Tony Blair used to say this when challenging his ministers. But whatever our thoughts on politics, Blair’s question recognises that the best technical solution to a problem and most rational decision does not on its own guarantee acceptance.
My boss in British Airways had his own way of asking Blair’s question. He would point out that every decision had its Q&A. The Q stood for Quality. The A stood for Acceptability. He required decisions to pass both tests.
Andrew Lansley’s planned reforms for the NHS are a good example. Perhaps too little effort went into acceptability and the politics.
But there is something more fundamental missing in technically best decisions; they lack a further key ingredient before they can be the best answer for users. This point is particularly well brought out in Professor Eileen Munro’s Review of Child Protection. It harks back to the work of consultants on socio-technical systems at the Tavistock Institute in London in the 1960s. The term refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour. (How slow we are to learn.)
In her report, Eileen Munro explains: “… a ‘technocratic’ approach assumes that a given analytical problem is clear, with consensus about aims and that implementation of recommendations will be via hierarchical chains of command. In contrast, a ‘socio-technical’ approach assumes the individuals involved and how they work together are just as important as any analytical problem. There is no presumption about consensus regarding the problem: aims might be hard to agree on, and implementing change may require support from a range of partners. This approach does not undermine the value of rigorous analytical thinking, but argues for a balance of abstract analysis and consideration of human relations. The nature of the child protection work has to mean that professional practice and policy makers are open to variety in both defining what help is being sought but also in any response to it.”
Sarah Helm, wife of Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was close to the inner workings of government when the Iraq War was being planned. She says: ‘I observed things that other people – journalists and inquiry teams – didn’t observe: human relations and their impact on decision-making’.
But Helm then takes the point a step further. In writing a play now on the countdown to conflict, she says: ‘You can’t stop people drawing their own inferences and interpreting it in their own way, as anybody does.’ Though speaking of her audience as they eavesdrop on the play’s conversations between Tony Blair and key figures, the point holds true for the politicians, planners and journalists as well. Everybody makes their own meaning of everything. ‘Management’ cannot tell people what and how to think about plans for change. So this level of internal personal response also has to be factored into the leadership equation. Once you accept that uncomfortable reality you begin to fundamentally reshape the process by which leaders bring about change inside organisations.
For this, we have to thank the world of complexity theory for providing valuable insights into these hidden dynamics. The work of Chris Rodgers on 'informal coalitions' is especially powerful.
Monday, 16 May 2011
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Is the government’s ‘big tent’ too small to hold ‘all the talents’, or is it the wrong sort of tent?
Bringing more faces into the government’s ‘big tent’ from a range of backgrounds, as the coalition has done, is welcome in principle, in spite of some odd celebrity choices. Broadening governance membership can improve any board of management. In government, expanding the talent pool takes place within the constitutional paradigm 'government proposes; parliament disposes’ (i.e. gives ministers’ proposals legal force). This in turn affects the government’s style of leadership. But even with a bigger tent, this particular model of leadership is failing western-style democracy. WikiLeaks has put secrecy under attack. Twitter spreads information in minutes. The online world and social media make marshalling mass campaigns easier. Witness the public outcry that forced the BBC to backtrack on its Eastenders plot. Perhaps the government’s big tent itself needs to change, not just the membership invited inside.
This suggestion connects with the idea that leadership – like wisdom – belongs to the wider system, not just the leaders. Instead of leadership being primarily about content (say, policy pronouncements) it would become identified more with process (how views are formed). Consider a leader like the Education Secretary Michael Gove, a man who shoots content from the hip. Looking out from his small tent, he rapid fires policies, decisions, edicts, cuts. Whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, his proposals are dramatic, catch people unawares, win approval from some and anger from others. His announcements are intended to get a reaction. Some people fire back, and Gove returns fire. Under pressure from all directions, including from his boss, he may be forced to backtrack. Just reflect on his announcing and then abandoning the School Sports Partnership network, changes to the Building Schools for the Future, capping salaries of headteachers paid more than the Prime Minister, and Book Trust funding of free books for children. Such matters are not generally distinguished by left v right political ideals, but instead concern things like efficiencies and budget cuts. For issues like Gove’s, surely there must be a better, less painful, way – for us, and for him.
Gove is not alone: he fills popular expectations of any ministerial leader. Andrew Lansley’s NHS commissioning reforms took the Commons NHS Select Committee by surprise, according to its Conservative chairman, Stephen Dorrell. On this occasion secrecy had initially been maintained, but that didn’t stop talent haemorrhaging from primary care trusts and putting up costs that offset the planned efficiency savings. In any case, the old management mantra favouring secrecy and surprise to contain anxiety and spare the people from premature suffering is increasingly vulnerable to leaks. Arguably, it is not so much individual ministers who need to change: it is the management model that needs to change.
Seeing the ministerial job principally in terms of content-proposal doesn’t work any more. It is narrowly informed, inefficient, gets people’s backs up, and hurts the proposer’s reputation. The standard defence ‘But wait until you see the consultation paper; it’s not as bad as you think’ doesn’t work well either. Making subsequent changes following consultation takes courage and pain to backtrack; reputations have to be protected, faces saved. Consultation carries too much baggage of hierarchical overtones and leaves people feeling sceptical and short-changed.
The problem is that consultation comes from that same tent, done by those inside to those outside. Yet when one then hears subject-experts speak, and read pundits’ blogs, special correspondents’ columns, business editorials, and encounter radio and web-based discussions, you can be forgiven for thinking that there is more expertise and wisdom outside the tent than in it. So why isn’t it (not them) allowed in? For that to happen, the paradigm would need to change, and changing a paradigm takes leadership. It would put the power and the role of leaders to the test. It would challenge Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the role of MPs, the Whips Office, the Civil Service and the Fourth Estate. But it needs to be done, and it is happening anyway.
The key to this is process. If leadership were to be seen less in terms of content and more about process, then the role of the leader would become one of designing and running a process of all the talents who can contribute to a wise and acceptable outcome, one that would not need railroading through against objections. Ministers shun process as not being under their control, indeed not under control at all, so they drive harder on the content. But in an imaginative and expanded process, advocacy would be replaced by enquiry. Talent would include anyone, not just those being consulted. In freely defined public debate, all views could be expressed and voices heard. The role of participants would not be to react to a proposal, but to question the question – helping to clarify the need, frame the issues, identify possible ways forward and explore options. Better informed decision making would follow.
Technology now makes this possible. WikiLeaks has shown that exclusiveness, secrecy and private emails no longer work. Hierarchy, strong leaders and paternalism aren’t as strong a shield against worry as they used to be. Discussion can no longer be contained, nor should it be. Most of it is going to take place out there anyway, one way or another. So instead of resisting and resenting full prior debate, government should enthusiastically promote and embrace this chaotic expansion of voice. Make a virtue of it, and gain credit for it. The prize on offer is huge: wiser, more acceptable outcomes and a more harmonious society.
This suggestion connects with the idea that leadership – like wisdom – belongs to the wider system, not just the leaders. Instead of leadership being primarily about content (say, policy pronouncements) it would become identified more with process (how views are formed). Consider a leader like the Education Secretary Michael Gove, a man who shoots content from the hip. Looking out from his small tent, he rapid fires policies, decisions, edicts, cuts. Whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, his proposals are dramatic, catch people unawares, win approval from some and anger from others. His announcements are intended to get a reaction. Some people fire back, and Gove returns fire. Under pressure from all directions, including from his boss, he may be forced to backtrack. Just reflect on his announcing and then abandoning the School Sports Partnership network, changes to the Building Schools for the Future, capping salaries of headteachers paid more than the Prime Minister, and Book Trust funding of free books for children. Such matters are not generally distinguished by left v right political ideals, but instead concern things like efficiencies and budget cuts. For issues like Gove’s, surely there must be a better, less painful, way – for us, and for him.
Gove is not alone: he fills popular expectations of any ministerial leader. Andrew Lansley’s NHS commissioning reforms took the Commons NHS Select Committee by surprise, according to its Conservative chairman, Stephen Dorrell. On this occasion secrecy had initially been maintained, but that didn’t stop talent haemorrhaging from primary care trusts and putting up costs that offset the planned efficiency savings. In any case, the old management mantra favouring secrecy and surprise to contain anxiety and spare the people from premature suffering is increasingly vulnerable to leaks. Arguably, it is not so much individual ministers who need to change: it is the management model that needs to change.
Seeing the ministerial job principally in terms of content-proposal doesn’t work any more. It is narrowly informed, inefficient, gets people’s backs up, and hurts the proposer’s reputation. The standard defence ‘But wait until you see the consultation paper; it’s not as bad as you think’ doesn’t work well either. Making subsequent changes following consultation takes courage and pain to backtrack; reputations have to be protected, faces saved. Consultation carries too much baggage of hierarchical overtones and leaves people feeling sceptical and short-changed.
The problem is that consultation comes from that same tent, done by those inside to those outside. Yet when one then hears subject-experts speak, and read pundits’ blogs, special correspondents’ columns, business editorials, and encounter radio and web-based discussions, you can be forgiven for thinking that there is more expertise and wisdom outside the tent than in it. So why isn’t it (not them) allowed in? For that to happen, the paradigm would need to change, and changing a paradigm takes leadership. It would put the power and the role of leaders to the test. It would challenge Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the role of MPs, the Whips Office, the Civil Service and the Fourth Estate. But it needs to be done, and it is happening anyway.
The key to this is process. If leadership were to be seen less in terms of content and more about process, then the role of the leader would become one of designing and running a process of all the talents who can contribute to a wise and acceptable outcome, one that would not need railroading through against objections. Ministers shun process as not being under their control, indeed not under control at all, so they drive harder on the content. But in an imaginative and expanded process, advocacy would be replaced by enquiry. Talent would include anyone, not just those being consulted. In freely defined public debate, all views could be expressed and voices heard. The role of participants would not be to react to a proposal, but to question the question – helping to clarify the need, frame the issues, identify possible ways forward and explore options. Better informed decision making would follow.
Technology now makes this possible. WikiLeaks has shown that exclusiveness, secrecy and private emails no longer work. Hierarchy, strong leaders and paternalism aren’t as strong a shield against worry as they used to be. Discussion can no longer be contained, nor should it be. Most of it is going to take place out there anyway, one way or another. So instead of resisting and resenting full prior debate, government should enthusiastically promote and embrace this chaotic expansion of voice. Make a virtue of it, and gain credit for it. The prize on offer is huge: wiser, more acceptable outcomes and a more harmonious society.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Speaking personally
Personalisation in the provision of public services is the order of the day. But if you are a provider, how can you relate to customers individually if you treat yourself as a functionary?
