A news blog to collect ideas from around the world - of where small changes have been made to the public & third sector services that have resulted in big benefits. I am looking for ‘bite sized’ ideas that have helped your organisation deliver more to your local communities, or helped make work even more efficient, or just saved some money or staff/officer time. And the idea could be applied elsewhere reasonably easily. All creativity & innovation welcome! Thanks
The Council consolidated the mobile phone invoicing arrangements from individual invoices per phone to sub accounts. This reduced invoice volume from 13,560 in 2007 to 1788 invoices. Project was led by the Head of Procurement and part of the ongoing challenge and review of costs and the search for appropriate tariffs to match Council need – all related to improving economy, effectiveness, efficiency.
Thanks to the Isle of Wight Council for this example
Please email me: jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk or add comments to the existing postings.
And every now and then I will add a posting specifically inviting ideas to be added as comments. Anyone can post on here - with or without attribution. Thanks.
Readers may wonder why I created this blog. I hope I have made it clear what this blog is the description above and in the first post - but perhaps not the why...
I guess it is because I am generally fed up with the focus on big initiatives and massive reengineering projects and whole scale restructuring as being the answers to better results. Instead I take the view that within almost all organisations are people with ideas for improvement urgently wanting to be heard. But it seems that these organisations would rather hire expensive consultants / programme managers / high flying executives to come in and do improvement to the organisation. The implicit beliefs underlying this are that we need people from outside (or at the most senior echelon) to have all the big ideas.
However it seems to me that the most important ingredient in success for any organisation - large or small - is motivation. This is not just the motivation to turn up, or indeed the motivation to do good professional job. The kind of motivation I am talking about is the desire to think "how can we do this better?... how can we deliver even more to those we serve?... what do I and my colleagues have to do to achieve even more than yesterday?..." This kind of energy is rare in many organisations. Indeed, many of these organisations do not even know what they are missing.
If organisations focus on bringing in outside "experts" - I think this kind of ordinary but rare motivation is neutralised (or at the very least it is not nurtured). At the worst - people are turned off and will maybe even seek to sabotage the organisation or harm it in some way.
I know I am not alone in thinking this - but I and my fellow activists against the "bring in the expensive experts" approach to organisational development are sometimes marginalised. Perhaps this is because many senior people do not allow themselves to really believe in the boundless creative energy of more junior people - despite the oft favoured words of "our people are a greatest asset". Large consultancies, naturally, collude with this view and happily (and expensively) introduce cumbersome systems of performance management, target setting and human resource management strategies (etc.) which weigh down the organisations and squeeze out creativity.
I declare that I have a profoundly optimistic view of people. I believe most people, given the right conditions, default to being creative, clever, enthusiastic and committed. But given the wrong conditions, all of us can become cynical, de-motivated, dull and tedious.
And so this is why I wanted to create this blog. I wanted a blog that would celebrate the small ideas - the small ideas (that can easily become the big ideas with great results too) that come from the ordinary people in organisations - the people whose voices and ideas deserve and demand to be heard. I want this blog to be part of the effort to help make this happen - because I believe it is good for business, good for people and good for the world.
Crucialy, I am interested in what leaders in these organisations (where these ideas bubble forth like a mountain brook), are doing to create the right context. This for me is critical. Simply exhorting organisations to do more to unleash the small ideas with big results is not enough. I want to hear about and publish here what leaders are doing to make this happen. In this way I hope that other leaders will learn and add to their own practice.
My ultimate aim for this blog is that it will become a self regenerating hub, humming with the small and creative ideas from all over the world that are making the world a healthier, wealthier, happier and sustainable place for us and for future generations. Please contribute & please circulate. Thank you
All original material on this blog is © Jon Harvey. I am very happy for you to use the material and/or pass it around as it is in the public domain. But please acknowledge the source. And of course much of the material on here comes from the various contributors and I would ask you to respect their intellectual property in a similar way. Thank you.
In essence, I sign up to the Creative Commons approach.
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