communicating often get in the way of understanding, preventing good ideas from getting off…

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minimum viable policy

Publicly funded organisations often invest significant time and resources to carefully design policies that minimise opportunities for any unfair advantage or benefit. All that up-front effort sometimes outweighs the costs avoided, delaying good outcomes for targeted beneficiaries while trying to eradicate tiny unintended costs. Stewardship of aggregate public good is…

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wells of authority

Publicly funded organisations once had a virtual monopoly on authoritative policy advice, drawn from unrivalled wells of information, expertise, and resources. More recently, their dominance in the market for policy ideas has been diluted, or even displaced, by other voices claiming other sources of authority. In a policy space increasingly…

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the importance of being urgent

Many people in publicly funded organisations work in reactive environments where urgent issues demand immediate attention. The urgent issues can often obscure other important priorities and, once they are out of sight, those other priorities can end up out of mind. It can be difficult to focus on even the…

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cooperative accountability

Accountability frameworks in publicly funded organisations tend to emphasise individual roles, reinforced by formal delegations and performance management. Most work that creates significant public value, however, is done by many individuals passing a baton of shared accountability. Reinforcing individual achievement can, perversely, encourage people to prioritise simple individual metrics over…

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active risk culture

Risk is the price of both action and inaction. It is worthwhile when expected benefits justify the potential for losses. Publicly funded organisations tend to be risk averse, missing valuable opportunities while enforcing costly compliance with rigorous risk management processes that can give the illusion of reducing risk without making…

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your money or your life

Social and economic policy are often perceived as being in opposition, like a pendulum that reacts to the latest crisis by swinging into action at the temporary expense of other priorities, or that briefly elevates one political ideology over another. Volatile and reactive policy tends to exacerbate crises and reinforce…

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transformation model

Even the most dynamic organisations operate best with a harmonious balance between performance information, the skills and attitudes of workers, and the rules of the operating model. Major change programs often fail because they break this fragile balance. If you want to transform an organisation and make change stick, then…

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the reality of VRs

Voluntary redundancies (VRs) are commonly used to achieve ‘head count’ reductions imposed on publicly funded organisations. The stated goal is to reduce positions or skills that are no longer needed in the same numbers, but many people accepting VRs are high-performing workers with essential skills who are confident taking those…

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sedimentary policy

Policy seldom starts from scratch. Most policy work builds on decades, or even centuries, of accumulated policy that may complement or conflict with newer layers. This complex environment of sedimentary policy can be difficult to understand and even more difficult to reform. Understanding policy as sedimentary can help publicly funded…

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sedimentary budgeting

Publicly funded organisations tend to carefully scrutinise new spending proposals. Intense competition for finite resources means only the very best ideas share in the limited new funding available. Meanwhile, less effective legacy programs can carry over year to year, going unexamined and ever more embedded below the surface. The longer…

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risk speculation frameworks

The discipline of risk management promises a consistent way for organisations to identify, analyse, and respond to the individual and aggregated likelihood and consequences of any possible event, with the goal of informing decisions that lead to better outcomes in any setting. In publicly funded organisations, structured risk management frameworks…

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rehabilitating regulation

In recent decades there has been a trend toward reducing ‘red tape’ and regulation, with increased reliance on tools like market-based incentives, subsidies, and services to pursue policy goals. Policy makers are reluctant to impose new regulation and enthusiastic about removing existing regulation, limiting the options available to policy workers…

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reforming policy puritanism

People in publicly funded organisations often have deeply held views about how to maximise public value. These views come from many sources, such as deep content knowledge, practical experience, or research and analysis. When people have different deeply held views, those views can easily become entrenched positions. From there, constructive…

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public enterprising

Publicly funded organisations are often criticised for being bureaucratic and slow, with rigid decision-making hierarchies that stifle creativity. Small businesses, by contrast, are often held up as examples of flat, energetic, and innovative enterprises. Alternative models of collaborative management and ownership of small publicly funded enterprises have been proposed to…

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principled regulation

Many people are intrinsically motivated to engage in pro-social activities, like volunteering, that benefit society and, especially, local communities. Sometimes, some people engaged in these activities behave in anti-social ways, prompting government regulation to prevent bad behaviour. Poorly designed regulation can create a compliance maze that drives out legitimate, pro-social…

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pirate codes

Many publicly funded organisations value consistency, compliance, and risk minimisation. To that end, they define many detailed rules to guide workers. Rules and instructions that strive to be prescriptive and exhaustive, however, can leave gaps and contradictions that are more confusing or vulnerable to exploitation than superficially looser codes of…

