Well it’s almost Christmas and just time for one last blog before the break. I have to admit to feeling slightly tired and I’m longing for some time off with Tracy and the boys. We’re having a quiet one at home – not even planning to go back to Essex this year which must mean that we are now fully assimilated into the West Country after six years. Yes it is that long. I am looking forward to reflecting on all that has happened this year and also starting to think through our objectives for next year. Fun all the way in the Brand household! I have a few items for my telescope on my Christmas list too.
Could I thank you all for your hard work, commitment and focus this year. The innovative things we’ve achieved together never cease to amaze me: whether it’s the year of celebration (the Jubilee visit and the Olympics); our work with communities to share service delivery and develop new ways to work together and shape services locally; major new contracts for highways and street scene; our new behaviours framework; meeting over 2,000 staff at our regular forums; our improvement in customer satisfaction by 16%; seven new campuses approved and under development; our new hubs and work anywhere technology (well almost anywhere); our continued work on systems thinking to improve service performance; the integration of colleagues from Public Health – they bring another innovative dimension to our organisation; the help to live at home programme and extra care housing schemes in adult care and new commissioning strategies and delivery models in Children’s services; our primary schools rated as being amongst the best in the country in the recent league tables published; the Planning transformation programme which goes from strength to strength; the Police & Crime Commissioner elections; Economic growth, employment and the Core Strategy are progressing well too. And what can you say about the Porton science park? All of these achievements are truly outstanding and the list could go on and on...
We’ve had some tough challenges too: the Ofsted review of Children’s safeguarding, and our budget cut by a further £16m to name but two. However, we are well placed to meet these challenges with talented and skilled staff and robust delivery plans.
The key leaning for me from all of this is just what a talented and strong team we have in Wiltshire. We should probably spend a little more time celebrating our successes, especially over the next couple of weeks.
Have a very Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year. All good wishes for 2013.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next year.
Carlton
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Friday, 23 November 2012
Friday 23 November 2012
It feels like it’s getting Christmassy which is exciting. It’s also feels like it’s been a long week. A week ago we ran the election for Police & Crime Commissioner which went very well (an all-nighter with no sleep). It was my first election as Returning Officer for Wiltshire so it was slightly nervy to say the least. It went very well thanks to the many people involved in organising it and the even larger number who worked on the day as poll clerks, presiding officers, counters, table supervisors, deputy returning officers, etc. My sincere thanks to each and every one of you. Roll on May 2 when we get to do it again on a larger scale. I just love elections.
On Monday and Tuesday this week I attended the County Council Network (CCN) annual conference. We discussed our plans for delivering growth in our economies, something that counties with their scale can achieve very well; the very tight funding settlement from central government; Ofsted safeguarding inspections – and the tougher inspection regime coming in next year; innovation in the delivery of adult care services with the increasing demand for a growing older population. Finally we shared common experiences around our respective transformation programmes. Whitehall clearly take this gathering very seriously as they sent a Cabinet minister (Mr Pickles) and his two Ministers of State. It was a great opportunity to hear from others and see how they are tacking a common set of problems. It’s always good to learn and mix with others.
The integration of Public Health into the council continues on track. During the week commencing 3 December the whole team will arrive in County Hall – it will be good to see them and welcome them to our organisation and new building. This move gives us a huge opportunity to fully integrate the planning and delivery of health and social care in Wiltshire with our partners in the Clinical Commissioning Groups led by our local GPs and the acute hospitals.
Finally for today, Andy Brown the Head of Finance who covers the services for which I’m responsible leaves us to take up a new position with Cornwall Council. A brave and courageous move, I would like to thank him for his dedicated support to me and my teams over the last four years; his approach to financial planning and management is truly refreshing as is the manner in which he works. A true leader if ever I saw one. I shall enjoy keeping in touch with Andy on Twitter and he has promised me that he’ll be back to work on the top table at the May ’13 unitary elections.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so when I shall feel even more Christmassy.
Carlton
On Monday and Tuesday this week I attended the County Council Network (CCN) annual conference. We discussed our plans for delivering growth in our economies, something that counties with their scale can achieve very well; the very tight funding settlement from central government; Ofsted safeguarding inspections – and the tougher inspection regime coming in next year; innovation in the delivery of adult care services with the increasing demand for a growing older population. Finally we shared common experiences around our respective transformation programmes. Whitehall clearly take this gathering very seriously as they sent a Cabinet minister (Mr Pickles) and his two Ministers of State. It was a great opportunity to hear from others and see how they are tacking a common set of problems. It’s always good to learn and mix with others.
The integration of Public Health into the council continues on track. During the week commencing 3 December the whole team will arrive in County Hall – it will be good to see them and welcome them to our organisation and new building. This move gives us a huge opportunity to fully integrate the planning and delivery of health and social care in Wiltshire with our partners in the Clinical Commissioning Groups led by our local GPs and the acute hospitals.
Finally for today, Andy Brown the Head of Finance who covers the services for which I’m responsible leaves us to take up a new position with Cornwall Council. A brave and courageous move, I would like to thank him for his dedicated support to me and my teams over the last four years; his approach to financial planning and management is truly refreshing as is the manner in which he works. A true leader if ever I saw one. I shall enjoy keeping in touch with Andy on Twitter and he has promised me that he’ll be back to work on the top table at the May ’13 unitary elections.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so when I shall feel even more Christmassy.
Carlton
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Thursday 8 November
It’s another busy week with lots happening.
Tuesday I was at Monkton Park all day; firstly for Cabinet, then Capital Assets Committee, then a meeting with all the Cabinet and Portfolio holders for the services which I’m responsible for. This is where we go through all of our key performance measures to ensure we’re delivering what we need to for our communities; we examine our budget position and make any adjustments that we need to ensure we come in at year end on balance; and we assess the key risks that the services face and how we plan to mitigate these. Finally I met with all of the political Group Leaders to discuss a number of issues relating to the running of the organisation and particularly next week’s full council meeting. I really enjoy these days as we get a lot done.
Today, Thursday I am with my service directors all day. We are assessing where we are in terms of work load and the pace at which we are delivering and seeking to explore ways of doing things differently to improve our performance and free up some time. Easy to say and tricky to do! I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them all.
Tomorrow I will be in London all day. I have meetings at the department for Communities & Local Government (CLG) and then I’m speaking at a conference on running an organisation without a CEO. I suspect there may be some heckling as there will be some CEOs present! As I shall say, any leadership model can work well or fail badly – it’s all down to the individuals in post.
Could I thank all of our staff who were involved in clearing the roads last weekend after the flooding in several areas of the county. They did a terrific job and most roads were open again within a few hours. It’s a reminder that we operate a 24-7 business with important life and limb services which communities rely on.
I would just like to remind everybody that there will be a number of events scheduled on Monday 12th for Children In Need in the East Wing. This will include a very large raffle, so please join in and give generously. I know you always do.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday I was at Monkton Park all day; firstly for Cabinet, then Capital Assets Committee, then a meeting with all the Cabinet and Portfolio holders for the services which I’m responsible for. This is where we go through all of our key performance measures to ensure we’re delivering what we need to for our communities; we examine our budget position and make any adjustments that we need to ensure we come in at year end on balance; and we assess the key risks that the services face and how we plan to mitigate these. Finally I met with all of the political Group Leaders to discuss a number of issues relating to the running of the organisation and particularly next week’s full council meeting. I really enjoy these days as we get a lot done.
Today, Thursday I am with my service directors all day. We are assessing where we are in terms of work load and the pace at which we are delivering and seeking to explore ways of doing things differently to improve our performance and free up some time. Easy to say and tricky to do! I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them all.
Tomorrow I will be in London all day. I have meetings at the department for Communities & Local Government (CLG) and then I’m speaking at a conference on running an organisation without a CEO. I suspect there may be some heckling as there will be some CEOs present! As I shall say, any leadership model can work well or fail badly – it’s all down to the individuals in post.
Could I thank all of our staff who were involved in clearing the roads last weekend after the flooding in several areas of the county. They did a terrific job and most roads were open again within a few hours. It’s a reminder that we operate a 24-7 business with important life and limb services which communities rely on.
I would just like to remind everybody that there will be a number of events scheduled on Monday 12th for Children In Need in the East Wing. This will include a very large raffle, so please join in and give generously. I know you always do.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Wednesday 24 October 2012
I attended the SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) conference last week in Coventry. It was great to catch up with colleagues from across the country and to explore the role of, and challenges facing local government. I thought that I would share with you some of the highlights over the next couple of blogs. The following is taken from the summary of the event published by SOLACE.
This year’s SOLACE Summit – built around the theme of Prosperous Places – provided a rich source of views and ideas from SOLACE members about the complex challenges facing local government.
This item reflects the richness of the Summit discussions and highlights actions for chief executives and senior managers to consider in their authorities. President Martin Reeves and Chair Joanna Killian are committed to developing the society’s work programme over the coming months, much of it based on these ideas.
Workstream 1: Your Local Future
How we think about local areas and what they mean to those that live, work and visit there. How can cities, towns and rural areas differentiate themselves from others, compete and collaborate? The answers have consequences for how we view a locality’s future and how we lead change.
Each place needs a narrative
It needs a distinctive set of attributes with which it is identified – reputation, identity, history etc – which provide a subconscious identification/sense of security/comfort/happiness. But sense of place can also undermine growth:
• People fear a loss of identity
• Residents resist change
• It can encourage people to look backward not forward.
Evidence matters – build up a picture of what people think of the area, and assess the impact of how the place is viewed from outside. Reputation can often unfairly denigrate an area – what are these negative perceptions and how can you tackle them? Local people can often buy into or perpetuate external misconceptions. You need to be in control of how others see you.
Branding matters
Branding can promote identity and tackle negative perceptions. It needs all local organisations to promote the same message. Businesses and other local organisations need to feel it is everyone’s identity, not just the council’s. Branding is an embodiment of culture, mood and emotional connection. It is more than just a logo. Place needs to be apolitical. Branding is not all about communications, but also about service quality and street scene, all of which need to reflect the values the brand is promoting.
