The operating environment for council chief executives is changing so fast that they cannot afford to stop reflecting and developing. The traditional skillsets of chief executives are no longer enough to affect the outcomes across a range of emerging cross-sector agendas.
That is the message of SOLACE leadership and learning spokesperson Becky Shaw and Collaborate chief executive Henry Kippin, two of the architects of the Ignite leadership ‘movement’.
The current discourse in the local government sector focuses on how systems should be different, what residents need and what senior management teams need to do differently. However, the backbone of Ignite is ‘the pure leadership bit of that’, according to Ms Shaw, who is also East Sussex CC’s chief executive.
Ms Shaw, who alongside West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) chief executive Deborah Cadman was the originator of the programme, says council bosses now have ‘multiple bottom lines’. ‘It’s not just about running an organisation well. We will be as much judged by the state of the health and care economy, as much by how we create somewhere that is economically thriving.
Mr Kippin, who recently became interim director of public service reform at the WMCA, has been involved with the programme since its infancy. Echoing Ms Shaw, he says the main agendas council chief executives have to contend with, such as health and social care and inclusive growth, are ‘no longer single organisation agendas’, meaning council bosses are constantly having to adapt their approach. ‘In the last five or six years there has been a shift towards recognising that more and more’.
Ignite was a response to the ‘relative lack of systematic thinking about the type of support local chief executives need as the context changes’, Mr Kippin says. ‘The rationale in a practical sense was to take some of that enthusiasm and do that in a way that felt exploratory. Nobody has answers to this.’
He says chief executives need to do some ‘reflection on the self’. He continues: ‘There is an element to this of people having time to themselves to think. That’s something that often gets squeezed out, isn’t it? There is not much reflective time or time to stick their heads above the parapet and think “where are we going with this”. This is space to do that.’
Similarly, Ms Shaw says chief executives ‘need to be holding the mirror up to ourselves and asking questions about what we all need to be doing in a hugely changing and uncertain world’. She continues: ‘What are the questions we need to be thinking about? This is a movement, a set of questions, not a training course people do.’
Ms Shaw says these leadership jobs are ‘intensely personal’ and ‘everybody will do them in their own way’. She continues: ‘It’s not about saying do this, this this and this and you will see results. It is about saying these are the questions you should be asking. That is at its heart.
‘At the core of ignite is that you cannot do these jobs without thinking about them and how you are doing them.
‘The world is changing and these jobs are moving so fast beneath our feet. The fundamental question for all leaders is how are you refreshing you skills and developing what you are doing and supporting others to do the same.’
Mr Kippin says it is important to remember the ‘emotional connection’ local leaders have to what they are doing. ‘There is something about good leadership that is collaborative leadership. Emotional leadership of teams and systems is totally fundamental to achieving goals. There is an element of having a dialogue with senior leaders in other sectors as human beings. We cannot achieve collaborative objectives without building those relationships first.’
‘Something about the world we are heading to and the world we are in that needs more and more of this.’
Mr Kippin believes there is room for the ethos behind Ignite, which has financial backing from both the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Local Government Association, to grow into something more over time. ‘I would expect this to evolve and, I hope, have a life of its own.
‘If this works as a space, how can we make it even more collaborative, perhaps with our NHS partners? If this is any good, if people value this space, do we need to make sure other ways of thinking and doing leadership are equally reflective?’
Mr Kippin urges all leaders to ‘give it a try’, adding: ‘None of this works so well if there is no commitment to putting your personal skin in the game.’
