However, this leaves us with a quandary; we still have opinions of our own and a desire to share them, yet no blog to do so through. After a little debate, we’ve decided that the only option that remains in this case is to finally remove our ninja masks.

Therefore, with no further ado, meet the We Love Local Government team.

Glen Ocsko

Creating this blog and then co-writing it has been one of the most amazing things I’ve had the privilege to do in my professional life. When we agreed in the corridor to do it in the first place I had no idea at all that it would end up anything like the benevolent beast it has become, and I am humbled by the comments, trust and opportunities it has provided along the way.

Having worked in engagement work for most of my professional life it always felt natural to discuss my ideas and engage with others who have a passion to do the same. Also, having a passion about all things digital meant that it was in retrospect strange that it took so long for me to attempt to discover my blogging voice. I’d like to think that I’ve started to do so, and hope that my own learning, questioning and development has perhaps sparked an idea or thought for someone else along the way.

There are many people I want to thank for their thoughts, guidance and support whether they have known that they were giving it or not, but foremost (and in true Oscar fashion) I need to thank my wife for her forebearance and understanding. When I have had to regularly cancel planned evenings in front of the tv or return early from nights out to put a new post up for the next day I’ve had nothing more than rolled eyes and a slightly mocking smile directed at me, fates I’m now able to handle. For someone who confesses that she has no interest in local government whatsoever she has put up with my scribblings and ramblings, helped proof read and critique them at times and tried to act as inspiration as often as possible: simply put, without her support I would have given up long ago. My thanks, love and appreciation go to her.

It would be simply impossible for me to finish on anything other than the biggest thanks for my partner-in-crime, Gareth. I don’t know if he is the McCartney to my Lennon, the Zippy to my Bungle or the Shearer to my Sheringham, but without his constant work, blogging attitude, quality of his work and analysis and simply his friendship, I would not be the person I am now and wouldn’t have such fond blogging, working and other memories to look back on.

I am constantly amazed at his ability to consider more angles on just about any policy than a human kaleidoscope, his depth and breadth of knowledge is stunning and were I ever to be in a position to recommend one person in local government for just about any job, his would by some way be the first name on my list.

Thanks Gareth!

It’s been an honour and a privilege, and something I’ll never forget doing. This may be the end of one blogging journey, but I hope it’s the start of many adventures yet to come.

@glenocsko

glen.ocsko@gmail.com

Gareth Young

When Glen suggested the idea of a blog I genuinely didn’t know what to expect. At first it seemed like a rather strange way to spend our time; writing words that no-one would read for basically just our own entertainment. However, the more we did it the more I enjoyed it. The act of writing was actually therapeutic; providing the opportunity to debate issues that we don’t get to discuss on a day to day basis. I also learnt the value of blogging and discovered a whole world of like minded people out there in the social universe.

The blog provided me with an outlet for my frustrations and a chance to look at a broader group of topics than my job ever would. It enabled me to try out ideas and start debates. It also gave the opportunity to start some debates and to be actively curious in a fairly safe environment. Finally, and this is going to sound crazy, it was really fun. All in all I’ve loved every minute of it and am really glad that we did it.

This might be clichéd but as this is my last time writing for a while, like Glen, I’d like to thank some people.

First things first, I’d really like to thank my wife for putting up with what is a pretty random hobby. I remember one Saturday when we were meant to be going out. She was ready to go and found me sitting on the sofa reading the cabinet papers from a council hundreds of miles away looking for some information for a post I was writing. She might have laughed at me a little but was always really supportive. I tried not to let this blog interfere with family life but it is undeniable that she has put up with this obsession for the past three years with typical love and support.

She is amazing and I genuinely can’t imagine life without her.

I’d also like to thank my friends and colleagues for their support, inspiration and friendship and in some cases for not exposing the anonymity of the blog over the years. You’re all awesome. There are also tonnes of people who we’ve met anonymously through twitter and through the blog and whilst I’m not going to name them all individually I hope that we can be friends and colleagues and fellow instigators now that the anonymity is gone. I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to have come into contact with so many talented and inspirational people.

Finally, and this might sound sappy but I must thank Glen.

There are very few people you meet in life who inspire you to be better than you are. Glen is one of those people.

Glen is an innovator, a thinker and a wonderful writer whose work I really enjoyed reading. He has high standards, cares deeply about involving people in public services and is the exact definition of an early adopter. Every organisation needs people who will help break the mould, challenge pre-conceptions and turn these ideas into reality and Glen is that man. I’ve worked for him and worked with him and would happily do either again. He’s also a great friend and someone who will hopefully continue to be so for many years to come.

I am pleased that we wrote this blog, am proud of what we achieved and am a little sad that it has now come to an end. Nonetheless, it’s the right time to conclude and I’m looking forward to the next opportunity whatever that might be.

I look forward to catching up with you all sometime soon.

@gyoun82

mrgarethyoung@googlemail.com

Welovelocalgovernment was a blog written by two UK local government officers called Glen and Gareth. We’ve stopped blogging now but you can always contact us individually through our e-mail addresses or on twitter.

Over the last three years we have penned over 500 posts, received over 200,000 hits and, although this is an estimate, written over a quarter of a million words.

We’ve written pieces about Government policy, drafted thoughts about the future of local government, started debates about the way local government operates and tried to make our readers smile with the occasional light-hearted post.

When we started this blog we did so, in part, out of a sense of frustration. We were both enthusiastic about local government and the work we did and yet there seemed to be a lack of debate and reflection happening, either in our own council or in the wider world. We would spend lunchtimes debating policy and the way local government operated or, more often, making fun of the more stagnant parts of the sector.

Despite our best efforts to locate another outlet for some of this desire for discussion there wasn’t really anything out there. It was at this stage that we decided to do it ourselves; although admittedly for the first few months it was mainly for our own entertainment!

Over the years the blog has developed as we have. We’ve addressed bigger topics, written longer and more serious pieces and expanded our understanding of local government.

We strongly believe that the blog has got better as we’ve gone along and hope that, if only in a really small way, it has contributed to the wider debates and thinking going on about our sector. We also hope that we have entertained people a little.

Reading the above you may be wondering why exactly we are closing the blog.

First things first: it takes a lot of time to write this. We’ve dedicated quite a large chunk of our evenings and weekends to make this a daily blog with what we hope is a consistent standard and we reached a moment where perhaps we have other priorities.

Some have suggested that we just reduce the amount of posts we write each week, thus keeping the blog but reducing the workload. We did consider some sort of stripped down version but felt that the strength of WLLG was its daily nature. We either wanted to be doing it properly or not doing it at all.