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(n)onboarding

In publicly funded organisations, new decision makers often join teams while work is underway. Inevitably, new starters have missed earlier key decisions and bring new perspectives that may encourage them to re-prosecute or overturn past decisions. Challenging or revising past decisions can change outcomes, constrain subsequent decisions, trigger extensive rework,…

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new money

Publicly funded organisations spend substantial time and resources scrutinising proposals for relatively small investments of new resources. Existing recurrent allocations, which make up the overwhelming majority of public spending, are subject to considerably less control and often lower expectations. This mismatch between the scale of investment and the level of…

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need versus demand

Many publicly funded organisations are judged on how they deliver core public goods and services. Many were created to deliver specific public goods or services, like welfare payments or schooling, in response to community demand. As success has increasingly been redefined in terms of outcomes, such as employment or literacy…

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most likely to succeed

Publicly funded organisations are essential to implementing policy decisions, but their role as contributors to policy debate is often undervalued. Sources of policy advice have expanded, while traditional policy units have become increasingly engaged in selling the policy decisions made by politicians. Good policy proposals are increasingly self-censored, based on…

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managing the authorising environment

Publicly funded organisations and initiatives derive legitimacy and support from complex authorising environments that include politicians, experts, citizens, commentators, and lobbyists. As the needs and priorities of the public shift over time, the authorising environment and publicly funded organisations should shift as well. This is a delicate balancing act, in…

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legitimacy gaps

Elections tend to focus on a few key issues, which can leave policy makers with a clear mandate for only some of the many decisions they are called upon to make. For some important policy questions, an identifiable and engaged ‘public’ may not even exist to express a view. Many…

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KSSMI

For organisations planning structural or strategic changes, deciding what should change and what should stay the same is a necessary, but often difficult, step. It can be a struggle to delay drawing organisational charts for long enough to think objectively and strategically about organisational functions and how best to achieve…

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identity policy

Although often not historically a big part of public policy making, consulting people with lived experience of a policy’s implications is increasingly encouraged. In some settings, this pendulum has swung so far that involving people with lived experience in decision making is viewed as not only necessary, but sufficient to…

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functional focus

Organisations need to change over time as their circumstances change. Before you can decide what changes to make, you first need to identify the purpose and functions of the organisation you’re changing to become. For publicly funded organisations this can be a more complicated question than it is for many…

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experiential evidence

Different people are persuaded by different kinds of information and have different expectations about evidence. Many, perhaps even most, people tend to value experiential evidence over empirical evidence. Public policy analysts who have been trained in rigorous analytic techniques tend to dismiss intuitive and tacit knowledge as an invalid basis…

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exercising delegated authority

Publicly funded organisations are often subject to stricter rules about transparency and accountability than private sector organisations. Concern about these rules, and the consequences of mistakes, contribute to cultures in which workers are unwilling to exercise their delegated authority. When escalating routine decisions to executives is perceived as less risky,…

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evolving governance

Governance models develop slowly over time, partly in response to increasingly sophisticated social and economic systems. In times of rapid change, governance models can be slow to adjust, lagging behind the needs of societies and unable to solve the problems that governments are called upon to solve. Australia’s Westminster system…

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empirical storytelling

Different people are persuaded by different kinds of information and have different expectations about evidence. People who work in publicly funded organisations tend to prefer robust, empirical evidence but many, perhaps even most, policy makers and stakeholders tend to find stories more persuasive than facts and figures. This can lead…

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efficiency

Every decision in an organisation is a financial decision because every decision has financial consequences. Balancing limited resources with infinite demand requires publicly funded organisations to continuously reduce or contain costs while maintaining public value. One way to do this is by improving on three dimensions—price, quality, and volume—to increase…

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effectiveness

Balancing finite resources with seemingly infinite demand requires publicly funded organisations to consider actively and often whether their resources are delivering as much public value as possible. Critiques tend to focus on inefficiencies due to waste or excessive bureaucracy, but there are also opportunities to deliver more value by identifying…

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deep policy

We create public value by investing public funds in public works, aligned with the written and unwritten laws, rules, and principles that define public policy. Political work sets priorities and allocates resources. Delivery work provides or commissions public goods and services. Policy work informs decisions and directs delivery. These types…

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decision rules

Many people in publicly funded organisations feel frustrated by the friction caused by decision rights being concentrated in the wrong places. Outcomes often seem poorly defined and many of the people with the authority to act can send the bill to someone else, while someone else again gets the blame…

