Wednesday 30 November

Wow things are moving at a pace – my feet don’t seem to be touching the ground much at the moment...

Last Friday we held the first two manager forums in Salisbury. About 120 managers attended from right across the organisation and county. It was great to meet everybody, describe who we are and what we’re each about and for us to set out why we have adopted such a radical leadership model. We then talked about the cross cutting themes by which we will manage the organisation, the key deliverables in our first 90 days, the changes that we will all experience from the transformation programme including campuses and finally 2012 – a year of celebration, with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee. Both very important events for Wiltshire. We concluded with over an hour of questions and answers which is always good – it gets us all thinking and hopefully understanding.

There was a buzz about the events that I haven’t sensed for a while in Wiltshire and all managers fed back that they supported the new model and thematic working. I found this very encouraging. The next two sessions are on Monday in Chippenham, so I look forward to seeing some of you then. The events for all 5,000 staff start in mid-January.

Yesterday I met up with front line staff. It’s always good to catch up with what’s happening, brief staff on some of the larger issues such as the budget and campuses and find out what the “word on the street” is. We plan to expand these type of informal meetings from the new year and hold them weekly in each of the hubs. I’m looking forward to that.

Speaking about the budget we had an excellent informal session with Cabinet last week. It was the first real test for the three Corporate Directors. We took a balanced proposal to members almost two months ahead of where we were last year. The finance teams have done a great job – thank you all for that – and at the end of the discussion we were still just about balanced. We’re now working on the delivery plans associated with our proposals.

That’s probably enough for now. I’m in London for three days next week so we’ll talk again early the following week.

For daily updates, discussion, opinion and comment you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand
Thanks for reading.

Carlton

18 November 2011

It’s Children in Need day today – always fun and exciting and a somewhat unpredictable prospect. I hope you all have a good day and that we raise a lot of money for children and young people, both in the UK and across the world. A couple of events to note if I may. Mark Stone will be having his head shaved in the chamber at 10am so long as we have more than £250 raised. At the last count it was way past this, so bring him on...

I shall be drawing the raffle in the East Wing at 12 noon. We have more than 70 prizes up for grabs so if you haven’t bought a ticket yet, please do so – It’s such a good cause.

You will have seen the council operating model or structure chart published yesterday. It was important to get this agreed with Cabinet and published quickly – I noticed last night that it’s even on our web site.

The important thing to say is that the three corporate directors will be focussing much less on structure in the future. We won’t be using it to manage the business per se, but of course it is important for line management reasons such as objectives and appraisals, etc. The important point to consider are the cross cutting themes. The full list is still under development but will include:

• Culture, behaviour, leadership
• Business plan
• Communities
• Transformation
• Planning peer review action plan delivery
• Highways and amenities commissioning
• Economic development
• Health
• Promoting democracy
• Vulnerable families and safeguarding
• Organisational performance

We will lead the organisation through these themes – because these are the issues that matter to our communities, customers and our elected members. This will also ensure we start to break down the boundaries that pop up between professional groups and departments. I’d like to encourage you to feedback on this concept, because we need your views and opinions. Please email any of the corporate directors.

For daily updates, opinion and all sorts of things, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand

Thanks for reading, and talk again next week.

Carlton

11 November 2011

First off, my apologies for not blogging for a couple of weeks. It’s been busy and I thought it best to let the dust settle after the appointment process last week. That said, I’m hugely excited to have come through that process and have spent the last week or so working with my two fellow corporate directors – Sue and Carolyn - on our plans to take the organisation forward and to deliver for our elected members. We have agreed the new council structure with Cabinet and will be sharing this with ELT and the organisation from Monday.

We want to work in a different way. Rather than a departmental focus, we have identified a number of cross cutting themes which are important to our customers, communities and members. Our focus, and that of the service directors who make up ELT – the extended leadership team - will be to work across the organisation on these themes to ensure we deliver quickly. This will also enable us to embed the new values, behaviours and culture that many of you have been involved in developing over the last few months. More of this next week.

Today I shall be working with Sue and Carolyn on our operating model for the organisation and most importantly on the critical success factors for our first 90 days in our new roles. This is an important period for the organisation as we seek to capitalise on the new leadership arrangements in place and ensure we are on track to achieve our objectives.

This week’s full council meeting was a marathon ten hour session in the City Hall Salisbury. There were some very interesting subjects debated and it was good to see members of the public and business communities attending too.

For daily updates, opinion and all sorts of things, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. 98 followers and counting... It’s a great way to keep in touch real time.

Talk again next week.

Carlton