Leadership for Change Programme

Residential 2

Tuesday 4th November – Thursday 6th November, 2014

Welcome!

Since we last met, what has been going well? What have been the significant changes and pressures?• For you, personally?• In your work?• In your wider system?

Pay attention to the way you are listening to your partner.

Reflect together:Given the above, what will help us to be as ‘present’ as we can over the next three days? What might we need to acknowledge and handle as a group?

Overall Purpose of the programme

• To develop systems leadership skills and capacity amongst public leaders

• To support public leaders to make progress on complex systems challenges in their places

• To make tangible improvements for the people and communities we serve, and in which we live and work

What is systems leaderhip?

Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional times

Improving outcomes for service users

Ways of feelingPersonal core values

Commitment

Ways of perceivingBalcony & dance-floorThe unseen & unpredictedDiverse viewsSensitivity to narratives

Ways of thinkingCuriositySynthesising complexitySense-making

Ways of doingNarrativeEnabling & SupportingRepurposing &Reframing

Ways of relatingMutuality & EmpathyHonesty & AuthenticityReflectionSelf Awareness

Ways of beingCourage to take risksResilience & Patience

Drive, energy, optimismHumility

• to create space for reflection and learning arising from your safe-fail experiment(s) in relation to your systems leadership practice and the systems leadership challenge you are addressing

• to deepen your understanding and ability to work with multiple sources of power in your system

• to develop a systemic approach to working with teams of leaders from across your system

• to develop your capacity to use narrative as a systems leadership practice for mobilizing actors from across your system to take action

• to deepen your appreciation of the impact of culture in your system and how to work with it

• to increase your own self-awareness as a systems leader through opportunities for peer feedback

• to identify areas where you want to further develop in your systems leadership practice and to design a personal safe fail experiment to help you do so.

Aims for Residential 2

Expectations and aspirations

• Given the aims of this residential and where you are at, what questions and expectations are you bringing?

• How can we best use these three days together?

• Discuss in fours

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Cycle of Learning1. Practical experience

Acting in the world, experimenting and

experiencingresults

ACTIVIST

2. Observation and reflectionReviewing and

reflecting on experienceREFLECTOR

4. ApplicationTranslating ideas and insights into

action/ways forwardPRAGMATIST

3. ConceptualisationDeveloping understanding through

deepening/challenging assumptions, using models and concepts

THEORISTAdapted from David Kolb’s work

Today’s outlineTiming Activity

09:30 – 10:00 Arrival and registration

10:00 – 11:15 Check in and re-connecting – acknowledging changes since we last met. Aims and expectations for next 3 days.

11:15 – 13:00Learning from our safe/fail experiments. Where are we now? What are we learning about our systems leadership?In place teams and home groups (including break)

13:00-13:45 Buffet lunch

13:45-14:00 Reflection

14:00-15:45 Understanding and working with power

15:45-16:00 Break

16:00-18:00 Understanding and working across cultures

18:00-18:30 Free time

18:30-19:30 Evening speaker

From 19:30 Dinner in the restaurant

Tomorrow’s outline Timing Activity

07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast

08:30 – 09:00 Check in

09:00-10:45 Narrative as a systems leadership practice & reframing your systems leadership challenge

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00-13:00 Introducing public narrative and story of self

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:00 Story of us

16:00-16:15 Break

16:15-18:00 Story of now and linking your public narrative

18:00 – 19:00 Free time

19:00 – 20:30 Dinner

Day 3 outlineTiming Activity

07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast

08:30 – 09:00 Check in

09:00 – 10:45 Consolidation, moving forward and ‘messy solutions’- place teams and home groups

10:45- 11:00 break

11:00 – 12:30 Who do you need to draw on and how might you work together? Working with multi-stakeholder leadership teams and networks

12:30 – 13:15 Lunch

13:15 – 14:45 What do you need to do to sustain learning and change?

14:45 – 15:00 Break

15:00 – 16:30 What do we need from each other and ourselves? Giving/ receiving feedback- designing a personal ‘safe-fail’ experiment

16:30 – 16:45 Review and reflection

16:45 Depart

Reflecting on progress and learning from your ‘safe-fail experiment In Place Teams:• Individually reflect out loud on the progress you

think have been made in relation to your safe-fail experiment and your part in it

• What challenges have you faced and how have you handled them?

• What have you learnt about your own systems leadership?

One person speaks, one acts as ‘listener’, others as ‘observers’. Take it in turns and rotate roles.