Politicians
Members can sometimes try to keep the status quo to please voters. They need to develop a long term sense of place, which does not fit a political timeframe. Developing a sense of place may mean working with Members to develop a new set of skills, particularly around letting go of control of the sense of local identity and learning to influence as one of a number of local players. It is important to establish greater cross-party business strategies to ensure stability and success.
Boundaries
Different boundaries can be used depending on the audience, e.g. a home county might associate itself with London when talking internationally. Formal boundaries should not determine identity. There can be a conflict between the local authority and place boundaries – local authorities are not places.
Private sector
Businesses are now realising the ‘I pay my rates’ excuse no longer works. They will contribute if they realise they will get something in return. Private sector needs to recognise it is their place too and they don’t need permission from the council to transform it. Customer experience of an area is key e.g. Trip Advisor. The example of Burnley shows the value of the private sector in generating a sense of place because they understand branding. The 100 biggest companies now drive the message; the local authority does not front it.
Group comments from attendees
• A sense of place should help link local businesses with education providers, e.g. to help focus apprenticeships on business needs
• The narrative of place provides a foundation for policy issues which may destabilize existing policies and relationships
• Creating a sense of place can be a challenge if people feel you are taking over their own story
• Important to ensure leadership is not command and control – this requires a more enabling approach.
• Recognition of place management: in the UK less than 10% of places have woken up to the potential of place management. Australia does this well
• Loss of retailers: within 5 years, 30-40% of retailers will not be around. 100,000+ empty units. This requires a rapid rethink of the town centre offer
• Need to be ruthless with who is involved. Need people who want to make something happen
I find the ideas shared here thought provoking and profound for the challenges we face moving forward. We need to ask ourselves if we are up for this approach? I think we have to be...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and I’ll share more with you soon from SOLACE. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
This year’s SOLACE Summit – built around the theme of Prosperous Places – provided a rich source of views and ideas from SOLACE members about the complex challenges facing local government.
This item reflects the richness of the Summit discussions and highlights actions for chief executives and senior managers to consider in their authorities. President Martin Reeves and Chair Joanna Killian are committed to developing the society’s work programme over the coming months, much of it based on these ideas.
Workstream 1: Your Local Future
How we think about local areas and what they mean to those that live, work and visit there. How can cities, towns and rural areas differentiate themselves from others, compete and collaborate? The answers have consequences for how we view a locality’s future and how we lead change.
Each place needs a narrative
It needs a distinctive set of attributes with which it is identified – reputation, identity, history etc – which provide a subconscious identification/sense of security/comfort/happiness. But sense of place can also undermine growth:
• People fear a loss of identity
• Residents resist change
• It can encourage people to look backward not forward.
Evidence matters – build up a picture of what people think of the area, and assess the impact of how the place is viewed from outside. Reputation can often unfairly denigrate an area – what are these negative perceptions and how can you tackle them? Local people can often buy into or perpetuate external misconceptions. You need to be in control of how others see you.
Branding matters
Branding can promote identity and tackle negative perceptions. It needs all local organisations to promote the same message. Businesses and other local organisations need to feel it is everyone’s identity, not just the council’s. Branding is an embodiment of culture, mood and emotional connection. It is more than just a logo. Place needs to be apolitical. Branding is not all about communications, but also about service quality and street scene, all of which need to reflect the values the brand is promoting.
Politicians
Members can sometimes try to keep the status quo to please voters. They need to develop a long term sense of place, which does not fit a political timeframe. Developing a sense of place may mean working with Members to develop a new set of skills, particularly around letting go of control of the sense of local identity and learning to influence as one of a number of local players. It is important to establish greater cross-party business strategies to ensure stability and success.
Boundaries
Different boundaries can be used depending on the audience, e.g. a home county might associate itself with London when talking internationally. Formal boundaries should not determine identity. There can be a conflict between the local authority and place boundaries – local authorities are not places.
Private sector
Businesses are now realising the ‘I pay my rates’ excuse no longer works. They will contribute if they realise they will get something in return. Private sector needs to recognise it is their place too and they don’t need permission from the council to transform it. Customer experience of an area is key e.g. Trip Advisor. The example of Burnley shows the value of the private sector in generating a sense of place because they understand branding. The 100 biggest companies now drive the message; the local authority does not front it.
Group comments from attendees
• A sense of place should help link local businesses with education providers, e.g. to help focus apprenticeships on business needs
• The narrative of place provides a foundation for policy issues which may destabilize existing policies and relationships
• Creating a sense of place can be a challenge if people feel you are taking over their own story
• Important to ensure leadership is not command and control – this requires a more enabling approach.
• Recognition of place management: in the UK less than 10% of places have woken up to the potential of place management. Australia does this well
• Loss of retailers: within 5 years, 30-40% of retailers will not be around. 100,000+ empty units. This requires a rapid rethink of the town centre offer
• Need to be ruthless with who is involved. Need people who want to make something happen
I find the ideas shared here thought provoking and profound for the challenges we face moving forward. We need to ask ourselves if we are up for this approach? I think we have to be...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and I’ll share more with you soon from SOLACE. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Tuesday 9 October 2012
I thought that today I would talk about performance targets. The government came into power in 2010 on a wave of anti-target rhetoric but we seem now to have more than ever. See the link below to see a 400% increase in targets over the last couple of years.
http://whitehallwatch.org/2012/08/20/targets-what-targets-change-and-continuity-in-the-performance-regime-in-whitehall/
My main beef with targets is that they don’t work and they cause massive amounts of waste – waste that we pay for in terms of poorer performance and increased costs.
The main causes of waste are many, but the main culprits are always: treating all customer demand as value work; variation and its misunderstanding; targets; poorly designed work (flow); IT; thinking (command and control); Inspection regimes and specification; management (and their decisions) disconnected from the work; and leadership (or a lack thereof).
Targets cause waste for several reasons. Firstly, there is no reliable way of setting a target. They are always guesses usually made by people who don’t understand the current system. Targets come from manufacturing, my background where standardisation is absolutely vital. They work there. In the public sector of course, every client, community and customer is different so our systems have to absorb variety. Targets can never work in such a system where the client is involved in production. It is also interesting to note that people quite rationally cheat to meet the target. Think investment bankers and performance related pay...
Measures derived from a deep knowledge and understanding of our systems are important. To select good measures, always start with customer purpose. The purpose of measurement is to understand and improve the system. It’s that simple! If a measure doesn’t enable you to do this it is not the right one. Measurement is not about managing people, managing activity or managing volumetrics. These are all important for managers to do but not by setting targets.
I use four simple rules for establishing measures:
1. Does it help to understand the work?
2. Does it show variation in the process?
3. Does it relate to customer purpose?
4. Does it relate to customer experience? (I often ask customers to rate the service they’ve just had on 1-10 scale and to suggest one improvement. Try it, it’s incredible what you learn... A 7 or below is a problem.)
Any useful measure needs to do at least one of these.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and see you at next weeks’ staff forums in Salisbury. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
http://whitehallwatch.org/2012/08/20/targets-what-targets-change-and-continuity-in-the-performance-regime-in-whitehall/
My main beef with targets is that they don’t work and they cause massive amounts of waste – waste that we pay for in terms of poorer performance and increased costs.
The main causes of waste are many, but the main culprits are always: treating all customer demand as value work; variation and its misunderstanding; targets; poorly designed work (flow); IT; thinking (command and control); Inspection regimes and specification; management (and their decisions) disconnected from the work; and leadership (or a lack thereof).
Targets cause waste for several reasons. Firstly, there is no reliable way of setting a target. They are always guesses usually made by people who don’t understand the current system. Targets come from manufacturing, my background where standardisation is absolutely vital. They work there. In the public sector of course, every client, community and customer is different so our systems have to absorb variety. Targets can never work in such a system where the client is involved in production. It is also interesting to note that people quite rationally cheat to meet the target. Think investment bankers and performance related pay...
Measures derived from a deep knowledge and understanding of our systems are important. To select good measures, always start with customer purpose. The purpose of measurement is to understand and improve the system. It’s that simple! If a measure doesn’t enable you to do this it is not the right one. Measurement is not about managing people, managing activity or managing volumetrics. These are all important for managers to do but not by setting targets.
I use four simple rules for establishing measures:
1. Does it help to understand the work?
2. Does it show variation in the process?
3. Does it relate to customer purpose?
4. Does it relate to customer experience? (I often ask customers to rate the service they’ve just had on 1-10 scale and to suggest one improvement. Try it, it’s incredible what you learn... A 7 or below is a problem.)
Any useful measure needs to do at least one of these.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and see you at next weeks’ staff forums in Salisbury. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Tuesday 2 October
Just a very short blog today to remind you all to complete the staff survey on line. The closing date is this coming Friday for on-line responses and it is very important that we hear from you all. As an organisation which seeks to continuously learn and improve, it is vital that we hear your views, observations and ideas for our future. It takes only 3-5 minutes to complete and is very easy to use. For staff without computer access, the paper format is open for responses up until October 26.
I look forward to seeing many of you at tomorrows’ staff briefings in Trowbridge and in Salisbury and Chippenham the week after next.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and completing the survey. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
I look forward to seeing many of you at tomorrows’ staff briefings in Trowbridge and in Salisbury and Chippenham the week after next.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and completing the survey. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Thursday 20 September
I’m writing this blog in the cafe at Monkton Park with an enormous bacon sandwich in front of me. Flexible working is suiting me rather well! We’re about to start a board meeting for Action for Wiltshire – a group chaired by the leader with many of our external partners whose focus is on providing support for the Wiltshire economy; protecting jobs and attracting business into the county to create new job opportunities.
I shall be completing the staff survey today as well. Could I encourage you all to do the same; it’s very important to me that we receive your feedback. That way we can improve on things that are going well and address some of the issues that might be getting in our way.
In my last blog I spoke about management and leadership and the importance of growing the current and next generation of Wiltshire leaders. I received the following feedback for a member of staff. It inspired me so I thought that I would share it with you all. It would be good to hear your thoughts too.
