Ingredients for Success

Building services around people and their communities is the key to successful service transformation. The experiences of people that use your services need to be the starting point, with local partners jointly accountable to their communities for the delivery of those services.

Key principles

Delivering better services and outcomes stems from a focus on the people who need the services and outcomes.  Putting people first allows partners to concentrate and collaborate on the common priority of improving lives, over and above individual agency and sector agendas and domains.  

Focus on the people

Delivering better services and outcomes stems from a focus on the people who need the services and outcomes.  Putting people first allows partners to concentrate and collaborate on the common priority of improving lives, over and above individual agency and sector agendas and domains.

Better services and outcomes are achieved when partners agree they have a shared interest in working with particular individuals or groups of people, and when they agree that more is likely to be achieved for and with these people through a collective rather than individual agency effort.

Focus on the place

Better services are also achieved when local partners focus on the place in which they will be delivered.  Identifying with and pooling in-depth knowledge of the place and the people in it unifies and directs responses.  The place focus has particular impact when it enables partners to break free from the limitations of existing service, sector and geographic boundaries and silos, to work in new ways. Focusing on the shared priorities in a place and the collective resources that exist to address them, can provide the impetus for new partnerships and collaborative working.  For example partners can use their place knowledge to decide what action is best taken at different levels in the place e.g. community, neighbourhood, local authority, sub region, county.

Co-create with multiple local and central partners

The priority people and issues in a place are often the most complex.   If more progress than before is to be made on pressing, long-standing challenges, a wide range of partners are often needed to develop and deliver a new response.  Local and central partners need to want and be able to commit to work together across service and sector boundaries.  This can include public sector (e.g. central and local government, health, police, schools), voluntary and community partners (e.g. people who live, work and use services in a place, voluntary organisations, social enterprises), private sector (local and national businesses) and academic sector (e.g. local universities and colleges).  Partners need to collectively agree the roles and responsibilities that different partners in their place will play in delivering better services.  Only then can all available resource in a place – skills, assets, funding – be put to the best use to achieve the greatest impact.

Lead Collaboratively

Delivering better services to address complex issues involving many partners requires strong collaborative leadership.  Leaders from different sectors in a place need to want to work together to achieve common priorities and a shared vision.  Only then will new behaviours and practice develop into better, sustained ways of working between sectors and organisations.

Leaders need to determine where collaboration is needed, will work and add value versus where it will add complexity but without much value.  Collaborative leaders persist in the effort to instil a new way of working when they agree it is the only way to achieve better services.  They need to require and give permission and encouragement to partners to work differently.  The result is a new ‘business as usual’ achieved though significant culture and behaviour change.

Leading partners in collaboration and integration requires addressing organisational differences, including in workforce, professional regulations and funding arrangements.  Strong collaborative leadership can overcome and use these differences, for example to deliver good governance and accountability, joint commissioning and performance frameworks.

Communicate a clear vision, priorities and progress

To achieve better services collaborative leaders need a compelling vision and narrative for change that focuses on the people who need the services and outcomes.  This needs to be collectively developed with and owned by partners.  Leaders need to create the opportunity and put the structures in place to have the discussions that result in agreement on the vision and priorities for change.

The vision and priorities need to be persistently communicated to all relevant partners to sustain momentum and buy-in.  Ongoing communication that demonstrates action and progress on agreed milestones towards better services is key.  To maximise impact diverse channels are needed that match partner preferences for methods of communication.

Invest in analysis and evidence

Analysis and evidence must underpin all stages of achieving better services.  Leaders and partners need to ensure sufficient resource and skills are available for this.  In doing so buy-in, efficiency, delivery and impact can be maximised.

For example, analysis of what is already working in the place, and what has worked elsewhere, can save time and resources in reinventing existing success, and increase the pace of better services.  Investing in cost benefit analysis can ensure that all partners are clear on their return on investment, and so maintain pace and buy-in.  And involving all relevant partners in selecting good metrics and evaluating and evidencing impact, can drive investment of resources so that successful projects are scaled-up and sustained.

Innovate in the use of information, data and technology

Information and technology in many forms is key to achieving better services.  Leaders and partners need to invest in the best of what works, and innovate where new responses are needed to the challenges in their place.

For example the delivery of integrated services and new ways of working will only be possible if partners agree to allow access to and share data about service users responsibly and fairly.  Big data can enable a higher level of analysis to underpin service design.  And open data can enable more partners to participate in and contribute to better services.  Whilst new technology can also increase partner participation in creating better services, and result in new and improved service delivery and user experience.

Take action – test and refine

Addressing challenging, priority issues in a place is difficult, but it is important to get on and act.  Confidence and courage to act can be taken from all of the above principles.  Prototyping new services enables new approaches to be tested and refined based on practical application, which provides direct feedback and learning from service users and providers.

It is important to deliver ‘quick wins’ to sustain momentum and partner commitment.  This can be achieved by initially focusing on less complex service transformation, or by delivering and demonstrating the early milestones of more complex projects.