What does it take to actually deliver real impact in local government?

In this episode, Joe sits down with Tom Alexander, formerly Head of Change for People Services at Haringey Council, where they dive deep into the challenges and opportunities of driving meaningful change in the public sector. From navigating complex societal problems to the importance of ethical decision-making and genuine community engagement, Tom offers invaluable insights drawn from his extensive experience in local government.

What you’ll learn:

• Why going directly to the source is essential for effective change
• The role of adaptive leadership in today’s challenging public sector environment
• How to balance data-driven decisions with real human impact
• The importance of listening to diverse voices and being willing to pivot when necessary

Whether you’re a leader in public services or simply passionate about making a difference, this conversation is packed with actionable advice and thought-provoking reflections.

Stay connected:

• Follow Joe on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joseph-badman
• Read the latest chapters from our upcoming book: https://relationalservicedesign.com
• Master the methodology: https://basistraining.co.uk/
• Partner with us: https://basis.co.uk

So we're writing a book at the moment on how to make progress on really messy societal problems. And we've organized a whole bunch of interviews with some of our clients that are doing really pioneering work.

Basically, I've just gone some of my friends to come and talk to us, and the first of those is Tom Alexander. Hey, Tom. Welcome.

Hello. Thanks for having me.

So we've known each other for quite a while now, actually. I guess six, seven years, maybe even something like that.

Time flies. Having lots of fun?

Yeah, indeed. I don't actually know how you.

How you got to where you're at now, so I'd love it if you could just explain what is it you're doing now and what's the. I know it's an unconventional route, but what's the. What's the route to where you've got to now?

Yeah. So, currently head of Change for People Services in Haringey, so working for Haringey Council.

That covers some fairly chunky change programs and problems projects across children's adults and a bit of housing demand, but also some more universal work around community hubs, which we can come to. But my journey is an interesting one. So I started out retail, as most people do. Used to fill in for the security guard.

Strangely, when he went on this program,.

I can see that.

Not sure I was particularly effective because I had a Robin Hood approach where I'd let little old guy who didn't have much money at the time come and just take cheese and he'd give me a nod as he went through the door and I'd be like, yeah, so redistribution of wealth. But I.

Then I went to university and I was in a weird position where I was part of the time working on building sites across London and part of the time lecturing in Gramshin Hegemony theory.

What.

Which was a strange mixture. And that got me through the day and then got into respite care with adults with learning disabilities. So my background is frontline.

Kind of worked my way up a little bit, ran care homes, moved into local government, was the personalisation lead in Sutton for a good few years, while also running a day centre, again working with people with learning disabilities, people with enduring mental ill health, and then turn to the dark side of commissioning.

So going from being a provider of services to commissioning services, which I think people who have been decent providers make good commissioners because they tend to be able to see what's good, what's bad, and they don't need to go through lots and lots of data. They have a Hunch. So I think skill set was right for that.

And then ended up being responsible for creating what my chief exec said at the time was a mixed economy of delivery models.

Say more about that.

Don't know what it meant. But essentially I ended up with probably 20 different shared services of different types with different organizations with the.

With the host borough and three or four staff led spin outs that became community interest companies, mutuals, that kind of thing. And there was a couple of things or there was, there's one particularly that became an arm's length organization.

It's the staff who have led them since they spun out. But that's quite pleasing and that was genuinely quite transformational. And then did a little bit of consultancy work with dark side red quadrant.

Yeah, yeah. I got worse as I went on. Then we came to state. No, never recorded for a bit.

Covid hit furloughed myself, consulted with myself and then made myself redundant. Strange experience. Very good of you.

And then ended up in Newham as the assistant director for improvement and change across people services which is pretty similar to what I do now. And between Newham and where I'm in Haringay a short stint and town hamlets insourcing there leisure services.

So lots of it is bound together by project management and commissioning type stuff and trying to do change against the backdrop of not really having much money.

Yeah. And sort of underpinned with all that frontline experience as well. Right.

