I’ve sometimes been asked to give advice about scrutiny best practice.

What I’ll say is sorry, I’m not sure there is any. Even good practice might be a bit of a stretch. Let me explain in case this sounds strange.

The key thing here is context.

I’ve seen enough scrutiny to know that everywhere is different. The places are different, the councils are different, the committees are different, the people are different, the rules are different and perhaps most important of all, the cultures are different.

Do you know Pawson and Tilley’s book ‘Realistic Evaluation’?

It explains very nicely how, for mechanisms to lead to outcomes, they must have the right context. Just as gunpowder has the potential to explode but will only do so in the right conditions.

So, it is with scrutiny practice - something (a mechanism) that works perfectly well for one committee might not work for another.

Take pre-meetings, for example. Whilst I know some committees who couldn’t get by without them, others find them awkward and unnecessary, preferring to do their preparation in different ways.

Do I think pre-meetings are ‘good practice’? Yes. But I also don’t think you should force yourself to eat something if it makes you feel bad.

So, if you are a looking for ways to improve, how might you go about it?

First, I think it’s useful to pay attention to what’s working well for you already. After all, we know that these are the things that definitely do work in context.

And this is not something we always do well - we easily notice the things that don’t work as they grate with us, but we spend less of our attention on the things that do. Development sessions, annual reporting processes, ‘wash-up’s at the end of meetings are all good opportunities to ask, ‘what went well?’ And ‘what might we do more of?’ And we might ask others as well, those that come to meetings, that take part in inquiries, to help build a richer picture.

But what about the things that are working well for others? Of course we are going to be curious about that. After all, there are maybe new things that we can try. Right?

Well, yes, of course, but let’s be careful about how we frame this. What works for them, in their context, might not work for us, in ours.

I picked up a nice way of sharing the “good practice” of others from Evan George at BRIEF solutions.

When I’m sharing examples I’ll say, ‘here are some things that others find helpful’, taking care to say these are things that might not work for you. There is no 'expert' saying 'you should do this'.

Indeed, dear scrutineer, you are in the expert in how things work with you in your place, and you will be the best judge of whether things are likely to be worth trying.

And trying is the right idea here. After all, new practice is always an experiment, we won’t really know if something will be helpful for us until we see it working in our own unique context.

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If you want to comment or see any other comments, I've posted this reflection on LinkedIn here.
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