Joining Forces: building systems leadership into job roles at all levels
Summary of key points
The theme of the discussion was ‘Systems leadership: How can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels, and help people to do this from a perceived position of no organisational power?’ The main points which emerged from the discussion were:
Systems leadership is capable of being exercised far more widely, and at many more levels, including at the frontline of services, than is often assumed.
But for this to happen, we need to build a different culture and set of expectations about what good leadership looks like.
And we need to create psychological safety, especially for those in front line roles. So that they feel they have a role to play, believe that their voice will be equally heard and thought about, and are confident that they can contribute their own ideas and perspectives.
We also need to pay attention to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion so that participation in systems leadership activities can be truly inclusive rather than simply the preserve of a relatively privileged minority.
The leadership models associated with New Public Management are a very real barrier to progress, and these are deeply embedded. So this is not an easy journey, and the changes are especially difficult for large national organisations, where claiming credit is fundamental to maintaining income and profile.
But, it was suggested, the conditions to make progress are perhaps more favourable now than they were before, because during the pandemic it became obvious that many things worked better when more responsibility was devolved to the front line, and that operating at a greater level of trust was more viable than many had expected.
Most progress will be made when there is a clear understanding that, first and foremost, everyone should be working for what the community needs rather than what the organisation needs.
In more detail
Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change, which some have called the Better Way ‘beachball’:
In this cell we are exploring the ‘joining forces’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.
Our focus this time was ‘How can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels’. As Cate Newnes Smith, thought-leader for this cell, pointed out, we need everyone to be playing a part in bringing about systems change. It is not enough to have a group of senior leaders in a room somewhere trying to change a system. The richness often comes from the front line.
We started with two presentations:
Nadine Smith described the challenges that face systems leaders. It takes a long time to unlearn the models and behaviours of New Public Management. Nadine spoke of her experience in Whitehall, where everyone wants to be the best, to have the answers, to be the hero.
One reason why New Public Management hasn’t died is because we lack an alternative that is clear. But the conversations on how to build a different kind of leadership are nevertheless developing in a healthy experimental way in many parts of government, and are promoted by public sector reform networks such as One Team Gov.
Systems leadership training tells leaders that their role is not to control, but rather to create the right conditions for good things to happen. But this is very daunting in the civil service, where performance management reviews insist on answers to questions such as ‘What did you do, what was your role?’ and pay rises and promotions are awarded accordingly.
Systems leaders know that they need to take account of complexity, and the Human Learning Systems model pioneered by Toby Lowe provides helpful guidance on what leaders can do when faced with complexity. The Centre for Public Impact has a forthcoming report which will catalogue a wide variety of approaches, from across the world, which embody the spirit of systems leadership and Human Learning Systems.
One big challenge is how to measure and evaluate in a system that is complex and messy. This, suggested Nadine, requires new methods to capture different types of information, including stories, emotions, and relationships. And it is necessary to ask whose voice is missing, to consider how untested assumptions obscure the truth.
It is also useful to adopt methods that can evaluate programmes in real time, and which can provide a running commentary on them. Measuring for control can create perverse incentives in the system, and it is better to use measurement for learning, not control.
Systems leaders can easily become burnt out. In part this is because they are worried about the whole system, and about accountability and responsibility. Systems leaders need a really good team around them. If they don’t sleep well at night it might be because there aren’t people around them they can trust.
The Human Learning Systems Approach uses VEST as a guide for systems leaders:
· Variety – respond to the variety of human need and experience
· Empathy – use empathy to understand the lives of others
· Strength – view people from a strengths-based perspective
· Trust – trust people with decision-making
It is also important to remain open to that which is unexpected. Nadine quoted the words of a senior civil servant Clare Moriarty, who said: ‘I came across happy accidents. Things that changed my view of the world without me planning for it. It led to enlightenment and deep learning.’
Polly Neate
Everything on the Better Way ‘beachball’ is really difficult for a national organisation like Shelter, said Polly. But we cannot ignore the importance of large national organisations, where so much resource and capacity is concentrated.
At Shelter, work is in progress to do things differently, with a new approach to local services, working within communities to provide a base for systems change.
Shelter has appointed three community development workers, with the aim of bringing people who have lived experience of homelessness to the centre of local decision making. This is not about placing Shelter at the centre. If no-one recognised Shelter’s role, that really doesn’t matter, says Polly.
For example, in Bournemouth, over the last six months, the community development worker has established links with a variety of local partners to achieve more input of people with lived experience into a consultation about the local authority homelessness strategy, and their recommendations were included in the strategy. She hosted a consultation on a women-only centre in Dorset, to establish a housing case for this centre. She set up a partnership with a Gypsy and Traveller forum, to consider how the new trespass Bill could lead to homelessness and loss of property, and Shelter was able to take up these issues in its national lobbying. While carrying out this work, it became clear that there are widespread problems with mould in Gypsy and Traveller caravans, and the Shelter DIY skills adviser, funded through a B&Q partnership, was able to offer support to address this. The community development worker also formed relationships with the Dorset Race Equality Council and other organisations working with minoritised communities, and one result of this has been that Shelter has provided free training on housing rights, benefits, and debt advice to these small grass roots organisations, so that they themselves can provide advice to their community members in future.
