Public Sector Transformation

Evolving Enterprises: Stories of Growth Transformation

Today I am talking to Benjamin Taylor who is Chief Executive of the Public Service Transformation Academy and Managing Partner of Red Quadrant. I asked Benjamin about what led him into consultancy and we talk about his first job as coordinator of a youth development program, aiming to fill places on exciting expeditions, which would have been more straightforward if the cohort of people were very confident and were used to travel. The realities of young people with lower levels of literacy or just low familiarity with systems and bureaucracy meant that it was difficult to fill places. Benjamin talks about the moment that his view of the system changed. Instead of preparing young people for THE expedition, Benjamin decided to prepare the young people for AN expedition and then call forward a group as each new adventure opened. This change led to a much higher take up of places.

We talk about the challenges of the public sector and how systems thinking can help with the complexity of delivering local government services within a region, with partners such as the NHS. This experience has led to one of Benjamin’s passions, which is enabling person centred, adaptive, agile provision of public services. Moving the thinking back to making public services centred on the people that they are provided for, not on the availability of staff, or the way that existing funding mechanisms as designed. We talk about adaptive systems and less adaptive systems. We talk about how the fire service don't fight fires – it is firefighters who fight fires and the service who create the capacity and capability to deal with a range of emergencies. We talk about how it is possible to make huge progress when we view systems in the right way and have the right kind of conversation, just as Benjamin did when his view of the youth development system changed.