More effective ways of working
There were many ways to improve council working, from making
meetings more productive and less time-consuming, through to mastering the
complexities of matrix management and having
effective information management systems. With the complexity of the council’s
task, with demands coming from all directions at all levels, there needed to be
a clear (or as clear as possible) way of working a matrix structure to cope with
the specialist, cross-cutting and geographical dimensions of service
delivery.
There was a real need to accelerate the business planning
process, to ensure a performance management system was delivered in a consistent
way across the organization and to reduce conflict at the myriad of boundaries
within the organization.