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The adaptive council – from RedQuadrant and the Public Service Transformation Academy #adaptivecouncil
In the face of a ‘perfect storm’ for local government, facing apparently insurmountable challenges and conditions that are truly ‘turbulent, uncertain, novel, and ambiguous’, local public services in the UK are running on empty. This paper sets out twelve principles for an adaptive approach to meet the needs of our circumstances.
Full paper: https://bit.ly/theadaptivecouncil
Between May and August 2020, at the height of the first UK lockdown, 120 people formed a learning community to build back better in the days after, with groups meeting weekly online to process their experiences and thoughts and explore possible futures, supported by the Public Service Transformation Academy, facilitated by Benjamin Taylor, and led by a volunteer steering group.
This process is documented in this Local Government Chronicle piece:
and the reference webpage for the community is at
The community met again as part of the OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation ‘Government After Shock’ event on 17 November 2020. This paper is developed principally from work conducted by the public service transformation consultancy, RedQuadrant, in supporting local government to respond to the current challenges, and received valuable input from the community at that event.