Nobody disagrees that the top-down model is broken. Thoughts on busting the bureaucracy.
Vast amounts of money and resources are directed from central to local to regional govt. The amount of “waste” is eye-watering. Yet nobody has “any money”.
Example: The Home office are investing £250m to reduce serious violence (SV). They have measures, reviews. It’s all top-down command and control. In the last independent review after 3 years: There were no statistically significant impacts on the primary SV outcomes of hospital admissions for sharp object violent injury or homicides.”
Ethos has worked across many agencies, with Police, Health, Local authorities and Central Government and we’ve seen that routes to funding innovation are broken. The metaphors of competition and commissioning lead to perverse incentives and failed impact on too many occasions. Attempts by government agencies to either create networks or central hubs result in organisations furthering their self interests (yes, we would include charities in this also). Yet we fail to impact communities and individuals in a sustainable way. Both ends of the telescope need to be refashioned:
How to get adequate resources to individuals and communities (NOT organisations), and
How to use a project metaphor (start-middle-end-outcome) around people and communities for impact delivery NOT an organisational governance methaphor for impact.
What do we mean by this? Have you ever been really hacked off with bureaucracy? We have and that is where our innovation is focused. Bureaucracy busters! We have a track record here. Team Forces has enabled new donations funded by business to grass root charities of more than £12m since the launch of the project and our young leaders project worked directly with 65 young people to fund their dreams through paid employment – not through the competition/skills/experience metaphor.
We want to run pilots with those motivated to solve this sustainability problem. Is this you?