Alongside this, we’re not naturally good at the whole anonymity thing. The blog started out anonymous almost by accident and in the long run one of its strengths was that no-one knew who wrote it, therefore people were judging the work on the content not on how it reflected back on the local authorities we worked for. This is not to say that we would not be happy to write what we wrote under our own names. We are proud of what we write and try to do so with an openness and humility that allows for disagreement, encourages debate and doesn’t appear either mean spirited or ignorant.

However, if we are not to run the blog on a daily basis then I think we’d rather not be left skulking in the shadows and cease the whole anonymity thing. We won’t be starting a new blog but we’re certainly not averse to writing a few words every now and again.

Before we go we do need – and want – to say thank you. We want to thank our readers without whom this whole enterprise would have been pointless. We’d like to thank the people who have sent us guest posts (you know who you are), have commented on our posts, those who have tweeted us and those who have inspired us. We’d like to thank our colleagues who have inadvertently given us ideas for posts and everyone we have worked with over the past three years. When local government is full of people with the ideas, enthusiasm and talent of some of the people we know in local government it is in safe hands.

So, that’s it…

It’s been an amazing time, but it’s now time to walk away while the smile is still on our faces and in our hearts.

There’s just one more post to come from us, and for the more curious of our readers you may want to come back tomorrow, but before you do we’d like to leave you with a paragraph from a previous post which we hope sums up what we were all about:

We Love Local Government because:

Within the catch all term ‘local government’ is a diverse, complicated, at times bizarre and yet dedicated, brilliant and innovative organism. At it’s best local government can make a lasting difference to the lives of the residents it serves and even at it’s worst you can guarantee that the motives will be good and that there’ll be something interesting to talk about. It’s a place where things done perfectly go unnoticed, whilst the slightest hiccup makes news columns big and small, which attracts some of the greatest thinkers and doers working today along with more than its fair share of those whose only purpose in life is to serve as a bad example to others.

Like any relationships, our love of local government has its ups and downs, its highs and lows, its moments of pure inspiration, its moments when the acronym WTF?! is the only way to describe things.  It may drive us mad at times, but if nothing else it will always drive us someplace interesting.

Local government is all this and so much more.

Welovelocalgovernment was a blog written by UK local government officers.

All this got us thinking about blogging in general, and some of the posts between us we ourselves have unleashed upon the world over the last few years.  Some of these have been good, others not quite so good, but overall we’re fairly satisfied with the overwhelming majority of our outpouring of thoughts and theories.  With that in mind, and to round off our introspective series with a retrospective and nostalgic post, here’s our own personal, non-scientific and entirely subjective pick of the We Love Local Government blog.  If you’ve got any personal favourites we’ve missed we really would love to hear what they are, if not then why not take a look at some of these and see how the blog grew from humble beginnings to where we stand today.

In the beginning…

It was way back in 2009 when we decided that some other people may enjoy some of the things we spoke about, so proceeded to set up this very blog and post up our first ever post, ‘How to walk in three easy steps‘.  This first toe-dip into the water made us smile enough to continue, so before too long we had added to it.  When we found out that we weren’t allowed to walk up the stairs we’ll admit to double taking, and when Christmas time rolled around we explored some of the health and safety implications it entailed.  And it was good.

It was 2010 when we decided to help the world to Meet Dave (no, not that one), and he soon became a recurring presence over the years.  2010 was also the year when we first featured a sort-of guest post, when one of our colleagues forwarded on an e-mail protocol that seemed just a tad on the over-the-top side not to share.

Having focussed up until that point on rather more minor issues, at this point in our evolution we made a small but important step by starting to think a little beyond the boundaries of our office with this initial look at shared services.  Of course we still delivered some more lighthearted messages (such as when a resident made a Members Enquiry in order to get some pigeons off their veranda), but this balance was one which soon became the norm for us.

It was one of the more lighthearted posts which began to prompt people who didn’t know us to start reading – a simple little post entitled “You know you’ve worked in local government too long when…” went around the office and was also picked up by the Guardian (some of the comments on there are worthy of inclusion!).  Soon after we went against the then-current grain and didn’t get upset when the Audit Commission went away, and we started seeing some silver lining appearing in the growing economic crisis facing local government.

Of graduates and jargon

The NGDP scheme was always an area close to our hearts, and over the past few years we’ve covered it from a number of angles.  To begin with, we began by asking where graduates might be able to find employment in local government, before taking a look at the graduates in question through two different pieces.  We think graduates are a good thing by the way, even if sometimes we rant about some of them!  We even tried to offer some advice to those who are new to local government, although it’s as true for anyone as it is for graduates.

Jargon and Councilese has always been something we are interested in, starting way back with our first pick of the litter.  Do you even remember when the word ‘efficiency‘ wasn’t intrinsically linked to ‘cuts’?  We’ve also tried to reveal some of the secrets of local government language (slightly tongue in cheek perhaps, but perhaps not far off the mark), as well as starting the biggest game of bingo in local government history.  That being said, sometimes having a strategy is a good idea, as long as you don’t just have it criticised of course…

Attack!!!

It’s not been easy being a public servant, and we’ve been attacked by the media on a regular basis.  Whether it’s Panorama making comparisons with the pay of the PM, Channel 4 on sickness levels, the TPA on senior staff or ITV just having a go at us for, well, not much really, frankly we deserve more.  We also expected a bit of backlash when we had a pop at lazy journalists, going so far as to name our top three FOI-ers, but happily it was the good ones who actually read it and seemed to agree.

And it’s not just the media which we like to have a good rant about either.  When a ‘colleague’ took credit for another’s work we felt justified in making a point, although it didn’t appear to get through as we had to return to them later.  Even our DCLG masters have felt content to stick their boot in, from Grant Shapps to Eric Pickles himself.  We don’t always disagree with Mr Pickles however, and will pay him his dues when we think he’s got something right.

Localism and the cuts

It would have been wrong of us to not share our thoughts on Localism, which we started to do by declaring that it’ll only ever work when people accept that some areas will be different to others; seems a little obvious to us, but not to others perhaps.  Of course it always helps to have a good benchmark to measure against.  Local approaches to other things have borne fruit, not least the local approach to the big clean up after the riots, which showed all that is good in our communities.

The cuts have had a monumental effect on us all but have been reacted to in different ways.  Some, such as children’s services, declared that they couldn’t be cut for reasons as grand as ‘a child might die‘, whilst some individuals have considered how the whole situation affected them mentally and emotionally.  It’s also not easy when the focus of the cuts has been local whilst the debate has stayed national – shouldn’t people be thinking of us and the challenges we face a little more?  However, our favourite analogy of the situation remains a guest post comparing local government to life on the high seas.

