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Telford and Wrekin Council and PCT have developed a Health and Well‐being Strategy that includes all health and council services that contribute to this area, including secondary health care. This article describes the challenges that they faced in understanding and agreeing shared priorities and how they used this whole‐systems framework to keep a clear focus on what local people want and need, bringing together and making sense of national policy such as World Class Commissioning and Putting People First.

An overview of all the elements that go into formulating a business strategy – including received wisdom from the gurus, vision and values, ideas on growth, forecasting, information, objectives, audits, customers, markets, competition, finances, structure, training – with the focus on how to make it happen. Directed at practising managers whose task this is. Making strategic plans is the easy bit; enacting them requires changing things, getting things done through people. Discusses learning, training and development, culture, quality, with the emphasis on real people in real businesses. Underpinned by the philosophy of “action learning”.

Of the considerations in formulating the marketing mix there is one element which is often neglected — people. This includes not only customer reaction to the marketing proposition, but also the service provided to the customer. The role of the service giver is central to the analysis of the marketing mix in practical terms.“Putting people first” is described and its potential impact — as it pertains to customers, but, just as important, its impact on staff — is assessed.

There is growing evidence that local authorities are providing care only to those people who are deemed to be the most critically in need, while many people are being forced to rely on informal care at home because they cannot afford their local authority charges. Caroline Bernard and Anna Passingham examine the background to the challenges around care charging, but say that the gap between those who need care services but are unable to access them, must be bridged.

Putting People First and the Social Care Reform Grant have been presented as ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities to get the ‘broken’ social care system fit for purpose. There is a risk that the guidance attached to the reform grant will force councils to focus on the transformation of processes and systems, rather than on what really matters, the transformation of the lives of disabled people. Like in Control, Putting People First locates the problem in ‘resource allocation’ and proposes that councils develop new systems to improve this. An alternative view is that the transformation of the lives of disabled people can be delivered by improvements in the components of the current system. How these improvements can be funded is also considered.

Since the government published Putting People First, there has been a raft of circulars, pilots, policies, reports and strategies bringing the personalisation agenda ever closer. In this article, Oliver Mills puts a finger on the pulse of local authorities and describes the complex challenges and barriers they face as they piece the jigsaw together that will transform the adult social care system for good.

Many organizations are investing much time and effort in the management of quality. A few enlightened ones even have a vision to be the best. G. Howland Blackiston, the president of the Juran Institute, noted recently that, “All around the world companies are waking up to ‘quality’. Everyone is touting quality. Many are attempting it. Some organizations have gotten enviable results by using the concepts of ‘managing for quality’ dramatically to lower their costs, increase their profits and become more competitive in an increasingly competitive market. For these winners, quality has become an integral part of their business strategy”.

Personal budgets are part of the Putting People First agenda in England and are at the heart of the biggest change in social care for decades. This article discusses the rationale and evidence base behind their introduction and focuses on the challenges to moving from small scale pilots to nationwide implementation.

Management theory and practice have been developed mostly based on Western capitalist principles and imported into other nations. Some of these nations have their own indigenous principles though these are less well known. This chapter presents the values and concepts of Ubuntu and Batho Pele, both prominent business doctrines originally applied in the South African context.

Many scholars have pointed out the notion of Ubuntu as a philosophy that encompasses the beliefs, values, and behaviours of most South African people. It is a spirit of humaneness, caring and community, harmony, hospitality, and mutual respect among individuals and groups. It shows in the thinking and behaviour of African people towards others. Batho Pele, literally meaning ‘people first’ is a concept emanating from the Ubuntu principle that means putting other people ahead of one’s needs. It started with the drive to put others first, propagated from the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994. This idea of prioritising others’ needs then gave rise to various service delivery policies, for example, the 1997 Batho Pele White Paper. Batho Pele, as adopted from Sotho–Tswana languages, was an initiative introduced by the Mandela administration to change the public service at all levels to be more focussed on continuously delivering and improving on excellent service.

HR must take responsibility for putting the fun back into work if they wish to attract a younger workforce, argues Professor Richard Scase.