“I think you’re right. I think developing, coaching and encouraging managers is key to a successful organisation. I think the right manager in the right role can make all the difference between a successful organisation where people want to work and a badly run organisation where people are clambering over each other to get out of the door. I think if you understand as a manager that it is as much about the people as it is about being task driven, then you only then begin to understand your organisation and how it can achieve its goals and aspirations for now and for the future.
How we as an organisation go about achieving that is a question I don’t have an answer to. I think one way of finding the leaders of tomorrow is to look in places that aren’t obvious and consider that they could be hiding beneath the layers of the organisation. I think we miss out as an organisation in respect of identifying the potential in people. At the moment we are a task driven organisation (not totally within our control) not a people driven organisation and as long as we stay in that mindset I think we will continue to miss the opportunity of identifying potential leaders of the future because they will be overtaken by what is required of them now.
I also think there is a layer of managers who are stuck in the hierarchical way of working, which prevents open dialogue between staff within the service and across the organisation. That culture shift is ongoing and there is no easy answer to that. But it is a block to identifying talent.
“I just want to come to work and be inspired”... I said this once to my previous manager and he looked at me as if I asked him to give his first born to me! You have to inspire as a leader, only then will people see that you are genuine and be drawn to want to do better and want to perhaps one day take on that mantle.
The extract below was taken from the Tom Peters website who I have been a fan of since reading ‘In Search of Excellence’ several years ago. Although American in content and aimed primarily at encouraging a better business model for companies, I think there is much to take from what he says.
Talent
The talent is the organisation... Everybody works on ways to attract, develop, stimulate, engage and reward a wide array of talented people; fostering a community where a diverse group of people have the freedom to excel in what they do, in ways that are unique to them.
If we work towards that as an organisation, I think potential leaders of the future will naturally identify themselves. We may already do that. You most likely work with people across the organisation and from a variety of partner agencies and organisations, which gets those inspirational juices flowing! Who inspires you within that environment? Identify that and I think you begin to understand what it takes to find future managers and leaders.”
I couldn’t agree more.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I hope to see you at the manager and staff forums which start next week. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
I shall be completing the staff survey today as well. Could I encourage you all to do the same; it’s very important to me that we receive your feedback. That way we can improve on things that are going well and address some of the issues that might be getting in our way.
In my last blog I spoke about management and leadership and the importance of growing the current and next generation of Wiltshire leaders. I received the following feedback for a member of staff. It inspired me so I thought that I would share it with you all. It would be good to hear your thoughts too.
“I think you’re right. I think developing, coaching and encouraging managers is key to a successful organisation. I think the right manager in the right role can make all the difference between a successful organisation where people want to work and a badly run organisation where people are clambering over each other to get out of the door. I think if you understand as a manager that it is as much about the people as it is about being task driven, then you only then begin to understand your organisation and how it can achieve its goals and aspirations for now and for the future.
How we as an organisation go about achieving that is a question I don’t have an answer to. I think one way of finding the leaders of tomorrow is to look in places that aren’t obvious and consider that they could be hiding beneath the layers of the organisation. I think we miss out as an organisation in respect of identifying the potential in people. At the moment we are a task driven organisation (not totally within our control) not a people driven organisation and as long as we stay in that mindset I think we will continue to miss the opportunity of identifying potential leaders of the future because they will be overtaken by what is required of them now.
I also think there is a layer of managers who are stuck in the hierarchical way of working, which prevents open dialogue between staff within the service and across the organisation. That culture shift is ongoing and there is no easy answer to that. But it is a block to identifying talent.
“I just want to come to work and be inspired”... I said this once to my previous manager and he looked at me as if I asked him to give his first born to me! You have to inspire as a leader, only then will people see that you are genuine and be drawn to want to do better and want to perhaps one day take on that mantle.
The extract below was taken from the Tom Peters website who I have been a fan of since reading ‘In Search of Excellence’ several years ago. Although American in content and aimed primarily at encouraging a better business model for companies, I think there is much to take from what he says.
Talent
The talent is the organisation... Everybody works on ways to attract, develop, stimulate, engage and reward a wide array of talented people; fostering a community where a diverse group of people have the freedom to excel in what they do, in ways that are unique to them.
If we work towards that as an organisation, I think potential leaders of the future will naturally identify themselves. We may already do that. You most likely work with people across the organisation and from a variety of partner agencies and organisations, which gets those inspirational juices flowing! Who inspires you within that environment? Identify that and I think you begin to understand what it takes to find future managers and leaders.”
I couldn’t agree more.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I hope to see you at the manager and staff forums which start next week. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 7 September 2012
Friday 7 September
Well don’t the weeks just fly by? This week has had a real feel of a new school term about it which I like. Full of energy and ideas. It’s been a week of meeting with and working with lots of elected members which I always enjoy. It’s why I joined local government.
Yesterday I attended the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee. They revised, discussed and shaped two important pieces of work; our Information Services strategy for the next few years and our quarterly performance assessment for the whole organisation. There are always great questions and suggestions for how we can further develop our approach to the services we provide and the organisation we run. Well done to both officer teams too – IS and the performance teams. Both papers were well received and well scrutinised.
Scrutiny is very important to me personally and to how we run our organisation and make it more effective. We must remember to engage with it early and use the considerable skill and knowledge we have there to shape and develop our policies with our communities and their elected representatives.
Budget scrutiny followed and there we went into great detail about our financial reporting processes and the status of the revenue budget at the end of the first quarter.
Today I am attending the Audit Committee where members will discuss and approve the final accounts for the year 2011-12. We are the first council in the south west to have our accounts ready for approval this year so well done to the finance teams for achieving this. It’s great to see our investment in SAP paying off so well too.
Later today I shall be meeting with a junior member of staff for some coaching. It’s important that we develop and grow the leaders of tomorrow; one of the most important roles for managers I believe. I’d be very interested to hear your views on this and how we do more of it?
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Yesterday I attended the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee. They revised, discussed and shaped two important pieces of work; our Information Services strategy for the next few years and our quarterly performance assessment for the whole organisation. There are always great questions and suggestions for how we can further develop our approach to the services we provide and the organisation we run. Well done to both officer teams too – IS and the performance teams. Both papers were well received and well scrutinised.
Scrutiny is very important to me personally and to how we run our organisation and make it more effective. We must remember to engage with it early and use the considerable skill and knowledge we have there to shape and develop our policies with our communities and their elected representatives.
Budget scrutiny followed and there we went into great detail about our financial reporting processes and the status of the revenue budget at the end of the first quarter.
Today I am attending the Audit Committee where members will discuss and approve the final accounts for the year 2011-12. We are the first council in the south west to have our accounts ready for approval this year so well done to the finance teams for achieving this. It’s great to see our investment in SAP paying off so well too.
Later today I shall be meeting with a junior member of staff for some coaching. It’s important that we develop and grow the leaders of tomorrow; one of the most important roles for managers I believe. I’d be very interested to hear your views on this and how we do more of it?
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 24 August 2012
Friday 24 August
Well it seems that I have hardly been away – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun on your holidays. I‘ve had a good break and actually managed to catch some sun as well as spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of the telly watching the Olympics. The withdrawal symptoms are steadily diminishing now...
This week has been quite quiet, so time for me to catch up, think and plan ahead for everything we have to deliver through the autumn as well as starting to think about the new Council that will be elected next May and which will run from 2013-17. We will start to consider all the aspects of this – vision, communities, customer, performance and resources so that we have the information required by members of all political groups as they start to think about the new council, their objectives and what they wish to achieve. Always good to be prepared!
I have also completed SAP appraisals for four of my service directors. The new system works very well and has enabled some good conversations between us as we completed the appraisal process. Please strive to get these completed through September, I think it is vital that every one of our staff has a proper appraisal. If you haven’t had yours yet please ask your manager.
I moved into the new part of County Hall yesterday. Open plan with limited storage! I must admit I’m blown away with the building, how it looks and feels and am very excited about the possibilities this way of working will open up for us all. The break out space will really help to change the culture of the organisation into a modern, fit for purpose public sector operation. Intra-team communication should be greatly enhanced too with no walls and little rooms to hide away in. I’d like to thank the teams from property, ICT, transformation, service engagement and all the others involved in making the transfer so successful. Everything works so well so far.
Finally, we will open the staff survey shortly to everybody. It is important that we all complete this – yes I always do too – so that we can capture where we are and where we wish to get to from our staff’s perspective. Keep an eye out on The Wire for further information.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
This week has been quite quiet, so time for me to catch up, think and plan ahead for everything we have to deliver through the autumn as well as starting to think about the new Council that will be elected next May and which will run from 2013-17. We will start to consider all the aspects of this – vision, communities, customer, performance and resources so that we have the information required by members of all political groups as they start to think about the new council, their objectives and what they wish to achieve. Always good to be prepared!
I have also completed SAP appraisals for four of my service directors. The new system works very well and has enabled some good conversations between us as we completed the appraisal process. Please strive to get these completed through September, I think it is vital that every one of our staff has a proper appraisal. If you haven’t had yours yet please ask your manager.
I moved into the new part of County Hall yesterday. Open plan with limited storage! I must admit I’m blown away with the building, how it looks and feels and am very excited about the possibilities this way of working will open up for us all. The break out space will really help to change the culture of the organisation into a modern, fit for purpose public sector operation. Intra-team communication should be greatly enhanced too with no walls and little rooms to hide away in. I’d like to thank the teams from property, ICT, transformation, service engagement and all the others involved in making the transfer so successful. Everything works so well so far.
Finally, we will open the staff survey shortly to everybody. It is important that we all complete this – yes I always do too – so that we can capture where we are and where we wish to get to from our staff’s perspective. Keep an eye out on The Wire for further information.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Wednesday 1 August 2012
It’s my last blog for a couple of weeks before I jet off to the back garden for a couple of weeks furlough. I must admit I can’t wait – I’m highly addicted to the Olympics already and will watch the rest of the games on the telly I think. Mrs B might have other ideas of course...
