Boards are up and running, says Lord Browne: now for the heavy lifting

After nearly five years as the government’s lead non-executive director (NED), Lord Browne cleared out his Whitehall desk last week. But first, he visited the Institute for Government to give his valedictory speech – taking the opportunity to point, politely but very firmly, at the substantial challenges still facing ministers and civil service reformers. Recruited in June 2010 by the fresh new coalition government, Browne in turn helped recruit NEDs onto all the department of states’ boards, while using his own seat on the Cabinet Office board to pursue governance, leadership and management reform across the Civil Service. The task had clearly not been an easy one: in July 2012, he told the audience, he’d given the ‘enhanced departmental boards’ model “two out of ten for progress”. The situation had improved, however. “Last year, I scored us six out of ten,” he said. “When I took on my role I aspired to perfection, but I now realise that was unrealistic. The work of government is far more ragged than the work of business, and boards will never reach a perfect ten. I think the limit is probably seven, so six out of ten isn’t bad.” There has been substantial progress on civil service reform, Browne explained – particularly around departmental capability, project management and management information – but he warned that “constant vigilance is required to prevent organisations from reverting to old ways of operating”. In particular, he argued that there is now “agreement that good delivery is at the heart of good policy. But in my experience, progress can be undone as quickly as it is made.” What’s more, the peer said, much more progress is required. “The restrictive nature of old departmental structures and the generalist training designed for the challenges of the Victorian era make things difficult,” he said, emphasising the need for better talent management, stronger “functional skills” and more cross-departmental working. Answering questions after his speech, Browne noted that the new Civil Service Chief Executive, John Manzoni, “has control of some of the functions. That now needs to be worked at to make sure that the behaviour of all the people in departments is in line with that.” As his answer suggests, Manzoni lacks the executive powers to single-handedly maintain the momentum behind reform; the Institute for Government has argued that his influence will largely be determined by the personal commitment of his own line manager, Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood. And Browne highlighted the need for strengthened leadership and coordination in the civil service professions – in particular in the creation of a “universal finance function. You wouldn’t want a gigantic corporation with every single sub-division having its own finance director doing their own thing”. Another key point focused on the need to improve the implementation of policy. While “governments are quick to formulate policy ideas, they have a poor track record when it comes to delivering them,” Browne said. Indeed, in answer to a question by Ministry of Defence reform chief Jonathan Slater, Browne argued that the “bad divide” between the policy and operational delivery professions should be dramatically narrowed: “I would try and eliminate the language,” he said. “They’re one and the same thing, and the sooner we get rid of this divide the better.” Browne, a self-proclaimed delivery professional, argued the division perpetuates unhelpful perceptions under which “policy seems smarter and somehow higher class, and delivery seems a bit grubby and lower class”. Departmental boards, Browne believes, have a crucial role to play in strengthening implementation – particularly in examining and testing plans for major projects. The Civil Service’s approach to risk management is often weak, he suggested – too often relying on processes “some of which are extremely undesirable and shouldn’t be used, such as making lists of risks and hoping that you’ve got them documented rather than thinking about what you should do” to address them. And Browne argued that NEDs can bring invaluable experience in risk management; indeed, he argued that “projects that reach a certain risk threshold should automatically require approval by boards”. Asked by the event’s chair, Institute for Government director Peter Riddell, how such a board veto would sit with individual ministerial responsibility, Browne replied that it’s not a question of new executive powers. The board should “be very clear that it will publish its findings; that I think is almost sufficient to change people’s minds,” he said. “You start by doing it privately… and then you raise the heat, and if you [as a NED] really don’t like what’s going on you can always resign, because a NED has no vested interest and can remove their voluntary labour very easily.” Browne’s call for boards to flex their muscles on project management reveals a degree of confidence that the argument for enhanced boards – and for NEDs – has now been won. Initially, he acknowledged, “there were quite a few permanent secretaries who were really worried about this”: they saw it as “destabilising”, and feared losing influence. But as a new generation of departmental chiefs has risen to the top and begun working with boards, they “haven’t been trying to kill it; they’ve been trying to work with it, and recognised that it’s not a matter of getting people close to you so that they’re not close to someone else.” However, the lead NED made clear that junior ministers are not yet sufficiently engaged with boards. Many have poor attendance records, he pointed out, and “should play a more active role in developing and questioning their departments’ plans for delivery”. Answering questions, he suggested that while some ministers have experience of working in business or the voluntary sector and thus understand the value of a strong board, others “don’t quite understand what it’s there for”. At the heart of Browne’s speech lay his belief in the need for a “razor-sharp focus on talent management” in the Civil Service. Permanent secretaries must put much more time into “encouraging, nurturing and rewarding talent”, he argued – prodded by making such work “an important part of the criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of senior civil servants”. “The question is: how much time are you spending on things you say you are doing? So the words ‘people are our most important asset’ mean ‘I am going to spend most of my important time doing that’,” Browne concluded. Boards, he hopes, will keep pushing officials to spend more time on developing their workforces. And he threw in a plea for politicians to give similar recognition to the value of their unpaid cohort of non-executive board members: like the progress on civil service reform, he argued, the gains made on departmental boards could unravel fast. “The single most important thing is for all parties to say they would value this type of activity, because if anyone said this is all nonsense I guarantee everyone would find something else to do very quickly,” he said. “This isn’t anybody’s job – it’s a vocation. And vocations need encouragement.”