Moving on

Some of our blogging team moved around and shared their stories. Whether writing about feelings of survivors guilt, concerns over one guest-blogger’s feeling that they have a non-job (whatever they are) and another’s lack of really caring about their job (despite doing it very well), telling your job that you are leaving them or the live blogging final-day-in-the-life-of post, we’ve been through the mill and will no doubt do so again.  We’ve even begun wondering whether or not we’ve reached the glass bottleneck, and whether actually we needed to find some sort of specialism if we were to have any chance of moving on.  Of course, sometimes you find yourself thinking actually, perhaps I do need a new job, especially when your boss asks you to handwrite their notes for them…

The interwebs

Another area we’ve had particular interest in has been around ICT.  Social media has been a regular topic of conversation, although sometimes we concentrate on things somewhat more mundane such as our propensity for demanding constantly changing and complex passwords for our multiple systems.  We’ve attacked intranets and proposed i-pads for councillors, and discussed whether or not we should be happy blurring the working lines through regular updates.

Christmas time

As we said above, Christmas time is always a lot of fun, and we managed to have some with a little caroling wordplay (and a bit more for good luck)and some local government jokes.  We nabbed Eric Pickles Christmas letter to Santa, mused on what to buy for colleagues through your secret Santa process

And finally…

At the end of the day, this blog is all about the good things in local government. Whether it’s sharing a little appreciation for some undervalued colleagues such as accountants, saying all of the things we love about local government or that our friends love, celebrating our own successes or our failures we’ve always tried to have something to say.  Sometimes things have gone wrong.  Sometimes we’ve written things and found that not everyone always agrees with us, especially when it’s a tough situation, but that’s fine; as long as the discussions are being had we’re happy enough.  And of course, should our own big idea – of a day/week celebrating all that is local government – ever come to pass then we will be happy that our hard work is paying off

And finally, here are a few of our favourite random funny posts, for no real reason other than because we like them.

• Dear John (and it’s companion, via Hansel and Gretel)
• Five people I’d like to see working at the Council
• Councils are people too
• How to stifle creativity in local government
• Delusions of Grandeur
• Local Government Haiku
• It’s always the case
• Chief Personality Traits
• Ode to Local Government
• 35 things I’m giving up for lent
• The devil’s guide to getting ahead
• 10 signs your organisation needs to innovate Parts 1 and 2)
• Me and My CC Army
• So you’re having a project?
• Election Day in the Jungle
• The Local Government Bucket List
• The absurdity that is Flexitime

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at:welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

When we started our blog there didn’t seem to be a lot of other local government blogs out there. There were of course some that we have now discovered but equally the quantity and quality has grown over the last few years. Thus, when we sat down to write this post it was a real challenge to narrow them down to a short enough list to fit in a post. We’ve tried our best to catch all of our favourites but if we have missed you out we can only apologise. Now without further ado let’s get to it:

Guardian Local Government Network 

Why? What can we say? Whilst we have our occasional disagreements with the Guardian it is surely hard for local government professionals, of whatever stripe, to challenge the notion that the Guardian Local Government Network is an invaluable resource for all local government staff. The posts are captured from a range of authors and cover a vast range of local government specialities. If you’re not a member then make sure you sign up.

One to read: It’s impossible to pick one post but if you want a feel of what the GLGN is about why not read this piece about the new homes bonus.

Richard Vize column: 

Why? Whilst we’re talking GLGN it is worth mentioning their contributing editor, Richard Vize. Richard’s weekly column is unique amongst local government writers in that it gets right under the skin of some of the major issues impacting the sector and is always worth a read, even on the rare occasions when we disagree with him.

One to read: Richard’s take of Eric Pickles’ high street plan is well worth a read: 

Flip Chart Fairy Tales 

Why? Because it is one of our favourite blogs and although not about local government it does address issues of public sector reform and even when it doesn’t we are yet to find a post we didn’t enjoy reading.

One to read: There is so much to choose but a post entitled Culture eats strategy is always worth a read; a little provocation for those of us embarking on transformation programmes 

Not so Big Society

Why? This is a blog about health and social care written by members of staff who work in social care. Reading the blog no-one can be in any doubt how much the authors care about the people they work with and the policy context they are asked to work in. Anyone interested in these areas should check out this blog as a fantastic counter balance to whatever else is being reported.

One to read: The integration of health and social care is increasingly a hot topic in local government and this post tackles the issue from the first had perspective of mental health.

LGIU Blog: 

Why? We really like the LGIU; the slightly scrappier alternative to the rather staid LGA. Plus, they have a blog and they aren’t afraid to use it. The blog varies between policy blogs, extracted from the wider reports they specialise in (and which should be a key part of your working reading), comment pieces, guest posts and extensive coverage of local government elections. Always worth a read.

One to read: Why not check out this post about Health and Well Being boards and the ever changing health agenda?

Comms 2 point 0: 

Why? Becuase if you are a communications professional working in the public sector this is a blog and information hub just for you. It’s written by communications professionals and always has an interesting thing to say. Plus, it gathers up lots of other interesting links and highlights them for the discerning communicator. Plus, their twitter account has links to five interesting articles almost every morning.

One to read: This post about what comms teams should look like in 2012 seems eminently sensible and is well worth a read.

Dan Slee Blog

Why? Because we are massive fans of Dan Slee and so should you be. A contributor to Comms2point0 Dan’s a local government communicator and as far as we can make out simply a top banana. His blog is about social media and digital communications in PR and local government and is well worth reading.

One to read: 11 Golden Rule for Social media in an organisation. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Helpgov’s helpful blog

Why? Because we love the style of the blog and the writing of the author, Roger White. It’s a mix of serious posts, helpful suggestions and serious dissection of published nonsense.

One to read: Check out this post about the employability of former local government workers

Inlogov blog

Why? Because Inlogov is staffed by academics with an interest in and passion for local government and because the blog is always an interesting dissection of a topical but tricky local government issue or debate. There’s rarely a post that I don’t enjoy.

One to read: Check out this post about the Barnet Graph of Doom 

New Local Government Network Blog

Why? Because despite our occasional joking around we are at heart geeks, and what’s more geeks who love local government and specifically local government policy. The New Local Government Network is a local government thinktank which specialises in new ideas and interesting thought. We’re big fans.

One to read: They don’t write as regularly as some other blogs but this post really peeked our interest from just last week: Should we abolish the DCLG?

Conservative Home local government blog

Why? The Conservative’s unofficial home website has a well developed local government site. It can be a little ‘parish newsletter’ for those who are not Conservatives but in amongst the announcement of bi-election successes and notes from senior Tories there are some really interesting pieces about the wider local government agenda.

