Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

Control without targets

suggested by Geoffrey Morton-Haworth on 2010/07/14

At a Civil Service Live conference in London last week, David Cameron (the UK’s new Prime Minister) said:
“You need to know, instinctively, what will get a green light or a red light from me. If you want to make our public services more transparent, open them up to make them more diverse, to give people more power and control, you can be confident it will get the green light. But if you want to set targets, set new controls, impose new rules, don’t bother because you’re likely to get the red light.”

Seeking to control without setting targets runs contrary to the ideas of nearly every consulting firm that advised the UK government in the last ten years (and contrary to the ideas of many prestigious US organisations, like the Rensselaerville Institute http://www.rinstitute.org/index.php), not to mention the whole accounting profession.

So what is this all about?

In this piece, I will look at why target setting has failed so dismally in the UK (and continues to fail in the States), and what the alternative – indirect control – looks like. I will link this to a new Web 3.0 technology: the Yala (see www.yalaworld.net).