Deep listening

AssumptionValues /

Motivational Roots

Personal Feeling

Behaviours

Facts

AssumptionValues /

Motivational Roots

Personal Feeling

Behaviours

Facts

Reflection as a team

As a team:

• What did you notice? What was common, what was different amongst you?

• How do you interpret your experience now?

• What impact did the listener and observer roles have on the quality of your reflection when you were the speaker?

Exercise : experimenting with perceptual positionsHome group exercise: Reflecting on ‘safe-fail’ experiment using deep listening• ‘Clients’ talk together to the group about their experience of running

their safe-fail experiment(s) – what happened, what they noticed, how they are starting to interpret the experience and what they are learning about systems leadership

• Consultants listen in silence – paying attention to the different levels. Are differing aspects of the system being represented beyond personal positions/perspectives?

• Clients then ‘turn their back’ on the group. The consultants discuss their observations about the interpretations being made and any assumptions, biases or feelings that are beginning to show up. What is this telling them about the system?

• Clients come back into the group and reflect on what they have heard, sharing any new perspectives , insights or ideas that have opened up for them.

Reflect on what it is like to have ‘a good listening to’. How did the listeners impact on the conversation?

Leadership for Change ProgrammeResidential 2

Lunch

Power

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Sources of Power

Personal Powerexpert powerpersonality power

Organisation Powerposition powercoercive powerreward power

Political Powernetwork powerinformation power

Adapted from French and Raven

Identity power – Cultural, social,Professional Other?

Mapping power in your system• In Place Teams illustrate the power relationships

and types of power in your system

• Use ‘Lego’ to represent yourselves and the most relevant players – organisations, people and constituencies

• Build your system on the paper provided. Discuss how you see the power relationships

• Use coloured pens to show the types of power and

arrows to show the direction of the power relationship.

….. how things are done around here.

Ouchi and Johnson, 1978

….. the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs and

attitudes that constitute a pervasive context for everything we

do and think in an organisation. McLean and Marshall, 1983

‘values and basic assumptions which organisational members come to

share’. Van Maanen and Schein, 1979

‘ Culture is the result of all the everyday conversations and

negotiations between members of an organisation’ Seel 2000

How do we understand organisational culture?

By kind permission of Bill Crooks

Levels of culture (Hawkins and Smith)

ArtefactsOutward manifestations, buildings, furnishings, objects, settings, PR, high profile symbols. Rituals. Stated values. Policies, procedures and systems.

BehaviourSpontaneous actions, routine responses, enacted realities and values. Repeated patterns/norms of behaviour. Often absorbed via role models.

Mind setBasic assumptions and world view that underpin thinking and behaviour. Mostly unconscious. Paradigms.

Emotional groundThe passions, aspirations, motivations and projections that represent the emotional energy within a culture. Often well camouflaged, muted or expressed in distorted forms.

Stories &myths

Symbols

Rituals &routines

Mind-sets/ paradigm

Powerstructures

Organisational structures

Controlsystems

TheCULTURALWEB (Johnson and Scholes)

Culture and change (Seel)

• Unless the paradigm is at the heart of culture change, there will be no lasting change

• Paradigms are not imposed by CEO’s or invented by consultants, rather

‘they emerge from a multiplicity of interactions between individuals within the community’

• Therefore, change needs to move away from ‘planning change’ onto ‘facilitating emergence’

Inquiring into culture – being creative

• Using metaphors/pictures• Heroes and Villains• Find an object• Complete the sentence..‘our organisation always….’ ‘our organisation never….’ ‘our organisation loves…’ ‘our organisation hates..’• Tell stories• Unofficial induction• Amateur anthropologist/alien visitor/journalist

Culture inquiry

• Use one of the creative exercises to inquire into the culture of another organisation/sector/professional background etc that you are curious about

• Use this and the cultural web hand-out as a guide to draw out the underlying mind-sets/paradigms that really inform behaviour, from the perspective of the interviewee. How do these mind-sets show up? How do they impact on relationships with others in the system?

• What do they think might be needed to work well with others coming from different cultures?

• Any new insights/discoveries? Any assumptions confirmed or challenged?

Some implications for systems leadership

• Be curious and appreciative– seek to understand and share underlying mind-sets

• Work with informal processes and conversations• Encourage greater connectivity between people

from across different organisational cultures• Support spaces for thinking/talking differently

together “a talent for speaking differently, rather than arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change” Rorty

• Nurture and model new behaviours- develop ‘simple rules’

Leadership for Change Programme

Residential 2 Day 2

Welcome!

