Monthly Archives: July 2011

The Brilliant Local Authority of the Future

Posted on by
1

I’ve just read KPMG’s publication which describes what the Brilliant Local Authority of the Future needs to look like.

In the opening credits, KPMG state:  ”Within the UK, we have over 1,500 staff with the knowledge to work with Public Sector clients. We are well placed to help the Public Sector meet the challenges ahead.”

Sweet.  This will be good then.  I’d like to share the highlights with you:

  • “The brilliant council of the future will need to [...] Have highly skilled political leaders, high calibre councillors and a cabinet focused on outcomes and financial control.” (p2)  And there was me thinking that lowly skilled political leaders and low calibre councillors were the order of the day. Continue reading →

A nasty case of verbal diarrhoea

Posted on by
Reply

Symptoms and impact

Every now and again someone in your team comes down with a nasty case of verbal diarrhoea.  The symptoms are quite debilitating:

  • Incoherent ramblings about irrelevant stuff
  • Excessive repetition of stuff discussed in the last 5 meetings
  • Use of flowery language… no actual substance
  • Speaking over everyone else and dominating the meeting Continue reading →

Stakeholder engagement #fail and lessons learned

Posted on by
Reply

It recently became apparent that a key stakeholder in a transformation project that I’m managing was completely out of the loop as we approached a critical stage where her input would be essential.

I found myself having to quickly brief her on all aspects of the project and answer questions like: “Why wasn’t I brought up to speed two months ago?”… which with hindsight was a difficult question to answer. Continue reading →