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decision framing

Publicly funded organisations sometimes seem to assume that decisions are entirely individual, as though people only act within personal bubbles that are isolated from the systemic context. In practice, decisions are made in the space defined by a complex mix of organisational and individual considerations and constraints. Systems that fail…

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cylinders of excellence

Publicly funded organisations and teams are often defined by the work they perform and the types of workers they employ, rapidly organising themselves into functional silos. Bringing people with similar skills and functions together in ‘cylinders of excellence’ can be efficient and satisfying within specialist domains, but these silos can…

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conspicuous appropriation

The allocation of public funds is a powerful signifier of what a society values. Sometimes, this symbolic value is so significant that it eclipses the tangible benefits derived from the investment. Symbolic investments that do not materially improve outcomes divert resources away from real solutions to public needs. This type…

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balancing the risk ledger

There are risks in every decision or action, even doing nothing. Publicly funded organisations are often seen as particularly risk averse, seeking to avoid or minimise risk rather than recognising that risk is part of the price we pay to create public value. The critical question to inform an action…

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ask a silly question

Decisions about policy and legislation, government priorities and commitments, and allocation of scarce public resources, are influenced by many factors, including expert advice and often complex and incomplete evidence. Decision makers, who often ask very specific questions of experts, can be quick to criticise capability within publicly funded organisations if they…

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aligning the operating model

People in publicly funded organisations make decisions based on the information, incentives, and constraints visible to them. The consequences of decisions often look different from different perspectives, and complaining about decisions in other parts of an organisation is a lively tradition. The person best placed to deliver a desired outcome…

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working hard(ly)

Despite the perception that publicly funded organisations work slowly, many people who work in these organisations feel overworked, underappreciated, and under constant pressure to deliver large volumes of work. Quality is often prioritised over timeliness, so unfinished projects stack up, leaving workers feeling overwhelmed by the volume of concurrent work.

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value signalling

Values statements help workers and the customers they serve to understand why and how organisations achieve their goals. Many publicly funded organisations promote their values prominently. Where these organisations invest their time and resources, however, can suggest that different priorities guide their work in practice. Conflict or misalignment between stated…

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unspoken functions

Comparisons between publicly funded organisations and private businesses with similar functions are often linked to claims that publicly funded organisations are inefficient. Publicly funded organisations, however, tend to have additional functions that are not expected of private businesses and are not usually recognised in these comparisons. These ‘unspoken’ functions can…

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travelling fewer paths

When workers are not clear about the purpose and direction of their work, it is easy to waste time, effort, and resources exploring pathways that turn out to be dead ends. Work may go a long way down the wrong path before eventually being redirected and having to start again.

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the right track

Time and effort are wasted in publicly funded organisations by senior people redoing the work of less senior people, or less senior people trying again, and again. It’s a production line. An order comes down and goes through the whole production line, to deliver a finished product. If the product…

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the policy hare

Traditional policy development takes time. Policy workers analyse research evidence, community and political expectations, and implementation considerations to design policy responses to wicked problems. This rigorous process can leave a gap between public expectations and the pace of the policy tortoise, sometimes prompting knee-jerk, often ineffective, political action. In public…

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the last one per cent

People in publicly funded organisations are held to high standards and strive to achieve them, often searching for perfectly proven solutions based on comprehensive data before taking any action. Seeking protection in perfection, without regard to the incremental costs of resources and time, diverts effort from other uses that could…

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the dog that doesn’t bark

Publicly funded organisations typically shape their services based on feedback from vocal stakeholders. Other stakeholders, who may be equally in need, may be less able or willing to advocate for their own interests. For many organisations, properly understanding and serving the needs of a dog that doesn’t bark requires a…

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the best person(s) for the job

Publicly funded organisations deliver dynamic, specialised work, assembling a jigsaw puzzle of skills usually not found in a single person. These organisations are expected to be both efficient and flexible, paying only modest salaries, but still able to quickly reconfigure resources. Traditional models of recruiting for whole roles can mean…

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target blinkers

Key performance indicators direct work in publicly funded organisations by defining specific targets and measures that are used to assess success. KPIs are clear signals of what is most important, which can encourage workers to exclude other important considerations that are consistent with the organisation’s broader principles and objectives. Wearing…

