What book on leadership would you recommend?

I am in the middle of designing a leadership development programme for senior people working within a large Government agency. I have the idea that during the summer recess (there is a two month break in the learning modules) that we might ask them to read and write a synopsis of a book on leadership. They would bring this back to the first Autumn module.

Naturally, the participants will be able to choose which book they wish to read. But what books would you put on the list as a prompt or starter for ten, for them to consider?

What book (or books) on leadership have read that you have found particularly inspiring, useful or even just a good read? (If you have the time - a one liner as to why this book made an impact - would be peachy!)

I will kick off with one that I am reading right now:

Engaging Emergence: Turning upheaval into opportunity by Peggy Holman (I saw Peggy give a presentation about this in Berlin earlier this year and she was inspirational - it is a book which sets out the source code for how to tackle wicked problems. A must read in these austere times in my opinion)

Thanks for your ideas!


UPDATE: Had some very interesting replies from some people on Twitter and indeed elsewhere - I will be compiling a list at some point. But - the main thing I wanted to say was:

• It doesn't have to be a book (it could be a movie, or a poem, or a picture, or a you-tube clip, or whatever has inspired you...)
• It doesn't have to be a book about leadership - it could be any book (or...) that has helped you be a leader - a novel, a biography, a science revision text book, whatever!

UPDATE 2: The list has been compiled now. Go to this link (or above posting) for the document on Google Docs


UPDATE 3: I am now taking this idea and turning it into a whole book of stories and contributions. Please visit this link and consider whether you would like to add something yourself. Thanks!

Do you assume your leadership is useful?

I have just been re-reading a great article by Paul Whitby on Assumed Usefulness (The Psychologist July 1980 pp 308-310) which I had mislaid. I tracked Paul down on Linked-In and he graciously sent me a hard copy.

It is a very neat and powerful piece.

In the article, he ‘proposes a model to explain the widespread phenomenon of unwarranted self confidence’. In 1948, Skinner carried out an experiment with some hungry pigeons where he fed them a pellet of corn at regular intervals. As a result some odd behaviours were ‘reinforced’ (to use the behaviourist vernacular) such as head swaying or hopping from one foot to another. These behaviours persisted long after the corn stopped coming. So in this experiment a pigeon’s random behaviour was reinforced by an unconnected reward.

Paul Whitby then goes on to propose that this is what happens with psychotherapy. Psychotherapy (as opposed to more rigorously tested cognitive behavioural therapy techniques) is very popular and many (both therapists and clients) swear by it. Many psychotherapists assert the value of their craft despite numerous objective studies suggesting otherwise. Paul’s view is that in some cases, psychotherapy clients will get better, as they would have done anyway. These naturally occurring remissions are the equivalent of the pellets of corn for the pigeons, and result in collusion between client and therapist over the value and importance of the therapy. This is very challenging stuff and I don’t intend to enter into the debate here about the value or otherwise of the various psychotherapies in use today. I will leave that to others.

But I do want to pick up on Paul Whitby’s comment towards the end of his article where he says the “model is also applicable outside the healing arts. Probably the most fruitful field for Assumed Usefulness is business and management.”

Since first reading this article more than 20 years ago, I have long wondered the same.

How many of the everyday actions taken by leaders have been randomly reinforced in their pasts by performance improvements that happened through happen chance (or even despite what the leaders did)? How many strategies, plans, protocols and policies have merely seemed to work by the random occurrence of a few positive results?

This debate is raging at the moment in police leadership circles. My colleague Peter Neyroud (erstwhile Chief Constable and Chief Executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency) and David Weisburd (Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason

University) have written an article in support of “Police Science: Toward a New Paradigm”. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/228922.pdf. Malcolm Sparrow puts forward an alternative view that instead of ‘scientific policing’ the focus should remain with ‘problem orientated policing’ (“Governing Science” http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232179.pdf) Both articles are well worth putting the time aside to read in full and weigh up the arguments yourself.

But that debate is not really about whether the actions taken by managers and leaders should be evaluated but more about who should carry out the evaluation and in what context. I suspect that all three authors would agree that there is no room for Assumed Competence in police (or indeed any other) leadership.

So my questions to you are these: 

• How do you know you are a useful leader?
• What evidence or feedback are you drawing on to assert or even prove this?
• How can you demonstrate a causal link between the policies (or whatever) that you have devised / implemented and the results achieved?
• Indeed, do you agree that there should or ever can be a causal link?
• Or would you assert that leadership (and all the actions that arise from it) is an art and not a science: leadership is just too ineffable and complex to be evaluated by reductionist methodologies?

Interestingly and with powerful foresight, Paul goes onto cite an article by Eachus (“The psychology of the stock market”, The Psychologist; Bulletin of the BPS pp 100-103, 1988) where he illustrated how “persistent activity [is] maintained by the occasional and random reward of a large profit which is independent of effort or knowledge”. Paul Whitby wonders whether Assumed Usefulness underpins the behaviour of dealers in the stock market. He speculates that “yuppie merchant bankers are well known for their high self-regard” which leads them to an emotional state prone to Assumed Usefulness.

I wonder...

