The power of purpose and positivity in prioritisation

Earlier this month in my Analysis in Government talk I told you how we’ve been making statistics better in Scottish Government, and the elements to our approach can be adapted by all analysts.

Better statistics in Scotland

We developed strategic priorities for our statisticians with four key areas of how they can improve their statistics: users, efficiency, data and people. The main things to improve across these areas will look different for different teams, so it’s up to them what they choose to prioritise. For example, for some it might be finding out what users need through user engagement activity. For others it might be creating efficiencies by developing reproducible analytical pipelines, or developing shorter and more impactful publications. The purpose of the priorities is to help statisticians prioritise and focus on improvement work that adds the most value while seeking to deprioritise work that adds less.

We’ve had strong buy in to our approach from many different senior stakeholders including Ed Humpherson, the Director General for the Office for Statistics Regulation. We’ve also seen early success from our statisticians having this improvement focus front and centre helping them to break out of reactive and routine work.

I spoke about how my unit in the Office of the Chief Statistician evolved its role to focus on communication and development activity for the priorities. This includes delivering Teams presentations and writing blog posts to get the main messages of the priorities across, which helps statisticians make the right choices for them what to prioritise. Our comms activity is instrumental in embedding the priorities and improvement ethos among the stats community.

Agreeing what to deprioritise?

I got a lot of questions after the talk that I didn’t get time to answer, and many of them centred on the question of resistance to efforts to deprioritise and lack of agreement on what should be stopped or deprioritise.

My answer to this is much of it comes from an understanding of our roles, and how, as we put it in the priorities ‘focus on our purpose’. If we have a clear understanding of what we’re about individually and as an analytical team it becomes easier for us to identify what adds greater and less value.

Impartiality and transparency

One thing that unites all government analysts in terms of our purpose is that are impartial, and it is our job to provide the evidence free from interference. Statisticians also have a duty to produce statistics for the public good as per the Code of Practice, which means that we have a responsibility to cater for a range of users, not just Government. We need to live this, and be ready to push back against work that does not align with our purpose and our plans.

We can do this by being transparent and upfront in our communication with users. Last year we commented on our Scottish Government stats blog that statistics producers have the best ‘helicopter view’ of the landscape in which their statistics are produced and used:

“[Statisticians] have the best oversight of the data, resources, user needs and processes to produce statistics. They know how easy or difficult it is to accommodate new analysis, and judge its overall value for users.”

We need to convey this to help users of our analysis understand our limitations and range of needs we’re catering for.

The human challenge

But it is difficult to say no. We might think we won’t satisfy the needs of users of analysis when deprioritising work. We can fear the reaction we might get if we push back or seek to make changes. I felt extremely nervous about launching our strategic priorities as I was expecting a backlash within the profession. But, I was pleasantly surprised how positively they were received both analysts and non-analysts.

Much of this speaks to the mindset we have. I think to the story of Roger Bannister who was the first person to run a mile in four minutes. At the time it was considered physiologically impossible to do it. Bannister believed that it was possible, and he altered his training approach to incorporate mental as well as physical preparation. On May 6 1954 he ran the mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, smashing the myth. Just 46 days later, another runner, John Landy, also broke the 4-minute barrier. Then many others followed. It shows the barrier was psychological rather than physical. Once someone believed it could be done and showed it could be done it changed what others believed about their own limits.

This is why our work on the priorities is about developing strong and resilient leaders in our profession that believe they can push back when required and navigate the challenges of bringing forward change. My team is providing support to our profession on this, including our highly recommended Fit for the Future statistics leadership programme I spoke about last year at Analysis in Government month.

Wherever you are in the Analysis Function I encourage you to think about what you and your teams’ purpose is. Does all the work you do fully aligns with that? If not, what levers do you have to change that?

Our experience in Scotland shows what is possible with the right mindset, communication and support.