One of the first acts of John King (later Lord King of Wartnaby), when he joined British Airways as its chairman in 1980, was to tell all office managers to remove their job titles from their door plates and replace them with their names. And when writing memos to one another (before the days of email) we must in future write from our name to someone else’s name, and not from one job title to another. Of course, we knew that we would still be communicating as jobholders in our roles, but that didn’t need to be said. As I remember it, we were bemused but compliant – everybody was where the eponymous and fearsome King was concerned. King’s leadership was tough love (well, at least the former).
I was reminded of this incident recently. Having become embroiled in a car parking infringement with my council, I took up the cause of my local car dealer, who I had been visiting. The dealer’s premises backed directly onto a public car park, but its manager had been unable to obtain any concessions from the council, such as designated places for short-stay customers, or a drop-off point, in return for an annual fee. I arranged for the car dealer manager to speak to the car parking manager. The latter told me that my own attendance was unnecessary, and that the dealer’s manager should contact her by telephone, and she didn’t need to meet him personally. She then informed me that it would be a case of the car dealership speaking to the Council, rather than its manager to her as such, even though she would handle the matter. She was correct in law, of course, but why was it important for her to say it, or for me to be reminded of the obvious? Was she shielding behind her role – as we used to in British Airways? Or was this just the habit of officialdom – the way bureaucracy works?
If the car dealer eventually wins a concession, how nice it would be if he could thank her personally and think of the decision as a refection of her nature? When we receive help and kindness from a shop assistant with a name badge, we like to acknowledge the person; we would not expect a response such as ‘Marks & Spencer likes to take good care of its customers’. Personal exchanges don’t undermine business relationships: they bolster them. So the thought arises: when under government pressure to offer ‘personalisation’, how can providers of public services be expected to treat members of the public as individuals, with their own needs and wants, if the individual providers remain half-hidden behind a mask that puts their employer and their role to the fore?
In hindsight, Lord King’s edict was the act of a leader. He was disturbing the status quo, taking us out of our comfort zone, preparing us for much more change round the corner. His personalisation agenda was the first step in a much larger process of culture change, loosening up our bureaucracy, and humanising us, as we moved from our heritage as a nationalised industry towards privatisation and ‘putting the customer first’. Loosening our roles went along with using our common sense and discretion, and not simply following the rule book. Years later I had the personal opportunity to replace company ‘regulations’ with ‘guidance for managers’, coupled with permission for them to use their own judgement.
Letting the mask slip a little might make that social journey away from one-size-fits-all bureaucracy a little easier.
By a strange coincidence, today is King Day, in celebration of the life on another leader, one who was in a league of his own - Martin Luther King.
One of the first acts of John King (later Lord King of Wartnaby), when he joined British Airways as its chairman in 1980, was to tell all office managers to remove their job titles from their door plates and replace them with their names. And when writing memos to one another (before the days of email) we must in future write from our name to someone else’s name, and not from one job title to another. Of course, we knew that we would still be communicating as jobholders in our roles, but that didn’t need to be said. As I remember it, we were bemused but compliant – everybody was where the eponymous and fearsome King was concerned. King’s leadership was tough love (well, at least the former).
I was reminded of this incident recently. Having become embroiled in a car parking infringement with my council, I took up the cause of my local car dealer, who I had been visiting. The dealer’s premises backed directly onto a public car park, but its manager had been unable to obtain any concessions from the council, such as designated places for short-stay customers, or a drop-off point, in return for an annual fee. I arranged for the car dealer manager to speak to the car parking manager. The latter told me that my own attendance was unnecessary, and that the dealer’s manager should contact her by telephone, and she didn’t need to meet him personally. She then informed me that it would be a case of the car dealership speaking to the Council, rather than its manager to her as such, even though she would handle the matter. She was correct in law, of course, but why was it important for her to say it, or for me to be reminded of the obvious? Was she shielding behind her role – as we used to in British Airways? Or was this just the habit of officialdom – the way bureaucracy works?
If the car dealer eventually wins a concession, how nice it would be if he could thank her personally and think of the decision as a refection of her nature? When we receive help and kindness from a shop assistant with a name badge, we like to acknowledge the person; we would not expect a response such as ‘Marks & Spencer likes to take good care of its customers’. Personal exchanges don’t undermine business relationships: they bolster them. So the thought arises: when under government pressure to offer ‘personalisation’, how can providers of public services be expected to treat members of the public as individuals, with their own needs and wants, if the individual providers remain half-hidden behind a mask that puts their employer and their role to the fore?
In hindsight, Lord King’s edict was the act of a leader. He was disturbing the status quo, taking us out of our comfort zone, preparing us for much more change round the corner. His personalisation agenda was the first step in a much larger process of culture change, loosening up our bureaucracy, and humanising us, as we moved from our heritage as a nationalised industry towards privatisation and ‘putting the customer first’. Loosening our roles went along with using our common sense and discretion, and not simply following the rule book. Years later I had the personal opportunity to replace company ‘regulations’ with ‘guidance for managers’, coupled with permission for them to use their own judgement.
Letting the mask slip a little might make that social journey away from one-size-fits-all bureaucracy a little easier.
By a strange coincidence, today is King Day, in celebration of the life on another leader, one who was in a league of his own - Martin Luther King.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Incumbency rules OK! Or does it?
At age 53, Miriam O’Reilly wins her case against the BBC for age discrimination. With a strange quirk of timing, today also sees the Government announcing that, despite employers’ objections, it is pressing ahead with plans to scrap their compulsory retirement age of 65. Are the oldies receiving a step up while O’Reilly is required to step down? This conjunction raises several leadership issues, challenges and lessons.
There seems little doubt that O’Reilly’s loss of work on the programme Countryfile was handled casually and insensitively. She was then further punished for crying foul; branded a troublemaker, she found it hard to obtain alternative work. And, of course, the unwritten rules for media presenters operates to women’s disadvantage, reflecting wider society’s values where appearance is concerned. The BBC’s humiliation was compounded by its inability to produce records to the tribunal to show that its decision on Countryfile’s presenters was objectively considered. So far so good – or bad. But there are aspects of this case that have received no discussion that I am aware of.
Statistics may not have been the tribunal’s strong suit. Because people get older, and never younger, it follows that there is a greater chance that a presenter will be replaced by someone who is younger than they are. If this were not the case, the average age of presenters would keep on rising. If we might reasonably expect the average age of presenters to stay roughly the same, it is necessary – statistically – for older people to be replaced by younger ones. That is not age discrimination: it reflects the direction of life’s travel. In her 25 years of receiving work from the BBC (O’Reilly must have begun when she was in her late twenties) there may have been several occasions when she took over from someone who was older. Eventually, it was her turn to become one of the older ones (though that does not automatically mean too old). That is how the aging process works. In another case, having left her job aged 62, Anna Ford (who had a similar complaint to O’Reilly’s many years ago) displayed the same statistical oversight when she remarked, “… I think when you reflect on the people they’re bringing in, they’re all much younger”. Well, Yes! Did she really expect the BBC to replace old presenters with even older ones? Neither life, nor life’s statistics, work like that. Our dislike of growing older (and more wrinkled) may make our minds go fuzzy too.
The second point is that O’Reilly took her case to an employment tribunal, yet the BBC was not her employer: O’Reilly was self-employed. The BBC was her client, possibly her only or main one. The fact that the law allowed O’Reilly to claim discrimination by a third party will be of interest to many freelancers. I had previously assumed that employment tribunals were for aggrieved employees who had acquired employment rights with their employer. Seven years ago, when I was a freelance lecturer on a prominent business school’s Executive MBA programme, I too suddenly found that after many years of teaching my annual contract was not renewed. I was replaced by someone in her twenties. The timing was probably right, but – as with O’Reilly – the dumping process was shabby. Managing the relationship matters as much as taking the right decision.
O’Reilly’s boss was accountable for the success of the programme: that meant being content with the team of Countryfile presenters. The programme was said to have needed ‘refreshing’: that was taken to equate with bringing in new faces. Naturally, O’Reilly didn’t want to be replaced – possibly with good cause. But the issue may be more one of tenure than of age. Too long tenure is a problem that particularly afflicts leaders in business, especially many chief executives. Political leaders too. They believe they have a right not to be challenged until they decide to choose to step down. ‘There is no vacancy’, we hear it said. Potential leaders who think they could do a better job than the boss have fewer rights than incumbents to argue their case. So with budding young presenters. Tenure favours the incumbent; they tend to acquire the equivalent of squatters’ rights. But, irrespective of age, too-lengthy tenure leaves many stale. Having been brought in to solve a problem, they then hang around too long, enjoying the comforts. But the laws of entropy will have their way. Everything decays. It always does. So people run out of steam, ideas, and motivation. It is time to move on and refresh. And it is time to talk about it. Facial wrinkles is the least of it.
There seems little doubt that O’Reilly’s loss of work on the programme Countryfile was handled casually and insensitively. She was then further punished for crying foul; branded a troublemaker, she found it hard to obtain alternative work. And, of course, the unwritten rules for media presenters operates to women’s disadvantage, reflecting wider society’s values where appearance is concerned. The BBC’s humiliation was compounded by its inability to produce records to the tribunal to show that its decision on Countryfile’s presenters was objectively considered. So far so good – or bad. But there are aspects of this case that have received no discussion that I am aware of.
Statistics may not have been the tribunal’s strong suit. Because people get older, and never younger, it follows that there is a greater chance that a presenter will be replaced by someone who is younger than they are. If this were not the case, the average age of presenters would keep on rising. If we might reasonably expect the average age of presenters to stay roughly the same, it is necessary – statistically – for older people to be replaced by younger ones. That is not age discrimination: it reflects the direction of life’s travel. In her 25 years of receiving work from the BBC (O’Reilly must have begun when she was in her late twenties) there may have been several occasions when she took over from someone who was older. Eventually, it was her turn to become one of the older ones (though that does not automatically mean too old). That is how the aging process works. In another case, having left her job aged 62, Anna Ford (who had a similar complaint to O’Reilly’s many years ago) displayed the same statistical oversight when she remarked, “… I think when you reflect on the people they’re bringing in, they’re all much younger”. Well, Yes! Did she really expect the BBC to replace old presenters with even older ones? Neither life, nor life’s statistics, work like that. Our dislike of growing older (and more wrinkled) may make our minds go fuzzy too.
The second point is that O’Reilly took her case to an employment tribunal, yet the BBC was not her employer: O’Reilly was self-employed. The BBC was her client, possibly her only or main one. The fact that the law allowed O’Reilly to claim discrimination by a third party will be of interest to many freelancers. I had previously assumed that employment tribunals were for aggrieved employees who had acquired employment rights with their employer. Seven years ago, when I was a freelance lecturer on a prominent business school’s Executive MBA programme, I too suddenly found that after many years of teaching my annual contract was not renewed. I was replaced by someone in her twenties. The timing was probably right, but – as with O’Reilly – the dumping process was shabby. Managing the relationship matters as much as taking the right decision.