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stewardship of public value

Publicly funded organisations, and the people who work within them, are stewards of public funds. They have an obligation to ensure that the public funds in their care are used efficiently and effectively to create public value. Good stewardship can be compromised by poor performance or conduct of individuals, especially if…

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shifting organisational culture

Many people and organisations want to improve their operational capability and recognise the importance of organisational culture. The H4 Consulting Shifting Organisational Culture (ShOC) is a conceptual framework for expressing and analysing organisational culture and shifting that culture toward higher performance. A high-performance culture in publicly funded organisations is focused…

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sedimentary culture

Organisational culture is a product of people working together over time. Every individual’s behaviour will both change, and be changed by, culture. Cultural norms established long ago are passed on to new team members, becoming stronger and more resistant to change. New cultural norms can gradually shift the whole organisation. Organisational…

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red is good

Publicly funded organisations are often criticised for working slowly and deliberately, taking ‘too long’ to deliver political and community expectations. For people working in these organisations, the culture is rarely geared for rapid identification and swift resolution of concerns before they become crises. In risk averse organisations, raising a ‘red…

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policy communicators

Many problems in modern societies are complex, and so are many policy solutions. Members of the public rarely have the time or inclination to develop a deep understanding of policy issues that do not affect them personally. When it is too hard to understand and explain evidence-based policy proposals governments, and…

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on the merits of values

Publicly funded organisations rely on the efforts of workers to deliver public value, often in difficult circumstances. Merit-based recruitment, based on principles of fairness and impartiality, is a core part of how many publicly funded organisations hire their workers. Merit—hiring candidates based on what they know or can do—sounds appealing,…

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managing in the middle

Publicly funded organisations tend to have executive layers that translate government decisions into high-level strategic direction, and highly skilled frontline staff delivering services. A mediating layer of middle managers converts strategic direction into operational action, but is less visible and often dismissed as unnecessary. These managers play a vital role…

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managing for performance

Maximising public outcomes requires managing for performance within publicly funded organisations. These organisations can sometimes be slow to identify and respond to individual underperformance and many incentives, and disincentives, that are widely used in the private sector are less common. The H4 Consulting Managing for Performance model is a conceptual…

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managership

Management was once the celebrated discipline by which humans built and maintained structures, processes, and systems that made big ambitions and big organisations possible. Recently, management has been overshadowed and often displaced by its more charismatic sibling: leadership. Leadership enthusiasts have derided, dismissed, and devalued management as a controlling and…

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lost in translation

People in publicly funded organisations are often expected to collaborate across domains to solve complex or wicked problems, or codesign new ways to deliver services or regulation using new techniques or technologies. Contributors from different domains often think and work in ways that reflect their own deep content knowledge, assumptions, and…

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leadership in focus

Publicly funded organisations are expected to be efficient and consistent. The goal is to apply a predetermined set of rules and processes as efficiently and predictably as possible. Leaders in these organisations tend to divide the work into smaller tasks that can be allocated to specialist teams. These smaller tasks…

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in the loop

People in publicly funded organisations work hard to contribute information that informs important decisions being made by others. When this work is not fit for purpose, it will often be redone from scratch by time-poor, frustrated executives. When staff are not involved in decision forums, and therefore do not understand…

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human capital unions

Many workers in publicly funded organisations are highly skilled professionals. Although performance-based pay is uncommon in these settings, the capability and productivity of individual workers is a major driver of public value. But the organisations claiming to represent the interests of these workers often have an outdated view of workers…

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good, bad, and ugly

Despite the best efforts of teams, most endeavours are not a total success. Some outcomes will be good. Some will be bad. Some will be downright ugly. People working in publicly funded organisations often feel that they have limited scope to change their work in ways that will improve future…

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frank and fearless

There are many clichés about people who work in publicly funded organisations, including that they have no new ideas and are risk averse to the point of paralysis. These clichés conflict with the image of the frank and fearless servant of the public who promotes good ideas and leads from…

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drowning, not working

Many people who work in publicly funded organisations already have long to-do lists, with new demands pouring in all the time. Some demands are important, some urgent, and some neither. Many workers find themselves sinking in what feels like an uncontrolled torrent of work. When the flow of work feels…

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defining good performance

One of the basic functions of management is ensuring that the work of individuals and teams is aligned with the objectives of the organisation. Another is ensuring that individuals and teams operate effectively; that their skills are consistently applied in pursuit of the organisation’s mission. Both functions require an understanding…

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culture of urgency

Without clear and pressing deadlines, publicly funded organisations can struggle to make and sustain significant progress on complex priorities. In an environment with rapidly shifting goals and public expectations that far exceed available resources, it can be easy for proximity of a deadline to become a proxy for priority. It…

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collaborative budgeting

In publicly funded organisations every operational decision is also a financial decision about how to deploy finite resources. Similarly, financial decisions are also operational decisions about the resources available for service delivery. Too often, budgeting is seen as the exclusive domain of accountants rather than as an instrument of strategy.

