leadership for change programme residential 1 wednesday 25 th june – thursday 26 th june welcome!
TRANSCRIPT
Leadership for Change Programme
Residential 1 Wednesday 25th June – Thursday 26th June
Welcome!
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
Meet the teamChris Lawrence-PietroniResidential Facilitator & Learning coordinator for Birmingham
Liz GooldResidential Facilitator
Alix MorganProgramme Director
Mark DaltonProgramme Manager
Paul TarplettLeadership for Change Coach for Public Health England
Sue GossLeadership for Change Coach for North Staffordshire
Di NealeLeadership for Change Coach for Blackpool
Jo ClearyLeadership for Change Coach for Public Health Wales
Mari DavisLeadership for Change Coach for Devon
Lesley CampbellLeadership for Change Coach for Staffordshire
Julia MorrisonLeadership for Change Coach for NHS England
David LoveLeadership for Change Coach for Warrington
Matt GottLeadership for Change Coach for Somerset
Forming our learning community
• Who am I?• Who are we?• What are we here for?• How are we going to do it?
• build this learning community• start to explore the ‘six ways’ of systems leadership
practice• frame your systems leadership challenge and identify
common themes and connections• build place teams with LCs and Home Groups with each
other• be stimulated by wider thinking in public services and
key concepts from living systems• frame your first ‘safe-fail’ experiment and how you
intend to act and learn from it between Residentials
What are we here for?Aims for Residential 1
How are we going to do it?• Drawing on the extended leadership capacity and
experience in the room• Experiential exercises and group work• Formal inputs & speakers• Informal evening discussions• Reflection-in-action – ‘Moleskine Moments’• Home Groups• Create the conditions for transformational learning-
offering balance of support and challenge and responding to different learning styles
Learning Cycle1.Experience
Experimenting with and drawing on our
experienceACTIVIST
2. Observation and reflection
Reviewing and reflecting on our experience
REFLECTOR
4. ApplicationApplying new insights, ideas and
actions in our daily work PRAGMATIST
3. Deepening/Re-framingDeveloping our understanding,
testing our assumptions, exploring our thinking
THEORIST
Adapted from David Kolb’s work
How are we going to do it?Today’s agenda
Timing Activity
09:30 – 10:00 Arrival and registration
10:00 – 10:45 Welcome, introductions and programme framing
10:45 – 13:00 Introducing the ‘six ways’ of systems leadershipA provocation
13:00 – 13:45 Buffet lunch
13:45 – 18:00
Our local context and our challengesMarket placeWorking with living systemsReflections
18:00 – 19:00 Free time
19:00 – 20:00 External speaker
20:00 – 21:30 Dinner in the restaurant
Tomorrow’s agenda
Timing Activity
07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast
08:30 – 09:00 Check in- home groups/learning styles
09:00 – 12:45Ways of perceiving Home group Session 1 – framing the challenge from different perspectives
12:45 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 16:30 System tools: Learning cycles and safe-fail experimentsHome group session 2 – Designing the experiment
16:30 – 17:00 Review and reflections
17:00 Depart
CONTRACTING
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Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional timesSix Dimensions of Systems Leaders
Skills for Systems Leadership
What is systems leaderhip?
Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional times (Virtual Staff College)
Improving outcomes for service users
Ways of feelingPersonal core values
Commitment
Ways of perceivingBalcony & dancefloorThe 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
For discussion
• What strikes you most about this model?
• Is it helpful in deepening your understanding about systems leadership?
• Are there aspects you would want to challenge or add to?
• How might we model systems leadership as we work together on this programme?
Reflection Question
What do the ‘six ways’ suggest about your learning focus for this programme?
Judy Downey
The Relatives & Residents Association
Lunch in place teams with Leadership for Change Coaches
Our local context and challenge: initial framing
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Initial framing of Systems Leadership ChallengeIn place teams and with the support of your LC, start to map out and frame your systems leadership challenge between you
Be prepared to share with other place teams your initial framing of your leadership challenge and the system it is part of, as part of a ‘market-place’. Help others appreciate the complexity of the system you are working with
Do this in a visual form, for example using, (rich) pictures, metaphors, mind-maps- be creative!
Put out your stall!
Working with living systems
John Atkinson
Working with living systemsMaking sense of what we see
John Atkinson
@tryweryn91 on twitter
www.jma64.wordpress.com
The matter does not appear to appear to me now as it appears to have appeared to me then…
Robert H Jackson – US Supreme Court Judge 1941
How do systems work?
