On Thursday 13 May at Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council Christine Kerr, Gareth Owens and Councillor Tony Lloyd launched the first of a series of service interventions which will be used to drive their organisation wide transformation programme.

Councillors and the Corporate Management Team at NBBC recognise the real and urgent need for long term sustainable change to make sure they can continue to offer value for money to the citizens of Nuneaton and Bedworth during these financially turbulent times. Following a number of conversations and workshops with Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands around the available support, the council made the decision to go ahead with an organisation wide transformation programme using systems thinking methodology.

NBBC’s Chief Executive Officer, Christine Kerr showed she is determined to lead this change and recognises that only complete ownership and engagement with the programme and systems thinking methodology from the whole Corporate Management Team will ensure they will be in a position to face the immediate and ongoing challenges over the coming years.

Supported by IEWM’s transformation team and Councillor Tony Lloyd, Christine and her team spoke to the repairs and maintenance teams in Housing and the Benefits, not only to ask for their help to change the organisation so that it can meet their future commitments, but just as importantly, to help them to learn about the issues faced daily by front line workers so together they can make the changes vital for their community and the sustainability of the council.

The clear message from CMT was the need for everyone to focus on redesigning the council from the outside-in (from the customer’s point of view) so that NBBC can start to make a real difference. This message was the one that anchored the buy-in and support from everyone present at the launch because of its clear acceptance and recognition that it is these key workers who deliver value to the citizens of Nuneaton and Bedworth and who have had to deal with the consequences of an organisation being designed from the inside-out (from the councils point of view) on a day to day basis.

Everyone present appeared encouraged to hear the good news that change was not only possible, but that they were going to shape it and that their efforts would be openly encouraged and supported by their Corporate Management Team. Councillor Tony Lloyd, portfolio holder for Customer Services (which includes the affected teams) was impressed to hear how systems thinking methodology could benefit the citizens of Nuneaton and Bedworth and said he would support its adoption by the council.

The Benefits team has seen an increase in benefit claims of over 1000 applicants during the economic recession and the social impact is being felt across the whole council. In moving forward with this change methodology, staff will begin to understand the real gains to be made in releasing resource to tackle some of the Borough’s wider social issues such as financial inclusion and to find ways of working with other departments within the council to share some of their skills and resources.

Tags : Transformation

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