The Enterprising Railway - What Would it Do?

Chris Kimberley 

This paper contains an abstract of the talk that was to have been given to a public meeting organised by the Rail Reform Group and due to take place in Manchester on 19th March 2020. The event was cancelled due to the continuing coronavirus situation.

The focus of this specific paper is to suggest an approach to defining what an ‘Enterprising Railway’ would do. It does not seek to address delivery models as these are the subject of other papers, but rather will argue that too often popular commentary about the Railway focuses almost single- mindedly and obsessively on organisational form without first spending enough time and effort in gaining coherent and consistent direction as to what success will look and feel like.

This lack of ‘time and effort’ is actually my short-hand for a contention that there is a skills and capability shortfall in some public sector client organisations in being able to properly define and ultimately manage the strategic outcomes that are required from ‘their’ Railway, and similarly there is a lack of incentive on many of the Railway sector’s core operating companies to apply a professional service design approach to User Needs – motivation being driven increasingly by regulatory requirements and/or contractual obligations rather than future customer needs. 

Its contents are the personal views of the author and, whilst drawn from his extensive experience of operations and business management within the railway sector, do not necessarily represent the views of any particular organisation.

In order to give some ‘real-world’ context to the arguments I put forward, and in an attempt to convince the reader that I am not ‘cherry picking’ un-representative examples, I will occasionally in this paper use my own local rail service – I live in Glossop, Derbyshire – to illustrate a point. Again, this is not intended to point specifically to either Northern or Network Rail as a compliment or criticism but rather to illustrate the general point I am making. 

Introduction

I have played a part in the railway sector in one role or another for over 45 years. During that time and through all its ups and downs, and various restructurings two constants have remained:

1.      The railway is a complex, interdependent system – not only in its delivery but also in its planning – and initiatives which seek to over-simplify the roles of individual components – such as infrastructure, train operations and retail sales – often fail to acknowledge that the interfaces between the components within the system require active management and if left inadequately addressed result in sub-optimal performance of the system as a whole. I will return to the relevance of this point in the context of an Enterprising Railway later.

2.      The railway sector as a whole has a large number of people within it and given that we have not yet (although the time may be fast approaching) embedded artificial intelligence into the decision making of what we want to achieve (as opposed to some delivery processes) it is People who bring enterprise to the table by deploying innovation and securing delivery of what they believe success should look like – be it at a society, organisational or individual level. Motivation drives enterprise and we should be cognisant of the fact that without organisational clarity of purpose and motivation to achieve it human behaviour will substitute other assumed measures of success – either at the individual level or at some wider but unquantified societal level – and the resulting enterprise unsurprisingly is likely to become dysfunctional in achieving any coherent objectives.

People are key to enterprise

Building on the latter of these ‘two universal truths’ my experience would suggest that to harness and motivate the collective effort of many people in a complex system requires a clear and consistently held definition of what success looks and feels like - both rationally and emotionally. It is probably now an overworked analogy but the story I am always minded of in this context is that of US President J F Kennedy on a visit to the NASA space centre asking a cleaner what his job was, to which he replied ‘helping to put a man on the moon’. For me this speaks to the simplicity of vision and leadership where there is clarity of end purpose, and also a sense of emotion in terms of what today we would no doubt call ‘staff engagement’.  

There are plenty of examples from within the Railway’s history, including its relatively recent past, of where enterprise has been applied to deliver a compelling mission – although the missions themselves have often been about addressing some negative crisis or ‘burning platform’ such as the aftermath of an operational incident or the financial targets set by Government to the British Railways Board in the 1980s. On the other hand the interpretation of what success for system performance was meant to be in the period following the separation of Infrastructure Management from Train Operations in the early years of privatisation led to tribal behaviours where the enterprising capability focused on increasingly innovative ways to evidence why it was the other party’s fault rather than focus on initiatives that would improve the top level outputs. For me this is a classic example of an enterprising approach by very smart people which became dysfunctional through, for example delay attribution warfare.

