Research
As part of the Scottish Government funded Improving Together programme, the Improvement Service has undertaken research to identify factors that are key for the successful delivery of change and transformation in local government.
This has been a mix of desk research into the extensive literature on change management, filtered through the pragmatic lens of our own experience of supporting change activity in Scottish councils and elsewhere over the preceding years. This has been further enhanced by a series of study visits to a number of English councils with a track record of successfully delivering change to hear directly from them about those factors they believed were important.
But rather than just collating a set of case studies - although these have of course been added to the Library - key lessons learnt have been extracted and drawn together into a Change Capability Model which groups the nine identified critical success factors into four main areas.
The research has also sought to identify the different approaches to change being adopted by councils and public bodies across the UK and some of the specific options being chosen to deliver the necessary cost savings.
The information gathered in these two areas has been set out in the Resources section. Crucially, this seeks to link approaches to change with the critical success factors necessary for successful implementation.
The Improvement Service is ideally placed to gain access to key stakeholders in exemplar organisations and build the relationships necessary to gain the full knowledge and insight into what they have done. This research activity will continue over the coming months to further enhance and refine the information on the website and support the Consulting component of the framework.
If there are particular areas of interest you would like to see included in this research (e.g. specific service areas or particular organisations) please contact us to discuss how we might be able to help.
