Birmingham City Council

Learning Labs

Birmingham City Council has been working with Learning Labs since 2000. They have been used by natural work teams and cross-boundary teams to transform ways of working or improve performance and morale as they tackle difficult change issues. They have been effective in helping teams challenge their existing ways of working and modernise their service processes.

More recently, Labs have been used to capacity build the organisation's resilience to handle change and improve performance. They have also helped teams translate strategy into actionable plans.

Over a dozen Labs have been run, with varying degrees of success. A selection of them are detailed below. Click on the headings to find out more.

Crime & Disorder Strategy Implementation Lab
Youth Offending Service Labs
Citiserve Direct Services Lab
Erdington Drug Offenders Lab
Small Heath Forum Lab
Linkway Project Lab

Labs have been used in a variety of service contexts, involving employees in front-lne teams and senior management teams. A Lab is simply an approach that teams have used when they want to improve the way things get done. The teams learn how to use the CLEAR Method and are encouraged to appreciate the contribution made by all team members, to connect their work to a common purpose, to clarify what's possble and what's expected, and develop new skills to focus their actions on getting a result that works better than the previous arrangements..

Below is a summary of the benefits listed by Lab sponsors and the people participating in the Labs.

	Benefits for Managers		Benefits for Staff
	Learning new knowledge and skills		Influencing management thinking
	Finding out what energises people		Introducing better ways of working
	Generates interest in Best Value		Doing things their way - satisfaction
	Demonstrates good practice		Tapping staff knowledge/experience
	Aids business planning		Getting ownership of outcomes
	Builds trust and shared objectives		Increasing job satisfaction
	Improves the service profile		Improving customer service
	Saves money and secures benefits		Helping to meet targets
	Encourages innovation		Eliminating staff frustrations
	Secures real service improvements		Achieving personal development

The Crime & Disorder Strategy Implementation Lab

Lab Leader: Dilbagh Dhami - Senior Policy Officer
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121-303-4790
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

Introduction
This Lab brought together people with a Community Safety remit to:

reflect on progress - achievements and difficulties
share ideas and good practice
consider areas of improvement
identify areas where new solutions and impact could be achieved
xx through joined up working and partnerships

Desired Outcomes
To inform the development of, and integrate emergent community safety issues into the Crime & Disorder Strategy 2002-2005. This will connect council officers and departments at the local level so that practical community, social and people results can be achieved through effective networking. The idea is to develop a dynamic inter-agency and partnership working culture that supports and generates improvements in community safety

Learning Lab Participants

The Youth Offending Team Lab

Lab Leader: Graham Fletcher - Head of Service
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121-464-0600
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

In 1999, Birmingham created a new Youth Justice Service bringing togther people from different services to create a Youth Offending Team (YOT). Team Leader, Graham Fletcher, wanted to engage the new team in creating a shared vision for the new service and decided to use the Learning Lab approach to get things moving.

Steve Trivett the facilitator was given the brief to enable the YOT to identify barriers to change and develop action plans for overcoming them. To make the day more fun he decided to use landscape features as metaphors, and the change process as a journey across difficult terrain.

The YOT provided the landscape picture and the facilitator provided a key for the main features, such as hills, forests, rivers, swamps, etc., and the vehicles for overcoming them, such as tracks, bridges, railways, etc. See sheets and photographs to explain more. See Using Landscapes.

The first task was to explore everyone's personal visions and then use the landscape metaphors to identify the team's vision of the difficulties they would face and ways of overcoming them.

The three priorities for action were to:

create a unified team to deliver effective practice in reducing offending
use service level agreements to improve working relationships
have everyone trained in core skills by April 2000

The team created three groups to produce key milestones for each priority. See the report of the YOT Learning Lab Awayday

The Citiserve Direct Services Lab

Lab Leader: Nigel Sandland - General Manager
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121-464-6602
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

Citiserve is a direct services organisation (DSO) established to run the cleaning and catering services in schools. It has over 3,500 employees and has to deliver what the client wants to stay in business.

A Lab was seen as a valuable way of engaging all staff in business planning and consultation with their service users.

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The Erdington Drug Offenders Lab

Lab Leader: - Sarah Brothers - Project Manager - Depaul Trust
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121-303-2566
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

Introduction
This Lab brought together people from the Community Safety Unit, Police, Probabtion, Social Services, Education, Youth Service and the Courts Service to explore ways in which they could work together more effectively to improve services for vulnerable and disaffected young people aged 16-25 years.

They identified their shared objectives as:

shared mechanisms for tracking contributions and progress
identifying opportunities, options and referals
improving access to education, training and employment placements
overcoming barriers and inceasing transparency
offering consistent advice and support for the work of advocates
achieving better use of existing resources
involving Social Services as key partners

The actions they agreed to take were:

obtaining and sharing customer feedback and intelligence
mapping current connections and relationships
getting all agencies online - core information in a common format
secure funding to collect, collate and update who is doing what where

The Lab was visited by Mo Mowlam MP and the group agreed to xxxxxxxreport it's findings to the Cabinet Office.

Summary Report

The Barriers

1. Instability and uncertainty - unco-ordinaed agendas and goals
2. Poor communication and relationships between agencies
3. Unclear relationships with Social Services
4. Bored and unmotivated young people with chaotic lifestyles
5. Frustrated staff
6. Lack of knowledge about who contributes what
7. Lack of coherent strategy for taclking real issues
8. Lack of respect by some agencies for actions of others
9. Burdensome bureaucracy and duplication of effort

The Opportunities

1. A comprehensive electronic information exchange system
2. Contracted relationships with Social Services to provide advocacy
3. More openness and honesty in relationships between providers
4. Clearer complaints procedure for young people in care
5. Better partnership working arrangements in schools
6. A short-stay 'refuge' for young people in the West Midlands
7. Young person's needs should be the driver for change
8. Better co-ordination of specialist provision
9. Better transition arrangements from one caring agency to another

The Small Heath Forum Lab

Lab Leader: Dilbagh Dhami - Senior Policy Officer
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121- 303-4790
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

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The Linkway Project Lab

Lab Leader: Sueb Jabber - Project Manager
Contact: Tel: 44(0)121-303-2292
Facilitator: Steve Trivett

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