What is your 'boldness quotient'?

There has been much talk of 'New generation leadership' of late which got me thinking about how leaders establish new directions. 

One of the hardest jobs for any leader is going off in a different direction. This may only be a small change of direction, but it may be enough for existing followers to stop following. Those followers may somehow feel betrayed by this altered course. “After all that I have done, and now we are doing this?!” 

Cutting a fresh path is both harder and easier for a new leader. 

It is easier because there is no baggage to jettison, no inconsistency to defend and no loyalty to the past to retain for retention’s sake. And there can be plenty of quoting of George Santayana about ‘those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’ and so forth. The new leader is at liberty to both praise the old warriors and then, almost in the same sentence, make a virtue of departing from their strategies. 

But it is also far harder because there is no guarantee that a new leader will bring the followers of the old leader with them. The new direction may just be too novel and be seen as too much of a break with the past. Existing bonds of friendship and trust will have to be rebuilt by the new leader, as they are now the leader and the world has changed. 

The critical judgement comes in how bold to make the new direction. Will it just be ‘new’ in name only? Or will the new leader ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’? How will the new leader judge how bold to be, not just at the start of the new leadership journey but as it continues? 

The best leaders have people that they can rely upon and trust to give them independent, full and frank feedback about whether their ‘boldness quotient’ is on the money or not. 

How is your ‘BQ’ right now? 

(How do you know?) 

How will you stay ‘bold’ and avoid the ‘new’ becoming the ‘new old’

(How will you know?)

Transparency: some rambling questions

I have been reflecting on what all this spending transparency might mean for local Councils. Here are some of my rambling questions:

 

• Has anyone answered the question ‘transparency for what?’ In other words is transparency an end itself or is the ambition of the Government to achieve something else? And in particular what? How will a local authority be able to judge whether the processes it puts in place to be more transparent are a success or not? What will success look like? How should and will all these efforts be evaluated? 
• Is this / should this only be about financial transparency – what about transparency of decision making. Will this public facing transparency make the organisation itself more transparent? What will be the impacts on the leaders and decision makers of all this transparency? Will leadership have to change to match this new environment? 
• What impact will this transparency have on purchasing / procurement? How will suppliers be affected? Will procurement processes become more transparent? (From a supplier perspective, these processes often appear Byzantine and closed – you can see my thoughts about this here: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/13-ways-to-ensure-that-procurement.html) Will tenders now go out with a ‘health warning’? How much will this transparency affect commercial confidentiality, prices and the marketplace?  Will this evaluated? How?
• How will personal confidentiality be protected? I am thinking here not just of ‘say’ the costs of caring for people with multiple & complex needs for example – but also small businesses who may not want all their payments exposed for a variety of reasons. (Will this data be used by divorce lawyers in the future for example!?) How much room is there for misinterpretation? I am reminded of the case of a paediatrician who was hounded by local people who thought she was a paedophile etc... 
• Broadly – what are the unintended consequences of this policy? What are the risks, what can be done to mitigate those risks? 
• What do the public want or need? Where is the market research to find out the kinds of information the public want? Why £500 – why not £1000 – or £300? Will this threshold be index linked? 
• How will the value of the services and products provided be represented in all this data? Is this a policy of ‘cost of everything, value of nothing’? As a citizen I want my council to be spending my money wisely – how will this data answer my concerns? How will the use of this data be tracked – if my council spends £80K on assembling all this data just so a couple of researchers from the Tax Payers Alliance can get a couple of questions answered, I might not be very pleased. 
• How much will all this cost – what will be the transaction costs? Is it merely a question of uploading the budget spreadsheets to the net for all to see? Will the raw date be enough? Will it need to be cross referenced with other data to make it useful? For example, I live in Buckingham in the Aylesbury Vale District. One of the local concerns is that the Council spends disproportionately more money on Aylesbury than on the two conurbations in the North of its area (Buckingham and Winslow). Will the data allow me to investigate this? Will the date be cross referenced with budget heads or procurement tenders and so forth? 
• Will all this data empower local people? How will this be measured? How will society be better as a consequence?

 

Any more rambling thoughts - or better still answers??