One to read: This piece about the 202 tax commission made some interesting points about localism and Government budgeting. 

A Dragon’s best friend

Why? This is not really a blog about local government but rather tends to focus on Whitehall and the civil service. However, there’s so much that we can learn from each other in the world of Government and public service and this blog is so consistently interesting and provocative that it is always worth a read; even when the topic is not strictly local government. Oh, and the author has an alter ego who is a small dragon fairy called Puffles; what’s not to like?!?

One to read: It’s one of those blogs that is often topical in nature so just tune in and check it out.

Futuregov blog

Why? Because we love futuregov and their blog, although not furiously updated (we imagine they are too busy, you know, doing stuff) is an extension of all that we enjoy about them and their work.

One to Read: A post plugging their innovative social cooking project called Casserole. If you don’t know what that is then you should check the post out now.

FOI man

Why? The FOI man is not a local government employee but as the openness, transparency and freedom of information agenda is so crucial to local government the no nonsense and thoroughly sensible approach he takes to these overlapping issues is well worth reading and is equally applicable to local authorities. A practitioner who really knows his stuff.

One to read: In defence of the exemption; a post looking at the use of the exemption by Government bodies  (such as the NHS) and how it could and should be used.

Weekly Blog club

Why? Because it is a really good idea. The blog club asks each of its members to write a post each week which are then summarised and linked to on the WBC site. If you agree with us that the more blogging the better then this sort of mutual support network is a really good idea and churns out some really interesting posts.

One to read: It would be rude to pick one author over the others (although some participants are mentioned elsewhere in this round up). Just try and check in when you can and you’ll find some really good posts.

A Shiny World by Louise Kidney

Why? Because Louise is a digital front runner managing to handle multiple blogs and twitter feeds, setting up #lgovsm and developing the great idea of #1515gov. Although she has recently left local government her blog is still a good place to look for an interesting reflection and one we like to check out.

One to read: Why not check out this post about communications, digital and what happens when you don’t invest properly in understanding either.

Dave Briggs blog

Why? Because Dave is a bit of a legend having, in his own words, been advising government on how to make best use of social technology to engage with communities and citizens since 2004. He’s also a really interesting speaker and a passionate advocate of all things engagement and technology. His blog redirects to his company site now (we only just noticed… Gotta love shortcuts) but it’s still always worth a read. Indeed, there might even be more good stuff on there nowadays.

One to read: How about this post about writing an effective tweet. Typically good stuff.

Carl Haggerty blog

Why? Because Carl is just interesting and always seems to be trying something new or thinking about something in a new way.  He’s also way ahead of his time in many areas, and likes to push boundaries and change for better’s sake rather than just to be different.

One to read: The power of reflective thinking 

Mark Braggins blog

Why? Because Mark writes interestingly about things that interest us. He also gets out and about and then writes about his experiences and ideas coming from there.

One to read: This post looking at why Mark uses his i-Pad.

Adrian Short

Why? Because he is a passionate advocate of all things digital and technology with a Government core to him. He also likes to odd rant and writes some good pieces about how we communicate with our public.

One to read: This post about the nonsense in Argyle and Bute a few weeks ago is typically forthright and incisive.

Paul Coxon blog

Why? If Paul didn’t work in local government we probably would never have followed his twitter feed or read his blog. It’s not always about work but the rest of his interests are diverse and interesting and always worth a read; if only so you have something to disagree with!

One to read: A post about the relentless tick tock of time.

Its mothers work blog

Why? Because she is so opinionated and so absolutely unafraid of expressing those opinions. Oh, and she really cares which is what matters to us.

One to read: This is a little self-absorbed as we’re on this list but her alternative to the Queens Honours was a good’un.

Benjamin Welby Blog

Why? Because Ben used to work in local government and despite leaving to join the ever growing Government Digital service he still writes incredibly interesting posts

One to read: Check out this post about the power of blogging

Ben Lowndes Blog

Why? Ben doesn’t write about local government as such but he’s in public sector communications and therefore some of his posts have local government relevance. Well worth a peek in every now and again.

One to read: This post about the future of local press.

Finally, the next two sites are not blogs as such but do check out the openly local site which tries to gather together financial and other local information from councils for members of the public to analyse themselves. This is the sort of openness we should be encouraging. Also, the ‘independent local government’ site  is committed to opening up the debate about the future governance of local government. Both are worth checking out.

There are doubtless many other blogs out there that we haven’t mentioned above. Some we missed because we don’t know about them and some because we had to stop somewhere. However, the key message is that there are lots and lots of really good examples of local government writing out there, each of them contributing to the debate and exchange of ideas which plays a small but important part to the success of the sector. We thank the authors for their work and urge our readers to, if you haven’t already, check them out.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com 

What better way to end a week of posts reflecting on the wider context for local government than to reflect on the local government workforce?  Well, we couldn’t think of anything either, so here goes.

Like many service industries, and indeed like most organisations in existence, local government is almost entirely dependent on the quality of the people who work for it.  Whilst it is not universally the case, generally those councils who contain and retain the best staff deliver the best services, and the converse is just as true.  This poses the sector a number of inter-related challenges.

Firstly, the local government workforce is getting older and local government has struggled to attract and retain the calibre of new recruits to leave people confident in the future of the industry.  On the one hand this has resulted in staff who are increasingly experienced in their field, but of course holds the danger of a potential lack of innovative new ideas coming from people new to the sector.

A key point of ingress for these newcomers has for the last few years been through the NGDP programme.  However, it has become clear that this excellent stream of talent appears to have been dammed, with fewer councils taking on graduates as well as investing in their training and development.  This short term quest to save a few pennies promises to cost many, many pounds in the future.

Secondly, whilst local government staff are not, relatively speaking, badly paid the recent attacks on the pay and conditions of council workers has damaged morale and has the potential to put people off joining the sector.

A sizable portion of local government staff do not do it for the money, instead focussing on providing excellent services for the residents they serve.  But there is only so many jibes, attacks, snipes and outright verbal assaults which most of us can take.  Morale is something which is often the first casualty when cuts bite, but unless we address the now low levels of job satisfaction it’s only a matter of time before service delivery gets affected.

Finally, a simple point perhaps but an important one to bring up is that austerity has meant that many local government staff have lost their jobs.  In case you’d missed it, we saw 145,000 posts disappear from the public sector in 2011 alone, and in that time demand upon the services they delivered until then has mostly not followed suit and disappeared, in fact some services are more in demand than ever before.

