In the current financial landscape, political, executive and managerial leadership within the public services will have to be very different from that which has been exercised over the last 15 years or so. While there are some parallels to be drawn to leading a corporate organisation during a downturn, public service leaders are facing uncharted and very choppy waters.
The last 15 years have been mostly about steady growth. We are now in a situation of unprecedented reductions where previous non-cashable efficiencies must become cashable. The scale of the reduction would be enough to hole most commercial enterprises below the water line. This is in a time where (unlike commercial organisations), the demand for public services is likely to rise significantly.
There is a distinct and pervasive zeitgeist that the public services are now seen as a drain on the nation’s wealth rather than an investment in it. The measure of public services now seems to be only about what they are costing rather than any outcomes produced. It has of course always been strikingly difficult to track the links between public sector activity and safer, healthier and wealthier communities.
The public services are challenged with a large number of statutory duties and responsibilities, and political priorities which cannot be avoided but which introduce degrees of inflexibility not faced by corporate entities that are scaling down. The cuts that are to come will subject to fearsome and fierce debates over the coming months. Professional, political, personal and ethical loyalties will be under huge pressure. Public service leaders will be pitched against each other as each do battle over who can wave the biggest shroud. Tensions will erupt over whether decisions made are more in the public or political interests.
Meanwhile the public are unlikely to be passive observers as Facebook campaigns mount, Twitter storms erupt and flash demonstrations convene to hold local and national politicians to account. The celebrity culture may hold great sway as national treasures and pop artists choose to wield their influence. This phenomenon has unpredictable and possibly violent consequences.
And in amongst all this, ordinary local politicians, executives and managers will need to be making significant decisions that will have far reaching effects. This is not just about ‘managing change’ or ‘handling complexity’, this is about leading teams of public service workers in bleak cul-de-sacs.
- Do you recognise this context – what would you add or take away?
- Will leadership have to be so different in these circumstances?
- As a leader, what pressures are you feeling most keenly at the moment?
- How do you think your and others’ leadership will have to change over the coming months – what will you need to do (a lot) more of or (a lot) less of... and carry on doing?
- What key skills will be so important that to be unpractised in them will mean seriously poor & inefficient leadership?
- What will you have to do that you have never done before?
- What resources will you draw on to help you get through this?
Jon,I was with you until we got to the bleak cul de sacs. As a leader, you can't put your hand up and say 'here we are guys, this is a bleak cul de sac' without begging the question about who led us there.Different leadership is going to be needed to overcome the 'how did we get here' question. Not a change of leadership, but a different style that makes possible the kind of flexibility and opportunism that will find smaller scale, more adaptive responses to the challenges.A more distributed leadership style will also enable partners and stakeholders to come into the leadership group without implicit or explicit challenges to more traditional elite leaders.I'm an informal leader in my authority - we're working towards a model of distributed leadership - and what I say to my colleagues is that there are going to be some leaps of faith required alongisde the imaginative leaps that will be required to turn the Big Society from a soundbite to a social reality, but all the alternatives are worse.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of distributed leadership, even if I'm not totally sure what it means. But I sense that like me you're more interested in 'where do we go from here' than wringing our hands over 'how did we get here'?I'm discussing with colleagues in the social enterprise, private and public sectors ideas for new models of service delivery. Each sector has its own good qualities and models of good practice, and we can approach each community and service area with an open mind to choose the most appropriate organisation from any sector to lead a new kind of service delivery, with all sectors contributing.Leaps of faith and imagination are definitely needed!What do others think and what else is out there?
ReplyDeleteCertainly we are here now - and whilst it is really really important to apply lessons from the past - we of course must move forward. I guess I am very curious about how people are doing this. I fear that in some quarters leaders are doing the same things - only harder and quicker whilst stopping some activities on a slice by slice basis. But in some quarters, I am sure, some leaders are trying something new - because the context has changed - and so therefore must leadership. I am very interested to find out how it is changing.(The Australian 'warm seat' run over the last couple of days has some great answers from Wayne Scheggia & Ian Duncan from Western Australia including:My question: I have a second question - you talk about the critical importance for senior managers to be more adaptable and, indeed, lead their own organisations to becoming more adaptable.What advice would you give to such managers - what should they do a lot more of and a lot less of - to nurture these higher levels of adaptability? Wayne's answer: At the risk of sounding like a text book (and these aren't quotes from books) I'd suggest a couple of things; Experiment. Empower people with the confidence and authority to "do stuff". Be prepared to let them fail and learn - that's what experience is. Mentor young people in your organisation and you'll be amazed at what they teach you. Age plus experience usually gives you success, stability and certainty. It can also lead to stagnation. Mixing up the generations in your organisation can give you back some spark and also accelerate the sharing of values. Promote responsibility through accountability, but don't be punitive. Facilitate as much as you can - manage when you must. I think management is too much about controlling processes and not enough about making things happen. I see facilitating as that happy place where Leadership and Management collide to produce great outcomes. )see http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/436525/forum/thread.do?id=8289160&themeId=7650423 for the full warm seat discussionsThe cul-de-sac idea is certainly bleak - as I do think that is probably how a large number of people are feeling. But a cul-de-sac often has other ways out too - what is through that small gap in the hedge over there....?
