Seeing the Big Picture at SCS level

SAs a deputy director accountable for a national operational service, I inherited a recovery plan that focused on clearing a case backlog. At the same time, a cross-government resilience review and a public commitments dashboard were about to expose that our recovery metric ignored citizen harm in the oldest cases and conflicted with a new departmental outcome framework.

TI needed to reset the recovery narrative and operating model so the organisation delivered pace, fairness and the outcome framework without losing ministerial confidence.

AI paused the purely volume-based recovery target for one planning cycle and commissioned a harm-weighted view of the backlog with analysts and frontline leaders. I took a clear recommendation to the executive committee: shift to a dual control of throughput and harm, with transparent trade-offs about what would improve and what would worsen in the short term. I aligned the reset with the resilience review sponsors and the outcomes unit so we were not running three competing stories to ministers. I reallocated leadership attention to the oldest high-harm cohorts, stood up a weekly decision forum with finance and HR to unblock capacity, and I personally briefed ministers' offices on the dual control, the risks, and how we would measure both dimensions. I asked each Grade 6 to rewrite their team's objectives against the dual control and I modelled the behaviour by publishing my own assumptions and risks. Externally, I agreed a shared MI pack with partner organisations so referrals into our service carried better priority information. When media interest rose, I ensured operational spokespeople used the same harm-weighted explanation rather than reverting to raw clearance bragging. I also commissioned a three-month assurance review so we could show the executive committee whether incentives on the ground had actually changed, and I stopped a proposed league table of team clearance rates that would have pulled behaviour back to the old metric. Beyond the immediate fix, I mapped stakeholders who would feel second-order effects, agreed how we would handle exceptions, and made sure finance and delivery saw the same assumptions. At senior level I also reset incentives and reporting so the new priority could stick: objectives, forums and MI were updated in the same cycle as the narrative, and I held leaders to account for both. I checked progress against the measures we had agreed and adjusted the plan when leading indicators moved. I kept a short decision log so others could see why we chose this path and what we had ruled out. I briefed the people doing the work in plain language, including what would stop as well as what would start. I made sure the result could be evidenced with MI or feedback rather than relying on assertion alone. I invited a peer to challenge the approach before we locked it in, which improved the final design. I clarified owners and timescales so the change did not depend on informal goodwill alone. I revisited residual risks with the senior owner and recorded what we were consciously accepting. I shared a short lessons note so a neighbouring team could reuse the approach without starting from scratch. I tested the user or stakeholder impact before scaling the change beyond the pilot group. I aligned the local metric with the wider objective so incentives stopped pulling people backwards. I scheduled a review point with a clear stop-go criterion rather than letting the change drift. I translated the decision into practical steps on the ground and checked understanding with two practitioners. I quantified the before-and-after as honestly as the data allowed, including what had not yet improved. I protected quality standards while delivering pace, rather than treating them as optional under pressure. I ensured communications matched the operational reality so seniors and frontline staff heard one story. I checked progress against the measures we had agreed and adjusted the plan when leading indicators moved.

RWithin six months the oldest high-harm cohort reduced by 37% while overall clearance still improved by 14%. The resilience review closed its concern on our service, and the dual control was adopted into the department's outcome framework for the following year.