I want to stress that this is not about ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’ (although I would argue that the Railway as a whole is failing to be as entrepreneurial as it could be because despite all the talk we are a long way from embracing a truly diverse and inclusive approach to our thinking) but rather that People respond to motivation and if motivation is driven by ‘delivering the contract’ then we need to be sure that whatever the ‘contract’ is we truly understand how its obligations contribute to the strategic goals (equivalent to putting a man on the moon) in a very systematic and quantified way. This is particularly important given that the Railway is not directed as a system through a unified ‘command and control’ organisation but rather is formed through a complex set of commercial relationships between separately owned and governed entities within both private and public sectors.

To be successful in the medium- and long-term success is not about ‘fixing problems’ - vital as that is as a prerequisite but is having the clarity of purpose to be able to articulate what the mission is all about. Lots of people spend lots of time and money, often asking other people, who spend even more time and money, developing very clever Vision and Mission Statements of what they and their organisations are all about. I am not arguing against the need to have a compelling Vision or of the significant potential benefits of achieving ‘buy in’ from management teams and colleagues to initiatives aimed at positive change, but these cannot be a successful substitute for being crystal clear on the required outcomes (whether referred to as objectives, benefits or other measures) and how these ‘fit in’ to the system as a whole.

So, what would an Enterprising Railway do?

My experience suggests that for a passenger railway there are only three key success factors that really matter - and they form a triangular dynamic which forces trade off's to occur in order to create an optimised success statement (for the ‘techies’ - a balanced scorecard):

·        Customer Utility and Experience 

·        Sustainable Economic Growth

·        Value for Money and Affordability

I will briefly explain what I mean by each of these but the key point to keep in mind is that I am suggesting everything that others might put forward as specific success measures can be rolled up as contributing to one or more of these three points on the triangle.

This approach also presumes and assumes a legal and regulatory context which provides a number of pre-conditions or ‘boundaries’ to the envelope of success, for example in relation to health and safety, environmental impact, accessibility, consumer protection, minimum employment requirements etc. – these are not success measures in the strategic sense but are critical hygiene factors which have to be met if the Railway is to maintain its ‘licence to operate’.

Customer Utility and Experience

We so often hear the mantra of ‘putting the customer at the heart of everything we do’. But even when those saying that genuinely intend that to be the case the application of professional Service Design principles are often lacking, certainly in comparison to other consumer sectors that are exposed fully to the fast-changing User Needs that their customers have.  As with all good design this is not about designing things that cost more but designing things where the ‘acceptance criteria’ of knowing whether it has done its job are clear, objective and agreed between those involved in developing the functional requirements for the system.

So, here is what in isolation might be considered an isolated trivial example, but I would suggest is a microcosm of a more widespread issue. Broadbottom Station is one of my local stations. It is q relatively simple station with just two platforms, one for trains heading in to Manchester and one for trains heading out to Glossop and Hadfield. It has no station staff apart from a ticket clerk on weekday and Saturday mornings who spends his/her whole time behind the ticket office window selling tickets and giving out information when asked at the window.   Following relatively recent investment it now has a visual and audible real time train running information system and also a self-service ticket vending machine.

Now consider just one simple User Need of customers of Broadbottom station and is particularly important to new or infrequent travellers:

“I want to be confident that I am waiting in the right place on the correct platform to board my train quickly and safely and find a comfortable place on the train.”

Note that the described User Need is not expressed in any ‘railway operational language’ and is fundamentally about confidence in access to the service.   

Now picture the setting. At the main entrance to the station from the car park there is a functioning ‘standard’ real time information display indicating next trains – which for most of the day simply alternate between the trains to Manchester and Hadfield.  The display indicates whether each individual train departs from Platform 1 or Platform 2 and whether it is running on time or, if not, its expected departure time. I assume that as long as it is functioning as intended it meets the ‘contract’.  And I do not want to belittle the fact that this information is at least now provided. However, let’s go back to the User Need and draw out a few observations:

1.      Although the information display indicates whether trains go from Platform 1 or 2, the platforms themselves are not numbered! 

2.      From the main station entrance if I am catching a train to Manchester – the predominant destination – I am confronted with a footbridge with no ramps.  There is no information pushed to me on my App, or at the station entrance, to tell me what to do if I have difficulty using the steps – even though the platform I want to use has step free access from a separate road over-bridge.

3.      Although all trains at Broadbottom Station are formed of 3-car trains of a fixed length the stopping area for the train is not specifically identified, and the opportunity therefore to assist easier boarding by marking the places to stand is missed.

My main point in using this trivial example is that I wonder how critically User Needs are appraised, developed into Operational Functional Requirements and linked back to celebrating the success of measuring resultant improvements in customer experience. If success is motivated from delivering contractual compliance, then we should not be surprised that whilst Broadbottom probably passes the test it doesn’t deliver the best customer experience it could with the resources available to it.

Sustainable Economic Growth

By sustainable economic growth I mean medium- and long-term growth in economic prosperity, social inclusion and wellbeing, with lowest reasonable negative environmental impact. Today this latter point is enhanced through the commitments made to achievement of carbon neutrality. These conditions are enabled through many factors ranging from education, skills development and training; attitudes and approach to diversity and inclusivity; access to markets and local and regional planning policies. These concepts are generally well developed and understood at National and Sub-National Government levels and it is not the purpose of this paper to debate them here. 

Railways have the potential to deliver significant benefits that are not captured directly through customer utility and experience and these can be quantified and used in accordance with HM Treasury Guidance and other relevant planning appraisal frameworks.  These non-user benefits are often used to justify capital investments and operational expenditure to procure services made by the public sector where the user-benefits are not sufficient to cover the whole-life costs of the service in question.

One of the challenges, and potential opportunities, I would note in creating an environment for a successful Enterprising Railway is the current lack of linkage back to success measures for the Railway in delivering its contribution to these non-user benefits.

So again, thinking about the local line between Manchester and Glossop what are the specific non-user outcomes that the service is intended to contribute towards, and how could these be better articulated into a ‘scorecard’ which the ‘Railway’s management’ has clarity of ownership of?  

This is not just about the current community engagement practices that have resulted in much improved station and service improvements – enterprising as they are in their own right. Rather it is being clear what quantified outcomes are required in, for example

·        relieving road congestion on the A628/A57/M67 corridor; or

·        enabling access to education, skills development and employment for the communities of Gorton, Hyde or Hattersley; or

·        in achieving a lower carbon footprint for the total service including everything from source generation and transmission of the traction power supplies through to local sourcing of consumables and support services in order to reduce ‘road miles’ associated with distribution or travel

Again my point here is that although these are increasingly well understood issues that need to be addressed, the way to release the full enabling potential of an enterprising culture is to be clear on specifically what outcomes are required at a sufficiently granular level that they are capable of being understood and managed. Then ensuring that a benefits capture plan is developed, managed and reported against to give results which are governed with as much rigour as the direct user benefits and costs.     

Value for Money and Affordability

These two concepts (which are neither novel not the same thing!) are vitally important to put the checks and balances on the two primary outcomes described in the preceding section. 

For me Value for Money is simply about being sure that for every penny or pound of expenditure that either a customer or taxpayer is being asked for that the resulting benefits (both user and non-user) are achieved in the most effective and efficient way. This is probably where this Paper will yield to others who will argue various perspectives on the strengths of different industry delivery models, but I contend that if success is clearly defined as achieving a particular outcome in the most effective and efficient way then there is plenty of enterprising resource which can be harnessed either competitively or collaboratively to deliver success. But to harness this effectively also requires a willingness and confidence to ‘let go’ of many legacy concepts in order to free up the enterprising mind and the associated innovation to come forward in a commercially sustainable way.

Again using the Glossop line as an example I am forced to wonder why for customer utility and experience, and for the non-user benefit contributions to the sustainable economic growth strategy (in this case of the Northern Powerhouse) the Railway could not be delivered as efficiently and effectively as, say, the Metrolink services operating to similar markets within the Manchester city region. Whilst I can already hear the clamour of experts telling me all the reasons as to why a class 323 train from Glossop to Manchester needs two members of staff, and an on board toilet, and why the tram-train is not yet a proven concept beyond South Yorkshire (which as far as I know is actually also a part of the North!), and that the Infrastructure Manager (Network Rail) has national standards to assure, or why there will be a major confrontation with the Trades Unions if changes in working practices were to be contemplated (all of which I acknowledge as real issues) these seem to me to be examples of the very issues that an enterprising culture would be unleashed to address in order to ensure best value for money in achieving the benefits.

A word on affordability – it is worth reminding ourselves that it doesn’t matter how valuable something is if we cannot afford it, we cannot buy it.   So again, for both the customer utility & experience benefits that we are seeking to deliver, and for the wider on-user benefits we wish to capture, there needs to be a realism in prioritising these to affordability even once value for money has been optimised.  

There would have been little point in getting everyone excited about putting a man on the moon if there hadn’t been a commitment to pay for it!

Capability and capacity to enable an Enterprising Railway

This Paper does not seek to reprise the many issues that will have been considered by the recent Williams review of the organisation of Britain’s railways. Whilst its findings have yet to be published and Government will have to determine the acceptability of its recommendations, I would contend that to achieve the Enterprising Railway that itself delivers the success which will ultimately be celebrated by both customers and taxpayers requires:

·        A step change in the capability and capacity of some public sector client organisations (and learning from best practice from organisations such as Transport for London who are arguably more advanced in this space) in defining the strategic outcomes (benefits) that are required of ‘their’ Railways in ways that are clear, objective and capable of being cascaded down to manageable delivery units where responsibility and accountability for achievement is equally clear. This will also require the building of confidence in relinquishing a desire in client organisations to specify the detail of how an outcome is to be achieved. 

·        An environment within which Service Design principles become the norm for defining User Needs – especially in looking proactively to future needs – rather than being totally consumed in either fixing problems associated with customer satisfaction in the ‘here and now’ or seeing anything beyond contractual compliance as being an unrewarded ‘nice to have’.  This also means the Railway really challenging itself to ensure that it negates as far as it can ‘unconscious bias’ from the decades of conventional wisdom of the personas and needs of typical Railway Customers and Staff, and applies an open and welcoming mind in embracing the diversity of People and input that our society is capable of.

If these two enabling conditions are addressed, I have every confidence that there is no shortage of enterprise in the People who will make up the Railway in being able to address the opportunities, and challenges, through innovation and commitment to delivery.

Conclusion

Whilst the Railway is a complex, interdependent system it has the potential to deliver significant enterprise through its People provided there is at every level a set of clear, consistent strategic outcomes that represent what success will look and feel like both rationally and emotionally.

Although the breakdown of the top-level strategic outcomes into the supporting system hierarchies and organisational interfaces is a non-trivial task at the top-level success can and should be defined as simply as possible around

·        Intended Customer Utility and Experience

·        Contribution to wider Sustainable Economic Growth

·        Value for Money and Affordability

By establishing ‘Success Scorecards’ at a sufficiently granular level of ‘the Railway’ it becomes easier to communicate, and ultimately motivate, People to apply their enterprising skills to harness innovation and be committed to delivery – and build a virtuous circle where it is the resulting success which is celebrated and rewarded.

The capability to achieve both definition and delivery of these top-level strategic outcomes is not of itself dependent on the choice of delivery model but does require commitment to resourcing the transformational work required in both client and delivery organisations to achieve this.  It also critically requires proactive management of the key interfaces within the Railway as a system to ensure alignment of outputs through the myriad of contractual interfaces.

March 2020