The realities of when you're trying to implement change in that context, what does that actually mean for people that are doing the really hard work on the front line?

And I think that's the bit that's often misunderstood, overlooked is people who do this stuff because they've got the values based rather than see it as a transactional thing. There is a toll on them because you are being made responsible for doing something that is essentially like playing God.

You're doing it on behalf of another person without really ever knowing them even. You know, it's.

It was quite nice in the days when we used to do stuff in day centers and you might do service redesign because I knew the people who came to day center.

But these days it's all about secondary data and JSNAs and you know, wandering through LG inform and seeing what that says and you know the chances to go out and meet actual people and talk to them are fewer and further between.

So I think that that toll it takes certainly has taken its toll on me over the years of having the responsibility of buying something or setting something up for somebody who you don't know but you know is vulnerable. Yeah. Is an interesting challenge.

Yeah, it is, it is a big challenge. So it brings me on to where I wanted to take the conversation which is people tend to come in. It's not.

This isn't quite true for us because we've known each other a bit, bit longer than my. Than me and basis, we know each other before, before that.

But lots of people that we come into contact with or work with in Basis we come into contact with them because maybe they're just a bit dissatisfied with the way that change is done. Generally they're probably either experimenting or know even more than us about different ways of working.

So working in a more agile way or a more user centered way, actually spending time with people that are feeling the pain of things not working quite as well. Where did you start kind of trying out some of that stuff? When was that?

Right.

And I had a role which was to do that.

So I was the person centered planning coordinator and I remember it was marked up by either Richard Littlejohn or one of those far right press people saying it was a council non job. And actually what it was about trying to help very, very disabled people move out of an institutionally abusive hospital into their community.

Which I didn't think was a non job but Mr. Littlejohn obviously did.

And the whole ethos behind that was about getting the user voice to help define what their future needed to be based on their aspirations rather than just a kind of medical diagnosis. Yeah. So I was lucky because there was at that time a little bit of money around to do that stuff.

There was training for people and we used to do all sorts of weird and wacky things.

So we'd have bits of lining paper up on the wall and felt tip pens and we'd be doing personal person centered planning with people in, you know, going up and down in lifts or in the park or in the swimming bowls or wherever it was that someone felt most comfortable. Yeah.

And I had a team, we trained in lots and lots of kind of active listening skills and graphic facilitation and IT stuff at the time and being able to build people's website so rather than it being a report from a social worker, it maybe it was a PowerPoint slide deck of people showing what they appreciated about their social network, what other people like and admire about those, to force the issue that they were human beings rather than a case in a case management system. So I was lucky because there was that.

So when they talk about co production and co design, they're actually talking the same language as me with different terminology. But I don't see the use of genuine ethical tools for, for both finding out the voice of the user, incubating that voice and helping it flourish.

And that was something I was lucky that I was able to do fairly early in my career. And I try as much as possible to apply some of that with whatever I've done since. So, you know, I was talking about leisure in a previous role.

What I tried to do was genuinely get out there and speak to people who were going to be using the leisure sensors rather than rely on other people telling me what those people might think. So I think go to source is really important, but also doing so in a way which is ethical, appropriate, you know, doesn't put people on the spot.

You and I have done work before, we did something new on a small estate, knew about trying to find user voice, trying to find resident voice and then playing that back and getting them to validate that we've heard it right, which is the other bit that gets missed too often and then people go off and misdiagnose and the wrong service goes in place. So I hope I still do that.

But my concern is that there are lots and lots of people in local government now that have never had the chance to learn that in anything other than an austerity environment.

Yeah, I mean it's hard, isn't it? And you definitely do that.

I think that's one thing that I, not I think I know that is one thing I admire about you is your instinct is almost always, okay, let's go to source.

Let's figure out the best way of actually speaking to people that are experiencing this so that we can understand from their perspective what's actually, what's actually going on. But it's hard to do that, isn't it?