Whilst many of these cut staff have been the victims of what is indelicately called natural wastage, in some cases this means that those who can get another job do and those that can’t remain in the council.  This can never be seen as a good state of affairs, neither for those who leave or for those who are left behind.  Just because a competent staff member gets a new position does not mean under any circumstances that their previous role is now no longer needed; put simply, recruitment freezes are a ridiculous idea.

Equally, there are many good staff who find themselves made redundant and looking for an alternative way of making a living.  The government intended that these individuals would be taken on by the private sector, taking the best part of the public sector and reinvigorating its private counterpart.  This doesn’t seem to be happening yet, although with the advent of localism and the option for staff to set up their own social enterprise and bid to challenge the council’s service delivery there is hope for this aim yet.  About as much chance as Team GB topping the medals tables at the Olympics perhaps, but a theoretical hope nonetheless.

All of this should make the dispassionate observer fear for the long term future of the local government workforce. Whilst we are perhaps not dispassionate observers, we take a contrary view and actually feel pretty positive about it all.

The thing that unites most people in public service is that their motivations for doing their work extend far beyond salaries and the wider political context. People enter local government to help people, to develop their communities and because they believe in public service.

I don’t see any particular reason that this would change.

However, this public service does not have to exist within local government and just because staff want to serve their community does not mean that we can take it easy or take out staff for granted. My fear is that we will fail to inspire and motivate our staff and that either they will not feel able to best serve their community and become despondent or else they will just leave local government.

It’s thus really important that we support our staff to the maximum; and whilst I don’t think the Government noise will lead to a drop off in local government staffing there is a real danger at the local level.  After staffing levels themselves, the next thing to face the axe in a bid to save money is often training budgets.  The argument goes that staff are employed to do their jobs, and thus must be competent enough to do so already.  After all, why would we hire someone not up to the task in the first place?

Training costs organisations a pretty penny every year.  We think this is a good thing.  Every penny spent on training saves a fortune in time, effort and alternative cost further down the line, makes staff feel valued and enables them to keep up with new developments in their fields.  The thought that the world stands still or that staff will be able to keep up with it on their own is ridiculous, so councils should be offering training and development opportunities to their staff from the top to the bottom and in every direction – it’s what the phrase ‘invest to save’ was coined for.

We’ve also spoken in the past about the importance of staff moving between authorities, thus sharing their knowledge and experience across the entire sector rather than retaining it all within one part of it to the detriment of the whole.  We get very protective over our staff teams in local government, these days even more so due to the fact that many people’s pay grades are tied not into their competence or the importance of their work solely but also to the number of people they manage.  With the aforementioned recruitment freeze in place all too often, when good staff move on their manager sees nothing but negative consequences rather than any opportunities.

We need to change our focus and step back in these situations.  It may be a little zen in nature, but by stepping back and considering the positive impact upon the wider sector we should realise that the more who move between authorities, the more opportunity for the dissemination of good practice there is, and the more likely we are to identify bad practice along the way.  As long as staff are contributing to local government somewhere then they should be encouraged to think about how else they may learn and continue to grow, and through their own growth improve the lot of as many local authorities as possible.

Of course, this may not be for everyone.  A huge slice of the workforce work in the same borough that they live in.  This is great, as they have an affinity with their areas which (for want of a better phrase) ‘outsiders’ would struggle to match.  This doesn’t mean however that they should be abandoned with regards to their own development; they too should be encouraged and supported to develop.

The one silver lining about the whole staffing cut situation is a harsh one perhaps, but one worth mentioning: with fewer staff there are fewer opportunities for poor staff to hide.  Local government is no different to any organisation in that the performance of its staff can vary, and looking back over my own tenure in the sector I have known many people who have deliberately or unbeknownst to themselves been carried by their colleagues.  With the stripping back of staff and the roles we undertake, this is become increasingly rare.

As I look around the office these days I see a group of people who are experienced, skilled, interested in development and delivering under difficult circumstances.  We all appreciate that our futures are not guaranteed any more, so strive to make sure that whatever else happens we have some excellent work to put on our CVs, and we do our best to support each other as we really are all in as precarious a position as each other; who knows who might be next?

It may not be the easiest of times and may feel challenging more often than not, but if we can survive today when times are bad then imagine how much stronger we will be in the future.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

Starter for ten: What is engagement and why bother with it?  A pair of very simple questions perhaps but worth asking.  Engagement in relation to local government centres around how we involve local people in the planning, running and evaluation of our services, and comes in a number of forms and methods.  Popular engagement techniques include surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, workshops and interviews, but can also be as creative as World Cafes, PinPoint, Open Space facilitation or Planning for Real.

As for why, well if you have to ask this then perhaps you’ve not been around local government for too long.  The business case is fairly simple: firstly we are told we have to, secondly it helps us builds a two-way relationship with residents and thirdly good engagement actually opens up a huge world of knowledge which we otherwise may not find out about.

We’ve often remarked that you should never throw away your drainpipe trousers as sooner or later they will come back into fashion, and so it seems to be the case with approaches to community engagement.  There is no one single way of doing this, and so successive governments have tried various ways to encourage or force local authorities and residents to engage with each other.  Just a few years ago for example, the Communities in Control white paper hit inboxes and desks around the country, and promised to revolutionise the standards of involvement and engagement between service providers and service users.  It introduced a number of new ‘duties’ on local authorities, including:

• Duty to promote democracy
• Duty to involve
• Duty to inform
• Duty for councils to respond to petitions

Tied in with this is the new ‘requirement to consult communities before submitting certain planning applications’ which has been placed upon developers.  All too often councils foot the blame when developers undertake poor and meaningless consultation processes before putting planning applications in which will have real impact on communities.  By legislating against this developers will be forced to actually consider the views and opinions of local people, which in turn should lead to better outcomes for all concerned.

Scrutiny is a third area where real change is afoot.  Amongst other things, the Health and Social Care Bill is bestowing health scrutiny powers on local authorities meaning greater focus will be given by authorities to these matters.  The advent of Healthwatch as it evolves from its previous LINks incarnation should encourage local groups and individuals to share their thoughts and opinions on health and social care issues even more regularly, with the local authority having even more power to then make change happen as a result of these comments.  It is this ability and willingness to both listen and then to act which is vital if engagement of any type is to have meaning.

Engagement with residents is something which nigh-on all councils now take seriously, even if some residents don’t agree that they actually undertake their work well enough.  Some residents will turn up to engagement activities regardless of their belief that they are being listened to or have real power, and others will never turn up however easy it is made or what it will result in; as long as their bins are collected and potholes are filled in they simply don’t feel a need to have their say heard.  It’s the large chunk in between these two extremes however where we need to focus our time, energy and dwindling resources.

