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Jennifer Hughes's avatar

Having worked across many organisations in the private and public sector (central and local govt, nhs, regulators,quangos, prison service) I know that the culture of the public sector is designed to avoid accountability. Some of this goes to a basic but arcane value set, which runs along the lines of ‘if I am offering a public service, I don’t deserve to have my performance assessed. In fact the whole private sector notion of ‘performance’ is anathema to me’. So this deeply held but well hidden construct runs through everything - organisation structures, job design, the way people are or aren’t rewarded, the kind of people who get hired. People like me have tinkered at the edges, tried to introduce ‘change’ (the whole concept of change is seen as an ‘initiative’ which has no bearing on cultural or behavioural transformation. In fact they often love to use the word ‘transformation’ as it makes them sound as if they really mean it this time) Dominic speaks to everything I know and have experienced, but there is no critical mass to disrupt, never will be, and the nature of the change required is just not achievable. The most anyone can hope for is transactional change. At the level of, like, some civil servants learn some project management skills. They will eff this up too though because they’ll make some simple principles into an industry called Prince 2 (again,focus on process change,not cultural, leadership behavioural)

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Mark Harris's avatar

I am trained as a nurse and midwife and worked for Sitel as a T&T caller. For 3 months I was being paid for literally doing nothing. I sat at my desk with no calls to make. Then towards the end, before I resigned in disgust at how T&T workers were being treated, again I sat for days at a time making one call a day. By any measure T&T was not effectively managed.

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