Because it's a lot more difficult to go to an estate in an area that's got lots of kind of complex problems and people are. Yeah, there's a high level of deprivation and actually get into difficult conversations with people.

It's quite, it's quite confronting and very, very uncomfortable. But what, I mean, what does that. Some of these, or what does some of these ways of working make possible? So let's say we're.

We're on a project, regardless of what the problem is, we need to make things better. What does some of these ways of working actually make possible?

Well, I'll give you two fairly clear examples of where actually genuinely listening to voice, different voices and challenging your own mindset.

So, I mean, it's going to sound a bit twee, but I see myself as a convener of a conversation, not really commissioner that does things or a project manager that solves problems. I see my role is bringing people together to try and solve it and there are two that stick out.

So I remember once doing some work with a young woman who we trained her as part of our young Commissioner program. So she was very clued up on the commissioning process and the cycle and the rest of it.

And she also was care experienced and this was part of getting some stuff on her CV so she could leave care. I think she went off to become a social worker. I'm sure she was very good at it.

But an example with her was, I remember sitting in a room full of professionals and we were talking about a healthy eating service and we were all going on. The irony was there I was talking about trying to make people be less fat. Now look at the state of me.

So that was odd in itself and dare I say, a number of other professionals, similar position. And we went round and we were all fine. Oh, let's do this. Here's the KPI.

We all thought, this is very outcome based, we've been very collaborative out commissioning. And then she stuck her hand up and said, what about undereating? And we sort of.

And she said, because the college I'm at, the biggest issue is the boys have all got massive body image problems, they're all taking steroids and they don't eat any food. And you could see a room of kind of 10 professionals go, oh, my God, we've just commissioned. So hopefully, I mean, that was then we did.

Hopefully that means we didn't miss a whole level of need and in the end supported people in the right way.

But there's plenty of examples and you know as well as I do where people go by just the data or whatever happened before or whatever good practice says, rather than really listening to who the recipient is going to be of the service. And we misdiagnose or diagnostically overshadow things. And another example is actually where it really provides financial value.

I remember doing a citizen commissioning project for a local park in South London, again with our parks team, who are excellent, convening local people to help write the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. And three and a half million quid later was because residents had written large sections. It wasn't a council officer.

Residents had written large sections of the bid because they had professional skills. There was an archaeologist. You know, where are we going to find that knowledge in a local council?

There was an archaeologist who said, I could do that section.

Yeah, yeah.

And bringing people together like that added value to the output. I've been to that part since. Fantastic. But also it was the reason we got three and a half million pounds. So there's a financial imperative.

Yeah. I love both of those examples.

I think what we're talking about in those examples is, or certainly the first one is if you don't properly work with people and really understand need or challenges from their perspective, you can just completely misdiagnose what's going on. You can end up choosing the wrong thing to build or make or commission, which is. Which is disastrous, really.

I mean, obviously, it's terrible waste of public money if you're. If you're spending something on. On a need that actually isn't. Isn't the most pressing issue in the community.

And it can be quite embarrassing because you get to the.

You get to the point where you have spent the money and you can't even really own up to the fact that it's gone wrong because so much money has been spent. So it's kind of a bit. It's just a bit embarrassing politically, isn't it? So to be. Sorry you're going to come.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the things that, I mean, over the years I've noticed, and the excellent article you and I wrote recently about adaptive project management styles, picked up on this, which is we're not very good in the public sector, not just local government, but in the public sector at killing projects that aren't working or killing services that aren't delivering. And, you know, and because we're not good at that, you know, there's a. There's a resource pressure.

There's also an issue where we really struggle to decommission things which are nice, nice to have and good and effective, but aren't any longer the Priority need.

And I think unless you listen to resident voices and you're open with people and you have those conversations, you know, we're all residents of somewhere. This pejorative view of professionals saying we can't discuss it with the public because they can't possibly understand that the budgets are tight.

Everyone knows budgets are tight. Everyone's got a household budget, apart from perhaps our Prime Minister.