Yesterday we held the staff awards for July and a great occasion it was with the Council Chamber full of staff who have individually or as part of a wider team gone the extra mile for our communities and customers. I always feel very inspired reading the entries and deliberating over them with colleagues as we select the winners. The individual employee of the month winner was Karen Moles and the team winner was the Diamond Jubilee / Olympic Torch Events team made up of hundreds of staff from all departments. Thank you and well done to you all. In September we will be launching the categories for our end of year celebration in February / March 2013. This year I would like to hold this event in our new atrium facility that opens at County Hall in a few weeks time. We’ll see.
Talking about inspiration, I was fortunate to meet Ben Parkinson yesterday. He is a soldier – from 7 Para – who was severely wounded in Afghanistan. In fact he is the most severely injured soldier to survive from his tour of duty in that part of the world. What a guy. A wicked sense of humour and the most engaging smile I’ve seen. He’s about to do another parachute drop next month too which makes me frightened just thinking about it. He was at County Hall to present Jane Scott with a picture that she had bought on Armed Forces Day, by a local Trowbridge artist – the proceeds of which go to the charity of which he is patron (www.pilgrimbandits.org ). This charity works with soldiers whom have been severely wounded and supports their rehab through adventure activities. Very humbling.
To those of you about to go on your holidays, have fun and enjoy yourselves. For those of you working through the next few weeks – thank you.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a couple of weeks.
Carlton
Yesterday we held the staff awards for July and a great occasion it was with the Council Chamber full of staff who have individually or as part of a wider team gone the extra mile for our communities and customers. I always feel very inspired reading the entries and deliberating over them with colleagues as we select the winners. The individual employee of the month winner was Karen Moles and the team winner was the Diamond Jubilee / Olympic Torch Events team made up of hundreds of staff from all departments. Thank you and well done to you all. In September we will be launching the categories for our end of year celebration in February / March 2013. This year I would like to hold this event in our new atrium facility that opens at County Hall in a few weeks time. We’ll see.
Talking about inspiration, I was fortunate to meet Ben Parkinson yesterday. He is a soldier – from 7 Para – who was severely wounded in Afghanistan. In fact he is the most severely injured soldier to survive from his tour of duty in that part of the world. What a guy. A wicked sense of humour and the most engaging smile I’ve seen. He’s about to do another parachute drop next month too which makes me frightened just thinking about it. He was at County Hall to present Jane Scott with a picture that she had bought on Armed Forces Day, by a local Trowbridge artist – the proceeds of which go to the charity of which he is patron (www.pilgrimbandits.org ). This charity works with soldiers whom have been severely wounded and supports their rehab through adventure activities. Very humbling.
To those of you about to go on your holidays, have fun and enjoy yourselves. For those of you working through the next few weeks – thank you.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a couple of weeks.
Carlton
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
Tuesday 24 July 2012
The holidays are nearly here for most of us and thank goodness the sun is out. I got very sun burned on Sunday at Castle Combe watching some terrific saloon car racing so be warned – take your sun cream with you!
Today I shall be in Monkton Park all day for a series of meetings with members. Cabinet is up first where they will take a major decision regarding which supplier provides our highways consultancy service for the next five years. This is the team that do the engineering design and programme development of all our highway related activity and is a contract worth around £4m per year.
Other decisions relate to the major incident plan – our emergency plan should anything big happen anywhere in the county requiring a major response from the public sector and the annual governance statement, our statement of the major issues and risks affecting the organisation over the last and next year.
This afternoon we have a meeting of the Cabinet Capital Assets Committee – the group that decide and approve where our capital funding will be spent to secure the objectives of the council. We have an important paper summarising the achievements so far versus our plan for the Transformation Programme. It’s well worth a read and I’m very proud of what we have all achieved over the past four years.
Speaking about transformation I recognise that many of us are moving office over the next few months and will be starting to work flexibly more often. We are doing this to save significant revenue costs – the money that we free up is being used to invest in services for children, adults and other priorities across the county. This can be a worrying time for all of us and I am reminded of the following quote:
“Change is not an event to be managed but a psychological transition to be led”.
I have no idea who originally said this but it’s important to me nevertheless. The role of managers at a time like this is to lead people on the journey, aware of the transition to be made. Helping, encouraging, understanding, questioning and above all supporting staff. This is also the way we achieve the cultural change that we want.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Today I shall be in Monkton Park all day for a series of meetings with members. Cabinet is up first where they will take a major decision regarding which supplier provides our highways consultancy service for the next five years. This is the team that do the engineering design and programme development of all our highway related activity and is a contract worth around £4m per year.
Other decisions relate to the major incident plan – our emergency plan should anything big happen anywhere in the county requiring a major response from the public sector and the annual governance statement, our statement of the major issues and risks affecting the organisation over the last and next year.
This afternoon we have a meeting of the Cabinet Capital Assets Committee – the group that decide and approve where our capital funding will be spent to secure the objectives of the council. We have an important paper summarising the achievements so far versus our plan for the Transformation Programme. It’s well worth a read and I’m very proud of what we have all achieved over the past four years.
Speaking about transformation I recognise that many of us are moving office over the next few months and will be starting to work flexibly more often. We are doing this to save significant revenue costs – the money that we free up is being used to invest in services for children, adults and other priorities across the county. This can be a worrying time for all of us and I am reminded of the following quote:
“Change is not an event to be managed but a psychological transition to be led”.
I have no idea who originally said this but it’s important to me nevertheless. The role of managers at a time like this is to lead people on the journey, aware of the transition to be made. Helping, encouraging, understanding, questioning and above all supporting staff. This is also the way we achieve the cultural change that we want.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Thursday 12 July 2012
This week has been full on for two days of Olympic celebration in and around Salisbury. The torch came back into the county on Wednesday, visiting Ludgershall, Tidworth and Amesbury amongst others and entering Hudson’s field, Salisbury last night where the Olympic cauldron was lit in front of 30,000 people. It was a long day for the 500 plus staff involved in making this event such a huge success, starting at 7am in the morning with a business breakfast for over 200 representatives from businesses across the county. We had some great live music all day and many other performances from communities across the county. The firework finale was breath taking.
This morning, Thursday, I was up at 3am with Jane Scott to attend an event at Stonehenge where Michael Johnson, Olympic 400m Gold Medallist and world record holder showed the Olympic torch and flame to around 80 journalists from the worlds press and TV. These iconic pictures went round the world at 5.07 when the sun came up and lit the stones, Michael and the torch. I took the photos below to share with you. It felt like a real moment in history!
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We then attended the Cathedral for the official start of the torch journey today, moving on to Wilton, Barford St Martin, Fovant and then Ludwell where it left Wiltshire for the very last time. It was sad to see it go.
I would like to thank all our wonderful staff who put so much effort into making these events such a success. I had so much feedback from excited residents, visitors and businesses over the last few days, and all of them pointed out how great our team are. They’re so right! I know that many staff had to continue to deliver our important services during these events, and couldn’t be directly involved. I thank you all too for ensuring that we could deliver together as a single team.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
This morning, Thursday, I was up at 3am with Jane Scott to attend an event at Stonehenge where Michael Johnson, Olympic 400m Gold Medallist and world record holder showed the Olympic torch and flame to around 80 journalists from the worlds press and TV. These iconic pictures went round the world at 5.07 when the sun came up and lit the stones, Michael and the torch. I took the photos below to share with you. It felt like a real moment in history!
We then attended the Cathedral for the official start of the torch journey today, moving on to Wilton, Barford St Martin, Fovant and then Ludwell where it left Wiltshire for the very last time. It was sad to see it go.
I would like to thank all our wonderful staff who put so much effort into making these events such a success. I had so much feedback from excited residents, visitors and businesses over the last few days, and all of them pointed out how great our team are. They’re so right! I know that many staff had to continue to deliver our important services during these events, and couldn’t be directly involved. I thank you all too for ensuring that we could deliver together as a single team.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 29 June 2012
Friday 29 June 2012
A very short blog this week – my apologies.
Can I ask you all to please volunteer to help us out with the Olympic torch events on July 11 and 12 at Hudson’s field in Salisbury and the surrounding towns and villages. We need more marshals and others to help ensure these events run smoothly for our communities and are a real celebration in the county. They also offer us a great opportunity to further develop our culture and team working together and have some real fun! Thanks in advance.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Can I ask you all to please volunteer to help us out with the Olympic torch events on July 11 and 12 at Hudson’s field in Salisbury and the surrounding towns and villages. We need more marshals and others to help ensure these events run smoothly for our communities and are a real celebration in the county. They also offer us a great opportunity to further develop our culture and team working together and have some real fun! Thanks in advance.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 22 June 2012
Friday 22 June 2012
First off my apologies for not blogging for three weeks. I had a week away on holiday, a wedding and then came back and it’s been somewhat full on ever since! Normal service will be resumed from today.
It’s been an exciting week this week. Cabinet on Tuesday in Devizes reviewed a number of important papers including the Business Plan outcomes. Of over 100 targets that we set ourselves, 95% were green and being met which is a great achievement. Thank you to all our staff. We continue to work on the others to ensure we deliver for our communities. The press of course focused entirely on the 5%, which is expected. Unbelievably frustrating though after we spend so much effort delivering for Wiltshire.
I had the pleasure of meeting the newly announced Bishop of Ramsey later in the day. It was a good opportunity to welcome him to the county as well as to speak with partners from across the patch. It always surprises me how much business you can do in an hour when everybody is in one room!
On Wednesday I attended the development services team transformation morning in the Civic Centre. The team are really starting to deliver their transformation programme including a full systems review, culture change, new single IT system, management and team development, move into county hall and most importantly designing the service around our many different customers. Feedback from staff and customers continues to build in the team which is great to see. It was an energising session. Another unscripted Q&A which I always enjoy too.
Straight after this I attended the recruitment event for our new graduate trainee. There were five candidates who went through a full day of interviews, presentations, etc. It’s always so good to meet and speak with the next generation of local government officers before they start their careers.
