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 team
Chris
LawrencePietroni
Residential
Facilitator &
Learning
coordinator for
Birmingham
Liz Goold
Residential
Alix Morgan
Mark Dalton
Facilitator
Programme Director
Programme Manager
Lesley
Campbell
Julia
Morrison
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Staffordshire
Leadership for
Change Coach
for NHS England
Paul
Tarplett
Sue Goss
Di Neale
Jo Cleary
Mari Davis
Leadership for
Change Coach
for North
Staffordshire
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Blackpool
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Public
Health Wales
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Devon
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Public
Health England
David Love
Leadership for
Change Coach
for Warrington
Matt Gott
Leadership 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?
What are we here for?
Aims for Residential 1
• 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
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 learningoffering balance of support and challenge and responding
to different learning styles
Learning Cycle
1.Experience
Experimenting with and
drawing on our
experience
ACTIVIST
4. Application
Applying new insights, ideas and
actions in our daily work
PRAGMATIST
Adapted from
David Kolb’s work
2.
Observation and
reflection
Reviewing and reflecting on our
experience
REFLECTOR
3. Deepening/Re-framing
Developing our understanding,
testing our assumptions,
exploring our thinking
THEORIST
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 leadership
A provocation
13:00 – 13:45
Buffet lunch
13:45 – 18:00
Our local context and our challenges
Market place
Working with living systems
Reflections
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 – 12:45
Ways 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 experiments
Home group session 2 – Designing the experiment
16:30 – 17:00
Review and reflections
17:00
Depart
CONTRACTING
Systems Leadership:
Exceptional leadership for
exceptional times
Six Dimensions of Systems Leaders
What is systems leaderhip?
Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional times
Skills for Systems Leadership
(Virtual Staff College)
Ways of feeling
Personal core values
Commitment
Ways of being
Courage to take risks
Resilience & Patience
Drive, energy, optimism
Humility
Ways of perceiving
Balcony & dancefloor
The unseen & unpredicted
Diverse views
Sensitivity to narratives
Improving
outcomes for
service users
Ways of doing
Narrative
Enabling & Supporting
Repurposing &
Reframing
Ways of thinking
Curiosity
Synthesising
complexity
Sense-making
Ways of relating
Mutuality & Empathy
Honesty & Authenticity
Reflection
Self Awareness
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
19
Initial framing of Systems
Leadership Challenge
In 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 systems
Making sense of what we see
John Atkinson
fusions@hotmail.co.uk
@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?
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.
James Phillips Kay - 1830
Maturana & Varela - evolutionary biology
Organisms, 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 Rogers
Systemic 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
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–
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Structure
Tiers of government
Partners
Governance
Organisational form
Policy
Systems
Policy
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–
–
–
Economy
Crime and security
Health
Health and safety
Systems
–
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–
–
Delivery mechanisms
Formal process
HR, recruitment
Use of technology
What’s going on?
Identity
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
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?
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
Action
Trust
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
46
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 LCagreeing roles, practicalities
48
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
51
Day 2 agenda
Timing
07:30 – 08:30
08:30 – 10:00
10:00 – 12:45
12:45-13:30
13:30 – 16:30
16:30-17:00
17:00
Activity
Breakfast
Check in
Forming Home Groups and Learning Styles
Ways of perceiving
Home group Session 1 – framing the challenge from
different perspectives
Lunch
System tools: Learning cycles and safe-fail
experiments
Home group session 2 – Designing the experiment
Break
Review and reflections
Depart
Home Group Sessions - overview
Aim
Micro Skill
1. 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
Learning Cycle
1.Experience
Experimenting with and
drawing on our
experience
ACTIVIST
4. Application
Applying new insights, ideas and
actions in our daily work
PRAGMATIST
Adapted from
David Kolb’s work
2.
Observation and
reflection
Reviewing and reflecting on our
experience
REFLECTOR
3. Deepening/Re-framing
Developing our understanding,
testing our assumptions,
exploring our thinking
THEORIST
Honey & Mumford
Learning styles
ACTIVISTS:
• 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 styles
THEORISTS:
• 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 openended discussions
• practical, down-toearth
• if it works, it’s good
Ways of perceiving
Home Group Sessions - overview
Aim
Micro Skill
1. 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)
Ways of feeling
Personal core values
Commitment
Ways of being
Courage to take risks
Resilience & Patience
Drive, energy, optimism
Humility
Ways of perceiving
Balcony & dancefloor
The unseen & unpredicted
Diverse views
Sensitivity to narratives
Improving
outcomes for
service users
Ways of doing
Narrative
Enabling & Supporting
Repurposing &
Reframing
Ways of thinking
Curiosity
Synthesising
complexity
Sense-making
Ways of relating
Mutuality & Empathy
Honesty & Authenticity
Reflection
Self Awareness
17 X 24=?
System 1 - Gut
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•
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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=pMqM4BDqvXY
9:34-11:40
Heuristics
A simple procedure
that helps to find
adequate, though
often imperfect,
answers to difficult
questions.
Kaheneman,
Thinking, Fast and
Slow, p.100
Heuristics & Biases
Confidence & Coherence
Anchoring
Availability
Confidence & Coherence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqM4BDqvXY
13:29-17:45
Was Gandhi
more than
114 years old
when he
died?
Sale - 10% off!
LIMIT OF 12 PER PERSON
OR
NO LIMIT PER PERSON
Availability Heuristic
You are more prone to
availability biases when…
You are engaged in another effortful task
You are in a good mood
You score low on a depression scale
You are a knowledgeable novice (not a true expert)
Score high on a scale of faith in intuition
You are (or are made to feel) powerful
So what?
The way we make up our minds is typically driven
by short cuts
We can, and do, readily convince ourselves that we
don’t
Everyone does it
Hmmm…….
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-UnderstandingIntervention
‘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-floors
In 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
Home: experimenting
Group Session
1 : Framing
Exercise
with perceptual
positions
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
Programme
Residential 1
Lunch
Systems tools:
Learning Cycles &
Safe-Fail Experiments
Home Group Sessions - overview
Aim
Micro Skill
1. 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
Chris Argyris:
double loop learning
DEVELOPING
INSIGHTS &
UNDERSTANDING
EXPERIENCE
APPLICATION
CONCEPTUALISATION
RE-FRAMING
REFLECTION
RECOGNISING A
NEW PARADIGM
Exercise : experimenting with perceptual positions
Home Group session 2: Using
the group to create a ‘safefail’ 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!