But the challenge for us is we need to be more open at a time when the risk of failing is more acute. Strange paradox.

Yeah.

And there are examples all over the world of where people do proper participatory budgeting and involvement and it just takes a lot of time and effort. But the outcomes, I mean the outcomes even bear out in the data. You know, it's not. This isn't a theoretical exercise. It actually does work.

And I think actually what it does is I don't think it necessarily takes more time. It takes more time up front.

Yeah, yeah.

For less hassle later on. And then I think you get into the world of actually we need to let contracts fall much longer so they have time to grow and develop and embed.

Rather than the three plus one plus one cycle where it takes 18 months to get things warmed up, then there's a period of stability and then with the best of them world, that provider is worried about how to get their extension or how to compete for a new contract. So actual prime Delivery is probably 18 months out of a three year contract. Yeah, and that's. I'm not blaming the market for that at all.

That's because of the contracting processes we typically use in social care particularly.

So we started talking about some of the other conditions that need to be in place, I suppose, for good change, transformation, innovation, work to happen. Picking up on the kind of point around leadership, I wonder if you could talk about some of the other conditions that you think need to be in place.

One one of them being we need to properly involve people and understand their unique challenges and walk a mile on their shoes, all that stuff. You start to talk about leadership, I know you've got a lot more to say on that. What are some of the other conditions that need to be in place?

Yeah, I think the days of heroic leaders are well and truly over in the public sector and particularly in local government.

And I think that the best chief executives that I've come across and the best health service leaders are those that again, like I was saying earlier on, see themselves as conveners across a place and saying there's lots and lots of levers across all of our different partnerships and organizations.

You know, whether it's statutory sector or, or voluntary sector or small community groups or just direct with residents or whatever, they see themselves as helping bring people together to have the conversation rather than trying to fix everything. You know, there's no chief exec in the world can do that. There's no corporate management team, it's any council that's going to do it.

And unfortunately, there was a point, I think kind of mid austerity.

If you think we've had four or five waves of it now, our first couple, it felt like we were getting to a moment where that started to become the case. And definitely the response to the pandemic. You saw what I would consider to be the best of adaptive leadership. Yeah, 100% come out.

You know, forget the bureaucracy, forget issues around risk, let's just get this done because we need to. And I hoped that the silver lining to the pandemic was we would try and keep some of that alive.

And more and more I think we're retrenching because the, the budget restraints and the austerity has continued.

I think people are retrenching and that's a real shame because it means we're losing the, some of the only good things that came out of COVID But I still see individuals who are desperately trying to convene the system to respond. And I'd say one of the things about leaders is they've got to understand the system.

You know, it drives me up the wall when I hear people, for example, saying, you know, I've been a commissioner for 20 years in local government, I still don't understand procurement legislation. Why not? Why don't you? Yeah, yeah, you know, I found the time to.

That's the gig.

Come on, you're a professional. It's not good enough, you know, and then I hear social workers telling me we don't understand direct payments. Why not?

They've been around for 20 odd years. You're a professional advocate for a vulnerable person, you need to understand it.

So there is a bit about, you know, listening, but there's also a bit, sometimes, you know, we need to be a little bit more pushy with each other in local government and just call out some of that because that's not all right for the end user.

I think the other bit that is really important and I'm not, didn't want to come across as knocking data, is to actually use the data but genuinely understand it. I think that was something else we learned during COVID Is people can't read a graph.

And, you know, poor old Chris Whit, you stood there most evenings trying to explain to people rolling averages and what exponential means and all that kind of stuff people still haven't got. So I think that the sector needs to get much better.

It's got masses of data, huge amounts of data, unintended collected data in some ways, and it's such a rich resource for getting a sense of population. And I think there's some brilliant work in public health teams looking at that.

But I think that needs to become a standard approach across local government, that we're all really good with data, we're all really confident talking to residents and bringing those two things together. And then we don't seek to just solve everything, we then say, because we understand the voice and the data.

