Creating organisations for the future

Our work aims to address fundamental, system-wide challenges and help organisations rethink their role and relationship with the community.

We are helping organisations shape change that recognises that public services in the future will be radically different.

Ensuring organisational activity is completely aligned to a compelling strategy

Many organisations will have a strategic or corporate plan. However, it is not always clear that the organisation is tightly lined up behind the aspiration and as a result funds can be misdirected or wasted. Furthermore, outcomes may not be met without clear line of sight between funds invested and the delivery of the outcome.

The solution requires an organisation to refocus its strategic priorities and to ensure that activity and funding are clearly aligned behind them. This often has a number of effects, including: identifying significant savings, where funds are spent with no impact on strategic priorities; refocusing the way services are delivered, where greater impact can be achieved by delivering in a more strategically aligned way, and; identifying service gaps, where it becomes clear that there are no services or interventions are having a material impact on strategic outcomes.

Approach

Focus on core strategic priorities
Assess entire cost base to ensure aligned and focused
Assess services to ensure alignment behind strategic priorities and statutory obligations
Define opportunities to stop, reduce, enhance service
Define opportunities to eliminate “stranded” budgets
Reshape strategic plans

Unlocking the commercial potential of organisations

Organisations are rightly seeking alternatives to cost cutting and service reduction. They will have untapped assets and capabilities that, if appropriately used, can generate income or at least unlock opportunities for economic growth and increased tax revenue.

This solution is for organisations seeking to generate revenue and surplus by exploiting their assets and capabilities, taking advantage of alternative sourcing arrangements or leveraging their financial powers. Organisations need to get maximum leverage from their assets and we will help develop commercialisation strategies that ensure clients get maximum impact – whether that be about revenue generation or wider “place-building” benefits. There is considerable opportunity for innovation in the way in which an organisation can work with its community to shape economic growth and create more vibrant communities.

Approach

Scope focused on the whole organisation’s commercial approach or on specific commercial opportunities
Building commercial acumen and attitudes
Developing propositions and cases for the commercialisation of services
Bringing innovation to unlock commercial opportunities
Alternative business models

Changing the role of the organisation and its relationship with its citizens by unlocking the capacity and capability of the community

Simply put, the broad challenge is that demand on public services is rising and the funds available to meet that demand is, if anything, falling. This means that attempting to meet demand by doing things in the same old way is doomed to failure. More broadly, our society and culture has shifted. Somewhere along the line the notion of independent, connected communities has been damaged or lost. Public service organisations have, over the decades, inadvertently contributed by creating a sense of dependency.

As demand rises, we need to recognise that public services as we currently know them will not provide all the answers and that we need to unleash communities to do more for themselves. In the words of George Monbiot, “[t]his means complementing state provision with something that belongs neither to government nor to the market but exists in a different sphere, a sphere we have neglected.” This sphere is the Community. We focus on how community can be rebuilt in a way that helps address the demand on public services.

Approach

Creating clear line of sight between investment, primary impact, reduction in demand for services and reduction in the cost of meeting demand
Creating a method of monitoring and measuring impact from investments in community
Bringing theory and practice from the UK and around the world to stimulate more impactful community investments
Pragmatic implementation using a “pilot and prove” approach, while working towards a critical mass of community participation
Recognising that there is an ecosystem at work and, ensuring people pull the levers they can control and drive collaboration across agencies where they don’t
Changing the role of agencies and the culture that sustains a “delivery/fix it mentality
Looking at commissioning approach to test whether this is hindering or helping

Resolving the big system-wide demand challenges that require the involvement of partners across public services

We know that public services are under significant strain, yet we also know that they are pivotal to making great places. Many demand issues span multiple agencies – local government, police, health, education.

The impact of a range of factors (changing expectations, ageing populations, increasing gaps between rich and poor, increasing demand for housing, increasing need for children’s social care) means that we need radical change and innovative thinking if we are to meet demand. For Ignite, this is about growth that benefits and creates opportunities for everyone: cities, towns and villages where people can work and live; communities that make the most of their natural assets and history; and strong independent and inclusive communities that support one another. Every area will have its own particular circumstances that will shape its local aspiration, but the themes are consistent. We need cross-agency solutions that build on the community asset base and harness the joint capability of public service organisations.