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In these occasional newsletters we provide a brief update of our activities and share some of our current thinking in brief papers or abstracts. This time there are three papers:
- Mhairi's highly effective work on Strategy as Story or Narrative
- The preface and contents of our recently published work for the IDeA Inside Top Teams - a practical guide.
- Our model of Leadership as Juggling (hence our animation) which many of you will know us for and which we use extensively. It focuses on leaders juggling three balls - outcomes, interests and people - and knowing themselves
We also welcome Helen Dawson and Anjali Arya as Associates, both of whom have huge experience across public services -
for more details see our website >>
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  Strategy: Is it a convincing story? |
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‘At it’s most fundamental the value of a story lies in its ability to convey complex and multi layered ideas in a simple and memorable form to culturally diverse audiences’, D.J. Snowden 2005 (The Cynefin Centre).
Mhairi has been leading a number of workshops on the potential of the use of ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ in developing and communicating strategy, aims and ambitions with leading elected members and managers. Individuals during these sessions evolve and construct stories using a fable format to get key messages across on specific strands of strategy using a defined and dynamic process. The fable format is chosen as the natural medium for long, often complex stories, difficult to repeat verbatim but which have a memorable message or moral. It seems to lend itself well to some of the strategies politicians and managers struggle to get embedded in organisations and communities. Like all good stories, fables do not attempt to deliver the message until the story itself has provided the context that will make the message acceptable or inarguable! The fable format with its twists and turns, its reversals and resolutions contrast favourably with staged presentations and power points.
The more powerful message lies often in the sub-text of the story, hidden messages which reveal patterns of culture, behaviour and understanding.
‘Reliving of others experience is the historic role of storytelling in society in providing context for human action’, D J Snowden, Cynefin Centre, 2005.
Like any story these messages will get refined in the telling and retelling. Participants in workshops whilst engaged with this telling and retelling get feedback ( often robust!) to help them improve their story construction at the same time as helping them spot the anti stories triggered by the process. The identification of the anti stories, cynical and spontaneous reactions to messages, is often an unexpected benefit from the process and signals where the script has drifted too far away from the well understood reality of life the audience is very aware of.
Whilst the use of narrative as a means of communicating a key aspect of strategy does not resolve all the issues of communication and engagement, it does focus minds on what the key messages are, not just in terms of a slogan or sound bite but in terms of the culture, values, behaviour and wider understandings required so that the audience can fill in the gaps and make correct judgements for themselves. It also produces some great stories!!
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top teams a practical guide |
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why this guide?
Huge demands are placed on local authorities. The onus of meeting these demands falls squarely on the shoulders of the leading politicians and senior managers – a responsibility that they share for the overall leadership and management of the authority. |
Each authority has a unique combination of politicians and managers with very varied backgrounds, values, capabilities and views. They have rarely chosen to work with one another. Yet, for the sake of the community they all serve, they must make this relationship work effectively.
The phrase top team is frequently used in local government to define this combined group of leading politicians (in cabinets; executives; mayor plus cabinets; and committee chairs) and leading managers (in small or large senior management groups). Our experience, as others’1, is that this is rarely a single team. Usually it is two teams with a shared responsibility for working together on joint business. We prefer, and use throughout this guide, the phrase top teams – plural not singular.
This does not reduce the shared responsibility for council leadership of strategy, priorities, short and long term resources and overall performance, which have to be tackled jointly. The two top teams may not always exercise their shared responsibilities through a common forum – but throughout this guide we suggest that physically meeting together is important. Much of the detailed business will, of course, be conducted through the pairings of portfolio holders (chairs) and directors (senior managers), or clusters of more than two, with joint responsibility for a policy area or service. We acknowledge this in the guide (section 12) but do stress that the top teams must make the key decisions.
This guide aims to help the working relationship between the top teams. It sets out various themes that we have found top teams need to work at and suggests different approaches to tackling leadership challenges and problems. We have called it a guide because it offers information about various ways you might do things rather than a manual, which is the single way to do things. We recognise that the huge variety in local roles, responsibilities and relationships makes prescription impossible – but by drawing on our work and discussions with many authorities, we focus on the things that they have demonstrated to work.