O’Reilly’s boss was accountable for the success of the programme: that meant being content with the team of Countryfile presenters. The programme was said to have needed ‘refreshing’: that was taken to equate with bringing in new faces. Naturally, O’Reilly didn’t want to be replaced – possibly with good cause. But the issue may be more one of tenure than of age. Too long tenure is a problem that particularly afflicts leaders in business, especially many chief executives. Political leaders too. They believe they have a right not to be challenged until they decide to choose to step down. ‘There is no vacancy’, we hear it said. Potential leaders who think they could do a better job than the boss have fewer rights than incumbents to argue their case. So with budding young presenters. Tenure favours the incumbent; they tend to acquire the equivalent of squatters’ rights. But, irrespective of age, too-lengthy tenure leaves many stale. Having been brought in to solve a problem, they then hang around too long, enjoying the comforts. But the laws of entropy will have their way. Everything decays. It always does. So people run out of steam, ideas, and motivation. It is time to move on and refresh. And it is time to talk about it. Facial wrinkles is the least of it.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Renewal postponed
We all have a personal take on what leadership means. Words count better than polls. On a depressing political morning in which few people will be jumping for unalloyed joy, two positive-sounding words come to mind, and two negative ones. The positives are renewal and hope. The negatives are winning and tribal. Last night this country had a chance of grasping the former, and it blew it. The people ended up settling for a continuance of a discredited partisan game well past its sell-by date, whichever party gains power. I fear that, whichever party forms the government, the public will continue to witness and experience cynicism, disconnection, distrust, obfuscation, narrow party interest, the buying of compliance, and regulation and control over people, institutions, professions and sectors such as education.
It’s little different in the world of business. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Washington Post, has embarked on a crusade to destroy arch rival The New York Times. Why? Is that what the people need? Is that leadership? Is such a winning and tribal model of leadership any longer life-serving?
By a strange coincidence, yesterday I found myself talking to a doctoral student researching anarchy in local community organisations. He was referring to the ‘honourable’ political strand of leaderless community activism. I responded by saying that when people begin working together an early question for most of them is ‘we need to elect a leader’. Most reject political anarchy movements. Oh, what irony.
South Africa had a chance at renewal and hope and blew it. The USA had a chance and is doing its best to blow it. Winning and tribal took over. Expressing great sadness over the lack of leadership both there and here this morning, I am talking about leadership not in the person of an elected leader (though we need that), but in terms of how collective leadership and the body politic conducts itself that prompts renewal and hope. It may be some while before the chance of breaking the mould comes around again.
It’s little different in the world of business. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Washington Post, has embarked on a crusade to destroy arch rival The New York Times. Why? Is that what the people need? Is that leadership? Is such a winning and tribal model of leadership any longer life-serving?
By a strange coincidence, yesterday I found myself talking to a doctoral student researching anarchy in local community organisations. He was referring to the ‘honourable’ political strand of leaderless community activism. I responded by saying that when people begin working together an early question for most of them is ‘we need to elect a leader’. Most reject political anarchy movements. Oh, what irony.
South Africa had a chance at renewal and hope and blew it. The USA had a chance and is doing its best to blow it. Winning and tribal took over. Expressing great sadness over the lack of leadership both there and here this morning, I am talking about leadership not in the person of an elected leader (though we need that), but in terms of how collective leadership and the body politic conducts itself that prompts renewal and hope. It may be some while before the chance of breaking the mould comes around again.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Baby Peter Connelly’s legacy (4): What might Ed Balls have done differently?
In the final post on this theme, what would I have done if I had been Ed Balls, when presented with Ofsted’s Joint Area Review report? Would I have instructed that Sharon Shoesmith should be dismissed? The answer is No, for the reasons I give below:
I would have been aware that the process by which the report had been produced was partial, and that there would be many views on what it had to say on Haringey and Shoesmith, many reputations at stake and several vested interests, and scope for a variety of conclusions concerning responsibility, blame and action.
Note that Shoesmith and her performance had been defended by some fellow officers. She had also been praised by numerous Haringey head teachers, perhaps not surprisingly given her schools background and not in social services. But since these functions were merged at the behest of government – a decision which is still controversial and required Shoesmith to provide oversight to the assistant director of children’s services (who had the necessary background expertise) – it seems unfair to criticise her on that structural point. Others found that she was autocratic in her leadership style; while not defending that, the same criticism might be levelled against both Ed balls and his boss Gordon Brown.
As Secretary of State, I would feel that it was not for me alone to decide the outcome or to punish, or to imply that my action solved the problem. I would have been aware that leadership is one element in a complex system, to which there are many partners as well as constraining factors, one of which was my own department’s performance and contribution to the national IT system for child care. It is simplistic for leadership to be laid at the door of one official.
Similarly, accountability, cannot be regarded in this unitary way. Shoesmith just might have chosen to accept personal accountability and seek an honourable exit on appropriate terms, rather in the romantic manner of the ship’s master who is expected to go down heroically with his sinking ship even when he could be saved (as have the remaining crew). Her employer might have reached the conclusion that the function head’s career death was inevitable and appropriate. Shoesmith had played with fire. Someone was going to get burned. But it was the system that had failed too.
So, what would I, as secretary of state, have done?
I would recognise that, as a leader, I first needed to make a conscious choice about my role in this affair. I could either determine to be a decision-taker and make a judgement. Or I could choose the role of facilitator, seeking to reconcile opposing camps and viewpoints and prompt a process of reflection and learning.
In choosing the latter role, I would have held Haringey Council to account by setting a deadline and asking them to come up with a plan, to be discussed with me and my department (not left to an inspector), that shows how they have taken the opportunity to learn from the investigations into the case, and what and how learning has been followed up and acted upon, including such matters as how well the organisation works as a system, how the process of leadership takes this systems viewpoint into account, what system weaknesses have been identified and are being worked on, how the much-criticised lack of ‘strategic leadership’ is understood and how it will be addressed, as well as the suitability of named individuals remaining in their employment or not.
It is too easy, too crude, too punishing and too uninformed simply to force the employer to summarily dismiss an official and say to the electorate ‘job done’.
Paradoxically, Balls is now being targeted for dismissal by his own electorate. What would he learn if that happened?
I would have been aware that the process by which the report had been produced was partial, and that there would be many views on what it had to say on Haringey and Shoesmith, many reputations at stake and several vested interests, and scope for a variety of conclusions concerning responsibility, blame and action.
Note that Shoesmith and her performance had been defended by some fellow officers. She had also been praised by numerous Haringey head teachers, perhaps not surprisingly given her schools background and not in social services. But since these functions were merged at the behest of government – a decision which is still controversial and required Shoesmith to provide oversight to the assistant director of children’s services (who had the necessary background expertise) – it seems unfair to criticise her on that structural point. Others found that she was autocratic in her leadership style; while not defending that, the same criticism might be levelled against both Ed balls and his boss Gordon Brown.
As Secretary of State, I would feel that it was not for me alone to decide the outcome or to punish, or to imply that my action solved the problem. I would have been aware that leadership is one element in a complex system, to which there are many partners as well as constraining factors, one of which was my own department’s performance and contribution to the national IT system for child care. It is simplistic for leadership to be laid at the door of one official.
Similarly, accountability, cannot be regarded in this unitary way. Shoesmith just might have chosen to accept personal accountability and seek an honourable exit on appropriate terms, rather in the romantic manner of the ship’s master who is expected to go down heroically with his sinking ship even when he could be saved (as have the remaining crew). Her employer might have reached the conclusion that the function head’s career death was inevitable and appropriate. Shoesmith had played with fire. Someone was going to get burned. But it was the system that had failed too.
So, what would I, as secretary of state, have done?
I would recognise that, as a leader, I first needed to make a conscious choice about my role in this affair. I could either determine to be a decision-taker and make a judgement. Or I could choose the role of facilitator, seeking to reconcile opposing camps and viewpoints and prompt a process of reflection and learning.
In choosing the latter role, I would have held Haringey Council to account by setting a deadline and asking them to come up with a plan, to be discussed with me and my department (not left to an inspector), that shows how they have taken the opportunity to learn from the investigations into the case, and what and how learning has been followed up and acted upon, including such matters as how well the organisation works as a system, how the process of leadership takes this systems viewpoint into account, what system weaknesses have been identified and are being worked on, how the much-criticised lack of ‘strategic leadership’ is understood and how it will be addressed, as well as the suitability of named individuals remaining in their employment or not.
It is too easy, too crude, too punishing and too uninformed simply to force the employer to summarily dismiss an official and say to the electorate ‘job done’.
Paradoxically, Balls is now being targeted for dismissal by his own electorate. What would he learn if that happened?
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Baby Peter Connelly’s legacy (3): How can a fairer system of justice operate for cases of this nature?
Returning to this case (see post dated 30 April), let’s shift our gaze from the subjects to the legal process. Whatever his conclusion, the judge is the judge. Our deferential society tolerates that. Justice Foskett’s ruling stands (until and unless overturned on further appeal), whatever Barry Sheerman MP might think. And that’s part of the problem. Though deeply considered and having had the balance of evidence weighed, such rulings ultimately remain arbitrary. The judge has to come down on one side or another. Compare that with outcomes in tribunals, where one judge will frequently reach a minority conclusion. The design of the judicial appeal process is shaky in cases like that of Shoesmith. It is time to question this highly individualist and outmoded process and replace it with something better.
The purpose of the judicial review was effectively to decide right from wrong. Shoesmith would win or lose. Ofsted would be damned or cleared. Ed Balls’ reputation would be saved or dammed. But where are the shades of grey – on the one hand this, but on the other hand that? Shoesmith herself contributed to that starkness. When she smugly claimed that her department had been completely exonerated and had done nothing wrong, she damaged her own cause and brought accusations of a cavalier approach to Baby P’s death. She also lessened the possibility of learning – both for herself and for her department and organisation.
Shoesmith no doubt made mistakes. But her case could have been handled in a more dignified and sensitive way. In a revised appeal process the aim could have been that the organisation and all parties would learn – not be found innocent or guilty, or retain or lose one’s job. Where is the scope for organisational learning in a judicial review? The main lesson is ‘Don’t trust such a legal process’.
The judge recommended discussions take place between central government, councils and directors of children’s services in order to “establish a protocol for dealing with this kind of situation if it arises in the future”. Some good, some change and some learning might come out of that. We must hope so.
Tomorrow, what might Ed Balls have done differently?
The purpose of the judicial review was effectively to decide right from wrong. Shoesmith would win or lose. Ofsted would be damned or cleared. Ed Balls’ reputation would be saved or dammed. But where are the shades of grey – on the one hand this, but on the other hand that? Shoesmith herself contributed to that starkness. When she smugly claimed that her department had been completely exonerated and had done nothing wrong, she damaged her own cause and brought accusations of a cavalier approach to Baby P’s death. She also lessened the possibility of learning – both for herself and for her department and organisation.
