Cultivating a more commercially focused mindset across Services was one of the main goals set down for the Entrepreneurial Services Workstream Board at its inaugural meeting on May 29th.
Set up following the launch of the Council’s five-year business plan, the board is one of five newly established boards formed to ensure services work more closely together to speed up transformation.
Following a welcome from Chair, Graeme Webster, Environmental Health & Trading Standards Manager, members agreed the board had a responsibility to ensure employees with ideas that could potentially generate income for the Council felt supported to bring their thinking forward.
Carl Bullough, Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) of the board, and Head of Environmental Services, said: “Many of the Council’s employees will have great ideas that we cannot afford to miss. What we need to ensure is that we hear about these ideas and put in place a way to capture them. We then need to support and empower employees to develop their ideas into potential projects that could become part of this Entrepreneurial Services workstream moving forward.
“We are also here to support each other; to share our thinking, our knowledge and contacts so our own projects can deliver. We cannot limit ourselves. If there are benefits that can be realised from sharing services lets investigate them. If we know there is best practice elsewhere let’s take that on board. We have to stop being insular and start looking outwards as every penny of income we bring in reduces what we have to save elsewhere, but at all times we have to be mindful of our statutory responsibilities.”
Stuart Ritchie, SRO of the Council of the Future programme, added: “What lies at the heart of each of these new workstream boards is not just the delivery of current projects but the identification of new ones. It’s about imagining the art of the possible – what do developments in technology and changes in behaviour allow us to do that we couldn’t before? How can we harness new ways of working and thinking to bring tangible benefits and positive change? It’s about unearthing those nuggets of gold wherever they may be and not being afraid to see where they take us.”
The next meeting of the Entrepreneurial Services Workstream Board will meet on July 23rd.
Workstream Board Presentation(PDF, 680KB)