Open Leadership

Open LeadershipAm reading an excellent book at the moment – Open Leadership by Charlene Li.

Fans of dead-tree web 2.0 reading will be familiar with Groundswell, which Li co-authored and was chock-full of interesting case studies – mostly from the US private sector – around how collaborative relationships with customers, often using the web as a platform, lead to success.

Here’s some of the blurb for Open Leadership:

Open Leadership reveals step-by-step, with illustrative case studies and examples from a wide-range of industries and countries, how to bring the precision of this new openness to both inside and outside the organization. The author includes suggestions that will help an organization determine an open strategy, weigh the benefits against the risk, and have a clear understanding of the implications of being open. The book also contains guidelines, policies, and procedures that successful companies have implemented to manage openness and ensure that business objectives are at the center of their openness strategy.

It’s a great read too. One of my favourite bits is where Li lists early on five new rules for leaders to bear in mind when managing relationships:

  1. Respect that your customers and employees have power
  2. Share constantly to build trust
  3. Nurture curiosity and humility
  4. Hold openness accountable
  5. Forgive failure

Hear, hear!

You can get a flavour of the book with this free snippet:

Hack Warwickshire

Warwickshire County Council‘s approach to open government and IT strategy is impressive. Check out their IT strategy blog, where they detail their use of the cloud, for example, and their open data site. Great stuff, and good to see it happening at a council where I used to work! I spent a year as a Business Analyst there, between 2005 and 2006.

On the open data blog, Warwickshire have announced a competition, called Hack Warwickshire:

After the recent launch of our Warwickshire Open Data web site, we are really keen to see the new and innovative uses that our information can be put to. Whatever your idea, whether it is an incisive data visualisation, a web mashup, an app for your mobile or a way of integrating with social networking – this competition is a way for you to get involved with the open data revolution, build something cool and possibly get your hands on a brand new iPad with which to show your winning entry off.

Sounds good to me. Well worth following what these guys are up to.

#lgworkforce – Sharing management successfully

Chris Elliott, Head of Transformation at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and High Peak Borough Council shows how to make the most of a joint chief executive, how to bring services together to save costs and how to best spread best practice.

  • Both excellent councils, semi-rural market town environment. Similar population, adjacent boundaries.
  • But different counties and government regions!
  • It ‘feels’ different. Everyone has to work differently. Greater emphasis on people. Challenging every activity.
  • Double the number of members!
  • Was considered a takeover at one stage but no longer
  • Cultural differences
  • Flexibility is key
  • More secure by the day
  • The role of management – the tiers of management – what should the be doing? Directors, Heads of Service, Service Managers. Strategic, transformational, operational
  • Enablers – IT, procurement, change. Also legal, HR and comms.
  • Methodology, toolsets and quick wins
  • Resource strategy alignment
  • Got external consultants to produce high level business case
  • Programme began quickly (be quick and be bold!)
  • Potential projects mapped in terms of difficulty and transformative impact
  • Member led initiative – concordat –  2 pager – and governance. Need for scrutiny and reality check
  • Sense of urgency driven by budget issues. Message to staff – support this or there may have to be compulsory redundancies.
  • Importance of engaging stakeholders
  • Situation now: joint CEO and Snr m’ment team, joint ICT, procurement and transformation teams, joint property services, joint environmental health team, joint grounds maintenance service.
  • Measures: VFM, customer service, public recognition and satisfaction, improved quality of life for residents
  • Observations:
    • exception processes everywhere
    • Measuring the wrong things
    • Make waste visible
    • Help people to let go
    • ICT is a barrier – or is it? – Now at 35% shared IT systems. 80% by next year
    • Management competency
    • Use lean leanly
    • Procurement = 50% of budgets
    • Simple is better
  • Service heads have to own transformation process
  • Don’t create IT wish list
  • Pain is inevitable
  • Two councils = easy benchmarking
  • Don’t forget the supply chain
  • People first
  • Think process not tech
  • Be ruthless with waste
  • Make status quo unacceptable
  • Kotter – 8 reasons transformation projects fail
  • Grow your own, be prepared to learn
  • It’s easy to complicate things
  • Know when to stop

#lgworkforce – Buckinghamshire’s Organisation Redesign Programme

Gillian Hibberd, Corporate Director for People, Policy and Communications, talks through how their change process was planned and supported, and how staff were engaged.

  • OD is aligning structure to objectives – form following function. Many orgs struggle to easily define their purpose.
  • Structure alone does not guarantee success
  • Org design is not a perfect science
  • What are the issues?
    • business operating model – more outsourcing and commissioning. Councils become smaller with other partners delivering service
    • Reducing layers and numbers of managers
    • Spans of control
    • Synergies from merging teams and reducing m’ment team
  • Approaches to budget pressure – slash and burn, be reactive, or plan for change
  • Key requirement is a vision for the organisation
  • Bucks’ vision is ‘rising to the challenge’. 4 elements of lean organisation: elected members, knowing our customer, support services, different service delivery models.
  • Model based on locality areas – 19 geographic communities with community plans.
  • The core of the council is a very small, learn organisation
  • Design principles clarify the vision and translates into organisational changes
  • Bucks have 6 key principles in total
  • Redesign model – flexible, sustainable, cost savings, management and admin targets, blueprint driven
  • Director team and heads of service team reduced with a 25% cost reduction
  • Phases: design, high level org design, design phase, consultation, transition
  • Outcomes – £4.2m cashable savings so far. 183 posts cut. Few employee relations issues. Next phase of transformation about to start. Blueprint coming to life and a fit for purpose organisation.
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