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The guide is divided into three parts
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The basics (section 1-4) – themes that underlie all that the top teams do
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The business agenda (section 5-10) – business
themes top teams have to tackle
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The development agenda (sections 11-15) – themes that consider how to develop the top teams’ basic relationships |
You do not need to read this guide from cover to cover. Instead, dip into and use those sections of most relevance to you. We suggest:
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if you are bemused about why it’s such hard work, scan section 1 |
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if you want to get a grip on two models for how top teams work, read sections 2 and 3
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if you want to diagnose the range of leadership
capabilities of your top teams, use section 4 |
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if you have a substantially new cabinet or management team, working through sections 4-10 could be of interest |
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if you are unsure whether your top team is strategic enough, look at section 5 |
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if you have a problem with budgeting or performance, consider the ideas in sections 6 and 7 |
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if you are facing major change and the challenge of leading it, then section 9 may help |
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if you want to improve the top teams’ working relationships, then sections 11-15 could help |
Above all, try out ways of improving your top teams’ working – there are few teams that cannot improve and the ideas in the guide may help.
In each section we have briefly discussed each theme and added a workshop session for top teams to examine the implications for themselves. They vary in length from less than an hour to a half or whole day.While many of the tasks can be self managed by top teams and have been written with this in mind we suggest that you consider using a facilitator. The
workshops often need a facilitator because many
strong-minded individuals will be involved. An independent chair can steer the group to keep it focused on the task, encourage all to participate, flip-chart the issues, maintain discipline on timescales and keep a balanced record of the work done and conclusions reached. Facilitators may be drawn from within a council – but must be seen as impartial and command respect – or from outside the council, such
as from the IDeA.
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Andy’s presentation of a paper on ‘Modernising Strategies and Local Leadership’ at The Future of Local Government Summit in Melbourne, Australia, June 2006 can be viewed and downloaded at our web site
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| LEADING CHANGE: A JUGGLING ACT Andy Holder, Mhairi Cameron and Mike Green |
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To lead is a demanding and complex business. It is no surprise therefore that leadership abounds with many books and models of 'how to do it'. We have found that despite this many leaders welcome a straightforward guide as to what to keep in mind as they tackle a particular challenge.
We set out below a model we devised which attempts to be a straightforward guide to the leadership terrain. It is not new but brings together three familiar aspects of leadership - having a vision for business outcomes, negotiating with stakeholders, and taking people emotionally and behaviourally with the change. These are the three 'balls' which leaders need to 'juggle'. Leadership has similarities to juggling because the focus of attention is continually changing as 'balls' require more or less attention. It is also dependent on the particular skills of the juggler (or jugglers) at the centre of it all.
There are five aspects that require attention in leadership (and juggling).
Leadership starts from ourselves. It comes from a personal or small group concern to act or get something done. It draws upon our knowledge, character and skills. To lead well requires good self knowledge - to be aware of our drives and character.
Leadership must then juggle three aspects of the particular situation:
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Focusing on what needs to be done – the vision and business outcomes; |
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Spotting who is for and who against the change and finding a way forward – negotiating with stakeholders; |
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Enabling those involved to emotionally and behaviourally adapt – the people dimension |
Leadership is also inevitably within a context and does not happen in a vacuum. It must account for the context - how the context shapes what can be done and how what is done begins to shape the context.
A leader is at the centre of these processes, shaping and directing them, though not, of course, always responsible for carrying them out. What is critical is that although one aspect seems central at any time, e.g. developing a strategy, a leader's role is - like a juggler's - keeping an eye on other aspects at the same time, e.g. building support, allaying fears.
When it comes to leading a particular change each of the three 'balls' involves a wide range of activities and effective leadership is about ensuring each is dealt with at the appropriate time. We used the model in the Leadership Development Commission Strategy recently and the diagram below taken from it illustrates some of these activities. (www.idea.gov.uk)
Some key questions to keep in mind are;
Understanding our personal or team leadership
How well do you know your characteristics, skills and limits of knowledge?
Focusing on developing and delivering clear outcomes
What vision do you have and what outcomes do you want?
How are they to be achieved?
Spotting stakeholders interests and negotiating a way forward through influence, authority and power
What interests and voices are there linked to this change?
How do you negotiate a way forward?
Enabling people to adapt emotionally and behaviourally
What challenges, possibilities and dilemmas will individuals face?
How can they be enabled to face the emotionally and behaviourally challenging changes?
The Context
How well does the context of what else is happening define your room for manoeuvre?
The competing demands of leadership
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