Thursday 24 October 2013

I thought this week I would share with you some of my thinking about management and leadership in local government. At a time of rapid change in response to significant challenges, good management and leadership is vital to the success of the organisation and wellbeing of our staff.


For me management and leadership are inextricably linked. I believe that good managers are good leaders and that you can’t lead without being able to manage ― for me there is a credibility gap with leaders who can’t manage. Why would you follow a leader without credibility? This is probably controversial as the literature tends to separate the two. Leadership and followership are linked for me.

Good management is about performing a role covering three distinct but related domains; task, team and individual. Definition and achievement of the task in hand, developing the team as a collective, and developing individuals and one’s self to learn and improve. I like to think about these three domains existing in a model of management and leadership comprising four levels; vision, strategy, operations and tactics. The manager — leader has to operate at all four levels and in the three domains to be successful.

Leadership then goes beyond this into the realm of change. Change related to improved performance, better customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and enhanced staff wellbeing and learning. Change is the important differentiator between management and leadership; change is a psychological journey to be led rather than a task to be managed.

The skills required to manage and lead are closely related. They include a passion for and a skill to communicate, displaying the appropriate behaviours, being competent technically but also across the whole system ― not just the immediate part of the organisation. Leaders need to be conversant in systems thinking competencies. Above all they have to deliver; deliver change, and deliver the performance demanded by customers, citizens and politicians.

It’s a multi-faceted role but the bottom line is that it is my job. I am employed to lead. Everything else is secondary. It’s about all of the following:

• Attracting, growing and developing the best people and setting them free to deliver

• It’s something to be measured and worked at continuously to improve ― forming the major part of my annual CPD

• It’s lonely, complex, difficult, challenging, frustrating and hugely exciting and thrilling

• It’s about caring; for staff, customers, the organisation and yourself

• It’s about challenging the status quo with a dogged desire to improve things

• It’s about detail as well as big picture and also simplifying complexity for others

• Taking risks and being comfortable with prolonged exposure to those personal and organisational risks

Above all, it’s about having a vision for the future that you know will be better than today.

The world of management and leadership is changing because the world is changing. The global debt and government deficit crisis means that spending is massively constrained in the public sector and will be for another ten years. Customers and citizens expect better service, customised to their personal preferences all at a cost that represents better value to them ― as buyers or as tax payers. This requirement is driven by an increasingly sophisticated and developed consumer mind-set and market where the customer or client is in full control. In this world, local authorities are having to move from a model of “we’ll tell you what you can have” to a model of “what do you need and how can we help to provide this?”. This is a difficult cultural and behavioural shift for staff, managers and leaders to make if they have only ever experienced the former.

Key challenges in this new world include: doing more with less; doing different things with less; innovation and creativity, and how to fund & exploit it; better data and information and how to use it; exploiting new technology and ways of working; personal resilience to continual change and pressure; communication and influence — with customers, clients, stakeholders and partners and co-production and how to work with communities and individuals to enable service provision. Leaders who don’t understand this and merely propose service cuts are failing.

Local authorities are undergoing the biggest change that they have ever experienced. Funding reductions of 30% plus already and the same again to be announced over the next few years make the job of leadership very difficult. Most managers in local government have never experienced a challenge of this magnitude and it is becoming the discriminating factor between personal success and failure.

In this respect, key challenges for leaders include: finding a common purpose to galvanise effort and spirit in organisations which deliver 350 plus largely unrelated services; managing complexity between the interrelated parts of the organisation and the wider community systems within which the organisation operates; developing communities to co-deliver services to reduce unsustainable levels of demand; innovation, including cross sector innovation and how to leverage this to the benefit of communities and the organisation to improve performance and reduce costs and better management and leadership competence ― both political and officer to inspire staff and communities to make the journey of change that society is calling for.

The major challenge is for leaders to move on from their professional background and to embrace the profession of management & leadership. In a world where whole system thinking will differentiate between those that succeed and those that fail, the following, I believe, will be the new leadership competencies: the ability to think in terms of systems and knowing how to lead systems; the ability to understand the variability of work in planning and problem solving; understanding how we learn, develop, and improve; leading true learning and improvement; understanding people and why they behave as they do; understanding the interaction and interdependence between systems, variability, learning, and human behaviour; knowing how each affects the others; and giving vision, meaning, direction and focus to the organisation.

It will also be important to be aware of the ‘experts’, particularly those selling simple ideas as the panacea to address and meet the problems of today and tomorrow. In addition, new delivery models such as outsourcing, commissioning and staff mutuals have a role to play but they are not the solution or even a major part of the solution to the problems facing the public sector over the next 10 years.

Finally, leadership is lonely. I try to be prepared for the mental and physical effects of this and seek-out sources of support ― from friends, a coach or a mentor. Learn from sport where the best have great support systems in place.

Speak soon.

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.

Carlton