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

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