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change capacity model

The rate and scale of change in publicly funded organisations is increasing. We often talk about changing processes, content, and even work environments with minimal disruption, as if being good at change always means the same thing. It does not. Some work is dynamic and fluid. For other work, consistency…

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capability (double) standards

Publicly funded organisations often focus workforce development efforts on frontline staff such as social workers, nurses, and teachers. The priority of ensuring that these staff are highly skilled and certified often leads to less investment in the capability of staff in supporting functions. Prolonged neglect of supporting staff and functions…

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awkwardness gap

People are social animals and may sometimes be inclined to concede a point for the sake of collegiality and minimising conflict. In pursuit of good policy, this may mean that lower quality ideas prevail, while some good ideas end up on the cutting-room floor. Tolerating the awkwardness of social distance…

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assertive versus passive

Many publicly funded organisations have strong cultures with deeply embedded expectations about being detail-oriented, cautious, and measured. Over time, these expectations can influence the perceptions of employees about the tone of communications with external stakeholders. Subtle signals that might be heard clearly within the organisation could be missed entirely by…

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anxiety curve

It takes a lot of energy for new thinking to change old habits. We often think of anxiety as a negative consequence of change, especially when too much anxiety brings on a paralysis that makes change impossible. But just the right amount of anxiety can give us the energy to…

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a firm baseline

Most people working in publicly funded organisations want to do their jobs well, but do not have a good sense of how changing the way that they work could contribute to different outcomes. It is difficult to develop a culture of continuous improvement when workers cannot readily assess the current…

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carrot and stick

People respond to incentives and enforcement to different degrees in different contexts. Either, or both, can be effective ways to influence behaviour, but many publicly funded organisations have strong cultural preferences for using one or the other to achieve their aims. These organisations may fail to consider the full range…

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the tipping point

Publicly funded organisations plan for a wide range of business as usual activities and new initiatives. Not all of those plans will be successful, but it is often difficult to recognise the point at which Plan A stops being viable and it is time to switch to Plan B. When…

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stakeholder analysis

The importance of stakeholder relationships is a key feature of publicly funded organisations. Stakeholders are not just customers, suppliers, or interested parties, they are a key source of legitimacy and support for public endeavours. The H4 Consulting Stakeholder Analysis Model (SAM) is an easy, effective way to collaboratively analyse stakeholders…

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sedimentary processes

Processes within publicly funded organisations are only effective if they are clearly tied to achieving a desired outcome. Building on or refining processes without considering what, if any, value they create can result in more, rather than less, complication and inefficiency. As new processes are layered onto existing ways of…

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risk and outsourcing to NGOs

Public sector organisations increasingly outsource delivery of services to non-government organisations (NGOs), seeking more flexible and cost-effective approaches than traditional public service delivery. This can sometimes work well, but not always. Outsourcing to NGOs is not without risk and, managed poorly, can end up being less flexible and more costly…

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reservoirs of information

Publicly funded organisations hold large volumes of information that could be used to better understand public needs, and design better public goods and services. Tapping these reservoirs of information can be expensive and difficult, and organisations struggle to identify appropriate investments to realise benefits of using information better. Barriers separating information…

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prioritisation

Publicly funded organisations work hard to balance infinite demand with finite resources. Taking a systematic approach to prioritisation of effort can identify those activities – services, processes, and projects – that will deliver the maximum public value for public funds, while limiting the administrative burden of analysing alternatives. One of…

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PMOVE

Program Management Offices are commonly established in publicly funded organisations to improve visibility for executives and to coordinate programs that are outside business as usual. In practice, the term PMO can be used to describe very different things, designed for very different purposes. The H4 Consulting Program Management Office –…

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PMME

People in publicly funded organisations are constantly planning and implementing projects, small and large. The vast majority of these people will never think of themselves as ‘project managers.’ They think of themselves as specialists in delivering public services; as nurses, teachers, or engineers. H4 Consulting’s Project Management Made Easy (PMME)…

