Managing for Social Result Redux

Thirty five years ago, Laurie McMahon and I created the Office for Public Management (OPM). Today – with so much senseless political talk about the “need for public service reform” and so much electoral economic cowardice – OPM’s mission, “Managing for Social Result”, merits resurrecting.

It all started at a white board in 1989 at the King’s Fund College, where Laurie and I were “Fellows”. We were trying to depict what we knew to be a very different and messy purpose for the public managers – mostly in the health service, at the time – with whom we were working. The unifying focus on profit enjoyed by managers in commercial organisations – despite the Thatcher-driven penchant then to import commercial practices into public services – did not pertain to our managers. We recognised that the bottom line in public services is comprised, instead, of many often-unaligned demands that do not simply unify into a common goal.

Managers in all organisations orchestrate resources to produce value. For good managers, in whatever sector, that value should provide a focus for their decisions and actions. However, it is the nature of the value that they produce that we knew distinguishes public service managers from their colleagues in commercial organisations.

Much of what public service managers actually do is not significantly different from their commercial counterparts. They direct people, money and technology; they plan, implement and control. And commercial managers often do have competing objectives. But unlike commercial enterprises, where the focus on maximising profit is clear and where trade-offs between objectives are commensurable on a bottom line defined by profit (or loss), the value demanded of public services is invariably complex, frequently ill-defined and not measurable by a unifying standard. Public managers have to produce a “social result”, not just a financial one – a social result that comprises outcomes and outputs that are not commensurable and, indeed, that are often in conflict. Their bottom line is indeed messy.

Redefining the bottom line

This messiness is also due to the kind of problems that public managers face. Many advocates of public sector reform over the last four decades have distinguished between commercial management and public management principally based on of the type of organisation in which the managers sit. This has enabled them to support the wholesale replication of many private sector practices, including competition, targets with monetary incentives and cost-cutting – all in the name of “value for money” – into public sector organisations.

A more significant difference, however, is the kind of problems with which managers deal, a difference that was highlighted by Rittel and Webber who introduced many of us – way back then – to the term “wicked problem”. (Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Horst W J Rittel and Melvin M Webber, Policy Sciences (4) 1973.)

Straightforward, instrumental, linear planning – Rittel and Webber observed – can work when the problems being addressed are “tame”, where information is known and where optimal solutions can be identified, like paving a road or going to the moon (the latter – oddly – having become the model for the current UK government’s “mission-led” plan for change). However, an entirely different approach is required, they argued, when the problem is “wicked”, like eliminating homelessness or confronting crime.

Wicked problems, Rittel and Webber defined, have no definitive formulation, no good-or-bad, no victimless opportunity to learn by trial-and-error. Almost all social policy problems are wicked and, by their very nature, are a symptom of another problem, with no right to be wrong and, so, essentially unique. Wicked problems – which present competing demands and messy solutions – are the agenda of public managers.

The doodles of our white board brainstorming ended up becoming the logo of the OPM, which we launched in 1990. It depicts our then understanding of social result – or what others called “public value”: with outer rings representing external pressures and demands and an inner circle representing social result. And “Managing for Social Result” became our watchword.

Over time, the members of OPM summarised those competing demands as fourfold: to adhere to political directive; to increase output over input with probity; to meet the needs of individual users; and to contribute to a greater public good. Orchestrating all that, we believed, creates social result. The public managers’ job, we espoused, is to define and then to produce the “inner circle”.

Yet today – over three decades later – public management remains misunderstood and often de-valued. Public management is frequently depicted as something instrumental, something anyone can do or can be instructed to do by the imposition of politically driven targets. Looking up has become the standard of acceptable public managers’ behaviour, rather than looking out for the good of the public.

The public manager as leader

Defining social result is not the prerogative of management, of course, but it is an absolute necessity if public management is to function effectively. Because of its inherent complexity and its potential to generate conflict, social result is not often addressed explicitly by political masters, who often prefer transactional soundbites. The public manager’s job is to put that right and to define a bottom line that is at once political and economic, about customer responsiveness and public good. Without that definition, there can be no focus for their decisions and actions.

Crafting that definition is the public manager’s leadership role: to make explicit the inherent complexity and tensions contained within the contending commitments and demands. This means engaging in a dialogue with all stakeholders to understand their expectations and needs. It means fostering real debate between stakeholders to help each of those who make demands of, or contribute to, public services to understand the needs of all. It means developing trust amongst them, identifying areas of consensus and difference, and strengthening the voice of those whose claims are often easy to ignore.

In health care, this common “inner circle” will be not only better service but a real commitment to the improved health of the local population; in policing, to a safer community; in public broadcasting, to a more informed national debate; in education, to an employable and cultured population.

This task is not a substitute for the democratic process; nor is it a challenge to the role of elected leaders. It is a collective gathering of knowledge and experience – from and with users, communities, professionals, and managers as well – into the formal processes of policymaking and governance.

Lessons for today

In order to then deliver social result, managers must also build organisations which are skilled in handling resources, in planning and investing in more effective services, in implementing political direction and in collaborating constructively with other organisations. They must work constantly on improving structures and processes, on managing performance and enhancing assets and on developing the skills of teams and individuals. Developing these capabilities is not the end in itself, however. Social result must remain the unifying force for organisational performance, which means managers must focus too on building a clear understanding within their organisations of the links between day-to-day work and intended social outcomes.

Managing public service organisations has never been easy. As the demands on these organisations have grown, it has become ever more important for public managers to focus their energy on their critical leadership tasks and to produce social results for their communities. Thirty-five years on, that message remains as crucial to success as it was back then.

___________________

Greg Parston

February 2025