“It’s our space to talk about being a leader, have discussions amongst peers, and to reflect.”
Part of a series of posts written by the Directors’ Network, supported by One Team Gov and the Cabinet Office’s Civil Service Group.
We’re writing this blogpost to continue our series on growing the community of Directors committed to collective leadership, co-creation and building cultures that support collaboration. You can find out more about this work here:
Leading public services has always been tough — we have to tackle complex societal issues which no single organisation can face alone, especially during these times. As public sector leaders, Directors are at the forefront of this, wrestling with the systemic and interrelated nature of many issues.
As a network of Directors, we are learning to be generous with our time, gratitude, and support. It matters to us now more than ever. The time we have together is spontaneous, positive, and productive, which is hard to do during these times. We are permitting ourselves the time and space to focus on the long-term and see things in a different way. This is our space to talk about being a leader, have discussions amongst peers, and to reflect. We’re doing our utmost to protect the time to have real, purposeful, meaningful conversations.
We had our fourth breakfast call, which we ran slightly differently to previous calls, with the inclusion of a lightning talk from Anna Randle. We heard from Anna about ‘bottling the positives’ as she shared her insights on public sector leadership, collaborations with local government, and tackling complex social challenges.
Using Anna’s provocation back to the group, we generated the agenda and had discussions on the areas we felt passionate about. It was a very simple way of bringing a diverse range of views together on the theme of public sector leadership.
It was a participant-led discussion:
- Lighting talk by Anna Randle with a provocation
- Using a Google Doc, we proposed a topic for discussion,
- We used “dot voting” using emojis to prioritise the discussions based on what we wanted to talk about, and
- We then discussed the highest voted topics.
We are continuing to grow our network and it was great to welcome new people to the discussion this week! This allowed us to split into virtual breakout rooms for group discussions on each topic before regrouping at the end to share our reflections.
Below is a summary of our discussions.
Bottling the positives by annarandle, Collaborate CIC: Learning from the response of public services and people to COVID-19 to help build a new normal
Anna shared her experience of how COVID-19 is supercharging the pace of change in many ways. Things that were previously thought impossible have been achieved in a matter of days as people and organisations pull together united in a new collective purpose, adopt radical new practice, and organise in new ways.
The role of people in the response is fascinating. It has brought a unique opportunity to bring about change in public services. These learning opportunities are key; however, we need to carve out the space and capture learning in real time. We’re starting to draw learnings on what’s working well/less well and use this to build learning organisations. We need to recognise this is coming at high personal cost for people in terms of their wellbeing and resilience; reinforcing the importance of making time to reflect and learn will help them. It is all about creating the spaces where people can share, reflect, and learn.
We’re observing local success and pride in delivery — it’s not about grade, but how all are leading change. The success we’re seeing in areas comes from all of us fighting the same battle, but we’re talking about it in very different ways. Innovation is happening in the delivery of frontline services — it will take time to work back to the system level changes needed to maintain this. How can we take the collaboration we’re seeing from the community response and to think through this in terms of systems level?
We’re seeing the importance of trust and tapping into people’s motivations to do the right thing. The power of tailoring the goal at local level through ‘protecting the vulnerable’ is galvanising people. The impact of this cannot be understated. This, coupled with changes in governance, has enabled things to happen speedily that would have previously taken months. Organisations were cutting through what was often time consuming governance — more for the sake of control than adding value — to deliver at speed. Sometimes it is enough to know enough vs knowing everything.
Topics 1 and 2: How do we keep the increased risk appetite and lose the heavy governance permanently? Building forward is a great expression…How do we stop drifting back — what can we build in structurally?
We reflected that our current situation is not an entirely positive thing and that some people are having a really difficult time right now. We need to recognise this and support them.
We discussed how we aren’t clear about what parts of our system to defend at all costs, before we move into making the most of new opportunities. We are observing that the system rewards the behaviour that causes the problem in the current system. However, do we know that those problems are? What behaviours do we feel are being rewarded by the current system?
We explored, “when do we start accepting failure as a learning exercise?” There are formal changes in risk appetite that are being applied at board level — and we think these will stick over time. We believe there are things we can influence locally that are far easier to lock in and change.
We wonder what happens to the things related to the ‘machinery of government’. We think some newer ways of working are policy driven, but are unsure whether these are time limited? Will we go back? We think changes in working across boundaries and silos, use of technology, and creating space for learning are ones we can embed and sustain. We want to learn about examples of practical action that we can take to encourage more risk taking!
Reflection
“It’s so relevant to some work I’m leading on so I’ve got all sorts of ideas in my head now.”
As always, there was a lot to discuss and we could have talked for a lot longer! There were some really interesting views shared and some productive disagreement, too.
The kind of change we need starts from within. Whatever your role or discipline , we believe everyone has a topic in them. All Directors from across the Civil Service are welcome to join the ‘Your Agenda, Your Discussions’ breakfast call.
The next call will be held on Thursday 28 May from 8.30–9.30am.
You can sign up using the link below:
We look forward to seeing you there!
Further reading
Your Agenda, Your Discussions: Our journey navigating new terrain:
Exploring Future Leadership with the Civil Service Directors’ Network:
