Cutting your way to the top
It’s not just tree surgeons who climb to the top whilst making cuts. The financial climate in the public sector presents opportunities for those who can read the new agenda. This new agenda is about a willingness to undertake some radical pruning and make deep cuts.
The upwardly mobile manager is the one who recognises the name of the game is competitive cutting. Status and promotion prospects are no longer about who has the biggest budget but who can offer the biggest budget cuts. Those who still see the role as protecting their service or department from overzealous finance colleagues, those who indulge in special pleading or who paint a graphic picture of the dire consequences will be viewed with suspicion and told to “get real”.
The board and the chief executive don’t want reluctant trimmers they want enthusiastic cutters. They want managers who offer up savings rather than those who have to be forced to identify savings. They want managers who are corporate, who put the needs of the organisation before the interests of their service or department. They want managers who ask questions like “can we afford this and can we do it cheaper?”
The innovative manager is no longer the manager with good ideas about how to improve services but the manager with good ideas about how to save money.
This new agenda is about a sense of urgency- standing on a burning platform-the need to act and act quickly. There is no time to consult and negotiate to persuade staff of the need to accept unpopular changes. Managers need to be decisive. Besides “turkeys don’t vote for Christmas”. Any way some decisions are “no brainers” so obvious that there is no point in debating them. For example economies that can be achieved by centralising or externalising support services like HR, Finance and IT or bringing in additional income by charging staff for car parking at work.
The most effective way to establish your credentials as a reforming new manager, in tune and on board, is the enthusiasm with which you impose a new slimmer management structure. If the general rule of thumb is to cut one in five management posts then the ambitious senior manager will demonstrate their determination by deliver a new structure which deletes one in four or one in three post. After all the local media is unlikely to run a campaign to save managers jobs and politicians think of it as a relatively painless cut.
In this new world the only cuts you must not offer are the ones you can’t deliver.
Communication is of course key but it is less about listening more about explaining. The message is the financial position is very difficult, change is not optional and not for debate.
Managers who understand this new agenda can cut their way to the top but would you trust them with services to your frail grandmother or disabled son?
Blair McPherson was until recently a senior manager in a large local authority he is author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by www.russellhouse.co.uk