英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）中，民众对全科医生诊疗及医院就诊的满意度正逐步提升。
Satisfaction levels are rising in the NHS when talking about GP and hospital visits.
摄影：Nick Moore/Alamy 菲利普·因曼指出，无论是NHS还是私营行业，衡量成功的标准都应是客户满意度，而非仅仅完成规定流程。安迪·伯纳姆曾表示希望对经济体系进行“全面改造”，但随后又似乎踩下刹车，将多数改革措施推迟至2030年代实施。
Photograph: Nick Moore/Alamy Phillip Inman In the NHS as in the private sector, the measure of success should be customer satisfaction and not just box-ticking Andy Burnham said he wanted to “rewire” the economy. Then he seemed to slam on the brakes, kicking most reforms into the 2030s.
地方行政体系重组以及饱受诟病的供水行业改革均暂时搁置；社会照护服务与重大福利制度改革则需由下届政府来解决。
Local government reorganisation is on hold, along with an overhaul of the much-maligned water industry. Social care and significant welfare reform are matters to be resolved by the next government.
鉴于相关问题错综复杂，改革延迟尚可理解；不过左派阵营试图用“重新国有化”取代“全面改造”这一说法，也引发了诸多批评，被指会让英国倒退回20世纪70年代。然而，既然如今已有充足的知识储备，完全可以着手实施那些能在2029年大选前重新赢得公众信任的变革措施，此时再拖延便毫无必要了。
A delay is understandable when the issues are knotty and plans on the left to replace the word “rewire” with “renationalise”, stir up accusations of taking Britain back to the 1970s. And yet delay is unnecessary when the knowledge is available now to get on with the kind of changes that rebuild public trust in time for a 2029 election.
实现成功其实有多种迂回途径，而衡量成功的标准始终应是客户满意度。若缺失这一目标，改革便无从谈起。
There are oblique ways of achieving success, and the measure of success should be customer satisfaction. Without this aim, the hopes of reform are lost.
经济学家约翰·凯爵士是牛津大学圣约翰学院的院士，也曾担任财政研究所所长，他极力倡导各类组织牢记自身存在的意义——即服务于大众需求。这意味着这些组织的首要目标就应当是提升客户满意度。在私营行业中，利润自然会随之而来；在公共部门中，则能实现资源节约。
The economist Sir John Kay, a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is a keen advocate of organisations that remember for whose benefit they exist. That means their primary aim should be to achieve customer satisfaction. In the private sector, profits will follow. In the public sector, there will be savings.
在《迂回制胜》一书中，约翰·凯指出那些将股东价值作为首要目标的公司最终都走向了失败；而那些致力于打造优质产品的企业则收获了长期成功。
In his book Obliquity Kay shows how those companies that pursued shareholder value as their primary aim failed. And those that wanted to produce the best product secured long-term success.
正如对股东价值的过度追求——这一衡量投资者收益的财务指标——曾让无数企业走向衰亡一样，公共部门若仅依靠既定规程行事、却忽视对实际工作内容的深入理解，同样会导致成效不佳与资源浪费。
Just as a devotion to shareholder value – a financial metric of the benefit to investors -proved a blind alley for thousands of now-deceased companies, so the reliance on protocols in the public sector as a substitute for understanding the task in hand leads to failed outcomes and wasted money.
如今，英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）已经可以看到这一成效：患者对全科医生和医院就诊的满意度正在提升。新的预约系统虽然存在不足，但人们发现医生更容易约到，尤其是全科医生和门诊服务。
You can see it now in the NHS, where satisfaction levels are rising in relation to GP and hospital visits. The new system for booking appointments has its drawbacks, but people are finding doctors are available more quickly, especially for GP and outpatient appointments.
从妇产科部门管理者对不断上升的死亡率进行掩盖的行为中，我们也能看到其失败之处。
You can see the failures in the from the cover-ups by maternity unit managers of rising mortality rates.
无论是成功还是失败，都不能归因于对医疗服务的监管。监管只是额外增加的一层成本，而事实证明，这种监管屡次削弱了生产效率——要么因为私营机构和管理者发现可以钻系统空子，要么因为它抑制了创新。
Neither the success nor the failure can be attributed to the regulation of the health service. Regulation is an extra layer of cost that has, time after time, been shown to undermine productive behaviour, either because private providers and managers find they can game the system or it stifles innovation.
另一个例子可以在两个互不相关的政府机构中找到。上周，英国环境署表示将资助种植五十万棵树，并向地方议会、市长及其他政府机构提供资金以执行这项工程。这显然是一件好事，不是吗？
Another example can be found in two unconnected government agencies. Last week, the Environment Agency said it would fund the planting of half a million trees, giving funds to councils and mayors and other government bodies to carry out the work. Surely this is a good thing?