James Phillips Kay - 1830
The social body cannot be constructed like a machine on abstract principles which merely include physical motions, and their numerical results, in the production of wealth.
Maturana & Varela - evolutionary biologyOrganisms, from single cells to eco-systems have a variety of characteristics in common
They have evolved to be in a perfect relationship with their environment
It is a symbiotic relationship, the organism/organisation defines the environment and the environment defines the organism
If there is an external source of perturbation the organism acts to kill it, be it internal or external.
If the organism is held perturbed for sufficient time it adapts to this new condition.
Organisms are self-referencing, they act to preserve their own identity (autopoeisis)
By cultural behaviour we mean the transgenerational stability of behavioural patterns ontogenically acquired in the communicative dynamics of a social environment.
U-curves – Scharma, Kahane, Kubler-Ross
Myron RogersSystemic Approaches to Problems
How do systems work?
How does this system work?
How do I work with this system?
Working with social systems – The Big 5
Chaos and complexity
Emergence
Cognition
Networks
Self-organisation
Chaos and Complexity
A social system like an English place does not map neatly onto an organisation chart
And yet such places are ‘stable’ – ‘stuff keeps getting done’ - so complexity results in order not disorder, despite the mess
Cause and effect may be distant in time and space
This results in many unintended consequences (although not always unpredictable or negative consequences)
And attempting to manage these consequences adds to the complexity with new bodies, meetings, actions and costs. (And more unintended consequences…)
Emergence
Strategies, action points and timescales are more statements of intent than what actually happens
Public services have some guiding ‘rules of thumb’. They can be both helpful and unhelpful. They are not usually applied consciously and determine ‘what goes on around here’..
So simple rules give rise to global behaviour
What might be our ‘simple rules’?
Cognition
The system looks different depending on where you are in it. To understand it requires multiple perspectives
To better understand ‘what’s going on here’ requires multiple and diverse perspectives.
What you see is what you know, in other words, you do not understand what you see, you see what you understand.
Frame of reference is everything, what you see determines what you do.
Keep asking ‘how do we know?’ – what people say they do, and what they do do, are often very different.
Cognition is inseparable from emotion.
Networks
It is the informal structures that make public services work every bit as much as the formal ones
Stories provide the lived experience, this is how we make sense of what happens
Information feeds what people do – so sharing our perceptions of how things work helps us make sense of what we see
Understanding comes from collective behaviour not individual
Self-organization
Social systems seek to maintain themselves
– A living system preserves its identity
– It will change in order to preserve it
They are continually self-referencing ie use past experience ‘the way things are done round here’ to determine how to react
They do that within the limits of what they decide is ‘our business’
Identity is manifested in traditions, symbols, rituals, language, stories and practices
This is about the ‘Culture of Public Service’
The surface Structure
– Tiers of government– Partners– Governance– Organisational form
Policy
– Economy– Crime and security– Health– Health and safety
Systems
– Delivery mechanisms– Formal process– HR, recruitment– Use of technology
Structure
PolicySystems
What’s going on?Identity
– Who are we, what do we collectively stand for?– Different places/roles/professions/organisations
have different identities– Where and how do these come together for
mutual benefit?– Can we frame the space in which this takes
place?Relationships
– Where and in what way do people interact with each other and us?
– What is the balance of formal and informal?– What is the quality of these relationships?
Information
– What is being shared and what is not disclosed?
– Who has access to what?– How do we release the cognitive capacity of a
living system?
Identity
Relationships
Information
Where does this lead us?
Meaning
– Work and lives have a clear purpose and a sense of direction
Trust
– There is an implicit understanding of how all parties are trying to make things better that underpins their interaction
Action
– The things we do are the things that need to be done. Our actions are those that really work
Meaning
Trust Action
How do you work with this? – Myron’s maxims
Real change happens in real work
Those who do the work do the change
People own what they create
Start anywhere, follow it everywhere
Connect the system to more of itself
Market-place
Market-place• One person stays with your ‘stall’. The others travel.
Make sure you have enough time to swap. If you have a Leadership for Change Coach, they will also stay with your stall
• Travel to other ‘stalls’ and find out more about others’ systems leadership challenge
• Be curious, inquire, notice what resonates with your own situation, what is different, what you like to find out more about. Be prepared to share what you have discovered back in your place teams
Sense-making
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Sense-making• What struck you most from the other systems
leadership challenges? What connections, patterns, similarities and differences did you notice? Any implications for your own SLC?
