Crowning achievements

Mike Purvis details how HMRC approached a wholesale organisational transformation, and offers up his top 10 tips

One of the great things about working for HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is the scale of our transformation, which is one of the big building blocks of the cross-civil service SmarterGov work.

It got under way in earnest back in 2015, when the government agreed we could reinvest £1.3bn of savings into a wholesale transformation of our department. The aim is to make HMRC the world’s most digitally advanced tax authority, and this involves modernising almost every aspect of what we do.

That means everything from introducing new digital services for individuals and businesses, and systems and tools for our staff, to replacing an ageing network of more than 100 smaller offices with 13 modern regional centres. Alongside that, we’ve supported some major policy initiatives, including additional support for working parents and even the introduction of the sugar tax.

It’s a massive portfolio of work, which has been recognised as one of Europe’s largest organisational transformations. And it’s making a real difference to the UK.

We’ve improved customer service. Fifteen million people now have an online tax account and are using it for a range of services that mean they no longer have to call us – not bad, given we did it from a standing start two years ago. Meanwhile, our use of data and analytics has helped us collect record amounts of tax – money that funds the essential public services that we all depend on, including schools and hospitals.

Our transformation portfolio involves hundreds of different projects, and the dependencies (particularly where they involve things like data platforms that are used by lots of different projects) make it essential to get the planning and sequencing right. Along with that, you need a very clear and candid assessment of your capability to deliver all of that change, particularly when new work has been added.

As with any portfolio, we’ve had to adapt to changes in the world around us – whether it be the opportunities and challenges that new technology can bring, financial pressures or new political imperatives. For us, the decision to leave the EU brought the work we were already doing on a new customs declaration system to the very top of our agenda and led to the creation of a number of additional transformation programmes.

Our solution to this was to look across the whole of our portfolio in a comprehensive prioritisation exercise. While the impetus for us was Brexit, the principle is the same for any exercise of this type – essentially, you’re working out what the best mix of projects should be. What new projects are needed? What projects do you keep going? What should slow down? And what projects should you stop?

My job, when we first did this at the end of last year, was to run what was quickly dubbed the department’s ‘war room’. Prioritising a portfolio in mid-flight is certainly a challenge, but it’s not impossible, even at the sort of scale we were working at. We learned a great deal from the process and there are some very clear pieces of advice that will apply equally to the private sector, and regardless of scale. My top 10 tips, should you need to do this yourself or in your organisation, are:

Co-location. The first piece of advice is simply to make sure that you bring everyone physically together for a focused period (we took three weeks). The point about physical proximity may seem counter-intuitive given the way that modern organisations – including HMRC – increasingly use digital tools to collaborate and bring people together virtually, but we found this was probably the single biggest factor in our success.
Organisational focus on getting the best answer. The process and senior buy-in enabled us to cut through everyday processes and timelines. Colleagues were able to provide data and work up options and answers faster than they would normally have done. In some cases, work that might have taken weeks to resolve was done the same day, or even within the hour – enormously helped by having everyone together with a common goal and a clear understanding that this was an organisational priority.
Flexible use of space. We chose a large space in our 100 Parliament Street headquarters, because we needed it to be easily accessible by our senior team. This meant they could easily provide steers and make sure that everyone was thinking along the right lines. Like all senior teams, they’re extremely busy people, so we needed to make sure there were no barriers to their participation. Along with this, we secured a number of breakout spaces, which we used for workshopping sessions, often running several at a time. Quieter spaces allowed colleagues to ‘get their heads down’ and work through what could be fairly complex material. Having everyone together in the same space drove the pace of the project, supported communications across the team and really helped with buy-in to the project as a whole – it’s much easier to engender a shared sense of purpose when everyone is working shoulder to shoulder. You definitely need to think about your physical estate.
Care and consideration. The ability to take people to one side for individual or group conversations was invaluable when it came to working through sensitive issues. Physically having people together made it much easier to read non-verbal cues and gauge how things were landing with people. It’s important to remember that driving every programme and project are people who genuinely want to do their best, who are engaged, and who have invested in their work. Broaching changes, delays or even stopping work is best done face-to-face, giving people time to absorb what’s happening and getting them to a place where they can supply the detailed information needed. Always consider the human impact of any change.
Accept help. You may be surprised by the unexpected and generous offers of help that come your way; always be grateful, because your team is going to grow and come together faster than you might have expected. At first it might feel like more help than you can possibly handle, so it’s important to set up a daily rhythm and agree ways of working so you can harness these offers coherently.
Collaboration and preventing bottlenecks. Information bottlenecks can be a big risk, so use collaborative tools from the start. We needed multiple people to contribute to documents at the same time, both in the early days as we brought all of the information together and at the very end as we pulled together our final, agreed position. For this to work, a leader needs to put in place that little spine of organisation from the beginning so everyone can see where, and how, they play their part.
Quality. It’s essential that you set clear bars for the quality of information that you will accept.
Good project disciplines. Our underpinnings were our plan and daily operational rhythm, with a key readout and checkpoint late each afternoon. This brought key players back into the room – whether they’d been working on the prioritisation all day or were simply checking in on progress. It gave us a great opportunity to identify what issues had been cracked, and where more help or support was needed, so we could focus on that for the rest of the day (and through the next), and check progress against the plan.
Atmosphere. Given that the work was pressured, it was important to create a good, productive atmosphere. We found a combination of humour and chocolate kept us on track through some pretty long days.
Ongoing. My final piece of advice would be not to think of a prioritisation as a single event. Given the scale of our work, we’ve decided that we will do them regularly to keep on track. The good news is that the data, experience and collaborative ways of working you forge from the first one makes it much easier from then on.