My 50th year in seven days: part 2

The story so far...I was working in the public sector and starting to question whether the work I was doing was making any difference and if this was what I was meant to be doing with my life... and now for the next instalment:

Being constantly unappreciated is possibly the biggest issue with working in the public sector. You are unappreciated big-time, both by your political masters and the people you serve. Near enough everything you do is viewed through the spectacles of discontentment. If what you do can be clearly identified by the stakeholders (jargon in the public sector meaning those interested enough in what you are doing to complain about it) as meeting a need, then there is never enough provision to satisfy the demand.

On the other hand if what you are doing meets the needs of someone other than the vocal minority, then you are wasting public money. Worst still, if you do manage to get it right the politicians take all the credit, however if anything goes wrong is always your fault, whether it's your fault or not it's your fault. I used to say to my team; the sooner you accept that it will always be our fault the faster you can move on and get on with doing the job we are here to do.

The final project I worked on involved emptying a large inner city housing estate consisting of over 1500 homes. Over the years approximately half of the residents had moved out and the remaining 600+ families were the most vulnerable and excluded members of the community. My job was to create a system to move these people without resulting in any major reputational damage to my employers. Two previous large-scale estate re-housing programs had ended in high-profile tragedies; the senseless murder of a young boy and a woman being shot dead at a christening party. Naturally my employers were desperate for this not to be repeated.

The scheme I designed and implemented put the people at the core because it's the people that matter. If you take care of the people, ensure that their needs and issues are being met, everything else follows. The scheme was highly successful. We moved over 600 families within two years, something previously unheard of in re-housing and we only had to use our repossession powers a handful of times, i.e. force people to move using legal powers.

It worked, putting people at the heart of the issue worked. The residents were happy, my staff were happy and the politicians – they have moved on. They wanted bigger, flashier, sound bites and the election was coming. Suddenly everything was our fault again. Nothing bad has happened nothing had gone wrong, it's just that we didn't fit the profile anymore. We weren’t sexy enough.

To be continued tomorrow