Shoesmith no doubt made mistakes. But her case could have been handled in a more dignified and sensitive way. In a revised appeal process the aim could have been that the organisation and all parties would learn – not be found innocent or guilty, or retain or lose one’s job. Where is the scope for organisational learning in a judicial review? The main lesson is ‘Don’t trust such a legal process’.
The judge recommended discussions take place between central government, councils and directors of children’s services in order to “establish a protocol for dealing with this kind of situation if it arises in the future”. Some good, some change and some learning might come out of that. We must hope so.
Tomorrow, what might Ed Balls have done differently?
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Baby Peter Connelly’s legacy (2): How can a fair system of accountability operate when the organisation comprises a complex system?
This post follows yesterday’s theme. Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, commanded that Ofsted deliver a clear answer on the matter of accountability in its report. That may perhaps have led Ofsted to finger Haringey’s department head Sharon Shoesmith so prominently and publicly, to the exclusion of other players. Appearing to lend weight to this view, Mr Justice Foskett’s High Court decision against Shoesmith could equally reinforce the view that leadership is entirely a function and property of one individual and the position they hold, rather than (or as well as) a function and property of the organisation and how it works interdependently. In large and complex systems, responsibility is diffused throughout the structure. It is held jointly with others and depends on others’ contribution, so accountability might reasonably be deemed to have a plural quality.
Factors beyond any one jobholder’s remit and skills have a bearing on leadership performance. The system shapes leadership as much as leadership shapes the system. A case in point is the government’s requirement that local authorities adopt its much criticised national computer system for managing social workers’ caseload. Another is the child protection partnership that operates with schools, doctors and the police. In the Baby P case, the police incorrectly claimed that mother and child were living alone. The doctor incorrectly said that there were no suspicious injuries. The lawyer incorrectly said that there was insufficient evidence for a Care Order. Shoesmith wasn’t responsible for all of these, so she could hardly be held accountable for their performance failures. But if she can’t, who can? Judge Foskett could see a problem.
In his ruling, Foskett said “… a substantial factor in the Claimant being replaced by the Secretary of State was because, as head of the department that was assessed to be inadequate, she was held “accountable”. To that extent, the normal conceptions of “fairness” to the individual do not really apply. There needs to be a debate, which one case decided on its own facts cannot possibly resolve, about whether individual responsibility in this way for a collective failure is what is to be expected of someone who achieves the position of DCS [director of children’s services] or its equivalent and, of course, whether it justifies summary dismissal. … It is to be noted that the Dismissal Appeal Panel at Haringey gave as one of its reasons for upholding the decision to dismiss the Claimant “that the Director of Children’s Services was personally accountable for any failings identified in the Service” by the Ofsted report. I have not heard full argument about what “accountable” means in the legal context … and the view I express about it is necessarily tentative. However, whilst there can be no doubt that the word is generally understood simply to mean the same as “answerable” (in other words, a person who is “accountable” is the person who must answer questions about why something did or did not happen), it would be a very significant step to say that “accountability” means liability for summary dismissal without compensation. That seems to me, potentially at any rate, to open up some very large employment law issues aside the obvious comment that few people would want to take on the role of DCS in those circumstances.”
The accountability issues raised reach beyond Foskett’s “employment law issues”. They include the need to embrace a systems perspective. There is work still to be done here; this includes challenging the popular notion that is it always individuals who should be held accountable; what about teams and other agency partners? Should such accountability be seen as something that is invoked only after failure? What about a suitable and ongoing accountability process being openly communicated before major change is required (such as improving child protection in a council)? What should that accountability process look like, whether singular or plural? Which party should initiate discussion about it? Who would be capable of conducting it? (For a fuller discussion, see Chapter 14: ‘Leadership and Accountability’ in The Search for Leadership.)
Factors beyond any one jobholder’s remit and skills have a bearing on leadership performance. The system shapes leadership as much as leadership shapes the system. A case in point is the government’s requirement that local authorities adopt its much criticised national computer system for managing social workers’ caseload. Another is the child protection partnership that operates with schools, doctors and the police. In the Baby P case, the police incorrectly claimed that mother and child were living alone. The doctor incorrectly said that there were no suspicious injuries. The lawyer incorrectly said that there was insufficient evidence for a Care Order. Shoesmith wasn’t responsible for all of these, so she could hardly be held accountable for their performance failures. But if she can’t, who can? Judge Foskett could see a problem.
In his ruling, Foskett said “… a substantial factor in the Claimant being replaced by the Secretary of State was because, as head of the department that was assessed to be inadequate, she was held “accountable”. To that extent, the normal conceptions of “fairness” to the individual do not really apply. There needs to be a debate, which one case decided on its own facts cannot possibly resolve, about whether individual responsibility in this way for a collective failure is what is to be expected of someone who achieves the position of DCS [director of children’s services] or its equivalent and, of course, whether it justifies summary dismissal. … It is to be noted that the Dismissal Appeal Panel at Haringey gave as one of its reasons for upholding the decision to dismiss the Claimant “that the Director of Children’s Services was personally accountable for any failings identified in the Service” by the Ofsted report. I have not heard full argument about what “accountable” means in the legal context … and the view I express about it is necessarily tentative. However, whilst there can be no doubt that the word is generally understood simply to mean the same as “answerable” (in other words, a person who is “accountable” is the person who must answer questions about why something did or did not happen), it would be a very significant step to say that “accountability” means liability for summary dismissal without compensation. That seems to me, potentially at any rate, to open up some very large employment law issues aside the obvious comment that few people would want to take on the role of DCS in those circumstances.”
The accountability issues raised reach beyond Foskett’s “employment law issues”. They include the need to embrace a systems perspective. There is work still to be done here; this includes challenging the popular notion that is it always individuals who should be held accountable; what about teams and other agency partners? Should such accountability be seen as something that is invoked only after failure? What about a suitable and ongoing accountability process being openly communicated before major change is required (such as improving child protection in a council)? What should that accountability process look like, whether singular or plural? Which party should initiate discussion about it? Who would be capable of conducting it? (For a fuller discussion, see Chapter 14: ‘Leadership and Accountability’ in The Search for Leadership.)
Monday, 3 May 2010
Baby Peter Connelly’s legacy (1): What does strategic leadership look like?
In this case (see the previous post) one of Ofsted’s criticisms was that Sharon Shoesmith had not displayed strategic leadership. It is a charge that can be laid at many a senior manager’s door. Judging by the behaviour of Gordon Brown, notoriously embroiled in detail, it is frequently true of senior politicians seeking short-term ‘hits’. While there is no single and agreed definition of ‘strategic leadership’, three key ingredients come to mind.
First, leaders need a systemic appreciation of their organisation (and what systemic leadership failure looks like, since that is what happened in Haringey), and how their leadership is shaped by that system as well as how their leadership can help shape that system.
Secondly, they need to know how to spread the activity of leadership widely and down the managerial structure in a carefully considered way that takes account of performance management and accountability design issues.
Thirdly, leaders need a mental model of their three roles and have a means of managing the time and commitment given to each. The roles are: 1 delivering today, 2 safeguarding tomorrow (via improvement and change), and 3 providing supervisory oversight to other managers actively engaged with level 2. This third aspect of the role is probably the lest understood and comprises the elements below.
1. provides a context, reason and challenge.
2. gives permission for the process and events to happen.
3. provides funds, time and other resources.
4. defines a standard of what success or ‘good enough’ looks like.
5. ensures readiness for change: a point between excessive stability and anarchy. (In complexity theory this point is known as the edge of chaos. Managers who have grown up believing that their job is always to seek greater order by exercising control may find this expression intimidating.)
6. disturbs or shakes up the status quo for relevant aspects of how the organisation works and moves forward, making clear that the status quo is not an option. In parallel, it maintains stability of appropriate business interests (e.g. safeguarding customers’ confidence during the change).
7. loosens the system, to weaken strictly hierarchical management of change.
8. licenses more widely distributed power for managers to engage in system-wide improvement activity.
9. gives managers a collective and cross-departmental identity.
10. makes people’s fate rely on inter-dependence, which leads to cooperation, warmth in relationships, and people taking a fair share of responsibility.
11. makes clear how the relevant people will be held to account, individually and collectively.
(This is explained more fully on pp 217-219 of The Search for Leadership.)
This is a tough balancing act, one which keeps the leader in touch with key current operational detail and today’s risks without being swamped by it to the exclusion of their strategic leadership role.
First, leaders need a systemic appreciation of their organisation (and what systemic leadership failure looks like, since that is what happened in Haringey), and how their leadership is shaped by that system as well as how their leadership can help shape that system.
Secondly, they need to know how to spread the activity of leadership widely and down the managerial structure in a carefully considered way that takes account of performance management and accountability design issues.
Thirdly, leaders need a mental model of their three roles and have a means of managing the time and commitment given to each. The roles are: 1 delivering today, 2 safeguarding tomorrow (via improvement and change), and 3 providing supervisory oversight to other managers actively engaged with level 2. This third aspect of the role is probably the lest understood and comprises the elements below.
1. provides a context, reason and challenge.
2. gives permission for the process and events to happen.
3. provides funds, time and other resources.
4. defines a standard of what success or ‘good enough’ looks like.
5. ensures readiness for change: a point between excessive stability and anarchy. (In complexity theory this point is known as the edge of chaos. Managers who have grown up believing that their job is always to seek greater order by exercising control may find this expression intimidating.)
6. disturbs or shakes up the status quo for relevant aspects of how the organisation works and moves forward, making clear that the status quo is not an option. In parallel, it maintains stability of appropriate business interests (e.g. safeguarding customers’ confidence during the change).
7. loosens the system, to weaken strictly hierarchical management of change.
8. licenses more widely distributed power for managers to engage in system-wide improvement activity.
9. gives managers a collective and cross-departmental identity.
10. makes people’s fate rely on inter-dependence, which leads to cooperation, warmth in relationships, and people taking a fair share of responsibility.
11. makes clear how the relevant people will be held to account, individually and collectively.
(This is explained more fully on pp 217-219 of The Search for Leadership.)
This is a tough balancing act, one which keeps the leader in touch with key current operational detail and today’s risks without being swamped by it to the exclusion of their strategic leadership role.
Friday, 30 April 2010
Baby Peter Connelly’s legacy
Baby Peter’s tragic death spawned much industry, if not quite an industry. Legal cases are an inevitable element, most recently the verdict of the High Court application for a judicial review by Haringey’s ex-director of children and young persons services, Sharon Shoesmith, into her unceremonious dismissal without compensation.
