Defining our results as public servants

This article is written by Ed Bernacki, at The Idea Factory, Ontario, Canada.

• The problem: Service innovation is crucial in public service. If you study management and innovation to pursue knowledge, you will see that many management resources have roots in manufacturing. How useful is this for service innovation?  
• Why it matters:  Aspects of manufacturing crept into service management that need to be challenged, for example, that products can succeed or fail. Do services succeed or fail in the same way? 
• The solution: First, notice the research or roots of knowledge you study. Second, recognise the muddy middle grey zone to challenge ourselves to go beyond this “sort of” success. This helps to manage risks that lead to “sort of” failures.  Our goal is to avoid the mediocrity of the middle.  

While reviewing ’Overcoming and becoming: The real value of setbacks in government’ I read: “Like many, I’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with the concepts of ’success’ and ‘failure’. Much of that discomfort stems from considering one good, and the other bad, even though they are not. Success is simply achieving the desired outcome when not achieving it was a possibility. And failure is not achieving the desired outcome when achieving it was a possibility.”

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Thinking back over many years of innovation work inside and outside the public service, I am uneasy with this success-failure dichotomy. Services rarely seem so clear-cut as success or failure. I once designed a new postal service for New Zealand Post. The prototype trials added value. The problem? I overestimated what technology could deliver.  Technically this failed but the managing director was thrilled with its future potential.   

We should question: how would we see services if our management philosophies were solely based on service research and insights?

Over the years, I noticed that many books, case studies and academic articles were based on manufacturing. Often papers on services included references grounded in manufacturing. It led me to question if innovation in manufacturing provides useful insights for services. I concluded, “No”.

Feminism insight

During my MBA study, we looked at numerous philosophies to understand the context. This ranged from modernism to Marxism. One “ism” was feminism. It changed my thinking.

The feminist argument is that men wrote the history and philosophy of past centuries from a male perspective. It led to clichés such as “women are the weaker sex”. Men saw themselves as stronger. If women had attributes that men lacked, they were ignored. We questioned: how would we see history if it was written by female historians and philosophers?

I saw this as a parallel situation. For a century, academics and management writers used research on manufacturing to define approaches for innovation, improvement and people management. We should question: how would we see services if our management philosophies were solely based on service research and insights?  

An example is the standard marketing model taught in universities: the ‘4Ps’ of marketing; place, product, promotion and price. (Use Apolitical AI to ask: What are the 4Ps of marketing?) This is a framework to shape marketing strategies. Does it apply to services? Someone saw weaknesses and created the ‘7Ps’ of marketing. They added people, processes and packaging. How useful is this? Using the feminism challenge, what if we ignored manufacturing and reinvented our management theories based on services? I found an early marketing framework interesting: the ‘3Es’ marketing mix strategies to:

1. Entice — How can you entice potential customers to be interested in a service?
2. Enthuse — How can you enthuse prospective customers to use the services?
3. Excite — How can you excite them to continue to buy or use the services?

I found this useful to create new initiatives as it focuses on users.

The focus on services, service design and service innovation started in the 1980s. If you use service blueprints, this is Lyn Shostack’s work from 1984. She wrote a chapter in ‘Developing New Services’ (1984). ‘Service Breakthroughs’ (1990) became my manual for designing services. Later, ‘The Experience Economy’ (1998) added a new element.   

Measuring success

In manufacturing, products could succeed or fail in terms of “did they achieve the desired outcome?” Services are more complex. Often success and failure are fuzzy, like a continuum: success is at one end, and failure at the other end. In between is a grey zone of “sort of” success or “sort of” failure. 

You know, projects or programmes that are neither a success nor a failure. Some objectives are met. We are stuck in a grey “sort of” zone. To put a label on this, how about ‘mediocrity’? People know it is not great but there is little incentive to change. Reports are written to showcase the successes that ignore what it lacked. For example:

• My local city had a programme to engage seniors. It reached 1,000 seniors. The City promoted its successes. The potential market was 25,000 seniors who live in the city. Is it a success or a failure if it reaches 4% of seniors? Why did it not reach more? I also saw bias in the programme; it seemed skewed to interest females over males. As it was deemed a success, no deep-level analysis was done to discover why so few seniors engaged with the programme.
• A similar review was done on Covid-19 communication with seniors. A report was accepted by the City Council that listed tactics to reach seniors. I totalled their reach to see the City engaged 4,000 people, or 16% of seniors. If there was a time for a communication strategy to engage all seniors, this was it. No one on the council questioned this.

To say these were a success ignores the fact that their effectiveness was limited. To say it was a failure ignores the fact that some seniors were engaged. So how should we see the results? This is the paradox of something that is neither a success nor a failure.

The mediocre middle between success and failure

I have used this chart of a continuum in planning sessions to challenge participants to guide the design of programmes and test how robust they are.   

In summary, this requires two types of planning:  

• To avoid failure, what must we do? This could be a short list, such as we must reach 25,000 seniors with messages to protect people from Covid-19.
• To create success, what must we do? This will be a long list of actions to reach 25,000 seniors. Engaging seniors is a complex communication problem.

From this attempt to define the grey zone, I prompt a discussion on getting it right the first time. This also considers risk management recognising what we must do to avoid failure. For planning sessions, I used two whiteboards or flipcharts. One had a title, “To Avoid Failure”, and the other, “To Create Success”. We then brainstormed each challenge.

Sometimes, a mediocre solution may suffice.

I believe there is great value in recognising this middle zone. The Singapore Innovation Scorecard programme is designed for executive teams. It helps executives assess their level of innovation readiness. Executives review 56 factors to nurture a climate of innovation. They had to assess each factor. It did not ask executives for a “yes” or “no” answer. It provided two measures to make this assessment:

1. Approach – this asked executives to assess the design of the effort within the organisation from “none” to “innovative”,
2. Deployment – this asked executives to assess their organisation’s actions from “none” to “all” (as in all-encompassing in the organisation).

This takes deeper analysis and brutal honesty to make these assessments. This approach challenged executives to see where better tactics were needed to achieve success.

The Scorecard recognised the grey zone between failure and success. The challenge is to take actions that nudge results to move toward the right on the scale.

A section of the Singapore Innovation Scorecard

Using mediocrity as a planning tool

The grey zone needs a label. My term is mediocrity. We should not be offended or threatened by this. It should motivate us to explore the problem before we define our actions. Sometimes, a mediocre solution may suffice.

In my two examples, both were hindered by the framing of the challenge. If they started with a basic stakeholder analysis to expand on the needs of 25,000 seniors, a more robust programme design would be the result. This challenge will force a deeper level of creativity to reach different stakeholders with the right message.

When mediocrity becomes acceptable, often a result is the curse of getting it right the second or third time when it was possible to get it right the first time. I suspect every public servant knows this scenario.

Programme design that is fit for purpose

When programmes are designed, we must minimise the risks of failure while maximising the probability of success to avoid the muddy middle zone of mediocrity. It is imperative that we frame the challenge to ensure it will create the change we desire. I realise that I am playing with words, their meanings, and their implications. I am not arguing with the authors that is incorrect.

“Success is simply achieving the desired outcome when not achieving it was a possibility. And failure is not achieving the desired outcome when achieving it was a possibility.”

I am suggesting when designing services there is a middle zone that should be recognised. This may prompt us to dig deeper to create outcomes citizens truly need.

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