The three corporate directors had a quick visit to the redeveloped part of County Hall. I have to say it looks and feels fantastic. We all start to move in towards the end of August. It is going to be a huge improvement for our customers, elected members and staff. The team and contractors have done a great job delivering this with such high quality, on time and under budget (again). Well done the property and transformation teams.
I shall be meeting up with the passenger transport team in Shurnhold this afternoon to spend a couple of hours going through progress on their systems thinking review of the service. This is always a great opportunity to learn how we work, why we work like that and how we can jointly improve the services for our customers.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
It’s been an exciting week this week. Cabinet on Tuesday in Devizes reviewed a number of important papers including the Business Plan outcomes. Of over 100 targets that we set ourselves, 95% were green and being met which is a great achievement. Thank you to all our staff. We continue to work on the others to ensure we deliver for our communities. The press of course focused entirely on the 5%, which is expected. Unbelievably frustrating though after we spend so much effort delivering for Wiltshire.
I had the pleasure of meeting the newly announced Bishop of Ramsey later in the day. It was a good opportunity to welcome him to the county as well as to speak with partners from across the patch. It always surprises me how much business you can do in an hour when everybody is in one room!
On Wednesday I attended the development services team transformation morning in the Civic Centre. The team are really starting to deliver their transformation programme including a full systems review, culture change, new single IT system, management and team development, move into county hall and most importantly designing the service around our many different customers. Feedback from staff and customers continues to build in the team which is great to see. It was an energising session. Another unscripted Q&A which I always enjoy too.
Straight after this I attended the recruitment event for our new graduate trainee. There were five candidates who went through a full day of interviews, presentations, etc. It’s always so good to meet and speak with the next generation of local government officers before they start their careers.
The three corporate directors had a quick visit to the redeveloped part of County Hall. I have to say it looks and feels fantastic. We all start to move in towards the end of August. It is going to be a huge improvement for our customers, elected members and staff. The team and contractors have done a great job delivering this with such high quality, on time and under budget (again). Well done the property and transformation teams.
I shall be meeting up with the passenger transport team in Shurnhold this afternoon to spend a couple of hours going through progress on their systems thinking review of the service. This is always a great opportunity to learn how we work, why we work like that and how we can jointly improve the services for our customers.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Thursday 31 May 2012
Full speed ahead to the Jubilee weekend. I hope you and your families have a good early summer break and enjoy the festivities across the county. Thank you to all the teams working this weekend keeping the show on the road.
It’s been a busy week, with several programme boards – Shaping the Future and the ECO/C02, both making very good progress to drive forward our agendas for embedding our values and culture across the organisation and reducing the counties carbon footprint respectively. We also had the first meeting of the new Scrutiny Management Committee. Robust scrutiny is vital to our organisation and it is important that we use this forum to develop policy in the future.
This afternoon I’m being interviewed by one of our Graduate Management Trainees on the subject of Leadership. This got me thinking and writing, so I thought that I would share with you my favourite definition and model of leadership. It has five elements:
1. Personal mastery: self awareness, self development, authenticity, composure and balance, integrity, presence
2. Vision: change catalyst, direction, purpose, systems thinking, judgement
3. Action: personal drive, role model, decisiveness, commitment, influence
4. Knowledge: subject matter expert, critical thinking, integrative problem solving
5. Relationships: empathy and trust, collaboration, communication, conflict management, development of others, inclusion
And to simplify this, we have just two functions really; to get the job done and to develop people!
It would be good to hear your thoughts and ideas about this.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I shall be taking some furlough next week, so talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
It’s been a busy week, with several programme boards – Shaping the Future and the ECO/C02, both making very good progress to drive forward our agendas for embedding our values and culture across the organisation and reducing the counties carbon footprint respectively. We also had the first meeting of the new Scrutiny Management Committee. Robust scrutiny is vital to our organisation and it is important that we use this forum to develop policy in the future.
This afternoon I’m being interviewed by one of our Graduate Management Trainees on the subject of Leadership. This got me thinking and writing, so I thought that I would share with you my favourite definition and model of leadership. It has five elements:
1. Personal mastery: self awareness, self development, authenticity, composure and balance, integrity, presence
2. Vision: change catalyst, direction, purpose, systems thinking, judgement
3. Action: personal drive, role model, decisiveness, commitment, influence
4. Knowledge: subject matter expert, critical thinking, integrative problem solving
5. Relationships: empathy and trust, collaboration, communication, conflict management, development of others, inclusion
And to simplify this, we have just two functions really; to get the job done and to develop people!
It would be good to hear your thoughts and ideas about this.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I shall be taking some furlough next week, so talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 25 May 2012
Friday 25 May 2012
This week has been a real week of celebration – with almost 100,000 people on the streets of Wilshire as the Olympic torch visited seven of the northern towns in the county. It was great to walk the route and see and speak with so many residents, businesses and of course our hundreds of staff who marshalled the event so well.
I would like to thank all the staff who volunteered to marshal. The preparation and training beforehand paid real dividends as everybody was safe and able to enjoy a fantastic two days. The streets, pavements and towns were exceptionally clean which made a big impact on everybody present and those who watched the live streaming around the world. It was a great show case for the county.
I would also like to thank those staff who kept the day job running during this week too. Many staff couldn’t get out to watch or take part in the celebrations as they had critical work to do. This is greatly appreciated.
Changing subjects a lot, I’ve been thinking this week about how and what we write to each other. We all write lots of emails, papers and discussion documents and of course some of these have the desired impact whilst others don’t – causing confusion, angst and many other unhelpful emotions. I came across some thinking from David Ogilvy, of Ogilvy and Mather recently that I thought I would share with you today. It got me thinking about how we could help our cultural shift and values by writing better... see what you think and let me know.
The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy and Mather. People who think well, write well.
Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. (think email here)
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
I would like to thank all the staff who volunteered to marshal. The preparation and training beforehand paid real dividends as everybody was safe and able to enjoy a fantastic two days. The streets, pavements and towns were exceptionally clean which made a big impact on everybody present and those who watched the live streaming around the world. It was a great show case for the county.
I would also like to thank those staff who kept the day job running during this week too. Many staff couldn’t get out to watch or take part in the celebrations as they had critical work to do. This is greatly appreciated.
Changing subjects a lot, I’ve been thinking this week about how and what we write to each other. We all write lots of emails, papers and discussion documents and of course some of these have the desired impact whilst others don’t – causing confusion, angst and many other unhelpful emotions. I came across some thinking from David Ogilvy, of Ogilvy and Mather recently that I thought I would share with you today. It got me thinking about how we could help our cultural shift and values by writing better... see what you think and let me know.
The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy and Mather. People who think well, write well.
Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. (think email here)
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Next week we celebrate the Olympic torch coming into Wiltshire for the first time – Tuesday 22nd and 23rd. It returns later in July. This is a great opportunity for us to celebrate and I would like to encourage you all to get out of the office and watch the torch and other celebrations in our communities – they will be with us for only a short time, at some locations for less than 15 minutes so please feel free to all join in. Times and locations will be shared by our Communications team later this week. We also need volunteers to help marshal these events, so could I thank those of you that have already volunteered and encourage more of you to get involved next week – we need all the help we can get please.
Last Friday I spent the day at our Parsonage Way depot with the highways and street scene team. The team have implemented a radical redesign of their service using systems thinking principles. The bottom line is that the team have improved their already impressive performance by almost 100% whist delivering significant revenue savings back to our communities. The day was so impressive, with a team that really understood their customer purpose, characteristics of demand and flow of work through the system. It was capped off with great community engagement, especially with the Parish Councils.
We have over 200 people now trained in this method and we need to develop this approach and encourage our service teams to experiment and deliver continuous improvement for our customers. There is a lot of national debate about the future role of public service in times of national austerity. I feel this misses the point. We need to be in the business of delivering what our customers, citizens, clients, users and communities need whilst improving performance and reducing cost. Let’s focus on doing that together...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Last Friday I spent the day at our Parsonage Way depot with the highways and street scene team. The team have implemented a radical redesign of their service using systems thinking principles. The bottom line is that the team have improved their already impressive performance by almost 100% whist delivering significant revenue savings back to our communities. The day was so impressive, with a team that really understood their customer purpose, characteristics of demand and flow of work through the system. It was capped off with great community engagement, especially with the Parish Councils.
We have over 200 people now trained in this method and we need to develop this approach and encourage our service teams to experiment and deliver continuous improvement for our customers. There is a lot of national debate about the future role of public service in times of national austerity. I feel this misses the point. We need to be in the business of delivering what our customers, citizens, clients, users and communities need whilst improving performance and reducing cost. Let’s focus on doing that together...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Wednesday 2 May 2012
Just a quick blog today to thank all the hundreds of our staff who helped make yesterday’s Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in Salisbury such a success.
Despite a very wet and muddy start, the sun was out by lunch time as the celebrations got into full swing. It was great to see so many of the wider Wiltshire Council team working together on a single event and smiling throughout. I spoke to numerous members of the public and to our partners and they all commented on how great our staff are.
Thank you once again for all your support, help and commitment to making this a very special day for all those who attended.
I hope you get the chance to have a quieter, and dryer day today as we now head towards the next big summer celebration event – the Olympic torch coming to the City and to Hudson’s field on July 11.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Despite a very wet and muddy start, the sun was out by lunch time as the celebrations got into full swing. It was great to see so many of the wider Wiltshire Council team working together on a single event and smiling throughout. I spoke to numerous members of the public and to our partners and they all commented on how great our staff are.
Thank you once again for all your support, help and commitment to making this a very special day for all those who attended.
I hope you get the chance to have a quieter, and dryer day today as we now head towards the next big summer celebration event – the Olympic torch coming to the City and to Hudson’s field on July 11.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Thursday 19 April 2012
Welcome back from your Easter breaks, if you had them and thank you to those who were here keeping the ship afloat.