Mr Justice Foskett’s ruling (against Shoesmith’s appeal) was as disturbing as it was surprising. The judge found much to criticise in the behaviour of Ed Balls, the government’s children’s secretary, who required Haringey Council to dismiss her summarily after withdrawing her powers as a DCS. The judge criticised Christine Gilbert, the head of the inspectorate Ofsted, for mishandling the case by personally and publicly criticising Shoesmith. He criticised Ofsted’s inept handling of its obligation of candour before the court, and he expressed concern over Ofsted’s instruction to delete emails relating to the inspection. He criticised Haringey Council who ultimately isolated Shoesmith to defend its own interests. He even advised Shoesmith that she might have grounds for winning a case against unfair dismissal by Haringey Council at an employment tribunal. Yet, yet, Judge Foskett still found against Shoesmith, on the narrow remit of whether the Ofsted report was erroneous in its findings as a result of political interference by Balls and the Department of Children, Schools and Families, their being unduly pressurised by tabloid media hostility towards Shoesmith.
Ofsted’s investigation had been conducted too hurriedly, the judge claimed. Its report had allegedly been rewritten 17 times to beef it up [though this could indicate thoroughness rather than external political pressure]. Criticism in early versions of others’ responsibility in the case – especially by the police, doctors and lawyers – was said to have been removed from later versions, leaving the council and Shoesmith more exposed. Foskett highlighted evidence showing that the final report was changed “in a way that shifted the responsibility … from a combined failure on the part of members of the council and officers to an entirely managerial failure”. Yet, yet, Foskett concluded that, on balance, and given the evidence he saw, the report’s conclusion was fair. It was not within his remit, he said, to comment on whether a beefed-up report had unfairly strengthened the report’s conclusions. Why not, one might ask? Barry Sheerman MP, who chaired a Commons Select Committee investigation into the affair, was amazed at the judge’s decision. As were many others.
As one troubled commentator expressed it: Shoesmith was ‘guilty of leading Ofsted to give a ‘good’ rating when (previously) inspecting her department by concentrating on the surface appearance, the presentation and the paperwork. That, above all, is her crime in the eyes of politicians and bureaucrats … revealing that a department can get a ‘good’ rating despite the staff shortages and ludicrous case loads. Revealing that all the expensive inspection is no more than a tissue of fabrication and abstraction’. But some might argue that Shoesmith was simply beating Ofsted at its own game, as hundreds of managers have done to gain Investor In People status. We should blame the game and the incentives before the players who get wise to it. No wonder Ofsted would welcome a chance to get its own back. Foskett commented, too lightly, on the public denouncement of Shoesmith by Gilbert, when Ofsted rules require the focus be on the department and not on named individuals. Being married to a government minister may not have helped some people’s perceptions of Gilbert’s leadership of an Ofsted required to be ‘independent’ of government.
Where does that leave matters? Shoesmith will reflect on her loss and consider an appeal or a claim to an employment tribunal (already lodged but stayed pending the outcome of the appeal for a judicial review)? Recall the irony that in 1995 the ‘disgraced’ social worker Lisa Arthurworrey who was involved in Victoria Climbie’s death won a legal case to reclaim her professional standing following her earlier dismissal by Haringey Council. That court decided that the Council’s system had failed her and not the other way round. Shoesmith isn’t finished yet.
The outcome from the application for a judicial review is a loss, not just to Shoesmith, but to all those who hold a systemic perspective of how organisations work. Judge Foskett may have been aware of that himself when he wondered aloud why anyone would now want to become a children’s services director: “The prospect of summary dismissal, with no compensation and a good deal of public opprobrium, is hardly likely to be an inducement for someone thinking of taking the job.” His own decision hasn’t helped matters. Beyond that issue lie some others that need deeper exploration. Key systemic leadership questions that arise from this case are:
1. What does improved strategic leadership look like in senior posts like Shoesmith’s?
2. How can a fair system of accountability operate when the organisation comprises a complex system?
3. How can a fairer system of justice operate for cases of this nature?
4. What could Balls have done other than removing Shoesmith from her position?
Over the next few days we will answer those questions.
Mr Justice Foskett’s ruling (against Shoesmith’s appeal) was as disturbing as it was surprising. The judge found much to criticise in the behaviour of Ed Balls, the government’s children’s secretary, who required Haringey Council to dismiss her summarily after withdrawing her powers as a DCS. The judge criticised Christine Gilbert, the head of the inspectorate Ofsted, for mishandling the case by personally and publicly criticising Shoesmith. He criticised Ofsted’s inept handling of its obligation of candour before the court, and he expressed concern over Ofsted’s instruction to delete emails relating to the inspection. He criticised Haringey Council who ultimately isolated Shoesmith to defend its own interests. He even advised Shoesmith that she might have grounds for winning a case against unfair dismissal by Haringey Council at an employment tribunal. Yet, yet, Judge Foskett still found against Shoesmith, on the narrow remit of whether the Ofsted report was erroneous in its findings as a result of political interference by Balls and the Department of Children, Schools and Families, their being unduly pressurised by tabloid media hostility towards Shoesmith.
Ofsted’s investigation had been conducted too hurriedly, the judge claimed. Its report had allegedly been rewritten 17 times to beef it up [though this could indicate thoroughness rather than external political pressure]. Criticism in early versions of others’ responsibility in the case – especially by the police, doctors and lawyers – was said to have been removed from later versions, leaving the council and Shoesmith more exposed. Foskett highlighted evidence showing that the final report was changed “in a way that shifted the responsibility … from a combined failure on the part of members of the council and officers to an entirely managerial failure”. Yet, yet, Foskett concluded that, on balance, and given the evidence he saw, the report’s conclusion was fair. It was not within his remit, he said, to comment on whether a beefed-up report had unfairly strengthened the report’s conclusions. Why not, one might ask? Barry Sheerman MP, who chaired a Commons Select Committee investigation into the affair, was amazed at the judge’s decision. As were many others.
As one troubled commentator expressed it: Shoesmith was ‘guilty of leading Ofsted to give a ‘good’ rating when (previously) inspecting her department by concentrating on the surface appearance, the presentation and the paperwork. That, above all, is her crime in the eyes of politicians and bureaucrats … revealing that a department can get a ‘good’ rating despite the staff shortages and ludicrous case loads. Revealing that all the expensive inspection is no more than a tissue of fabrication and abstraction’. But some might argue that Shoesmith was simply beating Ofsted at its own game, as hundreds of managers have done to gain Investor In People status. We should blame the game and the incentives before the players who get wise to it. No wonder Ofsted would welcome a chance to get its own back. Foskett commented, too lightly, on the public denouncement of Shoesmith by Gilbert, when Ofsted rules require the focus be on the department and not on named individuals. Being married to a government minister may not have helped some people’s perceptions of Gilbert’s leadership of an Ofsted required to be ‘independent’ of government.
Where does that leave matters? Shoesmith will reflect on her loss and consider an appeal or a claim to an employment tribunal (already lodged but stayed pending the outcome of the appeal for a judicial review)? Recall the irony that in 1995 the ‘disgraced’ social worker Lisa Arthurworrey who was involved in Victoria Climbie’s death won a legal case to reclaim her professional standing following her earlier dismissal by Haringey Council. That court decided that the Council’s system had failed her and not the other way round. Shoesmith isn’t finished yet.
The outcome from the application for a judicial review is a loss, not just to Shoesmith, but to all those who hold a systemic perspective of how organisations work. Judge Foskett may have been aware of that himself when he wondered aloud why anyone would now want to become a children’s services director: “The prospect of summary dismissal, with no compensation and a good deal of public opprobrium, is hardly likely to be an inducement for someone thinking of taking the job.” His own decision hasn’t helped matters. Beyond that issue lie some others that need deeper exploration. Key systemic leadership questions that arise from this case are:
1. What does improved strategic leadership look like in senior posts like Shoesmith’s?
2. How can a fair system of accountability operate when the organisation comprises a complex system?
3. How can a fairer system of justice operate for cases of this nature?
4. What could Balls have done other than removing Shoesmith from her position?
Over the next few days we will answer those questions.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Can we see a clear need for skills?
‘One of the fallacies earnestly and unquestioningly maintained by New Labour is that we live in a primarily individual economy. We don't. To adapt Adam Smith, it's not through the efforts of the individual baker, farmer and consumer that toast, eggs and tea materialise on our tables in the morning - it's through the very visible hand of Tesco, Associated Foods, Nestlé and the utility companies. No organisations, no breakfast. The consequence of living in an organisational economy is that management - the orchestration of collective activity - matters greatly: at least as much as individual ability and skills.’ (Simon Caulkin, The Observer, 10 August 2008) Time and again comes evidence that this lesson has still not been learned, the latest from the National Skills Audit for England 2010. There are two major flaws.
The first is the conflation of too many diverse interests into its aim “to raise UK prosperity and opportunity by improving employment and skills … to benefit individuals, employers, government and society … help the UK become a world class leader in productivity, in employment and in having a fair and inclusive society”. Good stuff, but – leaving aside fairness and inclusivity for the moment – what needs to happen to make people employable is very different from what any particular employer needs to do with people when they are employees. Individuals’ generic skills are more relevant to the former; managing the whole by bridging relationships in the spaces is more relevant to the latter.
Just take a look at the business of the many sector skills councils to see how this confusion traps them into offering employers training services for their (post-engagement) individual employees. There is a risk of seducing employers into thinking that their responsibility to provide training (let alone promote learning in and for the organisation) has been met and that the organisation can be expected to improve as a result. In practice, such skills training will make little difference organisationally because it fails to acknowledge the specific organisational context, and it fails to develop that context and thereby expand the organisation’s capability. It is not just Caulkin’s ‘economy’ that is organisational rather than individual, it is the improvement levers too.
The second problem is one of accurate prediction and its usefulness. However thorough the research, there is limited value in attempting to predict future needs ten years ahead (see report ‘Horizon Scanning and Scenario Building: Scenarios for Skills 2020’). No-one predicted the eruption on Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. No one knows how long it will last, whether it will strengthen or weaken, the height of the ash cloud, how badly aircraft engines or holidaying families will be affected, or what this volcano’s stronger twin may do. We literally don’t know which way the wind blows. As our understanding of complexity science improves, we are slowly coming to terms with our humbling inability to make meaningful long-term plans and predictions, and to be able to link cause, effect and action.
The late Russell Ackoff, a systems thinker, identified scenario planning as a management confidence trick. At the same time, he points out that ‘few organisations are ready, willing and able to change in response to unanticipated internal or external change; they lack the responsiveness of a good driver of an automobile who gets to where he wants to go without forecasts of what he will encounter but the ability to cope with whatever occurs’. The paradox is that while it’s difficult to plan with confidence, you need to work out in advance what might prove useful if you encounter the unexpected.