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planning for results

Many projects complete all, or most, of the activities they planned, yet fail in the end to achieve the desired results. Many hard-working, well-meaning people follow work plans faithfully, only to be disappointed by outcomes that do not live up to expectations. Just because a plan has been approved does not…

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pilot state

Publicly funded organisations work to improve the value they deliver over time by testing promising new ideas in small-scale, low-cost pilots. If a pilot demonstrates a superior new approach, then it can be implemented at scale, often with resources transferred from less effective alternatives. If not, the pilot should be…

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navigating complexity

Publicly funded organisations were traditionally organised around administrative structures that could conveniently and efficiently deliver services at scale. Services were limited and fairly straightforward, so this was relatively easy for citizens to understand. Over time, our expectations of public services have become increasingly complex and individualised, making it harder and…

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minding the budget gap

There is a gap between demand for public goods and services and the supply of resources to publicly funded organisations. Minding that gap requires rigorous prioritisation and understanding of, and compliance with, budgets. Most budgets are built by accountants based primarily on the prior year. A better approach is for the…

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mind your monitoring

Publicly funded organisations deliver vital services for the public and are responsible for the outcomes those services achieve. This includes responsibility for monitoring effort and adjusting where necessary to deliver results, often through routine reporting and frequent meetings. These routine monitoring and reporting cycles often take up a lot of…

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market (analytic tools) failure

Many publicly funded organisations offer goods and services because a market failure means that private sector offerings are not financially viable. Some public goods and services are non-commercial by their nature, yet many governments only consider policy proposals with positive Benefit-Cost Ratios. For policy decisions that are primarily about non-financial…

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manage the work

Many teams try to optimise productivity by organising effort around a mix of organisational priorities and processes, and individual work preferences. Focusing on the productivity of individuals and small teams, rather than an end-to-end process across teams, can encourage individuals to manage their work, instead of managing the work. This…

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informed symmetry

Many governments have an explicit or implicit objective of minimising regulatory interference and market distortions, which tends to encourage lighter touch regulatory interventions. Among these, are attempts to regulate markets by imposing obligations on parties to disclose information that would reasonably affect decisions about the fair value of a product…

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(in)efficiency dividends

Efficiency dividends seek to save public funds by imposing fixed rate constraints (e.g. 2%) on budgets across diverse publicly funded organisations. This locks in historical proportions of funding across organisations, despite changes in delivery options and public expectations. It also shifts accountability for reprioritisation onto publicly funded organisations, without addressing…

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flesh on the bones: de-risking drafts

Work in publicly funded organisations is often collaborative. It can involve internal and external contributors, or contributors at different levels of seniority, working together to develop a product iteratively. This process can be slow and cumbersome, particularly for substantial documents or artefacts. Without an agreed framework on which to build,…

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describe the world, not the model

The real world is complex, so people in publicly funded organisations often use models to filter through complexity for the details that are most relevant to key decisions. Models can inform policy decisions by predicting outcomes based on historical data and assumptions about selected details. Models can also simplify policy…

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collaborator beacon

Many people working in publicly funded organisations collaborate with a wide range of people with different expertise and interests. This can include decision makers, colleagues, delivery partners, expert advisers, stakeholders, and members of the public. Collaborators who come from very different starting points can find themselves wandering through a complex…

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business process improvement

Without dedicated time to improve work processes, the people who work in publicly funded organisations can find themselves stuck in a busy cycle of tasks and activities that may be outdated, ill-designed, and misaligned with current objectives. By devoting time and resources to targeted business process improvement, publicly funded organisations…

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business planning

Publicly funded organisations are complex collectives of diverse and, at times, unconnected teams. Some parts of an organisation may struggle to relate to other parts, or to understand how their work contributes to organisational goals. Executives may find it difficult to build and communicate coherent business plans that assemble the…

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business case

A business case presents an argument for a proposal, relative to other options. In publicly funded organisations, this is not just about dollars, but also includes public policy benefits and costs that may accrue across communities and be difficult to quantify. Business cases are robust analytic tools to inform good…

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bumps in the road

Publicly funded organisations often think about efficiency as the maximum productivity that can be achieved with finite resources by minimising wasted effort or expense. When this worthy goal is applied over too short a period, systems may be optimised for smooth conditions in the short term, like a tiny hatchback…

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actual contestability

Public sector monopolies are often judged harshly as enjoying a quiet life, looking after themselves instead of their customers. Privatising public monopolies has been a popular response, but it’s a safe bet that companies will race to maximise shareholder value rather than public value. To simultaneously deliver better efficiency, better…

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