(You may also like to see my article below about bankers’ bonuses and the questions that Boards and investors should still be asking)

Strategy: two alternative definitions

How about these two definitions:

A 'Strutegy' is a large glossy document where most of the effort has gone into talking with the printers and marketing people. Action is negligible and lasting outcomes even more elusive. Typically written by a small cabal in a darkened room with only a modicum of consultation & research into good practice and wider challenges. The idea of engagement does not feature. Implementing a strutegy is usually done via road shows and key note speeches from senior managers, who will have something more important to do before any questions are posed.

Whereas...

A 'Stractegy' hardly exists as a document and indeed exists more as the collective and focused actions of a wide diversity of people. Any documentation which does exist is recognised as the thinking on a particular day that is probably out of date as soon as the ink has dried. Stractegies are created in dynamic crucibles of insight, learning and practice exchange. In the way that strutegies typically fragment and simplify, stractegies on the other hand are based on processes which connect people together and enable them to wrestle with complexity. Often stractegies emerge when people get together in large groups to discuss the future and the challenges being faced. Outcomes are always the focus with stractegies.

Some more on this at these places

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/have-stractegy-rather-than-strutegy.html

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-strategy-dead.html

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/improving-whole-systems-with-creativity.html

Strategy & Leadership: Do you play draughts?

How do you approach the development of strategies and strategic plans? Some people adopt a ‘draught’ like manner – advancing mostly only forwards, occasionally sacrificing a piece when there is a need to and treating all the pieces on the board in the same way. ("We'll have road show to get the message out to everyone!")

Chess players are different. They recognise the diversity of pieces on the board, play a long game, several (if not many) moves ahead and knowing that even pawns alone can win.

How do you play the strategic planning game?

Is your leadership more like chess or draughts?

Time & parallax

Anecdotally, it seems to me that time is speeding up. Often this happens as one gets older. But it seems as if young people are feeling this too. I have been wondering why. 

When a train travels through the countryside trees far away seem to go by much slower that objects near to the train. This is ordinary parallax. Although of course the train is passing all the objects at the same speed.

What I wonder is that as more and more information is available to us through the internet and beyond, then this is like travelling in a train where everything is close. Everything is whizzing by at speed.

At this speed, are we making the right decisions? 

As a leader, how can you slow some things down?

Are there some things that need to be made to be bit further away so that you can gaze at them longer?

Change Alchemy: time to freeze?

Edgar Schein talked in his book "Process Consultation: Lessons for Managers and Consultants Volume ll" of their being three stages of change:

1. unfreezing the current state,
2. moving to the new one and
3. refreezing around the new state.

This model presupposes that there is time to refreeze. The experience now of many managers is that the pace of change means that refreezing is something of a luxury - everything seems to be in a constant state of transition.

Is this the case? How much of this apparent pace of change has been manufactured by people who make a living out of change?

As a leader, is it your role to speed change up or slow things down?

Police: who will be the leader?

There is now draft legislation to replace Police Authorities with elected Police Crime Commissioners. As we await the passage of the legislation into law, the debate is continuing about how these new PCCs will work - or indeed whether they should happen altogether. Today the Civil Service Live Network put up a debate between a past Home Secretary and a think tank Chief Exec about the pros and cons of this new policy. You can access it here.

It is a debate that I felt moved to add my six pennyworth - here is what I wrote:

Not being able to name the chair of local Police Authority is not a powerful argument. Not even knowing that such a body exists is perhaps more convincing. Certainly, despite their best efforts, the awareness of Police Authorities is still very low amongst the general public. But there again, how many citizens really understand how all public services join up and are governed?

Quoting the research about public satisfaction with the police is not best placed since that has far more to do with how members of the public feel treated by police officers & staff (sadly) following a crime that it does about concerns about the setting of overall priorities.

The gap between reality (crime has been going down significantly in recent years) and perception (fear of crime & antisocial behaviour is still high) is notable. I ran my own one person campaign to get fear of crime included in the responsibilities of the local Crime & Disorder partnership legislation (1998) but failed. I do wonder, had it been in there whether things would be different now?

The gap is down to many factors not least the media coverage of crimes, the doubt over 'statistics' (lies, damned lies etc) and the ability of many in and involved with the police to really 'connect' with the public. PCSOs have been doing a remarkable job here and local PC led neighbourhood teams have been making real inroads. But, how many of these structures will survive austerity measures is yet to be seen. I do worry that expectations on these new PCC's will be so high whilst at the same time front line services will be cut back (there is only so much money to be saved by reducing the IT department to one person and an electronic dog) - that a perfect storm will be created. And in this storm, the perpetrators of antisocial behaviour and broad acquisitive crime will have a field day. Crime and fear of crime will rise together. I hope not, of course, but the omens are not good.

But on the other hand, over the years I have been working with the police as an independent adviser / coach / facilitator - I have seen the police HQ car parks grow and grow...

I don't think the last Government 'chickened out' - I think they ran out of legislative time. By the same token, one could argue that this Government has chickened out of a national restructuring and moving away from 43 independent police forces in E&W. Interestingly though - Scotland and possibly Wales are moving towards whole country forces in each case.