During my week off, between the rain, I was reading some of Dan Rockwell’s thoughts – he writes a blog under the pseudonym of Leadershipfreak. It’s excellent and thought provoking. I thought I would share some edited highlights with you because it really made me think about what I spend my time doing at work, particularly at a time when so many of us are working very hard.
When Working Hard isn’t Working
It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you’re working on the wrong things. Managers and leaders are the hardest working people I know. Working in your organisation is necessary but dangerous.
You work “in” when you do your business. Farmers milking cows, accountants accounting, preachers preaching, teachers teaching, and doctors doctoring are all working in their business. Working in is dangerous because it:
Your passion and ability to focus on getting jobs done blocks you from:
Working IN prevents you from working ON. This is dangerous.
Getting things done works for the short-term – soon it drains – but, eventually it destroys you and your effectiveness. Constantly working in your business without working on it:
So we somehow need to breakthrough to working on:
Evaluate the use of your time. How much is spent working in rather than on? Breakthroughs materialize when you alter dead-end habits.
How can we as managers and leaders work on our business or organization?
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
- Captivates attention.
- Consumes energy.
- Distracts from a powerful concern – working on your business.
- Creating or enhancing systems.
- Defining long term objectives.
- Identifying, leveraging, and enhancing the strengths on your team
- Offloading present work so you can focus on the future.
Working IN prevents you from working ON. This is dangerous.
- Defeats your innovative spirit.
- Saps vitality
- Restricts growth.
- Limits your potential.
So we somehow need to breakthrough to working on:
Evaluate the use of your time. How much is spent working in rather than on? Breakthroughs materialize when you alter dead-end habits.
- Create a weekly “working on” appointment with yourself. Identify and take a next step.
- Make small adjustments. You’ll never shift toward working on your business in onegiant leap.
- Find new eyes. Discuss systems, strategies, and vision with experts outside your field.
- Listen. Many leaders and managers owners have too many answers and too few questions.
- Try something. Waiting for stunning success prevents progress.
- Delegate more even if it takes longer at first.
- Follow-up and follow-through. Frustrations inspire conversations regarding improvements but follow-through changes things. Perhaps some form of accountability would help?
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Thursday 5 April
Last week we took Cabinet and CLT through the detail of our Systems Thinking work. Some call this lean. Cabinet were very supportive of the approach, as they have been for the five years we’ve been using it, and the performance improvements seen in the increasing number of services that are now adopting it. We currently have 11 services undergoing their reviews. So far, we have trained over 180 people in the method to enable them to experiment and improve their services as systems. We are committed to this approach to continuous improvement and the number of staff trained will approach 300 by the end of the year.
Systems Thinking is all about designing services around our customers and communities. To do this we seek to understand the purpose of the system from the customer’s perspective. We then seek to understand the type and frequency of customer demand and the flow of work through our processes. We redesign this flow to enable us to do only that work that adds value to our customers purpose. We try and eliminate any waste in our work flow.
This got me thinking about the skills and knowledge that team leaders, managers and directors need to undertake such work.
Managers and leaders need to understand systems thinking. They must show-up in the work and ask these two questions:
• “Show me the measures you use to understand and improve the work?”
• “What help do you need from me to remove the causes of waste in the system?”
I wonder how many of us could answer these questions with definitive evidence and data?
This leads me to the question of how will we run our organisation in this manner?
For me, the new competencies for managers and leaders in the future are:
1. The ability to think in terms of systems and knowing how to lead systems
2. The ability to understand the variability of work in planning and problem solving
3. Understanding how we learn, develop, and improve; leading true learning and improvement
4. Understanding people and why they behave as they do
5. Understanding the interaction and interdependence between systems, variability, learning, and human behaviour; knowing how each affects the others
6. Giving vision, meaning, direction and focus to our work across the organisation
These competencies are all embedded in our new behaviour and values framework.
If this has made you curious and you haven’t attended one of the courses run by John Rogers, please apply to do so. It really is one of the most enlightening sessions you’ll ever experience.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I’m taking next week off on holiday so we’ll talk again in a week or so. Have a very happy Easter.
Carlton
Systems Thinking is all about designing services around our customers and communities. To do this we seek to understand the purpose of the system from the customer’s perspective. We then seek to understand the type and frequency of customer demand and the flow of work through our processes. We redesign this flow to enable us to do only that work that adds value to our customers purpose. We try and eliminate any waste in our work flow.
This got me thinking about the skills and knowledge that team leaders, managers and directors need to undertake such work.
Managers and leaders need to understand systems thinking. They must show-up in the work and ask these two questions:
• “Show me the measures you use to understand and improve the work?”
• “What help do you need from me to remove the causes of waste in the system?”
I wonder how many of us could answer these questions with definitive evidence and data?
This leads me to the question of how will we run our organisation in this manner?
For me, the new competencies for managers and leaders in the future are:
1. The ability to think in terms of systems and knowing how to lead systems
2. The ability to understand the variability of work in planning and problem solving
3. Understanding how we learn, develop, and improve; leading true learning and improvement
4. Understanding people and why they behave as they do
5. Understanding the interaction and interdependence between systems, variability, learning, and human behaviour; knowing how each affects the others
6. Giving vision, meaning, direction and focus to our work across the organisation
These competencies are all embedded in our new behaviour and values framework.
If this has made you curious and you haven’t attended one of the courses run by John Rogers, please apply to do so. It really is one of the most enlightening sessions you’ll ever experience.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading. I’m taking next week off on holiday so we’ll talk again in a week or so. Have a very happy Easter.
Carlton
Friday, 23 March 2012
Morning everybody and my apologies for not blogging for a couple of weeks. I had to take a bit of time off last week when my wife and youngest son decided on separate emergency admissions into the RUH at the same time! All fine now thank goodness.
This week has been busy and it was good to spend two full days at Monkton Park with Cabinet and meeting a lot of staff based there. It made me realise what a poor building County Hall is and how I’m looking forward to many of us moving into the new end of the building over the next six months or so. It will really help to break down some of the communication barriers that exist between teams because of the cellular design of the current building.
I met with three junior managers this week for separate coaching sessions; it is so important that we grow our next generation of senior managers and leaders for what is one of the toughest tasks around – leading people. We worked on the role of managers to lead the development of organisational vision, service strategy, operational management and tactical delivery – the four key elements to the role of management. I find this one of the most exciting parts of my job, and it was great to see one of our service directors this week sign up to the coaching course run by south west councils.
I have also spent some time this week with my finance colleagues developing the detail of how we will deliver our budget for the coming year 12-13 as well as starting to prepare for how we will develop an affordable budget for 13-14. This may sound early but I think fortune favours the prepared mind as Louis Pasteur once said.
This morning I’m meeting up with one of our councillors who wants to explore some innovative ideas that she has for her market town. It will be fun to work out ways to turn her ideas into reality quickly to enable her community to develop and grow with Wiltshire Council as an enabler.
Last meeting of the week is a Scrutiny Task Group review of the planning transformation programme. Always a feisty affair, but adds real value to our work in the council.
Then it’s a quick getaway to pick up my eldest son and his friends to celebrate his 17th birthday tonight (first driving lesson in the morning – I’m terrified!) and watch some F1 practice...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
This week has been busy and it was good to spend two full days at Monkton Park with Cabinet and meeting a lot of staff based there. It made me realise what a poor building County Hall is and how I’m looking forward to many of us moving into the new end of the building over the next six months or so. It will really help to break down some of the communication barriers that exist between teams because of the cellular design of the current building.
I met with three junior managers this week for separate coaching sessions; it is so important that we grow our next generation of senior managers and leaders for what is one of the toughest tasks around – leading people. We worked on the role of managers to lead the development of organisational vision, service strategy, operational management and tactical delivery – the four key elements to the role of management. I find this one of the most exciting parts of my job, and it was great to see one of our service directors this week sign up to the coaching course run by south west councils.
I have also spent some time this week with my finance colleagues developing the detail of how we will deliver our budget for the coming year 12-13 as well as starting to prepare for how we will develop an affordable budget for 13-14. This may sound early but I think fortune favours the prepared mind as Louis Pasteur once said.
This morning I’m meeting up with one of our councillors who wants to explore some innovative ideas that she has for her market town. It will be fun to work out ways to turn her ideas into reality quickly to enable her community to develop and grow with Wiltshire Council as an enabler.
Last meeting of the week is a Scrutiny Task Group review of the planning transformation programme. Always a feisty affair, but adds real value to our work in the council.
Then it’s a quick getaway to pick up my eldest son and his friends to celebrate his 17th birthday tonight (first driving lesson in the morning – I’m terrified!) and watch some F1 practice...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Tuesday 6 March 2012
Morning all, I’ve been a little behind with my blog over the last week or so. No excuses, my apologies. Can’t believe it’s March already and spring is definitely here. I’ve even cleaned my bike and taken it out a few times to blow away those winter cobwebs. This will only end in tears at some point...
It was a big week last week with Council approving the budget. I just want to thank all of the finance teams and others who have been involved in this over the past six months or so. At some points it felt like it was never ending but in the end we have a robust budget that protects services for our communities and meets the saving that we needed to make in a thoughtful and considered way. Thanks and well done all.
I had the pleasure of visiting the MOD Porton Down facility last week with the Local Resilience Forum (LRF). The LRF are the group of public sector officers from many organisations that plan and rehearse for emergencies that might happen in our community. The visit was important to enable us to familiarise ourselves with what is a large site and also to gain an understanding of the type of work conducted there and the risks involved. It was fascinating. I hadn’t realised that we have a community of world class scientists and engineers – more than 2,000 in total – on our door step. Talking to colleagues from other branches of government, we were able to join up some of the objectives of the various organisations and explore new ways of strengthening the work that employs so many people in Wiltshire. A great day.
This week sees a return to more normal duties after the excitement of the budget last week. I’m visiting the economic development and spatial planning teams in Shurnhold on Thursday – pop along if you have a few minutes please – and then going on to Browfort to meet managers and staff in our weekly hub meeting. I also have one-to-one coaching sessions scheduled with three members of staff this week which is always fun and a real learning opportunity for me.