The first is the conflation of too many diverse interests into its aim “to raise UK prosperity and opportunity by improving employment and skills … to benefit individuals, employers, government and society … help the UK become a world class leader in productivity, in employment and in having a fair and inclusive society”. Good stuff, but – leaving aside fairness and inclusivity for the moment – what needs to happen to make people employable is very different from what any particular employer needs to do with people when they are employees. Individuals’ generic skills are more relevant to the former; managing the whole by bridging relationships in the spaces is more relevant to the latter.
Just take a look at the business of the many sector skills councils to see how this confusion traps them into offering employers training services for their (post-engagement) individual employees. There is a risk of seducing employers into thinking that their responsibility to provide training (let alone promote learning in and for the organisation) has been met and that the organisation can be expected to improve as a result. In practice, such skills training will make little difference organisationally because it fails to acknowledge the specific organisational context, and it fails to develop that context and thereby expand the organisation’s capability. It is not just Caulkin’s ‘economy’ that is organisational rather than individual, it is the improvement levers too.
The second problem is one of accurate prediction and its usefulness. However thorough the research, there is limited value in attempting to predict future needs ten years ahead (see report ‘Horizon Scanning and Scenario Building: Scenarios for Skills 2020’). No-one predicted the eruption on Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. No one knows how long it will last, whether it will strengthen or weaken, the height of the ash cloud, how badly aircraft engines or holidaying families will be affected, or what this volcano’s stronger twin may do. We literally don’t know which way the wind blows. As our understanding of complexity science improves, we are slowly coming to terms with our humbling inability to make meaningful long-term plans and predictions, and to be able to link cause, effect and action.
The late Russell Ackoff, a systems thinker, identified scenario planning as a management confidence trick. At the same time, he points out that ‘few organisations are ready, willing and able to change in response to unanticipated internal or external change; they lack the responsiveness of a good driver of an automobile who gets to where he wants to go without forecasts of what he will encounter but the ability to cope with whatever occurs’. The paradox is that while it’s difficult to plan with confidence, you need to work out in advance what might prove useful if you encounter the unexpected.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Northern rocks
Two former senior executives at Northern Rock have been fined by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for misreporting the bank’s arrears figures affecting near 2000 bad loans, masking its true health. One of them was the former deputy chief executive, David Baker, fined over £1/2m. ‘Alarm bells about Rock’s dangerous reliance on the wholesale credit markets might have sounded sooner if the true picture of rising arrears had been revealed in January 2007 when Baker made misleading statements to the City’ (Nils Pratley, ‘Financial Viewpoint’, the Guardian, 14 April 2010). When Baker discovered malpractice by the bank’s debt management unit, he failed to report the situation to the risk management committee or to the chief executive.
Pratley goes on to mention the “peer and market pressure on junior employees to hit targets on arrears. That’s a cultural failure …”, he claims. To be more precise, the failure of the culture lies in the bank’s values and the absence of a message to all employees that bad numbers cannot be hidden. By contrast, the targets are an aspect of how the system was designed to support those values. There are two points worth making here: the first on targets and the second on the nature of pressure to hit them.
Targets work in the sense that they do get results. People who are in receipt of targets take them seriously. Hitting the targets helps people’s job reputation and often their pocket too. But remember that these targets are mere proxies; they are arbitrary, imperfect but measurable inventions that try to capture something that is important but not directly measurable that lies behind the target (like improving the bank’s state of health). This nature of a target carries the risk that the target may be hit while missing what really matters. In this case, employees had to hit targets on arrears. Employees know that the target matters to them but may lose sight of what lies behind it (they may not even be told what really matters); and that can lead to short cuts and malpractice, especially if employees are given discretion about how to achieve their target, as in this instance.
While this was going on in the debt management unit, elsewhere in the system employees were being encouraged to make reckless loans; Northern Rock allowed customers to borrow more than the value of their homes as it sought market share. This too conveyed general messages to employees about the bank’s values and the risks it was prepared to take.
Besides ‘inviting’ employees to cheat (and then managers turning a blind eye), in systems terms there is always a price to be paid for hitting a target. This price needs to be understood, though it may be deemed a price worth paying. The problem is that a target applies to one component in a system that has been singled out for special attention. To achieve the target requires that it be given priority over other non-targeted functions. If people give more attention, time, energy, funds and resources to one area, they can do so only by privileging this area at the expense of others. There may be unintended consequences, some of them perverse or contradictory. One way or another, the performance of the whole will suffer. To believe otherwise is like saying at a child’s birthday party that the child whose birthday it is can have an extra large piece of cake, but that the other guests shouldn’t have a smaller piece as a consequence.
The second point is that pressure to hit targets can be insidious, implied and assumed. Employees don’t need to have a manager standing over them with a whip. Managers can make their wishes known more subtly. In the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, staff around the CEO Fred Goodwin would get together to discuss what they thought Goodwin would want. Perhaps Baker worked out what his boss Applegarth would and would not want to be told. There was pressure on Baker as well as on the bean counters.
Pratley goes on to mention the “peer and market pressure on junior employees to hit targets on arrears. That’s a cultural failure …”, he claims. To be more precise, the failure of the culture lies in the bank’s values and the absence of a message to all employees that bad numbers cannot be hidden. By contrast, the targets are an aspect of how the system was designed to support those values. There are two points worth making here: the first on targets and the second on the nature of pressure to hit them.
Targets work in the sense that they do get results. People who are in receipt of targets take them seriously. Hitting the targets helps people’s job reputation and often their pocket too. But remember that these targets are mere proxies; they are arbitrary, imperfect but measurable inventions that try to capture something that is important but not directly measurable that lies behind the target (like improving the bank’s state of health). This nature of a target carries the risk that the target may be hit while missing what really matters. In this case, employees had to hit targets on arrears. Employees know that the target matters to them but may lose sight of what lies behind it (they may not even be told what really matters); and that can lead to short cuts and malpractice, especially if employees are given discretion about how to achieve their target, as in this instance.
While this was going on in the debt management unit, elsewhere in the system employees were being encouraged to make reckless loans; Northern Rock allowed customers to borrow more than the value of their homes as it sought market share. This too conveyed general messages to employees about the bank’s values and the risks it was prepared to take.
Besides ‘inviting’ employees to cheat (and then managers turning a blind eye), in systems terms there is always a price to be paid for hitting a target. This price needs to be understood, though it may be deemed a price worth paying. The problem is that a target applies to one component in a system that has been singled out for special attention. To achieve the target requires that it be given priority over other non-targeted functions. If people give more attention, time, energy, funds and resources to one area, they can do so only by privileging this area at the expense of others. There may be unintended consequences, some of them perverse or contradictory. One way or another, the performance of the whole will suffer. To believe otherwise is like saying at a child’s birthday party that the child whose birthday it is can have an extra large piece of cake, but that the other guests shouldn’t have a smaller piece as a consequence.
The second point is that pressure to hit targets can be insidious, implied and assumed. Employees don’t need to have a manager standing over them with a whip. Managers can make their wishes known more subtly. In the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, staff around the CEO Fred Goodwin would get together to discuss what they thought Goodwin would want. Perhaps Baker worked out what his boss Applegarth would and would not want to be told. There was pressure on Baker as well as on the bean counters.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Iceland economy goes into deep freeze
Just as there are ‘wheels within wheels’ (according to the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament) there are systems within systems. Little systems nest and overlap within larger systems. The banking collapse revealed a system operating (or failing catastrophically) at a very high level. The sudden and unexpected collapse of the Icelandic economy was one of the most dramatic consequences. The report into how three Icelandic banks failed and brought ruin to their country reveals systemic leadership failure on an astonishing level. Repeated below is a key section of Eirikur Bergmann’s chilling account (‘How Iceland lost its soul’, the Guardian, 13 April, 2010).
‘Newly privatised, each of the three main banks came into ownership of three nouveau-rich families in Iceland. The report graphically explains how the three business blocks then, in a kind of a testosterone-driven pissing contest, used the savings of generations of hard-working Icelanders to storm the global financial market, including the City of London.
'The report also shows that the crash was mainly caused by a systemic error within Iceland. By vigorously enforcing its deregulation policy the lassez-faire government created a monster it couldn't control: the Icelandic Viking-capitalist was born. Any voice of caution and classical wisdom was dismissed as old-fashioned. In an opinion-oppressed political environment the regulation industry was made laughable by the politicians and business elite alike.
'Then the Icelandic business Vikings headed for the high streets around Europe with their pockets full of borrowed money. Fresh out of business school Icelandic CEOs took over established companies in fields they couldn't even pronounce. The fast decision-making and risk-seeking behaviour of this new breed was hailed in the business media around the world, boosting the already overblown egos of these young alpha-males.
'Within one short decade we turned a traditional Nordic welfare state economy into one of deregulated bonanza capitalism. We somehow lost sight of our roots and values, as is evident in the part of the report that deals with ethics. The president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar GrÃmsson – who recently vetoed the Icesave agreement – is portrayed as the main cheerleader of the new business elite.
'When the clouds started to gather on the horizon in early 2006, all criticism against what we had grown accustomed to calling the Icelandic economic miracle, was dismissed as ill-intentioned whining by envious foreigners. Throwing nationalism into the mix of inexperience, the Icelandic government responded by launching a defensive PR campaign in London, New York and Copenhagen.'
One can speculate how this disaster might have been avoided. Most leaders lack a suitable mental framework to help them to see and understand the dynamics of what is happening around, between and even within themselves. Such a framework might have enabled Iceland’s leaders to fit the emerging pieces into a systemic picture as the awful risk unfurled. Without this facility to capture, process and make sense of the unfolding of events, valuable data appears like so much random and unwelcome noise.
‘Newly privatised, each of the three main banks came into ownership of three nouveau-rich families in Iceland. The report graphically explains how the three business blocks then, in a kind of a testosterone-driven pissing contest, used the savings of generations of hard-working Icelanders to storm the global financial market, including the City of London.
'The report also shows that the crash was mainly caused by a systemic error within Iceland. By vigorously enforcing its deregulation policy the lassez-faire government created a monster it couldn't control: the Icelandic Viking-capitalist was born. Any voice of caution and classical wisdom was dismissed as old-fashioned. In an opinion-oppressed political environment the regulation industry was made laughable by the politicians and business elite alike.
'Then the Icelandic business Vikings headed for the high streets around Europe with their pockets full of borrowed money. Fresh out of business school Icelandic CEOs took over established companies in fields they couldn't even pronounce. The fast decision-making and risk-seeking behaviour of this new breed was hailed in the business media around the world, boosting the already overblown egos of these young alpha-males.
'Within one short decade we turned a traditional Nordic welfare state economy into one of deregulated bonanza capitalism. We somehow lost sight of our roots and values, as is evident in the part of the report that deals with ethics. The president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar GrÃmsson – who recently vetoed the Icesave agreement – is portrayed as the main cheerleader of the new business elite.