Day 2 agendaTiming Activity

07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast

08:30 – 09:00 Check in

09:00-10:45 Narrative as a systems leadership practice & reframing your systems leadership challenge

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00-13:00 Introducing public narrative and story of self

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:00 Story of us

16:00-16:15 Break

16:15-18:00 Story of now and linking your public narrative

18:00 – 19:00 Free time

19:00 – 20:30 Dinner

Leadership for Change Programme

Residential 2 - Day 3

Day 3 agendaTiming Activity

07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast

08:30 – 09:00 Check in

09:00 – 10:45 Session 1: Working with multi-stakeholder leadership teams and networks & Sustaining learning and change

10:45- 11:00 Break

11:00-12:00 Session 1 continued & An island of sanity

12:00-13:00 Session 2: Consolidation, moving forward and ‘clumsy solutions’

13:00-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:15 Session 2 continued: Home Groups

14:15-16:00 Session 3: What do we need from each other and ourselves? Fast feedback & your personal safe/fail experiment

16:15 Depart

Who do you need to draw on/connect with?

Working with multi-stakeholder teams & networks

Leading change in a new era

Dominant approach Emerging direction

Leading change in a new era

Dominant approach Emerging direction

Most transformation

efforts are driven from this side

Unleashing the spirit of the volunteer

You may be able to ‘buy’ a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power or fear but a human being’s genius, loyalty and tenacious creativity are volunteered only.The world’s greatest problems will be solved by passionate, unleashed ‘volunteers’

Stephen Covey, Turn the ship around, via @MarkGraban

Source of image: www.volunteerweekly.org

‘‘

’’

The Network Secrets of Great Change AgentsJulie Battilana &Tiziana Casciaro

1. As a change agent, my centrality in the informal network is more important than my position in the formal hierarchy

2. If you want to create small scale change, work through a cohesive network

If you want to create big change, create bridge networks between disconnected groups

John P. Kotter, ‘Accelerate’, HBR November 2012

Hierarchy & Networks

Strong ties vs. weak ties

Are we structured to lead in this way?

What would it take?

Teams and networks

‘you can’t really think about teams independent of their networks, sub-groups, and integrated leadership systems’

Katzenbach 2012

Networks and teams

• Interdependent Roles• Norms of conduct• Real work to do

Enabling Structure

3 conditions for successful teams (Wageman and Hackman)

The Right People

•Able to work interdependently • Well networked and diverse•System thinkers

Compelling Shared Purpose

• Challenging • Clear direction• Consequential

Five disciplines of high performing teams

Core Learning• Co-ordinating and

consolidating

• Reflecting,

learning, integrating

Task

Process

OutsideInside

Clarifying• Primary purpose

• Goals

• Roles

‘Authorising’/mandateEnsuring a clear commission/mandate

from its ‘authorising’ environment/wider system

Co-creating• Interpersonal and team dynamics

• Team culture

Connecting• and engaging all the critical

stakeholders

(within boundary) (across boundary)

Adapted from Hawkins (2011)

Actions for building a great leadership team/group

• Treat the beginning with great attentiveness:- Begin with personal stories and identify shared values/interests to support shared purpose- Assess individual capabilities- Get constructive norms in place from the beginning – and revisit them on an iterative basis. Hold each other to account!• Craft agendas that allow for conversations on those issues that matter

most- focus on meaningful activities that involves interdependent work in-between meetings

• Identify and recruit the “right people” to lead the work • Ensure regular opportunities are built in for reflection and learning• Keep connected with key stakeholders/constituency groups/strong and

weak ties• Ensure appropriate skilled support is made use of eg team coaching• Pay attention to the above in any turnover/reconfiguration of the team

Application

• Use the diagnostic framework to help you reflect on a systems leadership team/network you are part of, one you would like to grow or one you would like to create.

• What role might you play in supporting a positive shift- what might your first step be?

Leadership for Change ProgrammeResidential 2

Lunch

What do you need to sustain learning and change?

