Birmingham City Council - the largest Council in Europe could have been saved.

Birmingham City Council is the largest Council in Europe. A few years ago I approached the powers that be at the City Council with a view to introduce Systems Thinking. My Innovation Matrix would have helped them to get a handle on how they were spending taxpayers money, Their response was that they didn't need any help. I was to find out later. I was told by an insider that they couldn't implement a systems approach because they didn't know (ultimately) where the money was going. It was far too complex - It was almost like following a financial route that would lead to a blank or dead end. At the time I was teaching these innovation methods in my MBA programme at the University of Birmingham, I even enlisted some of my MBA students to help work on such a mammoth task - I knew it was daunting - but I also knew how important it would be for any government body. We would begin by introducing Scenario Planning a Systems Thinking approach that I used with Shell, ABB and Executives at Rolls Royce.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking would have highlighted the interdependencies between various departments, projects, and financial obligations. The council’s failure to manage IT project costs, while simultaneously being burdened by equal pay settlements, is an example of siloed decision-making. A systems approach would have integrated these aspects to ensure that financial planning accounted for all the moving parts, leading to more balanced resources and allocations. Systems thinking might have enabled a more integrated, adaptive, and proactive approach to managing the complex financial challenges that Birmingham City Council faced.

50-year Business plans

Working on 50-year Business plans at Shell facilitated a proactive future that meant there were provisions for unforeseen events. When I began my opening speech about Systems Thinking in Houston I announced to the administrators, scientists and vice presidents that I was going to unbrainwash them all - over the coming months. These directives and workshops led to a new company being created called Shell Global Solutions a spin-off from Systems Thinking (Scenario Planning approach).

These propositions in local government would have minimised the financial hardships that were to follow and saved Birmingham City Council from going bust. the shortfalls are well known. ￡1,1 billion. Shell Global Solutions (from seed funding in the beginning) now has an annual turnover of $6 billion.

"His Innovation Matrix process helped enormously with our Ambitious Business Challenges & launch of Shell Global Solutions, the process is genius & provokes new solutions," Dr Allan Samuel. Shell.

Perhaps a new way of delivering efficiency, coordination, gathering data and Innovation is called for? so we can mitigate future financial disruption, losses and heartache. Or we leave it until the next time?

This may be useful... for anyone interested

John ran our Entrepreneurship MBA course. His Innovation for Competitive Advantage course was mandatory for All of our MBA students, John gave an excellent presentation at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit." Jonathan Michie, Director, the University of Birmingham Business School. Currently Professor of Innovation & Knowledge Exchange at the University of Oxford.

From the Chapter of my book on "Unleashing the Power of Creativity and Business Intelligence." John Rainford,