Public services don’t start with commissioning; they start with someone trying to keep a life together. Come learn with us at Stronger Things! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_strongerthings2026-communitypower-relationalpublicservices-ugcPost-7472545519358148608-BUHc/ – please test our new AI-power thingummy!
Public services don’t start with commissioning; they start with someone trying to keep a life together. Come learn with us at Stronger Things!
By the time that life reaches a commissioning strategy, contract meeting, performance dashboard, or partnership board, a lot has already happened.
A life translated into service language. ‘Service’ translated that into categories, thresholds, pathways, contracts, risk, budget lines, reports. And then we wonder why the work becomes less human, less accurate, less useful.
What are the small translations where real life gets turned into system language in your world?
A form?
Triage?
A referral threshold?
Dashboard categories?
A contract measure?
A panel decision?
Which translations are useful, necessary, or actively damaging?
At Stronger Things today, we offer a practical way in: not another framework for commissioners, not a maturity model or guidebook, or report. Not a procurement tool with nicer words.
The Commissioning Compass is a way of seeing the system more clearly, from the edge. Start with real demand. What are people asking for, in their own words? What is the system itself causing? Where is judgement well used? Where is it blocked? Who can define, decide, resource, challenge, stopm and learn?
Relational public services are not just warmer transactions. Relationships create value. Arrangements either support judgement, trust and learning, or they drag people back into referral, eligibility, waiting, escalation, rework.
Tha’s why commissioning matters. Not because commissioners are in charge. But because commissioning shapes the conditions: what gets funded, measured, what counts as evidence, where authority sits, how risk is held, whether people can adapt, whether systems learn.
We’re sharing three ways to work with this
– smartCompass, our new AI-supported prototype: 16 questions about a system you care about, with a fast personalised AI response to help you see strengths, blockers, patterns and possible next moves
– the Commissioning Compass, free, for deeper team and partnership work
– and our Compass v2.0 beta: commissioning as collective system learning.
More place-based, more explicit about power, learning, and the conditions through which people can live well.
The point is to see what’s happening, find one real place to act, change one condition, and learn.
At a conference about community power, place, neighbourhoods and public service reform, this is the commissioning conversation we need.
Not ‘how do we buy better services?’ but how we help a place form the relationships, capabilities, arrangements and conditions through which people can live well.
Join me online at Stronger Things at 11:40
Commissioning from the edge: using the Commissioning Compass to enable a relational system.
Come to think, reflect, disagree, test it against your own work, and help us improve the tool.
#StrongerThings2026 #CommunityPower #RelationalPublicServices #Commissioning #PublicServiceReform
Links as promised.
I’m at Stronger Things on Tuesday 16 June. You can still join my online session at 11:40: Commissioning from the edge: using the Commissioning Compass to enable a relational system
It’s free for New Local members and community organisations:
Try the smartCompass:
Full Commissioning Compass:
https://link.redquadrant.com/commissioningcompass
Compass v2.0 beta:
https://link.redquadrant.com/compassv2beta
National Commissioning Academy, September 2026:
https://link.redquadrant.com/nextacademy26
Collection of posts on relational public services:
https://link.redquadrant.com/relationalpublicservicesposts
One question I’ll be putting into the session:
If the people closest to the situation know what matters, but cannot decide, act, change the rules, or stop the system doing harm, in what sense is the system outcome-focused?
That is the test I think many ‘relational’ and ‘place-based’ approaches need to face more directly.
chosen path 