Tony Blair's Prime Ministers Delivery Unit (PMDU) is one of the most successful and imitated UK civil service reforms. But it wasn’t until the arrival of ex-civil servant Zina Etheridge at Haringey Council in 2013 that any one tried to imitate it in UK local government.
I joined PMDU in 2002 in its early days. When the PMDU's founder Sir Michael Barber left in 2005 I became the interim head of the unit.
Michael Barber: creator and head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit
So I couldn't resist the temptation to carry out an external evaluation of the first 18 months of the Corporate Delivery Unit (CDU) in Haringey. I wanted to see if they could adapt the PMDU model and make it work in local government. After 3 months work I had my answer.
Assessment framework: Is your delivery unit fit for purpose?
The PMDU model works really well in local government. Haringey have done a remarkable job to created the critical success factors that led to PMDU's impact, whilst adapting it to the context and capacity of Haringey Council.
How did they do it? What are the lessons that others should heed?
Zina established three objectives for her CDU: to help the organisation focus on priorities; to challenge and support priority services; and to build Haringey’s capability to address future challenges.
The essence of PMDU is simple - but its most organisations don't do it. Once you have established the things that matter most to your council, you just need to ask, and keep asking 5 questions - until you get some good answers.
Question 1: What are you trying to do? What matters is the clear, measurable definition of success – whether a formal target or not.
Question 2: How are you trying to do it? PMDU required delivery plans that drove action. A visual ' trajectory' showed the link between proposed actions and their impact.
Question 3: How, at any given moment, will you know you are on track? PMDU introduced quarterly monitoring meetings between officials, ministers and the Prime Minister, which we called stocktakes. These meetings examined the data, had an honest conversation, and made decisions.
Question 4: If you are not on track, what are you going to do about it? Problems can always be solved. What matters is that you try something—and if that doesn’t work, try something else, and keep trying until you get a result.
Question 5: Can we help? The PMDU didn’t just monitor It also rolled up its sleeves and helped solve problems.
Zina and I have written a case study that provides a warts and all story of the first 18 months of the CDU. We work through each the eleven key elements you need to tackle if you are setting up a unit.
How do we know CDU has been successful?
Officials and members consistently talk about two early delivery successes: turning around performance on the time taken to process planning applications, especially major planning applications; and getting to grips with the basics of safeguarding children by ensuring that many more who are referred to social services are seen and assessed swiftly. The trajectories and performance data show how success was achieved.
The work of CDU has exposed problems of capacity and lack of strategy, ambition or operational grip in some areas. There are symbolic examples of action following the exposure of those issues – for example: staff moving on or out.
Early delivery successes in Haringey
Service managers found CDU constructive and helpful - bringing much-needed additional capacity and capability. Data analysis and production of trajectories (visual delivery plans) provided new insights and a compelling picture of performance. Everyone really likes the trajectories.
The leader and chief executive found the design reviews carried out by CDU useful for exploring big strategic questions. They created time to ask and answer more strategic questions.
We think there are five key lessons from Haringey's experience for other organisations considering the PMDU model.
Haringey’s adaptation is successful because the CDU team really understood the context of the original reform. They knew what it was about the PMDU that they wanted in Haringey.
The values, way of working and culture of PMDU are a non-negotiable part of any adaptation. The quality and diversity of the team, together with excellent initial training and support by people who really understood the PMDU model, were the foundation of the unit’s success.
It is tough to stay focused on the relentless grind of delivery. Once you create an effective and well-regarded unit, there will be a steady stream of reasonable-sounding demands to use the unit’s staff – and the unit can quickly lose its focus. It is vital to stick with delivery.
Pay attention to wider capability – you may need to pause and fix it. If the service area lacks capacity to take the actions required to deliver, don't use the delivery unit to substitute for that leadership and capability. To create sustainable delivery, you change the leadership, and pause to put in place the right capacity.
The council has set itself the aim of embedding the CDU approach as the new, ‘Haringey’ way of delivering. This will require a wider coalition of actively engaged cabinet members and senior leaders who have adopted the tools and methods of delivery.
At a time when most councils have had to strip out what little strategic and performance management capacity they had in services, let alone the centre - the CDU model offers a practical way to establish some crucial important functions that no council can afford to ignore.
There is much to learn from this pioneering unit in Haringey - and I hope others will be encouraged to create similar teams to help them deliver in the toughest of times.
I am grateful to the officers and councillors in the Council at that time for letting me tell their story.
This blog was first published as an article in Municipal Journal, UK in 2015