'Management can't control what goes on in your head'

I wonder whether the political discourse might have undergone a change in direction this past week.

The debate around Baby P and the operations of social work departments has thrown up some surprising pleas for professionals to be allowed the room to exercise professional judgement. Surprising, because the more usual response to failures or perceived failures in public services has been to call for even greater oversight and control of the teachers or doctors or social workers or whoever in the front line.

There was a fascinating discussion on last Wednesday's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (for a limited time it can be heard here, with the permanent Today pages here) in which London School of Economics social policy academic Eileen Monroe declared, refreshingly, that 'management can't control what goes on in your head, which is where the real work gets done, so what they focus on is what they can see, and that comes down to filling in forms and holding meetings'.

Monroe remarks that in the case of Baby P, 'Haringey has a beautiful paper trail of how they failed to protect this baby' - a satisfyingly concise indictment of the now almost universal dependence of politicians and managers on spreadsheets for their view of reality.

'It's the quality of thinking we have to improve - not the quality of data entry' says Monroe. If this maxim were now to guide policy and practice in the public sector then the quality of services, morale of the staff and efficiency of delivery would be revolutionized overnight.