Expect the Unexpected
Five years ago, a betting man (at least one who was any good) would not have expected Delt to be here at it’s fifth Birthday. Yet on the 1st October 2019, here we are.
Most new businesses fail. 60% of them fail within the first three years. We are twice the size we were on day one and have delivered more financial, more operational and more social benefit than projected. That’s pretty unexpected.
Shared Services can deliver great results but landing one in that Goldilocks zone is tricky. Rather too many fail. A shared service that works? That’s certainly unexpected.
Cross sector partnerships. You’d think that different bits of the public sector would love working together but just like most things in life, you tend to stick with what you know and cross sector partnerships that work (and last) are rare. Yet here we are with the NHS and Local government still working hand in hand for the greater good. That’s unexpected.
Bipartisan initiatives seem nearly impossible (at the time I’m writing this anyway) yet we’ve had political stakeholders from both sides of the House and they’ve all been equally supportive. That’s unexpected.
I started my career, more than 30 years ago, in the public sector. The public sector is brilliant but can be a little frustrating when you want to get things done at pace. I then went to the private sector and reveled in getting things done quickly. The private sector is brilliant but doesn’t always seem to be doing the right thing for the right reasons. I tried both public and private sector on the other side of the Atlantic too. Same brilliance, same frustrations. If only there was a way you could take the mission and the values of the public sector, the absolute commitment to doing the right thing, the driver of working for the greater good and join that up with the pace, agility and fearlessness of the private sector. That would be something truly unexpected. That unexpected thing is Delt. Five years old today and full of enthusiasm for the road ahead. Where it will go nobody knows for sure but whatever happens, we should probably expect the unexpected.
Giles Letheren – Chief Executive Officer