• foster thinking and learning from experience

• pay exquisite attention to relationships• Navigate/hold your ground against

bureaucratic and political demands• strategies for self-care for the long term

Islands of Sanity: The Role of Leadership

Adapted from Margaret Wheatley

• foster thinking and learning from experience

Question: Where is thinking taking place in your organization?Are you learning from experience or repeating mistakes?• pay exquisite attention to relationships

Question: What’s the level of trust, support, teamwork among staff? Getting better or worse?• Navigate/hold your ground against bureaucratic and political demands

Question: Where have you pushed back or said no? What have you learned from these experiences?• strategies for self-care for the long term

Islands of Sanity: The Role of Leadership

Margaret Wheatley-use freely cite source

Restoring Thinking

• Regular times for staff reflection, sacrosanct

• Open agenda: discuss needs of the moment

• Not added on to regular staff meetings

• Relaxed, hospitable atmosphere

Margaret wheatley

10 conditions for a Thinking Environment (Nancy Kline)1) Attention2) Incisive questions3) Equality4) Appreciation5) Ease6) Encouragement7) Feelings8) Information9) Place10)Diversity

Measures for assessingimpact of thinking

• Are problems getting solved by our solutions?• Are we applying what we learn from mistakes?• Are we quicker to identify problematic behaviours or

old patterns that no longer serve us?• Are we taking more risks? Experimenting more? • Do we truly feel “We’re all in this together”• Are we behaving better with each other?• Are we handling stress better?

Margaret Wheatley

We need boatrockers!

• Rock the boat but manage to stay in it

• Walk the fine line between difference and fit, inside and outside

• Able to challenge the status quo when we see that there could be a better way

• Conform AND rebel

• Capable of working with others to create success NOT a destructive troublemaker

Source: Debra Meyerson

Source: @NHSChangeDay

What is the issue here?“permission” ?

(externally generated)or

Self efficacy ? (internally generated)

Building self-efficacy: some tactics1. Create change one small step at a time

2. Reframe your thinking: failed attempts are learning opportunities uncertainty becomes curiousity

3. Make change routine rather than an exceptional activity

4. Get social support

5. Learn from the best

Source: Helan Bevan

Consolidation, moving forward and clumsy solutions

Source: Keith Grint @ http://www.dajf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Keith-Grint-presentation.pdf

Group Orientation

Adapted from ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’, Keith Grint, Clinical Leader, Vol I Number II, Dec 2008

Clumsy Solutions

Adapted from ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’, Keith Grint, Clinical Leader, Vol I Number II, Dec 2008

The Bricoleur’s approach to wicked problems approach to wicked problems

From ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’, Keith Grint, Clinical Leader, Vol I Number II, Dec 2008

Eschew the elegance of the architect’s approach to problems…..

…and adopt the world of the Bricoleur - the do-it-yourself craftworker.

Accept that imperfection and making do with what is available is not just the best way forward but the only way forward.

Avoid alienating significant constituencies – but progress does not depend on consensus.

Assume no one has the answer in isolation.

No man is an island entire of itself; Every man is a is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,As well as if a promontory were,As well as if a a manor of thy friend’sOr of thine own were:Any man’s death diminishes me.For I am involved in mankind.Therefore, send not to knowFor whom the bell tolls,It tolls for thee. John Donne (1572-1631)

Assume that the problem is a system problem not caused by or solved by a single aspect of the system.

Systems leadership in action

• In Place Teams – revisit your systems leadership challenge.

• Taking account of power, culture, identity, and messy solutions what action/behaviour might need to shift, change or continue?

• What interventions in your system are you going to make when you go back?

• Test your actions with your Home Group.

Giving and receiving fast feedback

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System 1 - Gut

• Automatic• Unconscious• Lightning• Intuitive• Emotional• Resemblance

System 2 - Head

• Reason• Conscious• Slow• Effortful• Calculating• Explaining

Fast feedback (1 min per person)

“What impresses me about you is…”

“What I imagine about your leadership edge is….”

Fast Feedback

• What did you notice about the feedback you gave?

• What did you notice about the feedback you received?

• What did you notice about doing the exercise for yourself? The Group?

• Any new insights/discoveries

Highly unpredictable

Highly uncontrollabl

e

Highly predictable

Safe Certainty

(Stuckness)

Safe uncertainty(Stretch)

Unsafe uncertainty

(Danger)

Highly controllabl

e

CON

TRO

LLAB

LE

PREDICTABLEAdapted from the work of Mason, Stacey, Critchley and Vanstone by Steve Chapman (2014)

Developing a personal safe-fail experiment• Explore your relationship with ‘safe uncertainty’.

How might you stretch your habitual ‘no’ and find your ‘yes’

• Reflecting on your feedback and your learning about systems leadership, design your personal safe-fail experiment between now and the final residential

• Share this in co-coaching trios

Review and evaluation

Leadership for Change Programme

Residential 2

Safe journey home!