Councils need to ensure that they are engaging with the right people at the right time in the right way: we also need to do this with a degree of consistency that is hard to maintain.  All officers – not only those with ‘engagement’, ‘participation’, ‘consultation’, ‘involvement’ or something similar in their job titles – must get to the point where engaging with residents is a natural task, one which they do early and one which they do often.  The localgov mind is willing and the localgov body is doing its best to deliver; with just a little resource to fuel this, quality engagement could work wonders for some time to come.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

The least worst option…

On first glimpse this post title is not too different to the post about politics we posted on Monday. Isn’t democracy and accountability just another element of the political context local government is facing?

We don’t think so.

The long term future of local government is far more dependent on what we do with the structure of democracy and accountability it operates in than any policy change dreamed up by this or any other Government.

Local Government, as it currently exists has elements of success and failure pre-programmed into it. On the success side of the ledger local government has proven to be the most responsive and quickest changing part of Government. It has, especially in recent years, proven able to make quick cuts and rapid investments, to commission imaginatively and to provide a series of complex local services to its communities in a fairly well received way.

On the other hand, local government is becoming increasingly less democratic at the local level. People don’t vote for their local councillors in anywhere near the numbers they vote for their MPs (we don’t even get levels as high as the Voice!). Even where local people are turning up to vote my perception is that in many areas the effort expended to capture that vote, by the local politicians, is rapidly decreasing.

What’s more in many ways it is not hard to understand why the voters don’t care and the politicians don’t try as hard as they once might have. Whilst Governments of all stripes might declare their support for localism the reality is that national politicians fear losing control, and the postcode lottery that might follow, even more. This leads to ring fences, legislative controls, guidelines, targets and other requirements dominating the public service provision. The current Government have done a little to reduce these but with 25% budget cuts coming it is very hard for local authorities to really do much more than the statutory services they are obliged, under the law, to provide.

Equally, local government in theory is predicated on the idea of local difference. This is fine in theory but we are also a universalist sort of country. I’m pretty sure members of the public would be ok with different street cleaning routines in different parts of Britain but the three biggest services in a local authority are all ones which many would consider needing a consistent approach; those being social care for children, working age adults and older persons .

So, in many ways it can be argued that local government is overly centrally driven, lacking in democratic legitimacy and whilst innovative and nimble lacking in a unique mandate.

The above is an intentionally negative view and laid out to spark debate; we love local government but are genuinely fearful that in twenty years local councils will just be glorified quangos or foundation trusts without the real democratic underpinning so crucial, in our minds, to what government is meant to be. We are, despite everything, passionate supporters of true democracy.

One of the reasons for out optimism is that there is light on the horizon in the form of two clear broad alternative visions currently being posited for this organisational and political malaise. Option 1 is broadly Steve Hilton localism, captured within the context of the Big Society and option 2 is empowered municipalism, as proposed by the ever energetic Graham Allen MP.

Let us start with the Big Society first. Under this localist vision the local authority plays a relatively small role. Instead of having a public sector organised around local councils we instead encourage a diversity of providers, co-operatives, voluntary groups, private sector and small providers sharing the public duties. Members of the public can bid to run local services and would be encouraged to do so.

This has many appealing elements within it and the localist vision that underpins it is certainly an admirable one.

However, there is a need to develop the democratic element of these ideas. For this to work there are areas where we will need to develop our approaches to these issues quite considerably. I’m not certain that the Big Society visionaries have managed to establish some means of attaining ‘consent’ from the public for their new marketplace of providers. It is clearly early days but without this legitimacy there is a rightful concern that the new mechanisms will not improve the democratic element of the local service delivery mix. Indeed, foundation trusts and trust schools have similar democratic holes in them which successive Governments have worked hard to try to fill.

In local government we do already have some successful democratic structures in place and this mandate and local consent could, in theory be provided through the local authority as commissioners but I wonder if even this would encourage the increasing atomisation of the political process. The point of a local authority is to manage these competing priorities and plot a vision for the local area. Would a role complementing the Big Society vision enable them to do so? It is definitely worth exploring this further.

The second option is put forward by the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee under the rather grand title: ‘A new Magna Carta for Local Government’ and we have quite some sympathy for it here at WLLG. In this vision local government takes real powers from the centre, is able to raise the funds it spends locally itself and:

They shall enjoy independence in both powers and finance and be entitled to do all that is required at local level, within the law, to secure and improve the well-being of their citizens and communities. Parliament makes plain that within their spheres of competence, local councils have co-equal not subordinate status to central government and that their rights and duties shall enjoy equal protection in law.

At a stroke we would be devolving a lot of power to local authorities and asking them to be responsible for a wider range of options than they currently have. There would be a real reason for people to vote for them in local elections and theoretically we would get a greater variance of policy in different local areas. This latter point is the one that appeals to us the most. If local government is to be truly local then allowing local people to determine a different course of action in their local area is a really good thing. This already happens in some local authorities but not as much as we would like.

But if we are to impute more power on our local authorities then we probably need to accompany this with taking the role of councillors more seriously. I know this is an unpopular position but we should pay our councillors enough money that they can free up at least two or three days a week to do the work of a councillor. Councils are complex bodies and running them should not be a hobby conducted in meetings between 7pm and 10pm four nights a week. Without that proviso how can we possibly expect people to take their role running local authorities seriously?

The above represent two options for local government. There are other policies that could make a difference; for example community budgeting could have a radical impact on local government’s ability to lead their local community. Likewise, a whole new approach might be dreamed up and become the idea de jour before this post has truly vanished into the archives of the internet.

Local government is at a crossroads. Can it become, once again, an engine of the local population it serves driving social change and providing services tailored specifically to the communities it serves or will the most centralised state in Europe leave local government as just another arm of service implementation?

One thing is for certain. The current drive for austerity, allied to the coalition’s supposed commitment to localism is pushing this question up the agenda. We shall watch with interest.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

For no reason other than alphabetical let’s begin with digital. In some ways the last few years feel like nothing much has altered: we’ve still got arguments over Twitter and Facebook, examples of archaic social media policies, no-one’s cracked single sign-on and IE6 just won’t die. However, scratch a little of this surface and you’ll find, in the same way as the Sopranos episodes where nothing happened yet everything changed, we’ve actually come a long way.

Much of the shift in digital thinking can be attributed to one person – the never-to-be-known person who convinced someone that they should ask David Cameron to ask Martha Lane Fox to do a quick report into the state of our digital nation. In line with many of these reports, that she was asked was in part down to her celebrity status and public name; however, unlike some other reports the Digital Britain paper was well thought out, realistic and set out a path that would make a real difference to the work and thinking of the public sector, and through them the prospects of residents around the country.

