There are lots of good ideas that just don’t work in practice. Sometimes that’s because the people providing the service don’t understand how people use the service. For example, Facebook only made its mobile app really good when Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, banned access to the desktop version in Facebook HQ. Forcing staff to use the mobile app meant they understood what wasn’t working.

Take your team outside the council offices and put them in the shoes of users. For example, if you’re developing a reporting service, go out into the street and get the team to report problems they see.