By Mark Smulian
10 June 2010
Frontline staff often blame finance professionals for stifling innovation because of their risk-averse attitudes, the CIPFA conference has been told.
Ed Cox, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research North, said the public sector’s risk-averse culture held back the innovations needed to provide services in a context of spending cuts.
‘Frontline people are full of bright and insightful ideas about how they could do their jobs better, but the people they blame for holding those back are the “bean counters”, who always err on the side of caution and are likely to become even more risk-averse with spending cuts,’ he said.
Cox said that failure to innovate would prevent public services from being redesigned around the demands of citizens’ needs and lower budgets.
But, he added: ‘My own experience with finance professionals is that the way to unlock solutions is to see them as human beings.
‘It has been in their self-interest to be risk-averse but, with an end promised to national performance targets, that can change.’
Ben Lucas, director of the 2020 Public Services Trust, agreed that institutional barriers stifled innovation.
‘At national level, if you take a risk and it goes wrong you find the Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Office doing a critical report,’ he said. ‘What we need are different drivers that show the costs of not innovating and taking risks.’
Daniel Oppenheimer, chief operating officer of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, said people deep within organisations were discouraged from innovation because ‘it gets in the way of the day job’. But setting up ‘an institute for crazy ideas far removed from reality’ would also fail.
‘You need people who are enough part of the system to be relevant but allowed to do things differently,’ he said.
10 June 2010
Frontline staff often blame finance professionals for stifling innovation because of their risk-averse attitudes, the CIPFA conference has been told.
Ed Cox, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research North, said the public sector’s risk-averse culture held back the innovations needed to provide services in a context of spending cuts.
‘Frontline people are full of bright and insightful ideas about how they could do their jobs better, but the people they blame for holding those back are the “bean counters”, who always err on the side of caution and are likely to become even more risk-averse with spending cuts,’ he said.
Cox said that failure to innovate would prevent public services from being redesigned around the demands of citizens’ needs and lower budgets.
But, he added: ‘My own experience with finance professionals is that the way to unlock solutions is to see them as human beings.
‘It has been in their self-interest to be risk-averse but, with an end promised to national performance targets, that can change.’
Ben Lucas, director of the 2020 Public Services Trust, agreed that institutional barriers stifled innovation.
‘At national level, if you take a risk and it goes wrong you find the Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Office doing a critical report,’ he said. ‘What we need are different drivers that show the costs of not innovating and taking risks.’
Daniel Oppenheimer, chief operating officer of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, said people deep within organisations were discouraged from innovation because ‘it gets in the way of the day job’. But setting up ‘an institute for crazy ideas far removed from reality’ would also fail.
‘You need people who are enough part of the system to be relevant but allowed to do things differently,’ he said.
