I am starting this blog as a place to record some of my ideas and thinking about continuous improvement. The opinions are my own but are based on 30 plus years of experience. A lot of what I want to consider is about the importance of operations management in the public sector, which does not get the intention it deserves.

In part I was motivated to begin this blog by a conversation on Twitter today around strategy and leadership. These are recurring themes but they are often discussed in isolation from operations management

One story I tell to illustrate the relationships is to think of a hotel chain. Sure it needs a good strategy, the responsibility of the CX; it also needs a sound financial strategy, the responsibility of the CFO; but the thing that will make or break the business will be the quality of the operations e.g. are the rooms clean are the customers satisfied? That is the responsibility of the Chief Operating Officer

Poor operations management or lack of consistency will bring the hotel chain down far quicker than another aspect of the business (unless the strategy and finances are totally shot!). Put another way sound finance and sound strategy won’t compensate for poor operations management.

Here is the rub of course. As we look at public sector organisations is there one person responsible for operations management or is it delegated and dispersed? Indeed is operations management valued and just like we would not dream of letting people unqualified in accounting to do our accounts do we apply the same standard to operations management?