By no means the most insignificant result of this report was the development of the new Government Digital Service (GDS). A growing collection of some of the sharpest digital minds in local government (although not me I may say, hint-hint… ) this promises to revolutionise much of what we have grown to take for granted. Not only that, it’s already delivering. A new and exciting culture is sweeping through much of the thinking around digital approaches, with even the monolithic Direct.gov not proving beyond their appetite to improve.  Don’t believe us?  Take a look at gov.uk and then come back to apologise.

Before anyone points out that GDS is central government in essence, may I point out that where good practice starts is not where it is constrained to stay. One of the key elements of the GDS approach is challenging boundaries and not accepting that not-really-good-enough is actually good enough for the public sector. There is simply no way that this attitude isn’t going to seep over to even the harshest cynic in local government, and promises to be the start of a seismic shift in how we conduct our business online.

Allied to this has been remarkable, if not universal, progress in how many local authorities are addressing social media. Many moons ago there were few councils who were truly aiming to make the most of this emerging technology. As we have often remarked, only six years before this post went out to the world, no-one outside of a handful of US students had ever heard of Facebook; we were in fact still staring in open-mouthed delight as YouTube made video sharing easy for the masses.

Some few councils with keen staff were dabbling in forums and blogs, but these were invariably small pockets fighting for any degree of validation, with most senior officers seeing nothing more than a little potential for some few services but not for mainstream council communications or engagement. Forums, after all, were filled with nothing but anonymous childish trolls who had no interest in commenting properly on council business.

Fast forward on a few years and the majority of councils are waking up to the fact that digital is here to stay. Most have adopted some form of policy around social media (even if many are ridiculously restrictive), and there are ever increasing numbers of examples of excellent digital work being undertaken, along with evidence as to what differences this work has actually made. Some few still shout about the number of fans or followers they have as if we were playing a game where higher numbers equated to winning, but more and more are instead focussing on what their followers are actually doing and how they are engaging instead.

This is a subtle but vital shift in our thinking, and one which is essential to support if local government is to have any chance at all of moving the digital agenda forward: digital channels are channels for communication and engagement, not end products themselves. While people see the delivery of a facebook page or the setting up of a twitter feed as an output to achieve they will forever fall short where it actually matters: the outcomes these tools achieve.

Carl Haggarty has been arguing this for a long time: that it should be the content that you should have a strategy for rather than social media. As a grossly simplified analogy – do you have a telephone strategy? A written letter strategy? A public meeting strategy? No, of course not, as they are simply tools and methods used to engage: social media is a different tool with its own idiosyncrasies and requirements perhaps, but it is a tool nonetheless.

The challenge of single sign on is finally also beginning to be considered. We are starting to slowly think about things from a users perspective rather than from the angles sold to us by company salespeople who have a new toy to sell and want our money. Again, some are better than others, but it is becoming more common to see people looking to integrate their software and to think twice before spending out on something new to see if it’s actually needed rather than just shiny.

Of course, a lot of this has been driven in no small part by the financial challenges we have faced recently.  They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and these days it’s also the step-mother of innovation.  Simply put, councils up and down the country are being forced to develop ever more innovative ways of delivering services in order to offset the constantly decreasing budgets they have available to them.  Doing things in the same ways will always cost the same money, meaning new ways are having to be found to deliver services (well, those that remain anyway) for less.

One of the major players in this forward charge are the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, commonly known as NESTA.  Despite their changing status they are successfully maintaining the good work they have been undertaking since 1998.  Their latest efforts were via the Creative Councils programme, which saw them put the call out for innovative ideas from councils across the country.  They are now teaming up with six to bring their ideas to life, with projects as diverse as energy regulation, cultural transformation and new economic models for social care.

That being said, generally councils still lag behind here though.  All too often the act of innovation is seen as an extra to the day job, and is rarely integrated in the common mindset of the average officer.  This is entirely understandable – most of us are so busy doing our business as usual that it’s difficult to negotiate time to do anything more.  Of course, in the long term this is not the best of ideas: at some point we must realise that the only way to chart a route through this forest of cuts we need to step right back from the trees.  Those organisations which invest officer time and develop a culture of innovation from top to bottom and side to side will thrive and benefit in the middle to long term, whilst those who continue to insist that the only way of delivering is to plough on regardless will sooner rather than later stagnate.

It’s not often that an area of local government is actually looking good for the future, and whilst innovation perhaps has some way to go it’s the world of digital engagement in which there is significant hope.  As more officers come to understand its importance and see the possibilities, a virtuous circle becomes possible which must be continued if we are to have any hope of seeing out the next few years.

Now, to find a localgov way of saying LOL without sounding as if we are either 12 or seeing pictures of cats playing the piano.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com 

The political context – on a mug

At a recent WLLG catch up we decided that we’d like to mix it up a little and try something different with the blog. So for this week we will be presenting five short posts looking at five elements of the local government sector and where we think we are right now. Today’s post is the first in the series and looks at the political context. We hope you enjoy this and the other pieces this week and look forward to hearing your responses to them.

When we stumbled upon the idea of writing a week long themed version of the WLLG blog taking on board some of the broader issues impacting local government I signed up to write this post thinking it would be a rather simple localist treatise plotting the future for local government in a new environment. This was not the case.

The more I think about it the more I am reminded of the innate complexity of the local government policy arena we all work in. Councils operate hundreds of services and each of them is governed to a greater or not quite a great extent by the Whitehall machinery. Thus, there is little that local government does that is not deeply impacted by central government.

This post then, has a danger of being central government focused which is precisely what I had hoped to avoid. However, despite my misgivings we do need to start with the coalition.

The recent Queens Speech was a bit of a waste of time and effort and seemed to many to show a Government that had run out of ideas.

I differ a little.

I suggest that the reason the Queens Speech was such a letdown was that the Government has already cast its dye in most key areas and is basically just in an implementation phase. The true impact of these changes will have a much greater effect on the perceived success, or failure, of the coalition than anything the Queen read out in 2012.

In most key areas of Government activity the coalition wisely used the first few years of the term to get their reforms out of the way.

Austerity and the accompanied dramatic cuts to public spending are definitely an ideological approach to our economic malaise but they provide a consistent, if controversial, base to the coalition’s economic plans. Whatever ‘Plan B’ ends up looking like it will be based on the austerity foundations. Whether this succeeds or ends up failing dramatically will probably define the success or otherwise of the coalition. Meanwhile these cuts are probably the single biggest risk facing local government now and in the next five or more years.

