This book gets to the heart of many issues that are of concern to those seeking public service change and transformation. The aim of improving public services has become a critical one, and thus far it has eluded most efforts at change.Consider this recent scenario:

The firefighters’ dispute neatly highlights the tensions at the heart of successive governments’ attempts to transform the public services. The social contract may need rewriting but ‘how to do so’ is obscured by a desire to change little on one side and by a lack of clarity about exactly what the future might look like on the other. In the five years since New Labour came to office, we have witnessed a shift in the territory on which the debate about public service delivery takes place. In 1997 the focus was on levels of spending – which party could commit to spending more on key services. In 2001 the public had become more critical consumers: more money had not delivered sufficient improvement in services. Hence the focus on money linked to reform.

Demands for new standards of delivery are matched by exhortations to join up practice and involve service users, but the only means of implementation appears to be through top-down audit and inspection regimes. By contrast, Leading change argues that whole systems approaches and partnership working are required to achieve new service configurations. It outlines the theory behind whole systems development and gives practical guidance on developing‘systems’ to improve joined-up working.

It is clear that the large increases in public spending agreed by the Chancellorin his 2002 budget – £301 billion by 2005-06 – will not result in a stepchange in performance without a degree of reform in working practices andwork organisation.