Transparency: some rambling questions

I have been reflecting on what all this spending transparency might mean for local Councils. Here are some of my rambling questions:

 

• Has anyone answered the question ‘transparency for what?’ In other words is transparency an end itself or is the ambition of the Government to achieve something else? And in particular what? How will a local authority be able to judge whether the processes it puts in place to be more transparent are a success or not? What will success look like? How should and will all these efforts be evaluated? 
• Is this / should this only be about financial transparency – what about transparency of decision making. Will this public facing transparency make the organisation itself more transparent? What will be the impacts on the leaders and decision makers of all this transparency? Will leadership have to change to match this new environment? 
• What impact will this transparency have on purchasing / procurement? How will suppliers be affected? Will procurement processes become more transparent? (From a supplier perspective, these processes often appear Byzantine and closed – you can see my thoughts about this here: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/13-ways-to-ensure-that-procurement.html) Will tenders now go out with a ‘health warning’? How much will this transparency affect commercial confidentiality, prices and the marketplace?  Will this evaluated? How?
• How will personal confidentiality be protected? I am thinking here not just of ‘say’ the costs of caring for people with multiple & complex needs for example – but also small businesses who may not want all their payments exposed for a variety of reasons. (Will this data be used by divorce lawyers in the future for example!?) How much room is there for misinterpretation? I am reminded of the case of a paediatrician who was hounded by local people who thought she was a paedophile etc... 
• Broadly – what are the unintended consequences of this policy? What are the risks, what can be done to mitigate those risks? 
• What do the public want or need? Where is the market research to find out the kinds of information the public want? Why £500 – why not £1000 – or £300? Will this threshold be index linked? 
• How will the value of the services and products provided be represented in all this data? Is this a policy of ‘cost of everything, value of nothing’? As a citizen I want my council to be spending my money wisely – how will this data answer my concerns? How will the use of this data be tracked – if my council spends £80K on assembling all this data just so a couple of researchers from the Tax Payers Alliance can get a couple of questions answered, I might not be very pleased. 
• How much will all this cost – what will be the transaction costs? Is it merely a question of uploading the budget spreadsheets to the net for all to see? Will the raw date be enough? Will it need to be cross referenced with other data to make it useful? For example, I live in Buckingham in the Aylesbury Vale District. One of the local concerns is that the Council spends disproportionately more money on Aylesbury than on the two conurbations in the North of its area (Buckingham and Winslow). Will the data allow me to investigate this? Will the date be cross referenced with budget heads or procurement tenders and so forth? 
• Will all this data empower local people? How will this be measured? How will society be better as a consequence?

 

Any more rambling thoughts - or better still answers??

Ten ways to keep the peace

Major restructuring of the police appears inevitable and is creating a plenty of debate in political and media circles. Consultant Jon Harvey weighs in with his own points of order. There are many ways to respond to the looming 25% to 40% cuts in resources that are coming to a police station near you....

For the full article go to: http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/police-cutbacks-comment-harvey

Ten ways to keep the peace

Major restructuring of the police appears inevitable and is creating a plenty of debate in political and media circles. Consultant Jon Harvey weighs in with his own points of order. There are many ways to respond to the looming 25% to 40% cuts in resources that are coming to a police station near you....

For the full article go to: http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/police-cutbacks-comment-harvey

Austerity plans & budgets: who has the ideas?

In anticipation of the CSR outcomes, nearly all public service budget holders will now be taking a long hard look at where the money gets spent and what is achieved. I can almost hear the distant clicks of numerous hatches being battened down.

Less money, probably a lot less money is going to be spent on not only on the 'frippery' of change management, organisational development and public engagement (etc.), but also on the wages of people providing direct services to some very vulnerable citizens.

Whilst there may well be very limited room for manoeuvre with the amount by which budgets will have to be reduced in these austere times, I am wondering how much scope there is in just how budgets are reshaped. 

Who has the ideas? Who needs to be involved? How will those people be involved?

I am concerned that many managers will feel driven to retreat behind closed doors, perhaps with a tame accountant, to craft the changes to be made. This is not an unreasonable course of action, of course. If people's jobs & indeed livelihoods are being questioned, if services to people in severe need are being scrutinised or if some critical priorities are being examined then confidentiality is to be expected.

The stakes are so high and the interests so potentially in great conflict, as to prevent anyone else (staff member, other connected departments & agencies, the wider public & service users) being involved in a more open & transparent discussion... would be the argument from many people, I suspect.

I have argued previously on this blog for 'Austerity Charters' (see below or click here for the original post on my blog) and I stand by this. 

But, am I alone in thinking that there is much to be gained from having more inclusive approaches to deciding just where and how budgets should be cut? I take the view, that given the right context, the right leadership and the right information, many more people could contribute constructively to building these new austere budgets. Yes, there will be conflict and yes, people will seek to express and protect their interests. But also, I think, people could earnestly, collaboratively and creatively find many more ways to do more with less than a manager (with tame accountant) is able to achieve on their own.

Or am I living in some fairytale world a million miles away from the grinding & crushing reality of austerity budgets where the only 'involvement' of staff, colleagues and citizens must only be during the titular 'consultation' periods?