• What does this tell us about this learning community/system and the wider system we are part of?
• Who might you want to learn more from, find out more about?
Final reflection with LC- agreeing roles, practicalities
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Final reflection
• How does what I’ve heard, impact on my view of our SLC and my own systems leadership practice?
• What kind of support and challenge will we need from our LC, for our own learning about systems leadership practice and in taking our systems leadership challenge forward?
• How will learning be captured?• Thoughts about Home Groups?• Sorting out practicalities, dates, etc
Leadership for Change Programme
Residential 1
Day 2
Welcome Back!
Check-in
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Day 2 agendaTiming Activity
07:30 – 08:30 Breakfast
08:30 – 10:00 Check inForming Home Groups and Learning Styles
10:00 – 12:45Ways of perceiving Home group Session 1 – framing the challenge from different perspectives
12:45-13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 16:30System tools: Learning cycles and safe-fail experimentsHome group session 2 – Designing the experiment
16:30-17:00 BreakReview and reflections
17:00 Depart
Home Group Sessions - overviewAim Micro Skill1. Framing the challenge Seeking diverse perspectives
2. Designing a ‘safe-fail’ Suspending certainty
3. Reflection on experiments(s) Deep listening
4. Deepening understanding of the system
Awareness of systems
5. Designing a personal ‘safe-fail’ Awareness of self
6. Critically reflecting on the challenge
Adaptive action
Forming Home Groups• Purpose of Home Group is to enable and maximise
learning on the programme• Stay in place teams• Not more than 3 Place Teams and 9 people per
Home Group• Similarity or difference of geography, systems
leadership challenges – up to you to decide• Will stay together throughout the programme• Will take part in different exercises that will support
your systems leadership challenge and practice
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Learning Cycle1.Experience
Experimenting with and drawing on our
experienceACTIVIST
2. Observation and reflection
Reviewing and reflecting on our experience
REFLECTOR
4. ApplicationApplying new insights, ideas and
actions in our daily work PRAGMATIST
3. Deepening/Re-framingDeveloping our understanding,
testing our assumptions, exploring our thinking
THEORIST
Adapted from David Kolb’s work
Learning stylesACTIVISTS:• enthusiastic about
the new• here & now• brainstorm• act first, think later• bored with
implementation
REFLECTORS:• range of perspectives• think, then think
again• cautious• action based on ‘big
picture’• listen, then
contribute
Honey & Mumford
Learning stylesTHEORISTS:• logically sound
theories• step-by-step
approach• perfectionists• analytical• rational more than
subjective
PRAGMATISTS:• problems are a
challenge• like to experiment• like to get on with
things• impatient with open-
ended discussions• practical, down-to-
earth• if it works, it’s good
Honey & Mumford
Ways of perceiving
Home Group Sessions - overview
Aim Micro Skill1. Framing the challenge Seeking diverse perspectives
2. Designing a ‘safe-fail’ Suspending certainty
3. Reflection on experiments(s) Deep listening
4. Deepening understanding of the system
Awareness of systems
5. Designing a personal ‘safe-fail’ Awareness of self
6. Critically reflecting on the challenge
Adaptive action
How do we make up our minds?
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2012)
Improving outcomes for service users
Ways of feelingPersonal core values
Commitment
Ways of perceivingBalcony & dancefloorThe 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
17 X 24=?
System 1 - Gut• Automatic• Unconscious• Lightning• Intuitive• Emotional• Resemblance
System 2 - Head
• Reason• Conscious• Slow• Effortful• Calculating• Explaining
Monkey Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
• Bat and ball cost together £1.10 • The bat costs one pound more than the
ball.• How much does the ball cost?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqM4BDqvXY9:34-11:40
Heuristics
A simple procedure that helps to find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions.
Kaheneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.100
Heuristics & BiasesConfidence & CoherenceAnchoringAvailability
Confidence & Coherence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqM4BDqvXY13:29-17:45
Was Gandhi more than 114 years old when he died?
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Availability Heuristic
You are more prone to availability biases when…You are engaged in another effortful taskYou are in a good moodYou score low on a depression scaleYou are a knowledgeable novice (not a true expert)Score high on a scale of faith in intuitionYou are (or are made to feel) powerful
So what?The way we make up our minds is typically driven
by short cutsWe can, and do, readily convince ourselves that we
don’tEveryone does itHmmm…….
Speaking of….• Confidence & Coherence
“She can’t accept that she was just unlucky; she needs a causal story. She will end up thinking that someone intentionally sabotaged her work.”