ReplyDeleteJon,Some thoughts.I tend to agree with Gareth.The number of leaders may need to decrease - and that could lead to real antagonism.But we should remember: different times require different leaders.Churchill was a great war time leader -perhaps the greatest we have known. He really shone during the war - but many of his years, before and after, were spent in virtual obscurity. In the Thirties, he could count his friends on one hand, so concerned was he about the threat of war, which no-one wanted to hear.I think the mark of the exceptional leader in the current situation will be the person who looks for that spark of leadership in his co-workers, then develops it. Distributed leadership sounds interesting, Gareth. I don't know how a ship would function under distributed leadership. It sounds fine in theory, but who carries the can? What do you do about accountability?We have never been in these times before; that means there are some intuitive people who may be very finely tuned, and we should attempt to be aware of them.Leaders have great potential now. With a collaborative effort, if it is for the benefit of everyone, we could learn to do a bit of following again.Good followers are important.Perhaps the greatest threat could come from Facebook or Twitter. It has the capacity to undermine structures that cannot react at internet speed!You ask what resources will I need to draw on....It can be a perpetual onslaught, simply holding my ground, with little support, and aware that nobody really knows where we are going!
ReplyDeleteInterested in your comments Helen but I am curious as to what substantial evidence there is that outsourcing saves money - certainly in terms of the magnitude that is being faced. With c. 50% of LA budgets already spent on outsourcing, where are these cuts to come from? (Yes I know we are supposed to be squeezing our contracts but they are not going to take 28 - 30% cuts).I certainly agree there are better ways to deliver and I definitely believe we can get far better outcomes for the resources we use, by, e.g. reducing non productive processes (such as the way commissioning gets done), rationalising salaries, looking at 4 day weeks for some posts (and thereby potentially also creating some time for people to be involved in the Big Society), investing in prevention (note, e.g. David Robinson's interview in the Guardian on Weds. Nov 17th as well as, e.g. experience of such initiatives as Time Banks where a reduction in graffiti, vandalism, etc. is being seen and will produce cash savings for Housing Depts and Housing Associations), looking critically at salary levels (grade creep), and supporting staff to develop skills to work with communities for better outcomes for all. There are many more ideas, but as budgets are to be strained to the extent that they are, it will be hard enough to maintain statutory services and all the prevention stuff is generally considered discretionary...how can we justify support to communities in general if front line children's social services and respite care, etc. may be dramatically restricted? (and I can certainly make the case for its importance) I am concerned that as money becomes tighter and tighter, that even more time will be spent going through processes, so that we spend £2x on priocesses checking that we are 100% certain that it is worth spending £X.More importantly, I am seriously worried about the next few years, in terms of poor communities under huge strain with job losses, housing benefit restrictions, benefit cuts with less and less support available, e.g. to help find work, develop skills and keep constructive social networks going. To intervene when crises occur. Will the only response be extra policing? I worked in Southwark when Damilola Taylor was killed and because we had relationships on the ground with key community leaders from the African and other communities, there was support to handle the Press interest, support to challenge the outsiders who swept in trying to divide the community along ethnic grounds - well i cannot prove it was mine and my colleague's involvement that made the difference, (as usual cannot prove a negative) but I am certainly concerned that there may be no-one left with those sorts of skills to make that intervention.Sorry if this sounds negative and I have loads more ideas about how things can be improved, but I think we need to be straight that it is going to be very hard indeed for people in the poorest areas - who will now also have many more unemployed people requiring support from their beleaguered community as services reduce, mental illness increases and shops close.....
ReplyDeletesorry realised I had veered from the subject of leadership - from the position of a middle Manager, I would (and do) ask that more is made of the skills and knowledge of the staff. That there is a particular kind of leadership we need in the future and perhaps there is another type of leadership that we need to steer organisations through this process of deconstruction (and some of us have had to be turkeys voting for Christmas - that too is a kind of leadership)But there is still too much talk about managing change when we are not managing change of emphasis or approach, we are looking at something that is fundamentally different and we do not know what it is and will not have time to develop something really constructive. It is clear that we will lose some leadership skills (such as those I outlined in my previous post) and then a year or so down the line, they will be desperately sought as it is realised that the ability to support communities in crisis is not there and crisis intervention is done individual by individual, etc.I am interested in the rhetoric and even potential of the Big Society, which includes a rather distorted version of some of the community development ideas (and ideals) of the 70s and 80s. Nothing wrong with that, but our communities are very different, opportunities for working class people are different (e.g. very few factories, no mines) and even then community development workers were needed as catalysts to get many things moving, especially outside areas where there were single industries with strong unions that could offer that lead for their commnities. What is the role of the public sector in terms of development and implementation - it cannot be to just "leave it to the community" and I do not believe this is being paternalistic - the role needs to be small and facilitative but it needs to be something in addition to being more open.I mentioned Time Banks - and these can make a huge difference to levels of engagement (which there is ample evidence makes a huge difference to such things as health, crime levels and even employment - see recent joint report from IPPR and JRF comparing, for example, Speke and Croxteth). Time Banks need very little money - enough for a couple of co-ordinators an office and access to a meeting room - but many that were funded under, e.g. NDC programmes, are finding it next to impossible to get further funding depsite impressive outcomes. This is the sort of investment I mean - it will be fine in middle class areas and the Big Society is not new, where it will work without a catalyst (Time Bank co-ordinator, community worker, etc.) it is already working. e.g. think of the work done to save canals, impotant buildings such as Victoria Baths in Manchester, local Victorian cemeteries and nature gardens, as well as campaigning on estates, etc, to oust drug dealers and to provide support for young people. There is no shortage of leadership there - but being inclusive, reaching out to the most disaffected as well as to the most disadvantaged, letting them know that they have something to contribute and that they will benefit themselves from contributing; that is the leadership we need if we are to make the Big Society mean anything other than massive cuts and trying to get essential services on the cheap.
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