So who are the partners we now need in the room to think, think through what the solution is or range of solutions and then be honest and say, we thought this was going to work. It's not working. Let's stop that, let's pivot somewhere else. And that's something, again, where local government is not good at it.

But I'd say that actually local government is better than most of the rest of the public sector doing that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's really good. I mean, thinking about some of those conditions, what are you.

What are some of the pieces of work that you've been involved in, do you think? Actually, you know what, I'm pretty proud of that because we did abide by some of these things. We consciously made sure we did some of these things.

What's something that comes to mind?

Yeah, I don't really do pride, so I don't know, I think things chuffed, let's say chuffed, I think things that I would consider to be effective.

Yeah.

So, you know, I've mentioned those two examples earlier on, I think, where we have genuinely involved people in designing a new service or solution. I think those examples are good.

And then I think there are a range of smaller things where, you know, actually this isn't a small project, but my team rather than me, when I was in Newham, did a really good piece of work with our housing colleagues who, again, were great of flipping an old extra care accommodation into a leaving care transition unit for people. Units, horrible word, but housing for. For people leaving care.

And that was done, I think, in a really sensitive, genuine way, given that, you know, the building's the building. So the idea of whatever it was, 20, 30 beds on a site with Lots and lots of teenagers. Stands a bit student halls, isn't it?

But actually, the way it was done, the way the team did it, was really genuinely co produce with young people finding out what they wanted to see in there, challenging the spec that came back from, you know, the people who are going to do the fit out and then how they ease them into, you know, coming from potentially residential care home into this much more open, freer place. I think that kind of project is the kind of thing that I genuinely pleased that I was involved in.

I think that I did a resettlement piece years ago where we had a family that came over from Syria and we worked with the Home Office and we did a lot of work with a local. Well, actually the church group led, but a number of other faith groups and voluntary sector groups who were involved.

I think the way we facilitated the conversation almost brokered the conversation between the community groups and the Home Office.

I think my role in that, almost a translator between the two parties to make sure that that family not only safely ended up in the uk, but settled and lived and flourished. From what I hear, that's something to be proud of too, I think.

Yeah.

And I think the biggest program is probably we did something in Newham around tackling racism, inequality and disproportionality. And I think the reason that worked, it won awards, so it must be successful.

But the reason that worked is because we took a very restorative approach to it.

And I know that originally people are a little bit nervous because I would spend my time going around apologising for things that had happened 20, 30 years ago under different leadership. But I think it's important to do that. Sometimes you have to take the hit. And it's something that, again, I might do.

If I'm speaking to residents, there's no point pretending something's rubbish. And they see me as the council. I'm not Tom.

So sometimes I have to be the council and say, as the council representative, I think we've got that wrong and how do we put it right?

So I think that program was successful because across all branches and too much detail to go into now, but across all branches of it, it was very much a case of us having some humility about, you know, as a council, how we had allowed things to be and how we were now saying we need to make that right.

Another thing that I'm always impressed with, with you, I'll say it begrudgingly, is that whenever you spot that perhaps people are not on the same page, or maybe there Is a relationship that needs to be developed or sort of managed isn't the right word. But perhaps you're getting the gist of where I'm going with this. Lots of projects fail because people are just, they're just not kind of.

They don't have relationships with one another or they're just talking different languages. And that's something that you always lean into. I wonder, is that something that you think about consciously?

Because you're always in there front and center. If you can see something's not quite right, you'll unpick that in order to move forward.

I suspect it's a. It's to do with having a nature that is not really ever satisfied with things.

So when I say about I'm not proud of products, I'm not really because I always think there was something else we probably could have done bit better. So yes, there's a control freaky about it, a bit of a perfectionist.

So yes, I will do that and I will do that sometimes to the detriment of my relationships with some of those people. So I will call things out.

And I know that it makes people uncomfortable, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find me ever doing that unless it was for the benefit of the end user.

