Capability Reviews: Progress and Next Steps - The Civil Service

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• A new business planning framework and process, linked to strategic priorities;resource allocation clearly linked to priorities (FCO).Case study: Business planning in the FCO‘One of the most unpopular days of the year for any manager in the FCO is the daywhen instructions thud onto the desk (or fill up the available space in your in-box)asking for draft objectives for the coming year. Even worse when you have to draftobjectives for the next three years, and worse still when the system has changed –yet again! This was the scenario facing the Business Planning Team in the FCO onceour board made the decision to adopt business planning practices earlier this year.But why change to business planning at all? First, the objective-setting exercises wehad run for years in ever more complex ways weren’t delivering what we wanted.Second, the Capability Reviewers had told us clearly that our planning practicesweren’t up to scratch. So we had to do something.We had to devise a business planning model pretty much from scratch, test it, rollit out and get buy-in from across the disparate FCO network: from policy wonks inLondon, and from super-embassies such as Washington to the smallest posts onthe smallest islands. The business planning model we devised has an inbuilt tensionbetween resourcing our Departmental Strategic Objectives (which the CapabilityReviewers liked) and resourcing our large overseas network (which, at first, theydidn’t). We had to be sure that our plan was the most appropriate one for us. Wecompared business planning frameworks across Whitehall and in local government.We brought in consultants to give our model a health check. We set up aconsultative group and a project board to run our ideas by.In the FCO, we traditionally burnish a project until it is gleaming and new and thenlaunch it fully formed. Dints and scars quickly accumulate. We then tinker with it,during which time interest turns to the next big thing. This time, we decided to use2007/08 as a trial year to roll out an unpolished, rough-hewn framework across thewhole network, which meant that everyone was involved in trying to make it work.Then we had to sell it to staff. We needed to impress upon everyone that businessplanning required a culture change in how the FCO goes about its work. We tookadvantage of all the FCO’s internal communications systems to keep businessplanning to the fore in people’s minds: we established a web page on the FCO’sintranet; the Permanent Secretary, who is the driving force behind our businessplanning, regularly sent messages to staff; we drafted templates and guidance foreach stage of the process, etc.We’ve just completed our mid-year review, using the new framework. It has been asuccess (our newly arrived, externally appointed Director General Finance couldn’tbelieve the FCO had not done this before). It’s not been perfect, but we didn’t expectit to be. It’s less ‘process light’ than we wanted, but corrections resulting from ourcurrent ‘lessons learned’ exercise should deal with that; this year it’s been less‘benefit heavy’ than it needs to be – but again, as the process beds down, we areconfident it will deliver. It takes at least a couple of years to run a good businessplanning process. But it has shown that it should provide the return we need to bringtogether more effectively what we do and the resources we need to do it.46 COMMON CAPABILITY GAPS: PROGRESS AND NEXT STEPS
Our challenge now is to ensure that we take on board the lessons we’ve learnedfrom this trial year so that everything necessary is in place when we ‘go live’ in April2008. A good sign is that already the results of our mid-year review are informingresource allocations for the new CSR period.’At a year after the review:• Evidence of tough decisions on priorities being taken collectively and on anongoing basis, including dropping previous priorities; more effective riskmanagement at board level and throughout the business; operating reviewsand monthly stocktakes of delivery programmes (Home Office).Where departments are making less progress, we are seeing:• insufficiently challenging programme management and governance, and lackof clarity on roles and accountability;• too many competing projects with no clear sense of priorities;• underdeveloped delivery skills; and• no clear narrative for staff about the vision and purpose of the department toenable them to deliver what is really needed.What is most difficult for departments in improving delivery and performance?Recent years have seen significant achievements in delivery outcomes, many ofwhich have been focused on tangible output-based PSA targets – for example,reductions in waiting lists, bringing more offenders to justice and improved GCSEperformance in schools. But there is still more to do and departments now have anincreasingly challenging set of objectives and outcomes in cross-cutting PSAs andDepartmental Strategic Objectives, which they will need to achieve through newways of working – which puts the spotlight more strongly on improvement in thisarea. The biggest challenges for departments are as follows:• Performance management. The previous section addressed the topic ofperformance management for individuals; individual performance managementrequires a clear ‘line of sight’ to business performance management. Effectiveperformance management for a department is not simply about effective toolsand techniques – though the consistent and rigorous applications of tools such asbalanced scorecards and business planning is important. It is also about creatinga culture of performance management that encourages challenge (also describedin the ‘Leadership’ section of this chapter), openness and learning. Whenperformance fails, it is often because front-line messages about problems havefailed to get through; they may have been watered down or seen as unacceptable.Shifting from this requires more bravery and an increased focus on performancethroughout the organisation.CAPABILITY REVIEWS: PROGRESS AND NEXT STEPS47
Page 1 and 2: Capability Reviews:Progress and Nex
Page 3 and 4: This has been an excellent example
Page 5 and 6: 1. Tranche 1 departments: a year on
Page 7 and 8: Department for Children, Schools an
Page 9 and 10: This will act as an innovative and
Page 11 and 12: • ‘Managing for improvement’:
Page 13 and 14: Home OfficeStarting from a low base
Page 15 and 16: Department’s wider agenda. Develo
Page 17 and 18: Ministry of JusticeThe MoJ was crea
Page 19 and 20: A number of significant programmes
Page 21 and 22: 2. Common capability gaps: progress
Page 23 and 24: later tranches have not been able t
Page 25 and 26: or hinder it:‘lack of leadership
Page 27 and 28: All of these aspects came together
Page 29 and 30: Case study: Collective leadership i
Page 31 and 32: • Engaging the wider SCS. This is
Page 33 and 34: Participants’ comments included:
Page 35 and 36: Consequently, the areas of focus su
Page 37 and 38: Building up the supply and demand s
Page 39 and 40: Case study: Development work with d
Page 41 and 42: Case study: A skills strategy for g
Page 43 and 44: The recent CSR has emphasised the i
Page 45: At six months after the review:•
Page 49 and 50: • a more comprehensive approach t
Page 51 and 52: The Tranche 3 report identified the
Page 53 and 54: Case study: The Home Office Strateg
Page 55 and 56: The group is expanding to include l
Page 57 and 58: • The Sunningdale Institute facil
Page 59 and 60: Exhibit 3: Change trajectoriesCapab
Page 61 and 62: original reviews. The re-review wil
Page 63 and 64: Departments increasingly have to wo
Page 65 and 66: LeadershipKey questions that test c
Page 67 and 68: DeliveryKey questions that test cur
Page 69: Capability Reviews TeamCabinet Offi

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