It is vital "that local people had a real say over the policing in their area" but I am just not sure that PCCs alone will be the answer. They may be part of the answer - but on their own - almost certainly not. I speak as someone who has lived and worked in the Thames Valley Police for nearly all of my adult life. It is a very large patch which extends from Milton Keynes to Witney to Reading to Slough to Eton and so forth. The idea that all these geographically (and otherwise) diverse communities could all feel represented by a single person is a stretch of the imagination. What will be critical, assuming the draft legislation becomes law, will be to elect a person who has a very clear and convincing plan for how to 'stay in touch' with the broad sweep of the area. I can only hope that the preferential voting system that the Government is proposing to use for electing these PCCs will be able to ensure that the best possible people - politically and otherwise - become the new PCCs. I also hope that the rigour of scrutiny and challenge that must happen as part of the selection processes and subsequent campaigns of all the candidates will tease out the wheat from the chaff (ie the really committed, knowledgeable and citizen focused people from the 'place people' that the central political parties may try to parachute in).

Once these people are in place - yes there will be some very tricky issues around governance and relationship with the Chief Constables to resolve. On its own, I don't think that is an argument against having the new PCCs. However it is an argument for some very clear thinking about roles and boundaries before the PCCs are elected. Perhaps some simulations, thought experiments and the like would not go amiss. This is not wholly new terrain since PAs have had the lead responsibility for Best Value while the CC is operationally independent. It was never really tested when (say) the PA decided the 'Dogs Section' should be closed down on BV grounds while the CC said that it was an operational matter over which he/she had complete autonomy. This was never tested.

So it is a big debate - which will only kick into gear when / if the legislation is passed into statute. When that happens, I hope that Civil Service World will host more debates like this (on and offline) to flesh out just how this new leadership role will operate in the context of 150+ years of policing.

Debate: Elected police and crime commissioners

http://network.civilservicelive.com/pg/pages/view/543134/ (Link now broken sadly)

I am left pondering on how the new PCCs (assuming it becomes law) will impact upon leadership in the police service - not just at the chief officer level but also throughout the organisation.

Process matters!

NetrootsUK was billed as a “one day event to help network and inspire progressive activists working on the web”. As someone with this blog, my small creative ideas blog and my Twitter account (...facilitating the conversations, ideas & questions to help build a more ambitious, creative and fair world), I decided to go along to the event in London yesterday, along with about 600 other people. It was busy, fascinating & diverse, and the day made me think a great deal. (And I thank the organisers, sponsors and contributors who made it happen.)

But: did it help me network and was I inspired? In order: broadly no and very variably so.

It was a long day, a good half of which was spent in a large plenary listening to speakers. Some were very good: Stella Creasy MP gave a passionate & inspiring speech and Clifford Singer entertained the audience with his use of comic sans (among other things)! However the broad view that emerged from the parallel tweeting and some conversations that I had, was that this was not what the delegates had come really come for. The agenda in the middle of the day was jam packed with a range of interesting seminars. I only managed to get to three of them: I would have liked to have to gone to more. Towards the end of the event, an ‘open mike’ session, which I only understood what that meant when it happened, had six speakers who hurriedly gave us information about their particular project. There was interaction and participation, but not nearly as much as there could have been.

At the end of the day, I was left feeling tired and frustrated as I knew how much more could have been achieved. This was not because of the content of the day (the seminars were good) but the process. The process was mostly didactic, constraining and preset. In many respects it was a classic conference form which was (perhaps) doubly frustrating as the people attending were anything but. The principles of interactivity, emergence, self direction & exploration, randomness, transparency and creativity which are what make social media / Web 2.0 such an exciting medium were almost absent in how the conference was structured. There was just so much untapped potential in the room.

If I had been in charge (as it were...) this is what I would have done: 

• made the whole event Open Space so that the people attending would have been able to shape the overall agenda and indeed their own conference. The event would have been far more fluid and allowed for people to network in open & deliberate ways that would have been so much more productive than the happen-chance discussions you might start (with the person standing next to you in the lift or over coffee). 
• explained the process of how the day was going to function at the beginning so that people would have understood how they could make the most of it. For example I would have at least announced or publicised that there was free wifi for everyone to use in the subterranean room (away from mobile phone signals). 
• have real and virtual walls for people to post their ideas, thoughts, concerns, links etc 
• told people in advance what they were coming to and how they would be able to sponsor discussions and workshops. (Whilst some lunchtime seminars were organised like this – so many more could have been put on.) 
• put all the chairs in a several concentric circles so that people could face each other rather than be put into passive audience style rows all facing the podium and speakers. (This was meant to be about networking – not a series of academic lectures!)

I am well aware that I am probably in a minority in my focus on process & outcomes as opposed to content. What comes first for most people, it seems – conference organisers and delegates – is content: who is speaking about what. I start with the outcomes: how do you want the world or yourself to be different as a result of the event? The form (or process) of the event must follow this function (outcome). If the purpose of yesterday’s event had been to inform people of some of the work going on around political activism in the UK at the moment, it did reasonably well. But as the purpose of the event (as billed) was to inspire people (to take action) and help people network, then this event did not succeed as much as it could have done. An opportunity was lost.

If there are any follow up events – nationally or locally – I sincerely hope that greater attention will be paid to the process of these events so that more, so much more, can be achieved. 

Moreover, progressive politics aside, what large or small event are you in the process of organising?