I’ve been picking up messages that some staff might lack the confidence to use our Lync software. Lync is a Microsoft product on most of our computer desk tops enabling us to stay in contact and communicate with colleagues in real time between offices and different sites without the need to use email, the telephone or more importantly travel. I’m using the system a lot myself and with practise it’s become second nature. I urge you all to experiment with the system and if necessary dedicate some time at your teams meetings for some informal training.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
It was a big week last week with Council approving the budget. I just want to thank all of the finance teams and others who have been involved in this over the past six months or so. At some points it felt like it was never ending but in the end we have a robust budget that protects services for our communities and meets the saving that we needed to make in a thoughtful and considered way. Thanks and well done all.
I had the pleasure of visiting the MOD Porton Down facility last week with the Local Resilience Forum (LRF). The LRF are the group of public sector officers from many organisations that plan and rehearse for emergencies that might happen in our community. The visit was important to enable us to familiarise ourselves with what is a large site and also to gain an understanding of the type of work conducted there and the risks involved. It was fascinating. I hadn’t realised that we have a community of world class scientists and engineers – more than 2,000 in total – on our door step. Talking to colleagues from other branches of government, we were able to join up some of the objectives of the various organisations and explore new ways of strengthening the work that employs so many people in Wiltshire. A great day.
This week sees a return to more normal duties after the excitement of the budget last week. I’m visiting the economic development and spatial planning teams in Shurnhold on Thursday – pop along if you have a few minutes please – and then going on to Browfort to meet managers and staff in our weekly hub meeting. I also have one-to-one coaching sessions scheduled with three members of staff this week which is always fun and a real learning opportunity for me.
I’ve been picking up messages that some staff might lack the confidence to use our Lync software. Lync is a Microsoft product on most of our computer desk tops enabling us to stay in contact and communicate with colleagues in real time between offices and different sites without the need to use email, the telephone or more importantly travel. I’m using the system a lot myself and with practise it’s become second nature. I urge you all to experiment with the system and if necessary dedicate some time at your teams meetings for some informal training.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 24 February 2012
Friday 24 February
TGI Friday! I’m taking today off so this might be a short blog as I’m off to Wales in half an hour. I’m also still smarting from us losing last night's cricket T20 match against Pakistan too, but their bowlers were excellent, especially in the last overs.
Talking about cricket I spent most of yesterday at Somerset County Cricket ground with Chief Execs from across the South West (they offer South West Councils cheap meeting rooms). It was good to catch up with friends and colleagues, and needless to say there was lots of interest in our leadership model. We discussed some of the big issues facing local government in the south west, to agree how we would respond and lobby central government. Welfare reform to the benefits system is worrying everybody as we believe that in Wilshire it will remove around £10 million per year from the economy at a time when we need every penny to stimulate economic growth and jobs. Others are hit much worse and the impact on rural communities will be high. We also discussed the approach to inspection, particularly the peer review process being led by the Local Government Association (LGA). Our fear is that the service based approach will emphasise silos and non-corporate working within our organisations at a time when this is the last thing we should be doing. Having said that we are definitely in favour of the light-touch peer approach.
I spent all day Wednesday in Salisbury. It was good to catch up with the Customer Service teams in the morning and talk about ways that we can improve the service. These ideas all came from staff working in the front line and we have started working on these items immediately. It’s all about continuous improvement. After lunch I went to Bourne Hill to meet staff from the Planning, Technical Support, Conservation, Enforcement and the Building Control teams. Again it was great to hear their feedback on our recent planning transformation event and importantly put some faces to some names.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. 199 followers as of this morning... will you be number 200?
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Talking about cricket I spent most of yesterday at Somerset County Cricket ground with Chief Execs from across the South West (they offer South West Councils cheap meeting rooms). It was good to catch up with friends and colleagues, and needless to say there was lots of interest in our leadership model. We discussed some of the big issues facing local government in the south west, to agree how we would respond and lobby central government. Welfare reform to the benefits system is worrying everybody as we believe that in Wilshire it will remove around £10 million per year from the economy at a time when we need every penny to stimulate economic growth and jobs. Others are hit much worse and the impact on rural communities will be high. We also discussed the approach to inspection, particularly the peer review process being led by the Local Government Association (LGA). Our fear is that the service based approach will emphasise silos and non-corporate working within our organisations at a time when this is the last thing we should be doing. Having said that we are definitely in favour of the light-touch peer approach.
I spent all day Wednesday in Salisbury. It was good to catch up with the Customer Service teams in the morning and talk about ways that we can improve the service. These ideas all came from staff working in the front line and we have started working on these items immediately. It’s all about continuous improvement. After lunch I went to Bourne Hill to meet staff from the Planning, Technical Support, Conservation, Enforcement and the Building Control teams. Again it was great to hear their feedback on our recent planning transformation event and importantly put some faces to some names.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. 199 followers as of this morning... will you be number 200?
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 17 February 2012
Friday 17 February
It’s been a fun week this week – out and about meeting staff from across the county and of course England are 2-0 up in the ODI series against Pakistan with the Essex lad Cook scoring back to back centuries in both matches.
On Tuesday I was in Shurnhold meeting the planning teams from the west and the east. It was a good opportunity for those informal discussions after the big transformation day we held recently. Lots of great questions, some real concerns about the future which I hope were answered with honesty. I have had several emails from staff since which I always like.
Yesterday I was in Bourne Hill with Sue meeting groups of managers and staff from the south of the county. Again we all learned a lot and it was inspiring to see staff from different departments coming together and able to sort many of their issues between them. Our role to facilitate this and ensure our teams connect across the organisational structure is important if we are to offer joined up services to our customers. There were concerns regarding the building which Mark from the FM team did a great job in handling and the other area of most concern was over the uncertainty surrounding the admin review. We have a paper coming to CLT on Monday on the admin review so we will have much more detail about this to share with you over the coming weeks.
Today I’m spending most of the day with the highways and street scene teams in Kennet House, Devizes. We’re looking at options around how we deliver these services in the future whilst ensuring we maximise the involvement of our community areas in shaping and making decisions related to their needs. Interesting stuff, or at least I think so! I should probably get out more...
Earlier this week we discussed the plans and issues around the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. These events this year are going to be massive in Wiltshire and will involve so many different staff from across the organisation. I see this as a great way to develop our cross boundary working and support our culture development as well as having a good old party in our communities. More on this over the coming weeks.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
On Tuesday I was in Shurnhold meeting the planning teams from the west and the east. It was a good opportunity for those informal discussions after the big transformation day we held recently. Lots of great questions, some real concerns about the future which I hope were answered with honesty. I have had several emails from staff since which I always like.
Yesterday I was in Bourne Hill with Sue meeting groups of managers and staff from the south of the county. Again we all learned a lot and it was inspiring to see staff from different departments coming together and able to sort many of their issues between them. Our role to facilitate this and ensure our teams connect across the organisational structure is important if we are to offer joined up services to our customers. There were concerns regarding the building which Mark from the FM team did a great job in handling and the other area of most concern was over the uncertainty surrounding the admin review. We have a paper coming to CLT on Monday on the admin review so we will have much more detail about this to share with you over the coming weeks.
Today I’m spending most of the day with the highways and street scene teams in Kennet House, Devizes. We’re looking at options around how we deliver these services in the future whilst ensuring we maximise the involvement of our community areas in shaping and making decisions related to their needs. Interesting stuff, or at least I think so! I should probably get out more...
Earlier this week we discussed the plans and issues around the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. These events this year are going to be massive in Wiltshire and will involve so many different staff from across the organisation. I see this as a great way to develop our cross boundary working and support our culture development as well as having a good old party in our communities. More on this over the coming weeks.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 10 February 2012
Friday 10 February 2012
A snowy start to the day today so I hope you’ve all had safe journeys to work or are using the home working ICT that most of us now have. I’m typing this at my kitchen table as I contemplate going outside to scrape the snow and drive to Trowbridge.
Assuming I get to Trowbridge I’m meeting about 170 staff from our planning service this morning. We’re launching the transformation programme for that service today with an interactive event for all staff in the service to shape and influence the work programme for the year. This is a major priority for me this year as planning is such an important part of delivering our vision for more resilient communities, and ensuring we attract more jobs into the county and keep the ones we have during what is a difficult economic climate.
Yesterday we had the joint scrutiny meeting of the proposed 2012-13 budget. It was a lively meeting with some great questions from members as they prepared themselves for the full debate on the budget at Council on 28 February. The finance and services teams have done a great job once again to prepare this in such a readable and accessible format. Well done all.
Earlier in the week I held my monthly managers meetings with around 100 managers from the teams I lead. We shared some learning around the forthcoming planning transformation programme, devolving service decision making to communities (highways have done a great job on this), the overall transformation programme including campuses and a quick session from me on communication and how we might understand and improve it. This last item was raised by many staff in the recent forums we held.
I now have to write a quick letter to the Local Government Chronicle about councils with no Chief Executive. They really don’t seem to understand how it all works so I’ll have another try...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Assuming I get to Trowbridge I’m meeting about 170 staff from our planning service this morning. We’re launching the transformation programme for that service today with an interactive event for all staff in the service to shape and influence the work programme for the year. This is a major priority for me this year as planning is such an important part of delivering our vision for more resilient communities, and ensuring we attract more jobs into the county and keep the ones we have during what is a difficult economic climate.
Yesterday we had the joint scrutiny meeting of the proposed 2012-13 budget. It was a lively meeting with some great questions from members as they prepared themselves for the full debate on the budget at Council on 28 February. The finance and services teams have done a great job once again to prepare this in such a readable and accessible format. Well done all.
Earlier in the week I held my monthly managers meetings with around 100 managers from the teams I lead. We shared some learning around the forthcoming planning transformation programme, devolving service decision making to communities (highways have done a great job on this), the overall transformation programme including campuses and a quick session from me on communication and how we might understand and improve it. This last item was raised by many staff in the recent forums we held.