'When the clouds started to gather on the horizon in early 2006, all criticism against what we had grown accustomed to calling the Icelandic economic miracle, was dismissed as ill-intentioned whining by envious foreigners. Throwing nationalism into the mix of inexperience, the Icelandic government responded by launching a defensive PR campaign in London, New York and Copenhagen.'
One can speculate how this disaster might have been avoided. Most leaders lack a suitable mental framework to help them to see and understand the dynamics of what is happening around, between and even within themselves. Such a framework might have enabled Iceland’s leaders to fit the emerging pieces into a systemic picture as the awful risk unfurled. Without this facility to capture, process and make sense of the unfolding of events, valuable data appears like so much random and unwelcome noise.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Lessons must be learned
The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) plays a key role in child protection in the UK. The Society is rightly exasperated with the seeming inability of the many parties involved to learn from past mistakes (‘NSPCC calls for reform of child abuse inquiries’ – BBC News, 8 April 2010) . ‘Lessons are not being learned’, claims the NSPCC. Too many recommendations from reports into past failures are not acted upon, it says. The same mistakes are repeated time and again. But is the problem with the way inquires are conducted and reported, or with how they are followed up?
The failings in child protection – including their repetitive nature – are, of course, systemic in nature. Children are protected by organisations working effectively (or ineffectively) as systems. Individuals play their part, of course, but within a wider and constraining system. If organisations fail to deliver, this whole system has failed. Attempts to blame individuals as though they are free and powerful agents are both misplaced and unfair.
The NSPCC expresses two interests: The first is to improve serious case reviews. These reviews follow individual child deaths, such as those of Baby Peter and Victoria Climbie, and recommend improvements. On this aspect my colleague Professor Eileen Munro of the LSE has undertaken pioneering research into alternative systemic methods of inquiry. Intriguingly, the NSPCC’s other interest is focused on post-inquiry implementation of recommendations for improvement. I discuss that next.
It may not be sufficiently recognised, by the NSPCC and other parties, that implementation of recommendations is also a systemic matter. If you examine the current post-inquiry implementation process that is undertaken following these reports, you can’t help but notice the absence of a systemic approach. But ‘lessons will be learned’ only if a systemic perspective is adopted after failure as well as before it. Improvement will not happen if implementation is simply left to players to pick things up according to how they see their particular roles and responsibilities in a typically run, hierarchical, silo-driven functional structure. Otherwise, the warts-and-all system will continue to thwart their aspirations to learn lessons just as it thwarts their good intention to provide faultless child protection in the first place.
The failings in child protection – including their repetitive nature – are, of course, systemic in nature. Children are protected by organisations working effectively (or ineffectively) as systems. Individuals play their part, of course, but within a wider and constraining system. If organisations fail to deliver, this whole system has failed. Attempts to blame individuals as though they are free and powerful agents are both misplaced and unfair.
The NSPCC expresses two interests: The first is to improve serious case reviews. These reviews follow individual child deaths, such as those of Baby Peter and Victoria Climbie, and recommend improvements. On this aspect my colleague Professor Eileen Munro of the LSE has undertaken pioneering research into alternative systemic methods of inquiry. Intriguingly, the NSPCC’s other interest is focused on post-inquiry implementation of recommendations for improvement. I discuss that next.
It may not be sufficiently recognised, by the NSPCC and other parties, that implementation of recommendations is also a systemic matter. If you examine the current post-inquiry implementation process that is undertaken following these reports, you can’t help but notice the absence of a systemic approach. But ‘lessons will be learned’ only if a systemic perspective is adopted after failure as well as before it. Improvement will not happen if implementation is simply left to players to pick things up according to how they see their particular roles and responsibilities in a typically run, hierarchical, silo-driven functional structure. Otherwise, the warts-and-all system will continue to thwart their aspirations to learn lessons just as it thwarts their good intention to provide faultless child protection in the first place.
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
It’s the system wot done it!
In November 2009 I wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper entitled ‘Sometimes it’s the workplace that’s stupid, not the staff’. My purpose was to support child-care social workers who were being singled out for criticism – by the media and politicians – in high-profile cases of child deaths or abuse.
Instead of a personal focus, the article showed how the behaviour of social workers was shaped by what was going on around them and between work colleagues and partners in their local structure. This ‘system’, I argued, was probably more influential than individuals’ own level of skill, capability, motivation and training. In other words, if not victims as such, workers are nonetheless vulnerable to the vicissitudes of their system. They are in a sense pawns, with a limited number of moves available to them under the rules, and they are themselves easily predated upon by those looking for a scapegoat – both from within their hierarchy and from outside their system.
My article showed that workers are often thought to be ‘stupid’. Indeed, the article triggered a handful of readers who have a pathological hatred of social workers, to vent their spleen on me as author of a sympathetic stance. They couldn’t stand the thought of ‘guilty’ social workers being able to escape their due by being able to claim “It’s the system wot done it.”
Yet we have all experienced a stupid system; for example, almost every encounter with a call centre. When something fails, ask if more than one person is involved in this failure. Ask whether there is something systemic about the performance failure, something that could apply similarly to other individuals that might go wrong. Might the failure recur if the design of the system remains unchanged? Indeed, is it the system that is stupid and needs spotlighting and improving?
A systems perspective is concerned with such questions as: who is allowed to talk to whom; how is accountability managed; how does leadership work; how does the organisation learn; how does the hierarchy operate, and how is power used?
In the fishtank analogy of a workplace, it is the quality of the water in the fishtank that determines the lustre of the fish. It is what people are surrounded by that shapes their work behaviour. Yet most onlookers see only the fish, and then criticise them. Seeing and challenging the system takes imagination, patience, and a thick skin.
Instead of a personal focus, the article showed how the behaviour of social workers was shaped by what was going on around them and between work colleagues and partners in their local structure. This ‘system’, I argued, was probably more influential than individuals’ own level of skill, capability, motivation and training. In other words, if not victims as such, workers are nonetheless vulnerable to the vicissitudes of their system. They are in a sense pawns, with a limited number of moves available to them under the rules, and they are themselves easily predated upon by those looking for a scapegoat – both from within their hierarchy and from outside their system.
My article showed that workers are often thought to be ‘stupid’. Indeed, the article triggered a handful of readers who have a pathological hatred of social workers, to vent their spleen on me as author of a sympathetic stance. They couldn’t stand the thought of ‘guilty’ social workers being able to escape their due by being able to claim “It’s the system wot done it.”
Yet we have all experienced a stupid system; for example, almost every encounter with a call centre. When something fails, ask if more than one person is involved in this failure. Ask whether there is something systemic about the performance failure, something that could apply similarly to other individuals that might go wrong. Might the failure recur if the design of the system remains unchanged? Indeed, is it the system that is stupid and needs spotlighting and improving?
A systems perspective is concerned with such questions as: who is allowed to talk to whom; how is accountability managed; how does leadership work; how does the organisation learn; how does the hierarchy operate, and how is power used?
In the fishtank analogy of a workplace, it is the quality of the water in the fishtank that determines the lustre of the fish. It is what people are surrounded by that shapes their work behaviour. Yet most onlookers see only the fish, and then criticise them. Seeing and challenging the system takes imagination, patience, and a thick skin.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Invitations to tender can suppress leadership
I am sometimes invited to submit a competitive tender for work, for example to run workshops. I nearly always decline – for three reasons. Firstly because of the costly inefficiency of a bureaucratic process that can waste considerable time for both parties. Secondly, the assumption that it is acceptable for multiple bidders to apply their creative effort in the knowledge that all but one will fail. Thirdly because of the poor quality of inter-personal connection, the game playing and second-guessing.
The challenge of obtaining value for money for the buying organisation, in an efficient and respectful way, which acknowledges the needs of the suppliers as well as the buyers, raises several issues about leadership.
Eastern cultures tend to prefer to develop reliable relationships with a small number of suppliers over time and stick with them. But this can work against novelty and new entrants. A case can be made for competitive tendering when it applies to purchasing commodities such as stationery. But it works badly when buying intellectual and creative contributions. Centrally organised purchasing departments can fail to make this distinction and be excessively driven by cost and uniformity of process.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a model that separates people into two groups: those who identify, understand and specify a need, and those who are then told what this need is and are asked to deliver against it. The approach is reminiscent of the division between head-office managers whose job is to think up strategies for front-line workers to implement. Or between systems analysts and computer programmers, which finds the latter often rejecting the former’s specification.
The same is true when it comes to human systems in organisations. Commercial imperatives may dictate that suppliers need to bite their tongue and comply with the buyer’s requests, but privately they may have misgivings about the buyer’s analysis. They may resent being kept at arm’s length from the organisation’s problems. They may want to challenge the buyer’s basic premise. They may have unrecognised expertise beyond that being sought. Once suppliers have landed the contract they may seek to reshape their offering, having kept this intention hidden initially.
How can this situation be improved? The aim of both parties should be to strive for authenticity, the minimalising of power differentials, the maximisation of trust between the parties, and a sense of partnership in matching problems and emergent solutions. There is only one way to do that: it means sitting down and spending time together, before specifications are hardened up, paperwork completed, and sums applied. If this kind of dialogue doesn’t take place at the outset, the strain, game playing and inauthenticity may remain during the period of delivering the contract.
In The Search for Leadership I discuss two possible mindsets behind inviting competitive tenders; one exhibits a managerialist approach and the other a leadership approach. In the case of the latter, the manager asks him/herself questions about the current tendering practice, including: ‘Why am I continuing to do what I am continuing to do the way I am continuing to do it?. What values and assumptions are driving the approach? What is being done merely out of habit?’.
The challenge of obtaining value for money for the buying organisation, in an efficient and respectful way, which acknowledges the needs of the suppliers as well as the buyers, raises several issues about leadership.
Eastern cultures tend to prefer to develop reliable relationships with a small number of suppliers over time and stick with them. But this can work against novelty and new entrants. A case can be made for competitive tendering when it applies to purchasing commodities such as stationery. But it works badly when buying intellectual and creative contributions. Centrally organised purchasing departments can fail to make this distinction and be excessively driven by cost and uniformity of process.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a model that separates people into two groups: those who identify, understand and specify a need, and those who are then told what this need is and are asked to deliver against it. The approach is reminiscent of the division between head-office managers whose job is to think up strategies for front-line workers to implement. Or between systems analysts and computer programmers, which finds the latter often rejecting the former’s specification.
The same is true when it comes to human systems in organisations. Commercial imperatives may dictate that suppliers need to bite their tongue and comply with the buyer’s requests, but privately they may have misgivings about the buyer’s analysis. They may resent being kept at arm’s length from the organisation’s problems. They may want to challenge the buyer’s basic premise. They may have unrecognised expertise beyond that being sought. Once suppliers have landed the contract they may seek to reshape their offering, having kept this intention hidden initially.
