Les Morgan: Needed: a bonfire of the inanities

IN THIS time of austerity, when much of the burden is being taken by the public sector, I strongly believe that the wrong decisions are being taken. Those making these decisions operate from a very limited view of change, one which deals with the process of management (essentially delivering more of the same) and not leadership (which would offer something different and progressive).

The truth is that the feared cutbacks that are emerging in public services, which will most likely affect every person in Scotland in some way or other, need not happen at all. I believe that Scotland has far too many public sector structures and too many layers of management, which cost far more than is necessary, and not enough leadership. Proper strategic leadership could devolve responsibility to local areas and the front-line, thereby creating a much simplified and unified structure. The result would be preservation of front-line staff who are liberated to become much more compassionate and effective in their work.

Let me explain why I have a background that can offer "expert" opinions. I was the second youngest chief executive in the UK back in 1991, when I was head of the paid services at Moray Council. I had previously been director of leisure and economic development in County Durham, one of the first authorities to link these two service departments. These two services are, I believe, where local government is in a competitive market situation, competing more directly with the private sector. I was allowed to work in what I would call a more "realistic" and less bureaucratic way than almost all of the other services, where the council will almost always be the default service provider for the population.

For all that I fear it is a scenario that is unlikely to come to pass, we do not require to lose any front-line services, nor should we find ourselves in a position of continually having to cut back on front-line staff. It is these staff and services that make council services what they should be - local and responsive to local needs.

Scotland has a population of just over five million - less than twice that of Greater Manchester (2.6 million) which has one central council. They have decided - in that highly diverse geographical, cultural, religious and ethnic area - to come together and link all ten area councils into the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. Their slogan is: "Together we are greater than the sum of our parts".

They have one police authority, one fire and rescue authority, one waste disposal authority, and one Business Leadership Council.Now, before anyone protests that Scotland has too many different, indeed unique areas and regions for such a model to work up here - and thus head down the traditional "victim mentality" route of "poor Scotland" (with its clans and cliques, its clandestine methods and its closed shops) - let me at least say what I have in mind.

Firstly there should be only one police service. This is already being discussed, at long last. And yet the usual negative scaremongering is once again being tripped out - for example, that there would be no "local view", possibly fewer bobbies on the beat, and all delivered through a less able and inflexible national HQ. (Interestingly, such alarmism may often be precipitated by senior civil servants who are Chief Constables, and those immediately under them, who may have waited decades to get into their highly paid and influential jobs.)

Chief Constable Kevin Smith, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), even claims the creation of one service could lead to "unforeseen spiralling costs". And yet, even at the highest level, no one has offered a truly compelling reason for why they should not become one force. Imagine if the changes being offered to the police were as vague and impotent!

Certainly such aimless "negativity" is likely to prevail if we continue to pursue existing models of management and not leadership. Leadership (as practised by human-beings) is about creating a world that people "want to" belong to and is quite different from the normal, brittle, narrow, controlling and limited management (human-doing) "need to" view. All too often we call people at the head of organisations "leaders", which is mostly driven by the media. These individuals are almost always "managers" - people who have been promoted for their ability to control things and people, rarely to empower them.

With one police force, and with a senior officer ensuring local leadership, we could then move onto one fire service for exactly the same reasons.

We should then address the local authorities, of which we have 32 in Scotland. In the last re-organisation, when we were meant to convert the two-tier system - the Region and District Councils - into a unitary system, we simply replaced them with another two-tier system, namely the Parliament and Unitary Councils. No real change there then. This also ensured that the "managing" politicians also kept hold of all the controlling jobs, just in a different location. The analogy of turkeys and Christmas comes to mind. So, 32 unitary authorities for a population of just over five million - more turkeys fattening for Christmas, at the public expense.

Realistically, if councils were properly led and not simply managed, we would need a maximum of about ten of them, and five at best. If this were the case - and we truly did want to serve the public and not simply "manage" them - the amount of money that could be saved would fund more front-line staff and services, not the truncated offering we are about to receive.

Now, in this streamlined scenario, it is only the top jobs that would go, along with the senior gaggle of councillors - as we would still require all middle layer staff and local council sub-committees. But the removal of those top jobs - the chief executives and directors along with their support staff, plus the many council buildings and offices where those senior people take up most of the space - would represent a massive saving. It would equate to many hundreds of frontline staff, just the sort of workers that we increasingly need as society struggles with the altered environment brought on by errant governments and automaton bankers.

That just leaves the health authorities, which should be joined and aligned with the five to ten councils, so that public service can truly be coherent and serve the public health. As things are now, senior council officials, health boards and elected representatives are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort and money in an attempt to align their disparate and incoherent services. It is an unwieldy system which serves the public poorly. How can health be separated from the running of public services? Only in narrow "IQ management" could this be seen as sensible. Try separating your head from your body and see how you get on!

So, one police service, one fire service and five to ten local council/health organisations to somehow bring about a more effective model of leadership, responsibility and action to what is one of the most unhealthy and overmanaged countries in Europe if not the entire western world.

In closing, I would draw readers' attention to the ideas of the American thinker Robert Greenleaf, who pioneered the notion of the "servant as leader". In 1962 he wrote: "The healthy society, like the healthy body, is not the one that has taken the most medicine. It is the one in which the internal health-building forces are in best shape.

"The real enemy is fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent, vital people, and their failure to lead, and to follow servants as leaders. Too many settle for being critics and experts. There is too much intellectual wheel-spinning, too much retreating into "research", too little preparation for and willingness to undertake the hard and high-risk tasks of building better institutions in an imperfect world, too little disposition to see "the problem" as residing in here and not out there.

"In short, the enemy is strong natural servants who have the potential to lead but do not lead, or who choose to follow a non-servant. They suffer. Society suffers. And so it may be in the future."It is time for Scotland to find its true "servant leaders" and slim the public sector down to what it should be, free to become one of Europe's healthiest, most vibrant and action-orientated nations. Because one thing's for sure - the old system has not worked and it is not working.

Can this new Scottish Government even start to consider what a healthy Scotland would look and, more importantly, feel like? I repeat my belief that Scotland has far too many public sector structures and too many layers of management - costing far more than is necessary - and not enough leadership. Leadership could devolve responsibility to local areas and the front-line, and create a much simplified and unified structure.

The result would be the preservation of front-line staff who are liberated to become much more compassionate and effective.

• Les Morgan is a former chief executive of Moray council, and a business adviser