The changes to the welfare system will have an even greater impact on the local government finances. This is not least because the government has cynically told local government to cut council tax benefit by 10% whilst protecting all sorts of people and then at the same time said that if local government wants to not make the cuts they can just cut other services. Of all the Government changes this is the one that annoys me the most as it is brazen, cynical and most of all cowardly.

Other welfare changes will also impact local government and put more pressure on our services.

Meanwhile the major changes the Government is making to Health and Education are already underway and each impacts local government. Free schools and academies no doubt undermine the influence of local authorities over local education but many councils are more vexed with the Government’s attitude over funding for new school building or renovation. Structures are important but what matters to teachers, parents, students and local politicians more is whether the schools that everyone is working in are in a fit state.

Mr Gove and his colleagues should make sure this problem is fixed, and fixed soon.

The changes to the health service have possibly wide ranging impacts on local government. Although the NHS has basically reconstituted PCTs in another form with the Commissioning Support Organisations for now, in the long term it seems more logical that local authorities might provide partnership to their Clinical Commissioning Groups. From a place perspective isn’t this more sensible than what is currently being offered in many areas? The Government seem keen to push local CCGs to operate tendering processes between local councils and the private sector thus ensuring that CCGs either go NHS or go private but I hope the Government will change their tune on that one.

Meanwhile, the challenges of localism and the Big Society will continue to bring new players into the local service provision. This provides a unique challenge to local government, not least as this will probably mean that local government has to get better at change; services may change providers every few years, services may fail and commissioning will have to be imaginative to meet ever changing local needs. The risks of this are huge but there are opportunities to exploit as well.

All of the above examples provide challenges for local politicians. No longer are they at the top of a command and control structure where their every word is implemented by somewhat star struck council officers. Instead, increasingly their direct influence is declining, to be replaced by an influence based on their ability to negotiate on behalf of their communities. I would argue that this makes councillors infinitely more important as without this democratic accountability or local consent we are left with services that have no connection to the communities they serve.

However, it is a real challenge and will involve councillors upping their collective game. Whether we have provided them with enough support to play this new role I am uncertain but seeing the development of it will be fascinating over the next 5-10 years.

Whilst most of the Government’s legacy is already put in train there is one area where we don’t yet know the impact or indeed whether the Government is going to have the courage to put in place a long term sustainable solution; funding of Adult Social Care. As the Barnet graph of doom shows, if this issue is not addressed soon the entire council budget could be taken by funding adult and childrens social care within a decade. An unfathomable amount of people support something equivalent to the Dilnot report and the fact that the Government have yet to put forward a Bill to implement the recommendations is a peculiar example of either Government feebleness or civil service intransigence or both.

As you can see, a post that was meant to be a localist treatise ended up being a quick trot through the impact of the coalition government on local government.

This is, of course, not totally fair. Local government is still the most innovative and fast moving part of the Government structure in the UK. Thus, whilst austerity is the unifying feature for all local government and the changes being made by the Government represent the context in which local government is operating right now, the changes being made around the country differ depending on the council concerned.

I’m going to be honest; I don’t know what’s happening in over 350 councils around the country. I could probably not do much more than ten. However, every time I visit a council or speak to more enthusiastic and forward thinking members of staff there is always something interesting and innovative happening.

Local government’s ability to continually flex to the changing contexts we face is central to the Government being able to introduce its radical and wide ranging policy prospectus. Our role is also crucial to ensuring that services provided locally that so many people rely on are provided in the best way possible.

Local government will rise and meet this challenge and it would be nice if the coalition recognised this once in a while rather than always being on the attack.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com 

Weakness can be a strength… But perhaps not at the Olympics!

If there is one thing I have learnt in my local government career it is that we are collectively really poor at identifying personal weaknesses.

By this I don’t mean that we are bad at identifying mistakes or errors. On the contrary we are excellent at this and many authorities have cultures of hanging people out to dry without giving them support or identifying why the problem occurred.

Instead, what I am talking about is our individual inability to be self-reflective and recognise that we have some weaknesses. Equally, the managers in our workplaces seem to have difficulty identifying the weaknesses of those below them and focusing on them as areas of improvement.

I don’t think that weaknesses are a bad thing. Weaknesses imply other areas that are strengths and we should be proactive in accepting that people have a bit of both. If not then we are probably accepting mediocrity across the board or expecting universal brilliance or incompetence, both of which are equally unlikely.

This inability to identify weaknesses impacts the organisation in a number of ways.

1. In the workplace we often set staff up to fail by asking them to do things which they are not comfortable doing. We then run the risk of assuming they are poor performing rather than just someone with strengths and weaknesses (like all of us).
2. People become defensive when mistakes are made or performance is low instead of asking for help as soon as they realise things are going off track.
3. We fail to improve our staff due to our focus on what they do well. Thus, a member of staff could be in an organisation for ten years and never take action on an area, or be told, that they really need to improve in certain areas.
4. Teams are rarely ever planned with complementary skills. Indeed, as we fail to recognise weaknesses appropriately we end up with teams with shared weaknesses.
5. On a slightly different but related note, projects are often reported as being green because people are reluctant to admit that there are weaknesses in their project and would rather pitch it as green than admit failings and ask for help.

The problem doesn’t just exist in individual staff members or an organisational culture that doesn’t encourage this sort of critical self-awareness; it also rests with managers.

I take weaknesses quite seriously, reflective perhaps of someone who has a lot of them, and make a point of asking (usually through gritted teeth right at the end of one to one meetings) what my biggest weaknesses are and what I need to do to improve. My better managers would usually come up with something but I was amazed at the amount who really struggled with this simple question.

Perhaps people don’t want to be mean and perhaps there is a wider issue about having the confidence to identify other people’s personal weaknesses. Managers seem able to identify when work is bad but having the confidence to assign personal weakness to that might be more difficult for people.

So what should we do about this seeming local government blind-spot? I have two recommendations:

1. For individuals: Accept that you are not going to be good at everything and try very hard to identify what your weaknesses are (and I don’t mean in the job interview sense where everyone says a variant of ‘I care too much’ or ‘I’m a perfectionist’). Be honest with yourself, maybe even talk to your friends about it but most of all look to improve them
2. For managers: Every year try and pick the five areas a member of your staff is weakest in and then agree to monitor them over the year. Test the person to leave their comfort zone but do so within an agreed structure that makes the conversations less awkward and/or confrontational.

We all have weaknesses; recognising them and adjusting accordingly is by far the best way to ensure that we don’t become an unwitting slave to them.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at: welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com