More great news today in the Fenland inbox. Public satisfaction rates have increased across all services – one by 20% – and we're 5% up on last time for overall public satisfaction.
It all bodes well for our CPA later this year, and it's the latest in a long line of successes in a year when we've racked up a series of awards and at least 80% of our BVPIs have improved.
It will probably be a critical success factor in terms of us reaching ‘excellent'... and I'm quietly confident we'll get there after a four-year improvement journey.
So, when you reach excellent – or ‘good', or whatever – what then? Is that the end game?
CPA was – in 2004 – and will be – in 2007 – a useful catalyst for improvement in districts.
But surely, the real challenge for senior managers is to shape the culture of a council to enable it to deal with the significant and ongoing challenges it will inevitably face.
When we aim for CPA excellence we get a template – i.e., key lines of inquiry – in true local government style, to tell us which buttons we need to press to put the scores on the doors.
No such luxury in terms of effecting cultural change.
A recent comprehensive survey of local government chief executives in Australia showed a surprising lack of understanding of organisational culture at the most senior level.
It would be interesting to explore the issue in the UK, and perhaps stimulate some meaningful discussion in the UK local government arena about organisational culture and it's critical role in ensuring sustainable change and improvement.
We're getting good at management of change, but should we be paying more attention to managing culture change? I know that's not about numbers, and it's one of the most difficult things to measure.
But, if we intend to move local government forward further, perhaps we should not be worried about challenging some of our own cultural norms, and broaden our focus to embrace people and organisational issues, as well as PIs and league tables, ie, if we are really looking to achieve sustainable transformation.
So after e-government and more recently, t-government, how about focusing on p(people)-government!
Reflecting on this proposition, perhaps the really good news in the Fenland inbox came a few weeks ago when our staff survey showed 83% of our staff are ‘proud to work for the council'.
Maybe, when we in local government place more value on organisational culture and development, we'll be able to benchmark that result.
Tim Pilsbury is chief executive of Fenland DC