Category captains for change

I ran a workshop at the NCVO Autumn Conference on Friday.  The keynote speaker at the conference was James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

He's a bit of a rising star in the Government - he even has fans in the blogosphere - so it was good to hear what he had to say first hand.  As you'll know I'm not that keen on the ministerial set-piece at third sector events - it often seems a bit pointless and makes me feel like I'm in the Soviet Union.  But I have to say that I was impressed by him - an understated style, and a firm grasp of how voluntary and community sector organisations can get involved in his line of work.  

He talked a fair bit about what the DWP is doing to enable private and third sector providers to deliver services - like services helping people to get back to work.  One of their big ideas is to develop a group of Prime Providers - organisations who will take a lead in helping to find other providers to deliver services. The thinking, it seems, is that they will be better placed than Whitehall bureaucrats to find people who can deliver what's needed.

It sounds good.  I've often thought that bureaucrats (get ready for a sweeping generalisation) can be good at working out how to make things happen internally (ie getting policy through) but tend not to be very good at making sure that good things happen to implement the policy.  So having someone external take the lead sounds like a good plan.

And I think, potentially, it is a good plan.  But I do have my concerns.  On the train home I thought about it more and I was struck by the parallels with category management in supermarkets.

Let me explain - or more to the point - let Joanna Blythman (in her excellent book Shopped) explain:

"Nowadays, all the big retailers...use category management.  A category is not a single product line, but a group - not tinned tomatoes, for instance, but all tinned vegetables.  The supermarket looks around for a household name in the category - usually a leader in the field - a player with enough manpower to do the job - and appoints it category "captain" or "partner".  The captain is charged with managing the category in partnership with the retailer.  The captain's job is to look at the category and design an "offer" that makes money for the retailer while giving a carefully constructed choice to the consumer."

Do you see the similarities?  My interest is in Blythman's analysis of the impact of category management. Some of the consequences, she suggests, include:

• The category captain's position in the market is strengthened - particularly in relation to competitors
• Small suppliers end up managed out of the system because the category captain considers them too much hassle to deal with
• Risk is passed down the supply chain - away from the supermarket 
• Less choice for consumers as the category becomes dominated by safe, big-selling, mainstream brands 

I'll be honest, I don't know the detail of how the DWP plans to implement this (if anyone does, please let me know) - but I can only assume that it's inspired by category management.  It will be interesting to see who ends up as Prime Providers (category captains).  In retail, they tend to be big businesses with the capacity to take on such a role.  So, for example, in the cheese category, they'll be the producer of cheap block cheddar.  Now if you're a producer of artisan cheese, you're probably a bit worried - as there's a fair chance that the block cheddar guy will know very little about the ins and outs of your business.

Do social enterprises tend to be more block cheddar or Stinking Bishop?  Many - not all - tend to be the latter - niche suppliers meeting a specific market need.  We need to ensure that the category captains don't lose sight of their value.  

Comments

[Alan Green]

Rob the idea of prime providers has been around in DWP and Jobcentreplus for some time now and i gues it does use the key partner principle you mentioned sort of a captain of the team. But alas its fairness is in question becuase the cash hungry leaders of the pack dont play ball, instead the reality is in many cases quite different. To expand, in my experience when it comes to writng funding bids the captains foster good relationshiips with the third sector team players and give us all the team play talk backed up with promises of rewards. Off goes the bid, Prime contractor appointed, team suspended ? The reality is that in many, but not all, cases the retoric is different from the reality. Indeed one such Prime contractor in the North East uses a local community centre, who struggle to survive, as its base for one of its programmes and despite the orignal rehtoric they pay nothing. Of course the DWP have a huge part ot play here they could police their contracts far better and also provide a procedure for third sector organisations to lodge appeals or complaints regarding none compliance. Alas i also have ot say that far more third sector organisations could see themsellves as the captain and not a poor friend of the team. The prime contractor model is sound in theory but the practice is in question.

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks Alan, that's interesting. I suppose for me it's a reminder once again of the imperfections of the market. The reason I think the category captain analogy is useful is that it points us to potential problems with the Prime Provider approach. For me that's not a reason not to do it. Instead it should help us to anticipate where there might be problems - so that you can intervene (or at least monitor closely) so that when things don't go to plan, you're on the ball and can step in.

I think there's an issue sometimes in that existing State-run systems are often so flawed, so that a shiny new solution can look so perfect - and we forget to remain critical of the new approach for fear of appearing anti-progress. Clearly the impact you outline above wouldn't be the one that people had in mind.

[Ted Harvey]

I'm struck by the similarities between what you post about 'prime providers' and the Scottish (SNP) Government's controversial proposals on affordable housing development programmes.

Their assertion is that the is a need to rationalise and consolidate the number of developers and garner economies of scale from larger programmes. The way to do this, allegedly, is to have large regional-wide programmes (similar to England's?) each with a 'lead developer'.

The lead developer will act as host developer for a range of smaller providers. The assumption is that we are here all still talking about housing associations, but that is where the con troversy begins.

A particular worry I have is over the language - why suddenly have the SNP invariably used the term 'affordable housing' and seemingly ignored 'social rented', or even 'affordable rented'?

Maybe associated with the language issue, the SNP has suggested that the lead could be a private developer. Moreover, you know, just somehow know, that the big losers in all this will be the myriad of smaller community controlled housing associations. Their pesky wee 'local' schemes with all that goody-goody stuff about community engagement (I'm being ironic!) will be seen as a distraction from the grander big schems.

Some critics are also arguing that the larger regional programmes have anyway not delivered the anticipated savings - I have no idea if that is true.