A plea for pragmatic ambition
The bait, switch, and twist It goes like this.
First the bait: an invitation to contribute to a multi-year strategy or plan. The service team marshal their best ideas. From their experience of performing live service at scale, they know these things would really shift the dial if stuck at for a sustained period. They have a set of initiatives, from the quick and easy to the higher value and more challenging to implement.
But then the switch: at short notice “the ask,” anonymously from on high, has changed. Could they ditch the hard but high impact things and only include items proven to make a difference in a single financial year? With this new constraint, the team is suddenly recast as the Department of No, damned if they overcommit, damned if they underwhelm.
And finally the twist: the plan is by now thoroughly pedestrian. When it goes to a higher echelon of decision-makers, they look on it and despair. Where’s the ambition? We don’t have long to fix it now. Could you just add something about AI? Here’s a mock-up I made in PowerPoint. How hard can it be?
I don’t blame the people involved for the behaviours that create this whiplash. We find it everywhere in our public conversation. The present-day woes of public service are easy to portray on the evening news. Meanwhile our online feeds are full of artfully staged demos involving humanoid robots and ethereally-voiced assistants. Unfortunately the messy work of innovation in between those polar opposites does not make for such compelling content.
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