When historians of public service come to write the chapter for the 21st Century, more than a footnote must surely be devoted to the One Team Government unconference of 29 June 2017. What I witnessed at Impact Hub Westminster was not the start of anything new. The roots of this movement go back years – … Continue reading Perhaps the end of the beginning →

The One Team Government unconference was awesome. I'll write another post about the event overall. For the time being, here's a quick write-up of my session, in which I revisited the Gaps Model of Service Quality and how we might use it to embed #oneteam working in our organisations. I might have done a better job of pitching my … Continue reading Closing the gap between expectations and delivery? There’s a model for that! →

There are 4416 cities in the world, but last year only 32 of them took part in the Global GovJam. That's a shame for lots of reasons, but one struck me forcefully when reading the final report of the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission: every city needs to be more openly creative if the widest range of people and … Continue reading Want to grow a better culture of citizen engagement? Start with a #GGovJam →

Giles, Ella, Matt and Russell have pulled together various opinions about presentations in one place: doingpresentations.com. It's ace. Follow their links and their advice. Your presentations will be better for it. In fact, stop reading here if you only ever do presentations in situations that look like this... But, but, but... Often I find myself … Continue reading Do the hard work to help people learn →

Few worthwhile service designs start from a blank canvas. By making visual what’s intangible, we understand what actors might be involved, and how they are already connected. But complex worlds demand honest maps. No more 2 by 2 matrices and deterministic left-to-right drift. Show me the dragons and the uncharted territories.

Why might people vote against the policies and institutions we design to meet their needs? Maybe because meeting their needs, changing their lives, dealing with their deficits, doesn't necessarily build their self-esteem, capacity or autonomy. It was nice to see "strength-based services" in PolicyLab's Predictions for 2017. More of this, please.

It’s easy to mistake accentuated uncertainty for accelerating change - the liberal myth of directional progress in the hands of a new exponentialist priesthood. But pace layers have always been with us. The challenge is to reconnect fast-moving fashion and commerce to the slowest things most essential for life.

Christmas, a time to spend with family, at home with children, catching up with relatives. Meanwhile the populists play profitably on family values, but only for families that conform to their stereotypes.