• Anchoring“Plans are best-case scenarios. Let’s avoid anchoring on plans when we forecast actual outcomes. Thinking about the ways the plan could go wrong is one way to do it.”
• Availability“The CX has had several successes in a row, so failure doesn’t come easily to her mind. The availability bias is making her overconfident.”
Perception-Understanding-Intervention‘It’s not so much the solving of the problem but the framing of it’
Rob Farrands, 2014
Multiple ways of seeing‘We all construct the world through lenses of our own making and use these to filter and select…we need a constantly expanding array of data, views and interpretations if we are to make a wise sense of the world. We need to include more and more eyes. We need to be constantly asking, ‘who else should be here? Who else should be looking at this’
Wheatley, 1999
Multiple dance-floorsIn systems leadership, we know that there may be multiple dance floors and the unpredictability of complex systems may keep some of these out of view, no matter how high the balcony. Thus, for systems leaders, whilst on the balcony, they must also constantly visualise the aspects of the context that are out of view….including what is heard and how it is heard’
VSC Systems leadership synthesis paper, 2013
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Exercise : experimenting with perceptual positionsHome Group Session 1 : Framing the challenge using perceptual positions• ‘Clients’ gives a brief outline of their challenge and identify one or
more key stakeholders in the situation. They then allocate a ‘perceptual role’ to each of their ‘consultants’ .
• Clients then describe their current thinking about their challenge in more depth
• Consultants listen in silence and then ask one good question each from their perceptual role.. Clients respond to the questions
• Each consultant gives feedback on how they think ‘their’ role might see differently .
• Clients reflect on the feedback and says how their thinking might have changed and what they have learnt. What might this mean for the framing of their systems leadership challenge?
Leadership for Change ProgrammeResidential 1
Lunch
Systems tools: Learning Cycles & Safe-Fail Experiments
Home Group Sessions - overview
Aim Micro Skill1. Framing the challenge Seeking diverse perspectives
2. Designing a ‘safe-fail’ Suspending certainty
3. Reflection on experiments(s) Deep listening
4. Deepening understanding of the system
Awareness of systems
5. Designing a personal ‘safe-fail’ Awareness of self
6. Critically reflecting on the challenge
Adaptive action
Cynefin model
David J. Snowden & Mary E. Bone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,’ Harvard Business Review, November 2007
Simple• Clear cause and effect• Stable• Sense, Categorize, Respond• Best Practice
• Complacency
Complicated• Hidden cause and effect• Multiple right answers• Sense, Analyse, Respond• Good practice
• Analysis paralysis• Ignoring innovative suggestions by non-experts
Complex• Cause and effect coherent in retrospect• Unpredictability & flux• Probe, Sense, Respond• Emergent
• Temptation to fall back into command and control• Difficulty in tolerating failure
Chaotic• No perceivable cause and effect• Rules have broken down• Act, Sense, Respond• Novel
• Authoritarianism
Simple/Chaotic Boundary• More like a cliff edge• Success breeds complacency
• Catastrophic failure
Disorder
• Unclear which context is predominant• This is where you spend most of your time
Domains
David J. Snowden & Mary E. Bone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,’ Harvard Business Review, November 2007
Designing a safe-fail experiment• Experiment freely and expect failure. • Consider as many ideas as possible • Start with experiments where failure can be
tolerated. Be comfortable with ‘safe uncertainty’ –• Design experiments that can be monitored. • Run multiple experiments in parallel.• Share the results of your experiments with others• Learn from the results of their experiments,
including about your own practice
RE-FRAMING
EXPERIENCE
DEVELOPINGINSIGHTS &UNDERSTANDING
RECOGNISING ANEW PARADIGM
CONCEPTUALISATION
APPLICATION
Chris Argyris:double loop learning
REFLECTION
Exercise : experimenting with perceptual positionsHome Group session 2: Using the group to create a ‘safe-fail’ experiment• ‘Clients’ outline their current objectives for their shared safe fail
experiment –and their learning edge• Consultants listen in silence and then take time to reflect before
offering one good idea each for a possible safe fail experiment :• Clients reflect on the ideas offered and co-construct a do-able safe-fail
that they can commit to completing before the next residential • Clients consider what they want to learn about their own leadership
practice through the process• Clients complete the safe-fail grid as a reminder of the conversation
and guide to action
Leadership for Change Programme
Residential 1
Review and Evaluation
Thank you, safe journey!