Holding each other to account

Topics: accountability, performance

I mentioned the other day that I was at an event. One of the interesting things I picked up was the idea of Kipling's friends. What are Kipling's friends? Well, they're not the juicy sultanas that make his cakes so exceedingly good. It's a line from one Rudyard Kipling's poems:

"I keep six honest serving men: They taught me all I knew: Their names are
What and Why and When and How and Where and Who”

Pete Franklin from Bristol City Council, uses Kipling's friends to help scrutiny councillors structure their questions about performance. It's simply a prompt, but a useful one - especially for new councillors in strengthening accountability within the council.

I shared this in the PMMI discussion forum and got some useful tips, here's what I came up with:

Why is performance below target?
-Are you sure?
-Is there any other reason?
Is this indicator an appropriate measure of performance?
-What else should we know?
What are the implications of not meeting this target?
-Will this affect our corporate priorities.
-Will it affect our partners?
-Is there an impact on other targets?
-Is there an impact on equalities, sustainability or efficiency?
What performance do you predict for the next month/quarter?
-How good was your forecast last time?
-Have you identified all the risks to achievement?
How will performance be improved?
-Will that fix it?
-When will it be achieved?
Who is responsible for improving performance?
-Can other services or teams contribute to improvement?
What happens if performance doesn't improve?
-Will additional funding/ resources be needed? Can you move them from elsewhere?
-How will underperformance be addressed?
What decision do you need us to take?
-What do we need to know to make a decision?
-What are the risks in the assumptions we might make?

But it got me to thinking about whether there are any similar tools for supporting accountability within partnerships and between partners. Questioning styles in partnerships will no doubt be different. Has anyone come up with something that's helpful?


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