I now have to write a quick letter to the Local Government Chronicle about councils with no Chief Executive. They really don’t seem to understand how it all works so I’ll have another try...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 3 February 2012
Friday 3 February 2012
The last 10 days or so has been great – really buzzing, all apart from the Second Test which I am still in shock over. We’ll see what today brings the England team.
Last weeks staff awards were terrific. It was great to see nearly 300 staff attend, and some of their stories were humbling indeed. The 2012 awards start again this month so please get your entries in. It makes a big difference to how we all feel during some tough times.
I presented the Planning Service Transformation Programme to Cabinet Liaison earlier this week. This is a very readable document that summarises all of our plans for the development of the service over the next 12 months or so including some radical ideas to accelerate development of our culture and behaviours work which I shall personally lead with Brad. We are getting all the staff together next week – some 160 or so – to share and discuss this with them and most importantly to get their input into the future direction of the service. This is exciting and Cabinet fully indorsed the plan developed by Brad and his team.
We completed the staff forums yesterday in Chippenham. We’ve met well over 2,500 people over the last few weeks from across the county. It has been a privilege to see such engaged staff and listen to their observations and questions about how we become an even better organisation delivering with our communities. So many great ideas. The big issue that I have heard is that of inter-team communication; service X knowing and understanding what service Y is doing and why. We need to think very had about how we address this. It’s all about connecting people I think. We’ll have to come up with novel and effective ways of encouraging this at a time when people are very busy. Twitter anybody?
Whilst at Chippenham yesterday we held our first hub session for managers and staff based in the locality. It was a great conversation about many subjects and so good to spend some quality time with front line staff. I am really looking forward to these weekly sessions in the hubs. If you would like to come along then please contact that communications team and they can let you know dates and times. It’s very informal!
I am spending all day today with the HR team working on the development plan for people throughout the organisation and the next steps on our culture change journey. I find this stuff fascinating and so important as it will be the work that starts to deliver on many of the comments, questions and observations that have come out of the staff forums over the last month or so. Watch this space for updates.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Last weeks staff awards were terrific. It was great to see nearly 300 staff attend, and some of their stories were humbling indeed. The 2012 awards start again this month so please get your entries in. It makes a big difference to how we all feel during some tough times.
I presented the Planning Service Transformation Programme to Cabinet Liaison earlier this week. This is a very readable document that summarises all of our plans for the development of the service over the next 12 months or so including some radical ideas to accelerate development of our culture and behaviours work which I shall personally lead with Brad. We are getting all the staff together next week – some 160 or so – to share and discuss this with them and most importantly to get their input into the future direction of the service. This is exciting and Cabinet fully indorsed the plan developed by Brad and his team.
We completed the staff forums yesterday in Chippenham. We’ve met well over 2,500 people over the last few weeks from across the county. It has been a privilege to see such engaged staff and listen to their observations and questions about how we become an even better organisation delivering with our communities. So many great ideas. The big issue that I have heard is that of inter-team communication; service X knowing and understanding what service Y is doing and why. We need to think very had about how we address this. It’s all about connecting people I think. We’ll have to come up with novel and effective ways of encouraging this at a time when people are very busy. Twitter anybody?
Whilst at Chippenham yesterday we held our first hub session for managers and staff based in the locality. It was a great conversation about many subjects and so good to spend some quality time with front line staff. I am really looking forward to these weekly sessions in the hubs. If you would like to come along then please contact that communications team and they can let you know dates and times. It’s very informal!
I am spending all day today with the HR team working on the development plan for people throughout the organisation and the next steps on our culture change journey. I find this stuff fascinating and so important as it will be the work that starts to deliver on many of the comments, questions and observations that have come out of the staff forums over the last month or so. Watch this space for updates.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 20 January 2012
Friday 20 January 2012
I feel it’s been a good week this week – if somewhat busy. Good except for the cricket of course. I’m waiting for a call up for the second test (in my dreams).
We held the first staff forum yesterday and it was good to talk with so many staff – 750 by the end of the day. There were some tough, challenging questions which I always like to hear as it shows deep thinking about the issues we face collectively. I always feel this is a good sign! The behaviours framework was well received and colleagues were keen to understand how we will implement it and ultimately ensure staff and managers aspire to meeting it. We will try and role model those behaviours and we expect others to do so too. I’m sure we won’t always get it right and we will need your help to identify when this is the case. In the next month or so our revised appraisal process, aligned to our new values and behaviours will be shared with us all and ready to use. I’m looking forward to the staff sessions in Melksham and Salisbury next week so if you’re not booked to attend please do so quickly. It will be good to see you.
Some information hot of the press. Our customer satisfaction has risen by 17% in the last survey to 56%. This is the percentage of Wiltshire residents who rate themselves as completely or very satisfied with us. This is great news and demonstrates that what we are doing, and how we are doing it is having a real impact on communities and individuals. There is no room for complacency though, as we can always be better but it’s great feedback which we can learn so much from. I’ll share more details behind this headline figure in future blogs.
I attended Scrutiny Committee as I always do earlier in the week. We had some good discussion around the new leadership mode (lots of member support) and our budget position in year for 2011-12 amongst other things. I was delighted that one of the members raised the issue of staff work load and some of the long hours being worked. All other members recognised this issue too and discussed their concern over staff welfare and the need to focus on this. I was able to confirm that we do just that but I was pleased that the issue was raised and recognised. We need to take this issue very seriously and where we see work-life balance issues becoming unbalanced, we must address them quickly.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next week.
Carlton
We held the first staff forum yesterday and it was good to talk with so many staff – 750 by the end of the day. There were some tough, challenging questions which I always like to hear as it shows deep thinking about the issues we face collectively. I always feel this is a good sign! The behaviours framework was well received and colleagues were keen to understand how we will implement it and ultimately ensure staff and managers aspire to meeting it. We will try and role model those behaviours and we expect others to do so too. I’m sure we won’t always get it right and we will need your help to identify when this is the case. In the next month or so our revised appraisal process, aligned to our new values and behaviours will be shared with us all and ready to use. I’m looking forward to the staff sessions in Melksham and Salisbury next week so if you’re not booked to attend please do so quickly. It will be good to see you.
Some information hot of the press. Our customer satisfaction has risen by 17% in the last survey to 56%. This is the percentage of Wiltshire residents who rate themselves as completely or very satisfied with us. This is great news and demonstrates that what we are doing, and how we are doing it is having a real impact on communities and individuals. There is no room for complacency though, as we can always be better but it’s great feedback which we can learn so much from. I’ll share more details behind this headline figure in future blogs.
I attended Scrutiny Committee as I always do earlier in the week. We had some good discussion around the new leadership mode (lots of member support) and our budget position in year for 2011-12 amongst other things. I was delighted that one of the members raised the issue of staff work load and some of the long hours being worked. All other members recognised this issue too and discussed their concern over staff welfare and the need to focus on this. I was able to confirm that we do just that but I was pleased that the issue was raised and recognised. We need to take this issue very seriously and where we see work-life balance issues becoming unbalanced, we must address them quickly.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next week.
Carlton
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Thursday 12 January 2012
Week two and it’s already getting very busy. Which actually is a good thing for me personally I think, now that I‘ve had a rest over the holiday period.
Yesterday I met with 120 managers from across the teams for whom I have line management responsibility. We did some work together on our priorities and objectives for 2012 as well as talking about communication within and across the teams. This is a priority for me. We also talked about the role of managers and leaders and my expectations related to this. I am a great believer that stock can be managed, but people need to be led. Here are my “must dos” for myself and other managers:
• One Council, one team (win-win)
• We balance where we spend our time; task – team – individual (it’s 40-40-20 for me)
• We communicate well (Face to face, social media, all the methods)
• We’re visible
• No surprises
• We always meet our budget (we sort our pressures)
• Staff, Communities and Customers are our focus
• Innovation, new ideas, take some risks (have some fun)
• Help and support each other
• Everybody has an appraisal. That means everybody.
• We run this organisation like it was our name above the door
• Management is a profession – we need to treat it as such
Also yesterday, we held our first performance – budget – risk meeting with the Cabinet members for my services. We reviewed our balanced score card of key performance indicators and our budget position. We plan to do this every six weeks or so throughout the year. This will be very important as we’re a group of services totalling well over £100 million in expenditure linked to some key priorities for members and our communities across the county. We’ll need to ensure we stay on track to deliver.
I chaired my first meeting of group leaders last night – the leaders of all the political groups in the council. This was a great experience and something I have been looking forward to for some time. There were some knotty constitutional issues on the agenda as well as some key policy items too. It was good to see so much consensus and a focus on what’s best for the people who live, work and visit our county.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next week.
Carlton
Yesterday I met with 120 managers from across the teams for whom I have line management responsibility. We did some work together on our priorities and objectives for 2012 as well as talking about communication within and across the teams. This is a priority for me. We also talked about the role of managers and leaders and my expectations related to this. I am a great believer that stock can be managed, but people need to be led. Here are my “must dos” for myself and other managers:
• One Council, one team (win-win)
• We balance where we spend our time; task – team – individual (it’s 40-40-20 for me)
• We communicate well (Face to face, social media, all the methods)
• We’re visible
• No surprises
• We always meet our budget (we sort our pressures)
• Staff, Communities and Customers are our focus
• Innovation, new ideas, take some risks (have some fun)
• Help and support each other
• Everybody has an appraisal. That means everybody.
• We run this organisation like it was our name above the door
• Management is a profession – we need to treat it as such
Also yesterday, we held our first performance – budget – risk meeting with the Cabinet members for my services. We reviewed our balanced score card of key performance indicators and our budget position. We plan to do this every six weeks or so throughout the year. This will be very important as we’re a group of services totalling well over £100 million in expenditure linked to some key priorities for members and our communities across the county. We’ll need to ensure we stay on track to deliver.
I chaired my first meeting of group leaders last night – the leaders of all the political groups in the council. This was a great experience and something I have been looking forward to for some time. There were some knotty constitutional issues on the agenda as well as some key policy items too. It was good to see so much consensus and a focus on what’s best for the people who live, work and visit our county.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next week.
Carlton
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