The Strategic Triangle and Public Value Proposition
Facilitators
Anton Florek
Boudewijn van
Velzen
Coleen
Jackson
Wilfried
Schley
The Context for Adaptive Leadership
A key task of the resourceful leader is to effectively
interpret their context and utilise the resources
available to them to deliver better outcomes for
children and young people. This process is one of
change: shaping and transforming their organisation
and influencing the context in which it operates over
time.
Resourceful leadership: how directors of children’s services improve outcomes for children.
National College/C4EO 2011
FOUR KEY ANALYTIC IDEAS




The “Strategic Triangle”
The “Public Value Proposition (Task Environment)
The “Authorising Environment”
The “Operating Capacity” (Value Chain)
Mark Moore (1995)
WHAT IS PUBLIC VALUE?
For Moore public managers create public value.
“The problem is that they cannot know for sure what
that is. Even if they could be sure today, they would
have to doubt tomorrow, for by then the political
aspirations and public needs that give point to their
efforts might well have changed”
Moore, (1995)
Creating public value is about ensuring that social goals are
delivered in a way that is perceived as:
 Legitimate;
and
 Is trusted by the public
Moore, (1995)
CREATING PUBLIC VALUE

The Private Sector aims to create private value
 Financial Profit

The Public Sector aims to create public value
?
A useful, conditional conception of public value can be
envisioned by public managers if they integrate:
 (1)
substantive judgments of what would be valuable
and effective;
 (2)
a diagnosis of political expectations; and
 (3)
hard-headed calculations of what is operationally
feasible.
Moore, (1995)
CREATING PUBLIC VALUE
“In short, in envisioning public value, managers
must find a way to integrate politics, substance
and administration”. (Moore 1995)
Authorised
Valuable
Done
The strategic triangle model posits that a strategy for a public
sector organisation must meet three broad tests.
It must:
 be aimed at creating something substantively valuable (i.e.
constitute public value);
 be legitimate and politically sustainable (i.e. attract sufficient
ongoing support – and concomitant resources – from the
authorising environment, that is, from political and other
stakeholders taken as a whole, with due recognition of their
differential power); and
 be operationally and administratively feasible (i.e. doable with
the available organisational and external capabilities needed
to produce it)
The Strategic Triangle
Legitimate &
politically
sustainable
Authorising
Environment
Public
Value
Proposition
Operationally &
administratively
feasible
Operating
Capacity
Substantively
valuable
Functions of the Strategic Triangle



To help public managers position their enterprises in
complex, dynamic environments
To focus and distribute managerial attention across their
“Task Environment” and their “Authorising Environment”
To help them envision a sustainable Public Value
proposition to be pursued (Question zero)
The Private Sector aims to create private value
Financial Profit
The Public Sector aims to create Public Value
Who Decides?
THE REALITY OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Incoherent, fickle mandates emerging from a chaotic
authorising environment
Stakeholders / Authorising Environment
People who can say Yes or No or influence those who can say Yes or No
Courts
Parliament
SoS
Local Authority
Chief Executive
Unions
Staff Associations
Director
Media
Direct reports
Lobby Groups
Taxpayers
Same people different views
Citizens
Staff
The Strategic Triangle – Mark Moore
Sources of Support
& legitimacy
Ability to say YES or
NO or to influence
those that can say YES
or NO
Legitimate &
Politically
sustainable
Mission purpose
Question Zero i.e. what is it
that we are trying to
accomplish exactly
Three Key Questions
Authorising
Environment
Operationally &
Administratively
feasible
•
Operating
Capacity
Organised & operated
The manner in which
we organise our
resources and use them
to produce desired
outputs/outcomes
In partnership with:
•
Public
Value
Proposition
Substantively
valuable
•
Is it administratively and
operationally possible?
Is it politically and legally
possible?
Is the purpose publicly valuable?
Supported by:
7
Three Key Activities
Managing downward towards improving the operating capacity for
achieving the desired purpose.
Managing upward, towards politics, to get or maintain legitimacy and
support for that purpose
Judging the value of your imagined purpose
Moore M H (1995) Creating Public Value, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
“OPERATIONAL CAPACITY” AND
THE “VALUE CHAIN”
Operational Capacity:
Assets and capabilities entrusted to manager
(plus those that the manager can influence required
to achieve the desired results)
Value Chain:
Process by which tangible assets like money, social
resources, ideas, etc. are deployed to produce
particular results
THE VALUE CHAIN WITHIN THE “OPERATING CAPACITY”
The boundary of
your own
organisation
Money based
i.e. anything that can be purchased
•buildings
•equipment
•peoples time
Programmes
INPUTS
Authority based
the unique resource
only available to
authorities to obligate
citizens to do what they
would not volunteer to
do
Processes
Procedures
Partners
&
Co-Producers
OUTPUTS
C
L
I
E
N
T
O
U
T
C
O
M
The
E
boundary
S of
your
Operating
Capacity
P
O
L
I
C
Y
O
U
T
C
O
M
E
S
INPUTS & OUTPUTS
Public managers are not limited, as they are in the private
sector, to the provision of goods and services; “often
public managers are in the business of imposing
obligations not providing services."
Probably the public managers most commonly thought to
be engaged in this “retail delivery of obligations” are
those in policing.
Turbitt, (2011)
THREE KEY QUESTIONS



Is it administratively and operationally possible?
Is it politically and legally possible?
Is the purpose publicly valuable?
WHY IS (the concept of) PUBLIC VALUE
USEFUL?
Public value offers a more holistic way of thinking about
goals and performance of public policy. It is a theory
that works comfortably alongside systems thinking and
strategic analysis, and is therefore well-suited to crosscutting work (tackling the so-called ‘wicked-issues’). By
applying a public value test to statements of goals,
outcomes and vision statements, it can aid decisionmaking.
Moore emphasises the ‘co-production’ of outcomes
achieved by public managers and public authorities
working together with their clients. Indeed the essence of
co-production, and thus the successful creation of public
value, is dissolution of the boundaries between client and
provider. The legitimacy of public bodies grows as their
accountability to the public is thereby strengthened.
Public managers should be seen as:
“explorers who, with others, seek to discover, define, and
produce public value. Instead of simply devising the
means for achieving mandated purposes, they become
important agents in helping to discover and define what
would be valuable to do. Instead of being responsible
only for guaranteeing continuity, they become important
innovators in changing what public organisations do and
how they do it.”
Moore, (1995)
The Strategic Triangle and Public Value Proposition
Facilitators
Anton Florek
Boudewijn van
Velzen
Coleen
Jackson
Wilfried
Schley