Thinking about the movement towards continuous improvement as a journey to be undertaken by everyone in the organisation.

Continually improving and then sustaining high levels of performance is a core requirement for public services in the UK. It fact, it is an explicit duty of laid down in the Local Government Act (1999).

Achieving this means taking the organisation on a journey. It is a journey that can only be made successfully by mobilising every member of the organisation and its partners.

Planning, equipping and implementing change in order to met this organisational challenge we have called “Performance Migration”.

‘Successful’ organisations achieve and sustain excellence by inter-weaving customer focused and continuous improvement ways of working. The results are consistently high value performance delivery – in measurable and demonstrable terms, and specifically in terms that are relevant to their stakeholders and customers.

Unlocking the full potential ‘value’ of an organisation means anticipating what is required; having a clear understanding of what has to be managed in order to deliver excellent services; and has to be underpinned with a consistent ability to deploy and manage the delivery itself.

Performance Migration calls for a new approach to management. This means learning and using some new techniques, tools and skills. It leads to working in a more open and flexible management style. In the end, this is the only way to overcome the legacies of entrenched culture and historical organisational values and behaviour.

This is a journey that challenges individuals and organisations alike. Understanding and applying lessons from elsewhere is good starting point for the journey. Applying the learning will demonstrate the organisations true capacity for improvement.

Performance Migration looks at the cultural requirements that can allow shifts, even radical shifts, to be achieved as a series of timely evolutionary acts – mitigating the stress and risks inherent in making one revolutionary big step.

In the book, we also examine some of the reasons that are making traditional organisation designs obsolete. Performance Migration goes on to look at where we can find patterns that will shape future organisational design.

The move to continuous improvement as a core requirement has evolved in leading private sector organisations over the last couple of decades. The ability (or otherwise) to become “customer focused” and “value driven” has been a key determinant of success or failure.

Performance Migration means identifying and implementing strategies that deal with the requirements shift; developing your own organisation’s strengths and capacity in order to match expectations and winning organisational behaviour associated with delivering to the standards of excellence now demanded by central government, employees and customers alike.

The tools and supporting processes have been around long enough for us to assess and select a set that is both robust and comprehensive. Work carried out within commerce and industry has taught us that continuous improvement can be introduced as an evolutionary step, albeit a big step.

Further, it is possible to predict the effect that this will have on the services to customers; the organisation structures; and cost of provision.

In summary, Performance Migration sets out the to address how organisations can begin to “get better at getting better”.