Does the form of the event match the outcomes you wish to achieve? How do you know? How will you evaluate the event (or meeting, or briefing, or whatever...) for how well these outcomes are achieved? 

Humour in a cold climate

In these austere times, despite moments of relief and joy for many, it is very hard to remain positive and act progressively. It is all too easy to retreat into a reactive bubble and just live from day to day, doing only that which is absolutely necessary to keep your head above water. Creativity flounders, working relationships are put under huge strain and leadership can descend into the emaciated hell of just following procedures.

One thing that remains though, despite all this gloom, is humour. Our ability to take a wry slant on the world and grimly laugh at the situation can be majestic. Humour is the warmth that keeps our home fires burning - or at least the embers glowing, ready to spark into flame when more fuel is found. Humour can make even the coldest places seem warmer and more hopeful.

Some years ago, I made a point of collecting a few examples of workplace humour which I share below. I do this for several reasons. Firstly I hope the statements below make you laugh and even if it is only through gritted teeth, I hope the small shot of endorphins helps. Secondly, if you come across any other examples that you would like to share please do so - you can add a comment below or email me. And thirdly, I hope this small smattering of humour helps you stay in touch with your ambitions and assists you in keeping on keeping on in these difficult times.

Some years ago in one senior police managers office, I came across this simple statement, pinned up on his notice board:

The only difference between this place and the Titanic is that 

they, at least, had a band.

Pinned up on a general notice board of a financial services company I once worked with, I saw:

The Management regrets that due to the current economic climate, it has been necessary to make certain economies. Therefore the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off until further notice.

In a well known consumer campaigning organisation that I once did some work with, the following posters sprang up overnight like a blanket of bluebells:

Meetings: the practical alternative to work

Are you lonely...?

Do you work on your own...?

Do you hate having to make decisions...?

Then hold a meeting!

You can get to see other people, sleep in peace, off-load decisions, feel important and impress your colleagues.

And then in another organisation, I saw this:

The Curse of the Pyramid

I will never forget the time when we entered the 

final chamber of the biggest pyramid. 

The endless variety of furnishings, the sense of absolute stillness... 

of action long ago abandoned... the incomprehensible symbols 

written for no living person to read...

And I turned to my companion and said "it's just like head office really, isn't it?" 

But he disagreed as he couldn't see a coffee machine.

(For 'head office' insert your own suitable place, of course!)

And finally, I would offer you this to indicate that I can laugh at myself as well:

The Consultants Promise

We may not succeed in answering all of your questions.

Indeed you may feel that we have not answered any of them.

Nonetheless, you can be assured that the answers we do give will only serve to raise a whole new set of questions

And so, in some ways, you may feel as confused as ever.

However, we promise, that you will be confused on a much higher level about far more important things.

Naturally, I would like to thank all the people who penned or posted these pieces of humour. I don't know their names, I am afraid, but I am most grateful to them. And like I say, if you know of any more items that made you laugh, do please share them. Thanks.

Is your leadership compatible with coalition government policy?

Here is a link to a Guardian Public article of mine - just published today:

http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/free-and-fair-responsible-society

It is a check list of 20 questions to prompt reflection on whether you are a free, fair and responsible leader...

Heathrow: a breathtaking failure of leadership?

There is an old saying (and some dispute about who coined it first): Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

This got me to wondering about leadership. Should leadership be breathtaking or breathless? It seems to me that many managers spend their time trying to be everywhere, support everyone, monitor everything and so forth. This is breathless leadership. Whilst this may give the leader a warm feeling that they are a ‘hands on’ influential leader, the chances are that others will not be as impressed.

I suspect that London Heathrow, which is currently wrapped for Christmas in very sticky snow, is full of breathless leaders right now, all seeking to make something (anything, dammit!) happen and get passengers moving again. This is commendable and necessary given the circumstances. But what were these breathless leaders doing in the Summer? Were they still running around in a similar fashion? (Latest news as I write here)

Perhaps what London Heathrow needs is a lot more breathtaking leadership. This is the kind of leadership that listens, that empowers, that connects, that plans, that waits, that assembles, that includes, that challenges, that invests, that innovates, that focuses... that inspires.

Breathtaking leadership is easy to spot. It is the kind of leadership that we have all felt once in a while when someone says or does something that makes us do a mental or real double take. We hold our breath as we think about what the person has just done. If it’s an exceptional moment of leadership, we may even forget to breathe until our body kicks in and we take short intake of breath.

My challenge for 2011: how can you make your leadership less breathless and more breathtaking?

Seasonal greetings: a time for prosperity

At this is a time of year, a good many people take a moment to remember the riches they have.

These are not the riches that can ever be measured in £ or $ signs. These riches are far, far more valuable than that. These are the riches in the smiles from neighbours, the gleams in the eyes of our children, the kind words of old friends, the courtesies of strangers or the laughs of our family members. These are the riches that make us feel truly warm, solid and human.

Although sadly, not everyone has these riches in abundance, happily we can all take action to spread more of this wealth around. Whilst I do try to do this wealth creation as much as I can, I will admit that during these austere and recessionary times, I have sometimes become just a tad too focused on the lesser (financial) riches. My resolution for 2011 is to remain resolutely focused on building true prosperity.

