MAKE IT DIFFERENT

or
"Sir Humphrey would not have done it."

What is it?

In pursuit of Civil Service Reform, thousands of civil servants around the country have had the opportunity to design, create and participate in a series of events where they could get together to focus on all the challenges of change in their work. These 10 events, held between May 2000 and July 2002 and sponsored by the Cabinet Office, were MAKE IT DIFFERENT!

Why is it different?

Something different was what Sir Richard Wilson, then Head of the Home Civil Service wanted as he sought to fulfil the Modernisation Government agenda -

'...to help make the UK a better place for everyone to live in, and support its success in the world. We want to be the best at everything we do.'

He recognised that difference when he was invited to open a meeting for the Home Office/Prison Service and Department of Health focusing on the relationship between these two departments in the area of prison health. He was surprised to find himself in the middle of a large circle of people, having to twirl round to address his audience, and astonished to see the agenda generated from scratch from apparent chaos. This was not the way meetings in the Civil Service usually happened!

Sir Richard wanted difference of this kind for the civil service-wide conferences. When Wendy Pritchard, who had supported the work on the Home Office/Prison Service event, was asked to work on these conferences she asked VISTA Consulting Team Ltd to become involved.

When people talk about large conferences or meetings several traditional images may be evoked...

Glitzy, staged proceeding with slides, backdrops, videos, soundtracks and glossy papers
Passive audiences sitting in rows listening to high level speeches which miss the detail they relate too
Syndicate exercises in remote rooms with even more remote topics

This type of experience is unlikely to fulfil the desires of those who want change. At worst stereotypes and resistance will be reinforced.

Other models of conferencing have been developed over recent years, designed to support very large numbers of people working together to

Understand the need for change
Analyse current reality and what needs to change
Generate ideas about how to make the changes happen
Implement and support making it work

VISTA Consulting Team is the leading exponent of these approaches in the UK and Europe.

What did these conferences want to achieve?

The desire was to breathe life into the Civil Service Reform programme in a new and different way to :

Maximise creativity and innovation
Model new ways of working
Build energy, insight and a sense of achievement
Be repeatable around the regions
Be seen to be taking risks

How was the approach different?

The whole process connects with the real organisational issues from across all levels in the organisation, with the programme designed to undertake real work and to meet the specific needs of the organization. The first difference is the way this was achieved with a large investment in the planning work with a design team made up of a cross-section of civil servants from different departments/agencies, experience, ages, gender and grades creating a microcosm of the people likely to attend.

This design team worked together with the leadership to produce a meeting design, based on a different approach Real Time Strategic Change that would engage and energise everyone around change. MAKE IT DIFFERENT! was born.

On 16th May 2000 over 400 Civil Servants got together for this first MAKE IT DIFFERENT! event in Hammersmith, London from over 50 government departments and agencies.

People from all levels answered the open invitation and came together to:

share ideas and thoughts on shaping the Civil Service of the future
discuss how to make the reform programme real for the individual
establish networks.

Taking part in highly interactive sessions, delegates took a hard look at what Reform had already achieved and where more still needed to be done. They mapped the external impacts on their work and what they were proud of and sorry about in their response. People also focused creatively on the future and what success would look and feel like in 2006, building a series of stepping-stones or actions they would take towards achieving these goals committing themselves to action.

"It's really rekindled my enthusiasm - it's also helped me to realise that my department has improved in more areas than I thought"

"The momentum of Civil Service Reform is like a small snowball starting at the top of the hill and multiplying in size all the way down!"

The energy and enthusiasm which ensured the success of the Hammersmith event was carried forward into the regions, using design teams to ensure a good fit with local issues, MAKE IT DIFFERENT! travelled to Manchester, Sheffield, Cardiff and Edinburgh, (PDF files).

At the close of the first event in May 2000, Sir Richard had committed to another event in 12 months to review the progress that had been made.