Fight or Flight? - Avoiding “Silo” Behaviour. October 2, 2008
Posted by Bill in : Learning Organisations, Outdoor Learning, Vision , trackback
Recent study has given me an interest in several of the boundaries to organisations becoming Learning Organisations. I can understand that it’s hard to come to terms with efficiency savings in local goverment and still deliver statutory requirments, offer best value, provide quality services and embrace culture change whilst aligning the authority to wider govermental aims.
”A Smarter Scotland - Expand opportunities for people in Scotland to succeed from nurture through to life long learning, ensuring higher and more widely shared achievements.”
(Moving Scotland Forward: The Government’s Programme for Scotland 2008-09)
In my previous work in the private sector internal departments in organisations can often develop an “I’m alright Jack” lockdown or “silo effect” approach when budget cuts are introduced much like our own human fight or flight mode when threatened. Although I am not responsible for a budget, I can appreciate how difficult that can be having been a budget holder in the private sector. I think the natural fight of flight reaction will happen with an organisation,section, service or department etc, when it is trying to ensure it’s own survival. This does not help however when an organisation is trying to acheive culture change through impoving organisational learning. A sharing of resources and knowledge is difficult I guess when you are concentrating on providing services from a limited financial pot.
Providing high quality Outdoor Learning in East Lothian is an on-going partnership with community, schools and the support of internal departments of the authority and we continue to offer an excellent service at no cost (importantly) to school pupils and the wider community within East Lothian. Although non-statutory, it supports and enhances many statutory requirements through delivery of inspirational outdoor learning. I wonder if efficiency savings, as we look for new premises, will result in the Outdoor Education Service entering a “silo mode” and potentialy having to consider charging for Outdoor Learning in East Lothian? Or can a funding partnership between the silos be considered to fund new premises for the East Lothian Outdoor Education Service?
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I found this bit or research on “The Work Foundation” website, which has a lot of interesting bits of pieces on it. Here is the conclusion, which seems to have some relevant ideas, sorry if it’s a wee bit long
Alastair
Public Service Innovation
A Research Report for The Work Foundation’s Knowledge Economy Programme
Report
Published: December 2007
Authors: Rohit Lekhi
‘Innovations are not random: innovation occurs in relation to the past and present conditions of the organisation’ (Hall 1996: 201). This statement is a truism, but it is also, in one sense, misleading. It is true because all change emerges from, and is shaped by,
existing conditions. This is true of all systems. However. it is misleading to suggest that all change can be controlled. Innovation can be catalysed through a combination of practices and policies which range through all levels of an organisation and also encompass its boundary relationships. The public sector, in contrast to the private sector, faces unique challenges when engaging in this task, but there remains a solid body of literature which proposes strategies that management might apply in this area. However, innovation is as likely, or more likely, to emerge through the everyday work of middle managers and staff,
or through serendipity, or informal communication. Innovation may emerge in spite of management strategies, not because of them. This cautions against attempts to micro- manage the conditions that give rise to innovative practice.
Nevertheless, innovation is now seen to be critical to public services’ ability to respond effectively to the challenges posed by social and technological change and rising public expectations that come with it. Here, policy drivers are increasingly focussed on
finding opportunities to make step changes in the way in which services are conceived, organised and/or delivered. The great demand that public services serve users rather than the providers has meant that most of the efforts to develop innovative practice in the public services have been oriented to issues focussed on service delivery. As a result, we see much less innovation being undertaken at policy level – both here and in most other studies of public service innovation. One consequence of this tendency to focus on delivery is that it encourages a view of innovation as a set of discrete and singular moments of change rather than a culture or process in which drivers of change are embedded in and facilitated by the strategic outlook of the organisation.
Of course, this raises wider questions about aversion to risk within the public services.
As long as the costs of failure in the public services remain so high – both politically and professionally – public managers are likely to shy away from innovation as a feature of everyday practice. We have seen throughout this study that where public
service innovations have happened, they have invariably featured a commitment from senior managers to assume responsibility for the risk of failure. The pressure to commit organisational resources in this way will be driven by a mix of, amongst other things,
political and policy priorities, ongoing demands for greater efficiency and the specific commitments and incentives of managers and workers to deliver more effective public
services (ie ‘ethos’). While the particular balance between these elements may be unique to each instance of innovation, it is the fact that they enable an organisation to open up a dedicated space within which to take risks (and indeed, to contemplate failure) that
presents public services with opportunities to be innovative in the face of contemporary change.
Interesting Stuff Alastair
“innovation is now seen to be critical to public services’ ability to respond effectively to the challenges posed by social and technological change and rising public expectations that come with it”
Absolutley agree and as we know silo behaviour will not encourage innovation.
“Innovation may emerge in spite of management strategies, not because of them”
Great reading. Thanks Alastair.