How can this situation be improved? The aim of both parties should be to strive for authenticity, the minimalising of power differentials, the maximisation of trust between the parties, and a sense of partnership in matching problems and emergent solutions. There is only one way to do that: it means sitting down and spending time together, before specifications are hardened up, paperwork completed, and sums applied. If this kind of dialogue doesn’t take place at the outset, the strain, game playing and inauthenticity may remain during the period of delivering the contract.
In The Search for Leadership I discuss two possible mindsets behind inviting competitive tenders; one exhibits a managerialist approach and the other a leadership approach. In the case of the latter, the manager asks him/herself questions about the current tendering practice, including: ‘Why am I continuing to do what I am continuing to do the way I am continuing to do it?. What values and assumptions are driving the approach? What is being done merely out of habit?’.
Friday, 9 April 2010
Keep it clean, but only when I say so
Simple but flawed human nature offers the best explanation for the problems identified in the two most recent posts. The following real story makes the point well.
A manager was responsible for a machine shop. The shop was always dirty and presented a safety risk. He couldn’t get the workmen to keep it clean and tidy. So he hired a consultant to help. The consultant took photographs of the mess and pinned them up on an office wall. He then invited the workers to rate them. The workers were shocked when they saw the photos, seeing the mess with a fresh pair of eyes. They gave the photos very high (bad) scores for presenting safety hazards. They returned to the workshop and started cleaning up the mess. Job done? No.
The manager was most put out and immediately instructed them to stop. He explained that he had not given them the order to begin cleaning up the place. This was an affront to his authority. What he needed more than a clean and safe workshop was recognition that he, as manager, was needed and that his authority was to be respected. If there was going to be something closer to self-government in his workshop, it would come only on his terms.
Managers are sometimes the problem as well as the solution. But there is a solution to the problem of what to do with managers, and that is to see the manager’s role and how it adds value in a very different way – switching its focus from managing the people to managing the system.
A manager was responsible for a machine shop. The shop was always dirty and presented a safety risk. He couldn’t get the workmen to keep it clean and tidy. So he hired a consultant to help. The consultant took photographs of the mess and pinned them up on an office wall. He then invited the workers to rate them. The workers were shocked when they saw the photos, seeing the mess with a fresh pair of eyes. They gave the photos very high (bad) scores for presenting safety hazards. They returned to the workshop and started cleaning up the mess. Job done? No.
The manager was most put out and immediately instructed them to stop. He explained that he had not given them the order to begin cleaning up the place. This was an affront to his authority. What he needed more than a clean and safe workshop was recognition that he, as manager, was needed and that his authority was to be respected. If there was going to be something closer to self-government in his workshop, it would come only on his terms.
Managers are sometimes the problem as well as the solution. But there is a solution to the problem of what to do with managers, and that is to see the manager’s role and how it adds value in a very different way – switching its focus from managing the people to managing the system.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Them and us
Yesterday I wrote about two different types of dialogue – both in politics and in organisations. In the first of these, people accept their position and are grateful for what is provided to them, sometimes being allowed to offer their feedback to their betters. In the second, the people expect more involvement and seek to influence change more directly. While leaders may claim to believe that the latter is good for others, and indeed for themselves, in practice they are tempted to seek shelter behind the certainty and protective shield offered by the former’s hierarchy.
By a strange coincidence, as I was sorting through some papers yesterday evening, I came across a Guardian article by Madeline Bunting dated 19 January 2004. In it she quotes David Marquand (in his Decline of the Public) referring to ‘‘Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of the parent state which aims to keep its citizens in ‘perpetual childhood’: power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild … it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided that they think of nothing but rejoicing.”.
Bunting recognises that ‘The 19th century Frenchman has provided a chillingly accurate assessment of Blairism. In a reworking of the bread and circus formula, New Labour will tirelessly seek to deliver the electorate better schools, hospitals and a rising standard of living (for the majority), but has no appetite for the debates on how that should be done. To a significant section of public opinion, that’s enough – just don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s called democracy’. In other words, don’t confuse the content with the process.
All large organisations reflect that dilemma. Employee climate surveys, for example, reinforce simple upward feedback in a version of Transactional Analysis’s parent-child model. Negative feedback can be easily shrugged off with a “Well they would say that at this time wouldn’t they”. But what does this say about trade union relationships with, say, signalmen and cabin crew. What about striking workers expressing a concern for safety? Is that management’s responsibility? Or is it everyone’s?
By a strange coincidence, as I was sorting through some papers yesterday evening, I came across a Guardian article by Madeline Bunting dated 19 January 2004. In it she quotes David Marquand (in his Decline of the Public) referring to ‘‘Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of the parent state which aims to keep its citizens in ‘perpetual childhood’: power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild … it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided that they think of nothing but rejoicing.”.
Bunting recognises that ‘The 19th century Frenchman has provided a chillingly accurate assessment of Blairism. In a reworking of the bread and circus formula, New Labour will tirelessly seek to deliver the electorate better schools, hospitals and a rising standard of living (for the majority), but has no appetite for the debates on how that should be done. To a significant section of public opinion, that’s enough – just don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s called democracy’. In other words, don’t confuse the content with the process.
All large organisations reflect that dilemma. Employee climate surveys, for example, reinforce simple upward feedback in a version of Transactional Analysis’s parent-child model. Negative feedback can be easily shrugged off with a “Well they would say that at this time wouldn’t they”. But what does this say about trade union relationships with, say, signalmen and cabin crew. What about striking workers expressing a concern for safety? Is that management’s responsibility? Or is it everyone’s?
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Focus groups don’t go far enough
After being the butt of jokes, focus groups are again receiving a favourable mention. It’s election time, after all: let’s find out what people think.
If the question that is the subject of the focus group is clear and accepted, then asking a group of people to discuss and express their viewpoint is valuable. This kind of conversational process embodies what is known as single-loop learning; that is, the broad premise is assumed to be valid. But a different form of discussion is needed where double-loop learning is required – that is, when the question being asked is itself open to question.
In organisations, single-loop learning helps with alignment and compliance. Double-loop learning opens up the possibility of change; it is a more challenging process. For those engaged in discussions aimed at achieving change, we need to replace the focus group with what Lesley Kuhn (Adventures in Complexity, Triarchy Press) calls ‘coherent conversations’.
The point about coherent conversations is that they permit ‘emergence’. This refers to the capacity of complex entities to exhibit unexpected and novel properties or behaviours not previously observed …’. Thomas Hunt Morgan captured the idea as long ago as 1927 when he said: ‘The emphasis is not on the unfolding of something already in being, but on the outspringing of something that has hitherto not been in being’.
Politicians and their favoured focus groups should take note. Single-loop questions such as ‘which of our policies do you prefer?’ have their place, but a sceptical and apathetic public has its own questions to ask about the name of the game being played.
If the question that is the subject of the focus group is clear and accepted, then asking a group of people to discuss and express their viewpoint is valuable. This kind of conversational process embodies what is known as single-loop learning; that is, the broad premise is assumed to be valid. But a different form of discussion is needed where double-loop learning is required – that is, when the question being asked is itself open to question.
In organisations, single-loop learning helps with alignment and compliance. Double-loop learning opens up the possibility of change; it is a more challenging process. For those engaged in discussions aimed at achieving change, we need to replace the focus group with what Lesley Kuhn (Adventures in Complexity, Triarchy Press) calls ‘coherent conversations’.
The point about coherent conversations is that they permit ‘emergence’. This refers to the capacity of complex entities to exhibit unexpected and novel properties or behaviours not previously observed …’. Thomas Hunt Morgan captured the idea as long ago as 1927 when he said: ‘The emphasis is not on the unfolding of something already in being, but on the outspringing of something that has hitherto not been in being’.
Politicians and their favoured focus groups should take note. Single-loop questions such as ‘which of our policies do you prefer?’ have their place, but a sceptical and apathetic public has its own questions to ask about the name of the game being played.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Ruby Wax helps senior leaders provide a civil service
The celebrity Ruby Wax has been hired to teach top UK civil servants emotional intelligence. She cites the Home Office as one of her successes. May a raised eyebrow be permitted?
Wax’s assignment raises a number of questions. The first is whether she is the right person to do this. She may embody how to talk rather more than how to listen, but she has sought to transform herself and gain relevant coaching qualifications.
A more serious question hangs over the analysis of what improved capability the civil service most needs. Where is performance falling short, and what explains this? What is blocking the release of leadership – system wide and not just at the top?
Most managers could and should improve their personal capabilities in areas such as emotional intelligence. You can’t knock that premise. But any serious analysis of what lies at the heart of departments’ poor performance would point to systemic issues (the fishtank and not the fish) of the kind discussed in The Search for Leadership.
‘None of us can exist independent of our relationship with each other’. So runs the opening sentence of Keith Morrison’s 2002 book on School Leadership and Complexity Theory. Paradoxically, Morrison’s words, and indeed complexity theory itself, offer both a reason why managers need emotional intelligence and an explanation as to why sheep-dip training exposure, devoid of context and the other party (especially including politicians), plus untold complex dynamics, is likely to lack traction.
Conclusion: well-intentioned, headline grabbing, a fun experience. Enjoy it but don’t expect transformation. In the civil service ‘fishtank’ there are bigger fish to fry, and they are not individual managers. The main determinant of behaviour at work lies in the system that surrounds people. Coincidentally, the banner of Wax’s website shows goldfish milling around. I wonder what they are searching for.
Wax’s assignment raises a number of questions. The first is whether she is the right person to do this. She may embody how to talk rather more than how to listen, but she has sought to transform herself and gain relevant coaching qualifications.
A more serious question hangs over the analysis of what improved capability the civil service most needs. Where is performance falling short, and what explains this? What is blocking the release of leadership – system wide and not just at the top?
Most managers could and should improve their personal capabilities in areas such as emotional intelligence. You can’t knock that premise. But any serious analysis of what lies at the heart of departments’ poor performance would point to systemic issues (the fishtank and not the fish) of the kind discussed in The Search for Leadership.
‘None of us can exist independent of our relationship with each other’. So runs the opening sentence of Keith Morrison’s 2002 book on School Leadership and Complexity Theory. Paradoxically, Morrison’s words, and indeed complexity theory itself, offer both a reason why managers need emotional intelligence and an explanation as to why sheep-dip training exposure, devoid of context and the other party (especially including politicians), plus untold complex dynamics, is likely to lack traction.
Conclusion: well-intentioned, headline grabbing, a fun experience. Enjoy it but don’t expect transformation. In the civil service ‘fishtank’ there are bigger fish to fry, and they are not individual managers. The main determinant of behaviour at work lies in the system that surrounds people. Coincidentally, the banner of Wax’s website shows goldfish milling around. I wonder what they are searching for.
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