When is an organisation not in transition? If you believe in continuous evolution, never. So transition is not a ready-made excuse for poor performance but there are periods where the performance dips whilst people adjust to new roles and different ways of doing things. It may be that the jigsaw requires a couple more pieces before it is complete. But how long will the Cabinet give you before the lack of progress creates doubts about your ability to deliver? How do you buy more time? And what do you do about the doubters in your ranks, you expect a certain amount of discontent from the front line but how do you keep your senior managers loyal?

The brutal reality is you only have two or maybe three budget cycles to live up to expectations. During this time you can only survive a bad inspection, below expectation performance or a tragedy like a death in care if you have the backing of the leader, the support of the Cabinet and the confidence of your senior management team.