So I think I've got working relations with people which have suffered because in projects I've called out and said, actually, are we really working in the best interests of. And that's difficult for people to hear, particularly when, you know, it's not really their fault.

You know, we've been, we're all being pressured to reduce budgets. But I also think it's, it's, it's years of, you know, enjoying team sports, isn't it?

My view is anybody who's a leader, there's a huge percentage of that as luck. So people look at me and think, oh, he gets a reasonable salary for what he does. And I think, yeah, I'm bloody fortunate really.

You know, I was a kid from Mitcham, working class family and there's other kids that I was at school with who had a very similar upbringing, didn't have the luck I had. So they're not in that position. And I think people in those positions need to remember how lucky they are.

And then when they do that, see their role as bringing together voices. So I don't see myself as more intelligent than my team or having better ideas than my team.

I see my team as people and I need to get from them as much as I can to try and solve these Problems.

And if there are barriers in the way that are about personalities, I'm quite fortunate that I look like a front row forward, having been a front row forward.

And I can call out a bit, but I don't think you have to do that too often because I think most people, 99% of people in public service are in it for the right reason.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But sometimes they do.

The environment around them creates an atmosphere, which means they forget a little bit about why we're doing a certain thing and it's just a reminder. But also, you know, it's just life's too short when it's going to work every day and the really shitty atmosphere because people aren't talking.

I can't bear the factionalism and Cuba. I'm not like that at all. I'm not interested in that.

Yeah, I think relationships is such an interesting thing because we spend so much time, you know, putting people through, training on how to run projects and leadership management courses and all that stuff.

But sometimes just really fundamental stuff, you know, it's like the, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, like, do we have good relationships with people?

And I think I'm interested in it because it's necessary on projects and in organizations, but it's also necessary with, with residents sometimes, particularly when we're working on.

I mean, I'm using the word relationship a lot, but relational services, you know, where there is somebody that needs help and there is a helper that's trying to help, and that could be a social worker, it could be somebody working in a housing service. Sometimes they can't be actually fit into a box. You know, there isn't a process or a service that perfectly matches their needs.

And you need an actual relationship with them to unpick that. They need to trust you, don't they, to, to even tell you what's going on, they might turn up because they've got themselves into debt somehow.

But I mean, that's not the only issue. I mean, there's, there's almost certainly going to be lots of other things going on.

How do you, how do you think about that when you're, when you're working on projects and, and you know, because of the nature of the issue that you, you can't just design a perfect process.

Yeah. The first thing is you need to be comfortable. The fact you can't design a perfect process.

So even though I am a perfectionist, I have now over time got my head around the fact that that's never there. So, you know, again, it's a bit hackneyed, but you can't let perfection be the enemy of the good. But you have to get closer.

Very good.

As close as you get, as close as you can to it. And it's.

It's difficult because I remember meeting a director years and years ago and he said, for me, unless these services are good enough for my family, I. I wouldn't let. I wouldn't be happy. I remember thinking, what a good thing to say. I can agree with that. It quickly became clear that that was bollocks.

And he didn't believe it. He just said it to try and get his troops on side. But for me, it stuck because, you know, I am a carer and in some ways that's not great.

It's not much fun when things are bad. But again, silver linings, it's fortunate because it gives me an insight into the impact of systems and processes on people.

So in a way, I am fortunate that I have that insight and I'm fortunate I don't have the disability that goes with it. And it means that when I say I want to try and make something that I would be happy for a loved one to use, that is what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Now I get very frustrated with not being able to do that. And it's continuous because there's so many things that's. But that is my starting point and it is a shame because there's that example I said for.

And then recently I was speaking to somebody reasonably senior in a local authority, not the one I work in at the moment, I hasten to say.

And I was saying, well, yeah, one of the things you can do to really find out about places when you're doing your emails, take your laptop, go and sit in your local library or your local cafe and just listen. Now I said, oh, no, no, it's far too busy, far too busy to do that. I think what's happened to public servants when we can't make time to do that.