With this in mind, I have adopted the word 'prosperity' for the next 12 months. (The 'I CAN' charity in association with Collins Dictionaries allows you to adopt words in exchange for funding action to ensure that no child who struggles to communicate is left out or left behind. You can adopt a word yourself by visiting here: http://new.adoptaword.co.uk/index.php And you can see a copy of my adoption certificate below.

  

So I am sending you my seasonal greetings: I sincerely wish that 2011 will be a truly rich and prosperous year for you, your families, friends and communities.

Jon

Followers do not a leader make: relationships count

On twitter, at the time of writing, I have 1452 followers. Does this make me a leader? True, all of those people have actively clicked on my 'follow' button and will (until they choose otherwise) see my 140 character pearls of wisdom and comment. But I don't think this makes me any kind of leader. Just having followers does not make anyone a leader.

Certainly, if you claim to be a leader and no one is following you, then your claim may not stand up to much scrutiny. But just because you can look around and see people following you does not necessarily make you a leader either. You have to wonder, why are these people following me? Are they doing so because they are contractually obliged to, or it is just in their interest to do so, or because someone they do respect has told them to follow you?. Even if they have chosen to follow you - are they doing anything different as a result? And so forth...

The relationships between leaders and their followers are ultimately what count. Do the followers respect and trust the leader, do they want to emulate the leader's actions or beliefs? Does the relationship have an impact at all on how the followers conduct their lives - professionally or personally?

Moreover, do you, as a leader, do things differently because you know that your followers will observe what you do? Does that responsibility inspire or restrict you?

So the next time, you hear someone talk about leaders having followers (I saw a presentation recently which featured this insight just recently), I would urge you to ask them a question or two about the relationship between leaders and their followers.

As a leader or follower: how are your relationships?  

Procurement: optimising the contribution to greater efficiency, effectiveness and economy

How do you know if your procurement / purchasing function is doing a better job than (say) this time last year – how do you measure success? How do you know if the service is VFM?

I ask the question because:

• most procurement processes frustrate me to bits – in recent days, I have even had a friend in the same business tell me that she is losing the will to live after having written x bids over recent weeks. (You may have already read my – hopefully humorous – rant about the excesses of procurement in my field  - click here if you haven’t)
• I have been offered a complementary place at a forthcoming conference on public sector procurement (see here) for which I am most grateful. The least I thought I could do was do some further thinking about the subject – hence this blog post
• the influence, scope and size of procurement in the public services is set to grow even further – especially of Sir Philip Green has his way (see here for the main story). Government services must practice excellent: efficient, effective & economic procurement as a consequence.
• it isn’t just suppliers who lose sleep and hair over procurement so do the clients want to source a particular service. I know of several instances of where a client wants Z but because of the procurement process enforced upon them, they get Y. And from the work I did years ago supporting a firm which developed systems for the Ministry of Defence – I know that the end user (be it frontline member of the armed forces in that case or a citizen / customer in many other cases) just does not get a look in, usually.

So what is to be done? I offer this checklist below as my ‘starter for ten’ attempt at what I would expect to see evidence of in an excellent procurement function. Please feel free to add more points or make the case to tweak or even delete some of my suggestions. I have written this without any reference to any published standards (of which their might be legion!)

For me, an ideal procurement function would: 

1. Have systems in place to understand and respond to trends in client satisfaction with its services
2. Have established a productive way of listening to feedback from suppliers / bidders (successful and unsuccessful) involved in the procurement processes they manage
3. Benchmark their processes with other procurement functions, both inside and outside their industry or sector, to look for ways to improve what they do
4. Collect the information and be transparent about all the resources spent on procurement processes: by the function themselves, the client who wishes to source a supplier and (radical idea perhaps) all the bidders. (It is a standard clause that clients do not pay for the effort that goes into writing bids. Fair enough. But that resource has to be paid for some how.) This overall data would also be a crude measure of how ‘elegant’ a procurement process is.
5. Have developed an easy to grasp method for measuring whether the cost benefit analysis of the procurement processes are improving or worsening.
6. Have practices in place to ensure that the ‘voice of the customer’ – the end user, citizen or frontline person who will be the final recipient of the new service / product being sourced – is evident at every stage of the procurement process and is heard loudly & clearly.
7. Make efforts to connect people together across the supply chain so that the procurement function does not attain disproportionate power by being the sole knowledge holder and (more crucially) that procurement is done ‘whole system aware’ (see here for further information about this).
8. Although it is harder, always look for ways to procure on outcomes or overall objectives rather than outputs or processes. (All too often, I see tender documents that specify what I know to be a less than satisfactory ‘going through the motion’ type process which will be lucky to achieve any lasting outcomes. Magic can happen if suppliers are given the scope to propose a process that may be outside the prescribed ‘usual’ way of doing things but which will still achieve the desired for outcomes.)
9. Run procurement processes in ways that inspire potential suppliers to be innovative and think of ways to achieve the desired outcomes with more efficiency and effectiveness.
10. Have accrediting procedures which do not involve the uploading of numerous policies and strategies but merely state that the winning bidder will be expected (then) to show that they have these in place.
11. Have established shrewd ways of sorting the bidders into ‘wheat and chaff’ involving (perhaps radically) asking the bidders to state what questions or measures they would pose to the other bidders to help achieve this result.
12. Led strategically, mindful of the key purpose of procurement within the overall strategy of the host organisation. 