英国国家公路局曾在2020年沿剑桥北部A14公路扩建路段种植了85万棵树苗，但其中四分之三都枯死了。
National Highways planted 850,000 saplings in 2020 along a widened stretch of the A14 north of Cambridge – but three-quarters of them died.
照片：Sean Smith/The Guardian 另一方面，当英国主要的道路建设机构——国家公路局在2020年沿剑桥北部A14公路扩建路段种植了85万棵树苗，却在三年后的一份内部审查中报告称，其中四分之三已经死亡时，你或许会觉得这完全是时间和金钱的浪费。这些失败反映的是公共部门各机构和部门的工作方式。监管只会加剧那种“打勾式”文化，这种文化只关心：“你是否遵循了流程？如果遵循了，一切就都没问题。”
On the other hand, you might think it a complete waste of time and money when National Highways, the main road builder in England, planted 850,000 saplings in 2020 along a widened stretch of the A14 north of Cambridge, only to report three years later, in an internal review, that three-quarters of them had died These failures are about the way public sector departments and agencies go about their work. Regulation only adds to a tick-box culture that asks: “Did you follow the protocol? If so, everything’s fine.”
从前公务员兼英格兰银行副行长乔恩·坎利夫爵士，到上议院工业与监管机构委员会，英国政坛的知名人士都相信，答案在于加强监督。
Eminent figures in Whitehall, from the former mandarin and Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe to the House of Lords industry and regulators committee believe the answer is more intensive oversight.
跳过新闻简报推广内容后，凯列举了许多公司成功发展的例子：这些公司的董事会由一群更专注于提供最佳服务或产品、而非将股东回报作为首要指标的人所主导。在这些实现扩张的公司中，利润和市场份额等指标并非核心衡量标准。
Kay has many examples of companies that grew because the boardroom was dominated by people who were more obsessed about delivering the best service or product than rewarding their shareholders as the chief metric. Profits and improvements in things such as market share were not the dominant metrics in companies that expanded.
飞机制造商波音公司曾在追逐季度盈利目标而迷失方向之前取得了成功。而英国曾经最大的工业公司ICI，则因将更高的股市估值作为主要目标，最终被拆分并逐渐式微。
The aircraft maker Boeing succeeded before it lost its way chasing quarterly profit targets. ICI, once the UK’s largest industrial company, was broken up and faded away after a higher stock market value became the main target.
管理顾问约翰·塞登支持凯对成功组织所需要素所做的详尽而深入的分析。他的先锋咨询公司已将丰田的系统方法进行了本土化应用。塞登以务实的系统化方法为这一理论注入了实践意义，这种方法曾帮助朴茨茅斯市议会的住房部门凭借其维修服务赢得国际奖项。
The management consultant John Seddon, whose Vanguard consulting firm has adapted the Toyota systems method, supports Kay’s studiously well-informed analysis of what it takes to make a successful organisation. Seddon puts flesh on the bones with the kind of practical systems approach that has helped Portsmouth city council’s housing department win international awards for its repairs service.
他观察到，公共部门管理领域出现了许多新举措，从宏大的战略到将服务与私营部门进行基准比较的常规方案，但所有这些尝试都未能改善公共服务。
He has seen many new initiatives in public sector management from grand strategies to more prosaic schemes for benchmarking services against the private sector. All have failed to improve services.
塞登并不主张完全废除监管。他表示，基于组织实现其宗旨能力的监管，可以避免监管“滞后于事件发展、马已跑远才关马厩门”的长期问题。
Seddon is not in favour of ditching regulation altogether Regulation based on how well an organisation achieves the purpose will, he says, avoid the persistent problem of regulation “running behind events, shutting the stable door after another horse has bolted”.
他补充道：“明确阐述组织宗旨，将使监管机构能够在发现某组织损害其既定宗旨时，立即采取制裁措施。”
He adds: “Having a clear statement of purpose will enable regulators to apply sanctions immediately if and when an organisation is found to be undermining its allotted purpose.
“现在是时候将公务员从我们现行监管方式所构筑的怀疑与不信任的牢笼中解放出来，这种监管方式贬低了他们的专业精神，并将他们视为问题的一部分，而非解决方案的积极创造者。”伯纳姆的团队应避免让关于所有权的争论占据主导地位——这违背了“私有制有害，公有制有益”这一原则。他们应更密切地研究公共部门组织如何实现更好的成果。相关证据已经存在，他们无需远求。
“It is time to liberate public servants from the prison of suspicion and distrust that our current method of regulation locks them in, demeaning their professionalism and casting them as part of the problem rather than as active creators of solutions.”Burnham’s staff should avoid letting the debate about ownership dominate – ignoring a maxim that says “private bad, public good.”. They should work more closely on how public sector organisations achieve better outcomes. The evidence is available. They don’t need to look very far.