The Leisure Review: February 2008

It is time to move on. We've had the 4 Cs and now it’s time for the 3 Ds. What are they? They were devised by a man of letters and are essentially a three-dimensional approach to ensure that things get done under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). The letters themselves stand for Decide, Drive and Deliver.

Every organisation needs to have a team of people that are ultimately responsible for deciding what needs to be done. Decision-making is vital to the overall process; without decisions we go nowhere. This team is the policy-makers, and could be a management board or the council. Their policies should be based on the results from the 4 Cs exercise and they should produce the long-term strategy.

The Drive part is undertaken by the 'doers'. They could be an executive board or a team of movers and shakers whose remit is to pick up the policies that have been established by the Deciders and drive them through. They are responsible for producing the action plans and the performance indicators. The people in this team need to be good at getting things done, and not just talking about them.

The third D – Deliver – is all about monitoring and ensuring that the Deciders’ policies are in line with the wishes of the community, that there is probity and that the Drivers are meeting their targets. The people in this team need to be thorough and would be described as completer-finishers in Dr Belbin’s world. All three teams operate in a three-dimensional way in that they all need to relate to each other and to the community that they serve. This will mean regular meetings and reviews to ensure that everything is on track and that we are all moving convincingly to the 2 Es – Efficiency and Effectiveness.

Of course we could save a lot of time and just call them client, contractor and auditor, and actually let them get on with the job that they are paid for, but where would the fun be in that?

So we have moved from 4 Cs to 3 Ds to 2 Es. The logical next step is one F. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what that will stand for.

Ken McAnespie is the principal consultant of KMC Consultancy, a founder member of Green Flag Award and a member of the Joint Committee for Landscape Industries.