I probably could go on! 

But what do you think? Do you agree with the points above? Would you add any more? Would you subtract some of the points above?

-----------------

UPDATE: Just spotted this interesting and related article:

9 November 2009 | Jake Kanter

"Significant weaknesses" in procurement skills are jeopardising value for money on major projects, according to the UK's National Audit Office (NAO). The spending watchdog's latest report, Commercial skills for complex government projects, said the public sector lacked commercial capability in areas including contract management, commissioning and risk management....

(see also my post below on the need for more commercial management)

Commercial leadership

I am struck that in several, perhaps many, parts of the UK public services there has been a shortage of commercial leadership. This is no surprise of course - government is not about commerce - despite some people's efforts to make it so. Government cannot pick and choose who it serves, it must be transparent, open and accountable, and it is about producing social outcomes not just financial ones. So for all these reasons, in my view, public services are not the same as commercial ones.

That said, the public services do enter into commercial arrangements where they have  to negotiate value for money contracts with suppliers. I do worry that sometimes this has not been done as well as it might. In short, I fear that our local and national government have been stuffed by some rather canny operators in the commercial world.

It seems to me that some public service leaders have treated transparent procurement as a proxy to commercial negotiations. But they are not the same. Negotiating a contract with a supplier after they have won the procurement competition is not the same as negotiating with them before...

I know - I am painting things in black and white here - and being deliberately provocative. But I came across a story this morning which left me sad and fed up. I attended a seminar hosted by Civil Service World and sponsored by Hewlett Packard on the 'Digital Dividend'. (It was a very good event - so thanks to the organisers.) In the networking time I spoke to a young chap from a large government department who explained to me he had recently developed a macro for a commonly used spreadsheet in his organisation that would save a lot of people a lot of time. But then he found out that if his department were to use this - they would have to pay the outsourced IT contractor about £15k every time they used it. You see - there was a clause in the contract... So this small innovation (and you know how much I like small creative ideas) was squashed from the outset.

So this got me thinking - how much commercial leadership is there in the public services. Given the current austerity measures - I would propose that we need a lot more of this kind of leadership.

What do you think?


What does commercial leadership mean for you - what skills (apart from negotiating skills of course) need to be well honed?

Research project: Leadership in a cul-de-sac

In the current financial landscape, political, executive and managerial leadership within the public services will have to be very different from that which has been exercised over the last 15 years or so. While there are some parallels to be drawn to leading a corporate organisation during a downturn, public service leaders are facing uncharted and very choppy waters.

The last 15 years have been mostly about steady growth. We are now in a situation of unprecedented reductions where previous non-cashable efficiencies must become cashable. The scale of the reduction would be enough to hole most commercial enterprises below the water line. This is in a time where (unlike commercial organisations), the demand for public services is likely to rise significantly.

There is a distinct and pervasive zeitgeist that the public services are now seen as a drain on the nation’s wealth rather than an investment in it. The measure of public services now seems to be only about what they are costing rather than any outcomes produced. It has of course always been strikingly difficult to track the links between public sector activity and safer, healthier and wealthier communities.

The public services are challenged with a large number of statutory duties and responsibilities, and political priorities which cannot be avoided but which introduce degrees of inflexibility not faced by corporate entities that are scaling down. The cuts that are to come will subject to fearsome and fierce debates over the coming months. Professional, political, personal and ethical loyalties will be under huge pressure. Public service leaders will be pitched against each other as each do battle over who can wave the biggest shroud. Tensions will erupt over whether decisions made are more in the public or political interests.

Meanwhile the public are unlikely to be passive observers as Facebook campaigns mount, Twitter storms erupt and flash demonstrations convene to hold local and national politicians to account. The celebrity culture may hold great sway as national treasures and pop artists choose to wield their influence. This phenomenon has unpredictable and possibly violent consequences.

And in amongst all this, ordinary local politicians, executives and managers will need to be making significant decisions that will have far reaching effects. This is not just about ‘managing change’ or ‘handling complexity’, this is about leading teams of public service workers in bleak cul-de-sacs.

1. Do you recognise this context – what would you add or take away? 
2. Will leadership have to be so different in these circumstances? 
3. As a leader, what pressures are you feeling most keenly at the moment? 
4. How do you think your and others’ leadership will have to change over the coming months – what will you need to do (a lot) more of or (a lot) less of... and carry on doing? 
5. What key skills will be so important that to be unpractised in them will mean seriously poor & inefficient leadership? 
6. What will you have to do that you have never done before? 
7. What resources will you draw on to help you get through this? 

I would be fascinated to read your answers to all or any of the above questions. Thanks

The critical leadership role of middle managers in these austere times

Public service middle managers will experience heavy loads of stress as the implications of the austerity measures are rolled out in coming months. They will be the people tasked to deliver the redundancy bad news to staff. They may well have little say in the decisions being taken. These managers will probably see the shape of the services they have helped to build, reshaped and reduced before their eyes. And they too may suffer a redundancy fate at the end of it all.