These are examples of activities which, as a large national charity, Shelter would not traditionally have undertaken. But the locally based community development workers have already been able to expand the charity’s reach, and bring national resources to bear to support local efforts, without having to be worried about branding everything as a Shelter project.
The biggest challenge for Shelter, as it localises more and more, is how to align the local and national operations. At national level, Shelter has effective and well-resourced media, campaigns and policy and research teams, but has had to scale back some national campaign activities in order to redirect resources to local activities, and this hasn’t been easy for everyone to understand.
The whole exercise has raised big questions about how to make the most impact, and what is counted as impact. Working at a national level, and trying to persuade the current government to do things differently, is resource intensive and difficult. Sometimes the impact that can happen locally is just as important, and indeed sometimes achieves a greater level of change.
But a shift from national campaigning to local influencing is very hard for a national charity like Shelter. Particularly when Shelter’s own role in bringing about change needs to be prominent in order to attract the funding and recognition which is necessary to remain a strong national charity, and without which it would not have the resources to support local community-based systems leadership of the type Polly has described.
Discussion
Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: how can we build systems leadership into job roles at all levels, not just at the apex of the organisation? In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:
A different culture of leadership
A shift from the Me to the We requires that that leaders have to be present at all levels of an organisation, not just at the top.
But this cannot happen without a different culture of leadership. Not expecting leaders to have all the answers, challenging them to think differently, allowing them to fail in the pursuit of change.
We all need to unlearn the engrained top-down assumptions about leadership. Education is a problem. From early childhood most people are kept in their box, they are not encouraged to develop their leadership qualities, or play their part in shared leadership, or as followers as well. Furthermore, schools don’t encourage systems thinking.
Those that are able to exercise a systems leadership role are in a relatively privileged position. There is a responsibility on them to model a shift in culture and behaviour in their own practices, to be credible and authentic.
Establishing inclusive psychological safety
Systems change requires the contribution of multiple top-down and bottom-up perspectives, with spaces that can accommodate conflict and collision, and a willingness to listen, and without this depth of inclusion, meaningful and lasting change will not happen.
People at every level therefore need to feel confident that they will be allowed to exercise systems leadership. For example to feel they have a role to play, to believe that their voice will be equally heard and thought about, and that they can contribute their own ideas and perspectives.
It is necessary to examine this through an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lens, addressing race, gender, and disability, because without this it will not be possible to establish psychological safety in a truly inclusive way, and some groups of people will once again be left on the margins.
Recognising the opportunities and the barriers
Leadership is situational, it was suggested. Everyone has the potential opportunity to be a leader in their own situation, and we need to consciously and persistently push for ever more agency and accountability in every role, from trustees, to staff, to co-production partners, to volunteers, to partners.
Barriers to this can be systemic (the annual appraisal cycle, the operational plan, the strategic plan, all of which tend to be top down) and cultural (the unspoken and unwritten rules and behaviours).
The role of Boards and the senior leadership
For those at the operational level who want to work differently it can be difficult to manage upwards and it is hard to bring about change without people at senior levels who are believers and proponents. So change needs to happen from the outset at the level of Chairs of Boards, CEOs, and Directors.
Social sector structures are governed by voluntary Board members who often come from a commercial and senior professional background, and the behaviours they exhibit can set a pattern for the whole organisation. For example if they see their role as inspecting and directing the CEO, this will make it much harder to build agency and systems leadership throughout the team, including at lower levels.
The role of funders
Funders can sometimes make it harder for organisations to build agency among the people they work with, by imposing controls that have a waterfall effect right down to the service front line and to beneficiaries.
We heard about one organisation which wanted to provide small grants to individuals struggling with poverty, and to give them full agency and control over how they used the money, but had to turn down funding for this, because the funder insisted that all the grants had to be fully approved and tracked, with a paper trail of receipts.
Funders can however also help, for example by giving funding priority to partnerships which are seeking to encourage systems change and which are promoting leadership among those in operational roles.
Bringing about change is difficult, especially in large organisations
The change we are trying to bring about is a big one, and the journey to get there will be uncertain and iterative.
It is difficult to move to a new system while needing to operate an old one. As one person said, it is hard to jump off the New Public Management carousel.
In a larger organisation it can be just too difficult to tackle everything all at once. It is usually better to start small and build out, it was suggested.
The conditions for change may – perhaps – be shifting in our favour
During the pandemic many people realised that it was possible to trust others, including those in undervalued front-line roles, much more than they had expected.
The model of New Public Management came about, it was suggested, because of an assumption that mistrust is necessary in public life. Once it is widely accepted that this assumption is flawed, the momentum to find better ways to operate is more likely to gather pace.
Establishing purpose
Progress will perhaps best be driven by a clear understanding that everyone should be working for what the community needs rather than what the organisation needs.