Radical Efficiency a Practical Guide - Nesta

PART 4: LESSONS FOR INNOVATORS 303. Start with people’s qualityof life not the quality ofyour serviceEach of our case studies starts with a shared andfundamental question about its user group – what willit take to improve the quality of their lives? It is notabout cost-cutting. This does two very different things fromtraditional policymaking. Firstly, it starts with aspirations, notproblems. Secondly, it starts with a person’s whole life notjust the part of it that goes to school or to hospital. This hasprofound implications – it is about solving social issues, notimproving individual public services.Understanding aspirations for whole lives means:• Developing a shared idea of what quality of life entails in auser community and going beyond questions such as ‘howcan we improve GCSEs at this school?’ or even ‘what is thefuture of social care?’• Coming to people’s lives without preconceptions aboutwhat they are like or how you could intervene to improvethem.• Thinking differently about skills and resources that arebest placed to tackle newly defined and ‘cross-service’challenges.• Generating greater sense of social responsibility by tacklingthe most pressing social issues.