Yeah, because that doesn't take more time. That's just about moving from that desk to that desk. You know, you have to do a lot of confidential work, you don't have to do courts.

Everyone spends time writing reports and emails. It's that kind of behavior I see less and less of. And that's a shame because that doesn't take time. That's about permission and culture, isn't it?

Yeah.

And I think, again, going back to those adaptive leaders, the ones that I've worked with best are the ones that have allowed me to do that. I haven't. You know, I've told them that I've done it afterwards because I felt able to do it without asking.

Yeah, yeah.

And when I've done it, they've got that's a good idea rather than what else you doing, what on earth. And they are people that measure things differently. So they measure the value of what I've been doing rather than when I did it and how I did it.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that that's an important trait of a good leader. I hope I am like that with teams I've either managed or worked with. But it's not, it's not a system response. It's in spite of.

Yeah, but I think having. Having senior leaders that are. That are doing those things, you know, role modeling sounds a bit naff, doesn't it?

But just doing those things sets such a tone, doesn't it, for the organization? Because what's the culture of an organization?

It's just, you know, the behaviors and actions and ways ways people interact with one another that you pick up over time that seem to be the ways of doing things. And you change that by doing other things, you know, and if there's enough people doing other things, then all of a sudden the culture changes.

I remember I worked in a. In a West London authority for while before I joined basis. And there was a. There was a new chief exec.

And I mean, I can only imagine how stressful it would be starting a new job as a chief exec in a new local authority. And she, if I remember rightly, it was either the first week or second week. Her first week she just, she worked on reception.

And I don't even think that the people working on reception knew that she was the chief exec. She just went. She just went down there and said, can you tell me what I need to do, how it can be useful?

And she learned so much about what was going on in that borough in a week, more than she would have ever got from six months worth of meetings. And what does that say to the rest of the organization? What's important, speaking with people?

It's more than that. It's a genuine commitment to understand the front line and go back to it and keep going back and checking in and making sure.

I do see some very good senior leaders in local government do that, and that's good. But I also think there are a number of people that use the. I haven't been expressly given this permission to do X as a Reason not to do it.

You know who got sacked for going to a library and doing their emails?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's quite well made, I think. Well, there's one other thing I want to ask you. So you've been.

You've had a really varied career in local government.

If, if you could give a piece of advice for somebody that's sort of starting out in this change, transformation world, designing new services, that kind of space. I'm sure there's lots of things you could give. But what would be, what would be the one thing that you would. You would share with them?

I will take guests privilege, maybe and have two. Okay, so the first one is just repeating what I said.

You know, you are there to try and design something that's good enough for someone you care about. And if you're in public service and that's not what gets you out of bed in the morning, then find something else to do.

Yeah.

Because it's not going to work.

But I'll say this because I think this is really important for the other end of the spectrum where people are desperate to try and is at the end of the day, it's a job and I made myself ill by trying to do so.

I still regularly consume citalopram to get through the day because of trying to get everything perfect when I was younger and over the years and with the benefit of medical intervention, I now don't take it all quite so seriously. And there's. That's important one for your own health, but also you can't function when you're working like that. You make bad decisions.

Yeah.

Miss things. And I. I've missed things when my head has been in that space that now I don't miss. So I am very pleased in a way that I've got.

I'm not pleased I went through the experience, but I'm very pleased I've come out the other side and can reflect back.

And I think there are a number of colleagues across the public sector that are still in that intensive, continuous fighting mode and they need to take a breather quick.

Yeah, I think that's really sage advice. Hey, this has been. This has been great. Thanks so much for taking the time to. Yeah. Spend the afternoon with me and share some. Share some wisdom.

In the next six months, we're gonna be having a whole bunch more conversations like this.

And if there are any people that you think we really should be speaking to or any questions that you think would be useful to ask, then I'm very, very keen to hear them. So, yeah, drop us a line on LinkedIn or any of the socials, and we'll make sure that we try and build those into upcoming conversations.

Don't get paid.