Throughout all this, these managers may well seek to juggle their deep commitment to the value of the service they manage & the people they serve, their need for ‘survival’ in this employment climate (& not put their heads too far above the parapet) and their desire to keep work & family life in some semblance of balance.

It is a gross understatement to say that this will not be easy.

But this is not an article to plead on their behalf – there are many others who will suffer too, not least the many (often vulnerable) citizens who will be getting lower of levels of critical services in the future. Instead I want to put forward some ideas about how these middle managers might play a critical leadership role as these looming cuts are rolled out.

For me the most important challenge to face in these coming months will be whether the cuts are used to simply reduce / ‘salami slice’ the existing services or whether bold & creative decisions will be taken to mitigate the cuts (as far as possible) by doing things differently. I contend that middle managers are best placed to do the latter while senior managers may well be under huge pressure (from their governance bodies) to do the former.

Middle managers know their services inside out. And whilst they may have a strong attachment to the current ways of doing business, their inside knowledge means that they have the potential to see some fresh green saplings instead of the old big trees. Whether this potential is realised or not will depend upon the leadership role that they adopt.

If the middle managers pursue a compliant style of leadership and seek only to implement the demands for resource cutting, there is little chance of innovation and new ways being found to deliver more with less. These middle managers may gamble on saving their own jobs by being good soldiers. But this will be a gamble. (I once met someone who was instructed to make his whole team of nine people redundant. He spent 10½  hours that day talking with each person, doing what he could to make the ‘brown envelope’ an opportunity and not a curse. Finally at around 7.30pm he returned to his own office to find his own brown envelope, just left squarely on his desk. He set fire to his filing cabinet.)

There is an alternative leadership role. (And from the discussions I have had with middle managers, many are and will be seeking to adopt this approach. I wish them well.) This approach seeks to create the room for manoeuvre to find the new ways of doing business. These might be radical innovations or just simple small changes that can lead to much higher performance, such that services and possibly jobs can be saved. This is not a leadership style for the faint hearted.

This leadership involves: 

• Being as strategic as the senior managers through understanding the past, present and future of the organisation, grasping the particular pressures which are being faced and having a vision of what could be. 

• Having the courage and deft footwork to challenge and question decisions from higher up the organisation, in ways that make the people who have made those decisions wriggle, but not squirm. 

• Being prepared to practise an inspirational & facilitative style of leadership which enables and encourages junior staff to think creatively and express their own bold ideas which will finesse the resources and find superlative efficiency & effectiveness 

• Deeply knowing what the public want and need, and being able to show clearly how proposals for newly redesigned services will come far closer to meeting their requirements and delivering social outcomes. 

• Maintaining honesty and transparency throughout, so that even if there is no job at the end, everyone will observe that the manager will still have their integrity. (In the end, that is all any of us have.) 

• Knowing what questions to ask of all involved that will liberate new ways of doing business. Just asking, for example, the simple question “is there anyone who provides this service far better than us?” can prompt a radical shift in existing methods. (When the first budget airline realised they could cut costs dramatically by keeping their aeroplanes in the air more and on the ground less, they searched for who was doing this extremely well. They learnt a huge amount from a Formula One team who showed them how do a pit stop in 9 seconds.) 

• Having the skills (and being able to share these) to redesign a service so that fewer resources are spent on ‘fire-fighting’ and more priority is given to prevention and systemic fixes that can head off the expensive mistakes.

Sometimes dramatic improvements are staring us in the face and when we finally see them we wonder how we could not have seen them before. One council I was working with had experienced something like this when they looked at how they repaired street lights. The original method involved taking a call from a member of the public that a street light was not working. An engineer was dispatched (at dusk?) to check that indeed the light was not working. If (as was invariably the case) it was not, a second engineer was then sent out to fix it. All this took a while and involved two journeys. They then changed their assumption from ‘we cannot believe the public’ to ‘we can believe the public’. As a consequence only one engineer is now despatched to fix a street light that has been reported as faulty.

This leads me on to declaring what I think is the most important attribute of this more progressive middle management leadership: 

• Having the capability to learn from the past (and possibly even chuckle about it) but not be attached to tradition. True, this is very hard to do in any organisation that is wracked with fear, blame and a belief that changing old ways necessarily involves a loss of face. But I believe (I have to believe) this is still possible, even in such organisations. Certainly if not now, then when? If this is not a time to let go of old & inefficient practises, when will it be?

If you are a politician or senior manager reading this, my challenge to you is what can you do to allow, enable and support your middle managers to act in these ways?

Putting the politics aside about whether now is the right time to be implementing extensive and deep reductions in public expenditure (I leave that to the politicians and economists to debate), it is always the right time for any manager to be putting in place radical improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. As Machiavelli said “a common failing of mankind [is] never to anticipate a storm when the sea is calm. A wise prince … must never take things easy in times of peace”.

Now that the storm has arrived, many people I fear are rushing to construct the world of public services as one large spreadsheet with lots of compartmentalised budget cells to slice and dice. I hope that the progressive middle managers will have the courage to practice leadership that calmly but dynamically acts in the interests of all of our futures.

But it won’t be easy!

Transparency: Some hopes and fears, new words and ideas

I write as a tax payer and a citizen who wants a world which is more ambitious, creative and fair. I also write as someone who has been working in and around public service organisations for the last 30 years as a civil servant, an adviser, a challenger, a listener and facilitator. I would like to talk about my hopes for what transparency should lead towards. I also have a couple of fears too.

