Beat the Cuts: How to Improve Public Services and Easily Cut Costs

While the public sector is faced with axing services to save billions and deliver 25 percentage - 40 pecentage budget cuts, there are organisations that are not only saving services but improving them and massively cutting costs as a result. Public sector leaders are currently weighing up heart-wrenching decisions to slash public services. This book shows that these dilemmas can be avoided. With no complex change programmes, expensive IT projects or extended training courses, this book describes a simple but effective method. It starts with the key questions and actions that will overcome resistance to change, enthuse staff and get concrete results in weeks. One government department, described in this book, discovered how to remove 52 percentage of the calls to its new contact centre, eliminate 91 percentage of its process steps and drastically improve service to its users. A 25 percentage - 40 percentage cut in budget is easy when you know how. If you are involved in the public sector and don't want to see services decimated, this is a must read book.

Table of Contents:
Introduction vii Fundamental Ideas 1 Work affects everything 3 2 Customer defines the purpose 11 3 Appreciation for a system 17 4 Understanding variation 23 5 Problem solving is the core skill 29 6 Failings of management 39 People 7 Good culture comes from good work 53 8 People want to do a good job 59 9 Real motivation comes from within 63 10 The waste of staff potential 73 11 Job roles must change 75 Systems 12 Biggest lever of change is demand 89 13 First, work on the work 95 14 Economy is in flow not scale 103 15 Not all work is equal 109 16 Measures drive behaviour 113 17 System conditions 123 Take Action 18 Subtle interventions 129 19 Start today 145 Afterword 157 Find out more 158 Bibliography 159 About the author 160 Acknowledgements 161

About the Author :
Rob Worth is a service design consultant specialising in helping public sector bodies such as local authorities, the NHS and government agencies to drastically improve their service and massively cut their costs.After an MMath (Hons) in Mathematics, Rob honed his skills in the City at Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan before starting Worth Solutions Limited in 2003. He has since worked in many public and private sector organisations before deciding to put something back into society by concentrating on working with the public sector. In addition to consulting, Rob is a writer and a speaker who believes that getting the best from any system is easier than you think if you know the right thing to look at. He is outspoken on many topics including management, systems thinking, organisational improvement, learning and excellence in public services. Rob is based in London and can be contacted at rob.worth@worthsolutions.com

Review :
"The thinking in Beat the Cuts is an innovative way of designing work and Rob conveys new ideas such that they become easily applicable to produce tangible results." Prof Neil Turner, University of Edinburgh, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh