A huge penny dropped for me when I was MD of Coca-Cola. One of the many business ‘gurus’ I met told me, “Your organisation is perfectly aligned to the results you are achieving.” This feels like a statement of the blindingly obvious. Yet I have found the implications to be quite profound. If you want to achieve a different result, you have to change the organisation; if you want a very different result, you have to change the organisation a lot.

Changing the organisation

Over the next few years, public funding of courses for adults will reduce significantly. Colleges of further education will be required to become more efficient and more responsive to the needs of their students and employers. Some colleges will respond positively to the challenges and take the opportunity to review all aspects of the way they operate. They will focus their educational mission, develop alternative income streams and become stronger, more independent institutions. The desired results are changing, so the organisations that deliver them will have to change too.

Unlike schools or hospitals, there are currently no ‘approved’ alternative models (such as academies, trusts or foundations) for colleges wishing to become more independent and flexible. I believe that colleges will need a new constitution for this new era in further education.

Mutual gains

Independent colleges are a form of employee mutual. Staff own a part of the organisation via an employee trust, and both staff and students hold seats at the ‘top tables’ of the governing body and the management board. This empowers staff and incentivises them to focus on the success of their college, which they effectively share. It also puts the student at the heart of key decisions that affect them. Independent colleges receive public funds to deliver the government’s priority learning and training. They also receive income from fees charged to individuals and employers and they have access to private capital. This all gives them the means to fulfil their educational, social and economic mission.

New thinking

Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In other words, we must come up with new – even radical – ways of delivering public services. The coalition is not just giving us permission to do things differently; it is actively encouraging us to innovate.

The key will be to see the opportunities in the changes and challenges. To let go of the things that have been preventing us from providing services in ways we know will work better. To build, from the bottom up, a new public service based on new models. We can improve both the efficiency and effectiveness with which public services are delivered by taking a new approach and by harnessing the passion and commitment of our staff to national and international best practice. That seems to me like a big opportunity.

Chris Banks is former Chair of the Learning and Skills Council and Managing Director of Coca-Cola GB. He is currently Chair of the Public Chairs’ Forum and founder of VOCADEMIX, Big Thoughts in Education.

The Public Chairs’ Forum (PCF) has worked with law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (RPC) to produce the report, Alternative models for service delivery. It has also worked with RPC and the Institute for Government on a follow-up report on mutualisation, which will be published shortly. Both reports contain practical advice on radically reorganising public services.