It is my earnest hope that these new transparency arrangements will mean that citizens and taxpayers become more confident that their money is being spent wisely on the projects and services that make a difference. In other words that there will be a greater sense of ownership and accountability about what councils, central government departments etc. do and achieve. To coin a phrase, that we will have ‘transpocracy’ – where transparency is adding to (and not subtracting from) democracy. 

I also hope that we get ‘transporency’ too, such that the information that is published under the transparency guidelines seeds ideas, actions and initiatives by all concerned (politicians, providers, service users and media observers) that helps all to build the Big Society that our government is committed to developing. I believe we already have a big (hearted) society where everyday millions of people do something for a friend, neighbour or family member. But we can have an even bigger society if transparency helps a thousand flowers bloom.

I am concerned though that all this transparency could feed a growing number of cynical armchair voyeurs. To coin another word – I fear we may be at risk of creating ‘transpruriency’ where a legion of self proclaimed ‘auditors’ and ‘researchers’ are only interested in the costs of public services and not in their value.

In my more cynical moments, I also fear that the sheer volume of the data which is being published and the ways it is being uploaded onto the internet will bamboozle & overload far more than it will enlighten and inform. In other words (and this is my final ‘new’ word) that we will get a great deal of ‘transapparency’ where a semblance of transparency is created but which is actually nothing of the kind. There will be a lot of ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’.

So, how can we ensure that we get plenty of transpocracy and transporency, whilst ensuring that we keep transpruriency and transapparency in check? For me there is a simple one word answer to this question: strategy.

In this context, I speak as an organisation development and change facilitator who has seen lots of public services lurch into policy implementation without considering what they want to achieve other than baseline compliance. So my challenge is this – what do you want to achieve with transparency and how will you evaluate whether you are getting closer to (or further from) your goals?

Transparency could achieve so much. I hope it will help reconnect people with their public services and make those services more accountable. It can and should help boost value for money and spread wise spending practices from one public agency to another. It must not become bureaucratic, opaque or inaccessible.

In my view, how each council (or other public agency) develops their transparency strategy will help it to be successful or not. If the strategy is developed by just a few accountants and IT people sitting in a darkened room, I think it won’t work very well.

It is not that I have anything against accountants and IT people, I hasten to add. It is simply that if transparency is for the public then I think the public need to be involved in shaping the strategy and designing how transparency is rolled out for them. I know that some councils have done this – but have they all? (I note that the website guidance: http://data.gov.uk/blog/local-spending-data-guidance Local Spending Data Guidance does cover items such as ‘file formats’ and ‘data content’ well but makes no mention of involving the public...)

How are you developing your transparency strategy?

Leadership: into the tunnel

This evening my mind is turning to the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Tomorrow, the Government will announce just where budgets will be cut and by how much. Frustratingly, the announcements probably won't include much detail as that will emerge over the coming months. But the broad sweep of which Departmental budgets have come off better or worse will be known. I wonder how the people affected by these budget reductions will react - be they front line staff, managers at all levels and, of course, the people & organisations who are current beneficiaries. This will be a bleak day for many as the rhetoric, leaks, promises (broken or otherwise) and hints of the past six months will be turned into reality.

And then I wonder how our public service leaders - beginning with the Prime Minister but ending with every single front line supervisor - will now lead as we enter this dark tunnel? 

• Will this courageous leadership akin to the Charge or the Light Brigade or the D-Day landings?
• Will this be steadfast leadership like Churchill's or King Canute's?
• Will this be the visionary leadership that Nelson Mandela or Ghengis Khan had?

When David Cameron announced the outcomes of the Bloody Sunday Report, he was widely acclaimed as having struck just the right tone.

Tomorrow will also be such an opportunity for him and the rest of the Government to evidence the kind of leadership that will be necessary to implement the budget reductions in ways that do no more harm (to people and the economy) than is absolutely necessary. 

Leadership is like water

The best are like water.

Water benefits all things and does not compete with them.

It flows to the lowest level that people disdain.

In this it comes near to the Way

In their dwellings, they love the earth.

In their hearts, they love what is profound.

In their friendship, they love humanity.

In their words, they love sincerity.

In government, they love peace.

In business, they love ability.

In their actions, they love timeliness.

It is because they do not compete

that there is no resentment

From the Dao de Jing which is attributed to Lao-zi (there is a copy here: )

In part, my interpretation of these two stanzas is that true leadership does not compete or even try. The endeavour of a true leader is to be simply present and through that presence help bring forth the achievement of dreams and ambitions for all concerned.

What do the stanzas mean to you?

I have quoted this part of the Dao de Jing today as my contribution to World Blog Action day - which is today. The aim of the day this year is to inspire people to take action on the fact that right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted. Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us. 

You can take action by signing the petition, top right on this blog. You can make a donation to Water Aid or indeed any other charity working in the developing world.

Or if you are lucky enough to live in a part of the world where you can just get yourself a glass of clean water easily - do so and drink it slowly. Please savour the knowledge that this is basic human need that all should be able to share. Also, I hope you enjoy this fresh gift from the sky!