UK Government adopts Lean Change approach
I’m encouraged to see that Test and Learn is being adopted by the UK Government in a bid to make the state “more like a start-up”. The Government has launched a £100 million fund to pioneer public service reform and deliver the Government’s Plan for Change.
Test and Learn – also known as Experiments – is one of the 5 Universals of Change developed by Jason Little and is at the heart of Lean Change.
Rather than treating change as a linear process, Lean Change embraces a continuous cycle of insights, options, and experiments:
Insights: Gathered from stakeholders to understand the current state.
Options: Co-created to explore possibilities for improvement.
Experiments: Ideas are tested in practice, with continuous learning and iteration
As Minister Pat McFadden puts it:
“Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Tweak it again. And so on, and so on, for as long as you provide the service. Suddenly, the most important question isn’t, ‘How do we get this right the first time?’. It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?’”
Lean Change is about cutting bureaucracy and paperwork, delivering results quickly and fostering a culture of learning through experimentation.
I’m not confident that such a radical culture change for Government will be handled successfully, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. What do you think?
