The sunnier months are when strategic plans tend to get dusted off and reviewed in order to inform the next year’s budget. This year, with the recession starting to bite in public service, this activity may be more sombre than usual. Thoughts turn to how to describe cost-cutting in imaginative ways (efficiency savings, re-engineering etc) that make it look like a positive, proactive activity.

Whatever the financial cycles are doing, a regular check of expenditure at the centre of an organisation is crucial as structures tend to accumulate new expenditure over time. This kind of review does not imply a full restructuring of the management, which can be enormously distracting and demotivating, but a simple check of whether functions and posts are necessary.

The involvement of an external figure in such a review can be enormously useful. Staff and board members tend to shy away from asking questions about long standing functions and posts and often miss quite obvious lines of enquiry through over-familiarity. I always find, when assisting an organisation in these exercises, that my unfamiliarity with the people within the structure allows me to ask obvious questions (“what is that post for?” or “why are they paid twice as much as everyone else?”) that force out long-standing and often shaky assumptions. Clearly such an activity can make for enormous unpopularity, which I can then take away with me, allowing the management team not be weighed down with it.

As you’ll see from my (moderately) updated website, this is the kind of service that I provide. Depending on your needs I can either lead a review process or simply act as an extra check of rigour. If you are interested in discussing this please don’t hesitate to give me a call.

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