Organisational change

Bridging the geek/policy wonk divide

Continuing the theme of how digital and policy people are more powerful when aligned than each is when operating separately, this post has lots of insights about how to make that happen in practice. Empathy, vulnerability and culture are as important as communication and collaboration. And as the company Harry leads has deservedly has just won an award for being the best digital SME workplace, his thoughts come with some authority.

Harry Metcalfe – DXW

Democracy

Better than experts? How citizen deliberation can improve decisions

One of the misunderstanding which often crops up between people who approach problems from a digital service design perspective and those who come more from a traditional policy development perspective is around transactional services – whether fundamentally we are designing services for users or outcomes for society. This post comes from a very different perspective of deliberative policy development, drawing out very clearly that people see their role as citizen more broadly than their role as consumer, even when they are being both simultaneously.

Tony Greenham – RSA

Organisational change

Accountability holes? Desert spaces? Orphan ideas? Buy the tent, occupy the street.

Big organisations have things which aren’t quite anybody’s job to do, so they don’t get done. Small organisations tend to solve that problem partly by making everybody’s role much more fluid, and partly by reducing the overheads of the collective action problem. Big organisations find that hard because they manage complexity through structure – which is fine for things which go with the grain of the structure but can be very difficult for things which cut across it. That can lead to situations where – in a neat phrase from this post – ‘the indecision is final’. The solution advocated here is a simple one: if spaces are unoccupied, occupy them.

Leandro Herrero