Leadership, Change & Strategy
George Levvy
In pairs
Thinking about leadership, strategy & change
• What’s front of mind from your work and/or
the past 36 hours?
• What questions do you have?
• What do you want to get out of the next two
days?
George Levvy
Aims
• Insight into leadership
• Connect that to current context
• Prompt reflection about your work and
yourself
• Enable actions based on learning from these
two days
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Manage your learning
• Ask
• Challenge
• Be aware of your needs –
pace, energy, space
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Why me?
• 10 years chief executive of a national
charity
• 8 years’ consulting, working with
leaders & top teams on leadership and
change
= practitioner perspective
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Strategy
George Levvy
What is the purpose of Culture & Sport services?
What are they there to achieve?
George Levvy
Groups of 3 or 4
• Is there a meaningful vision that guides those
services? If so what is it?
• Are there fundamental values that guide the
delivery of those services? If so, what are
they?
George Levvy
Groups of 3 or 4
Thinking about culture & sport services in
general
• Do a PEST & SWOT analysis
• Identify the three key issues in each category
George Levvy
Strategic issues
‘Fundamental policy questions or critical
challenges affecting an organisation’s [ability
to achieve its aims]’
John M Bryson 2004
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In same groups
Given the purpose, vision and values agreed
earlier and what you’ve identified in the PEST &
SWOT analyses, what are the strategic issues for
culture & sport services
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• Who are the target customers of culture &
sport services?
• What is the value proposition in relation to
those customers?
George Levvy
• Given the strategic issues, customers and
value proposition you have identified how
would you sum up the challenge facing culture
& sport services?
George Levvy
Strategy
• A diagnosis
• A guiding policy / approach
• A set of coherent actions
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Change: making it happen
George Levvy
Groups of 3 or 4
You are the leader of the reorganisation of your
service.
The criteria for the change are a 25% reduction
in costs while serving as many people as now.
What are the three most important things you
need to do in bringing about this change?
George Levvy
Kotter’s 8 stage
process
Establish a sense of
urgency
Create a guiding
coalition
Develop a vision
and strategy
Communicate the
change vision
Empower broad
based action
Generate short
term wins
Consolidate gains and
produce more change
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Kotter 1996
Anchor new approaches
in the culture
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People and change
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When you have been part of a change project
(not as the management / leadership),
• What was it like?
• How did it make you feel?
• What did you think of the management?
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When you have led or managed a significant
change
• What was it like?
• What did you think of how people responded?
• How successful was it?
George Levvy
The transition process
(adapted from William Bridges 2003)
ending
end
present
beginning
The Change Curve
Morale
Performance
Integration - results start
to be seen, behaviours
start to be the norm
denial
frustration
not fair,
why me
searching for
meaning - why was
it needed? Where do I
fit in?
testing
still in ‘old think’
shock
letting go
Time
The J Curve
What stakeholders
(mistakenly) expect
Desired state
Performance
Current
state
What actually
happens in most
cases
Time
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NEW ORDER
Capability
Chaos
REGRESSION
Change
initiative
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Rob Zuijderhoudt
In times of major change, what did you need to
know?
George Levvy
What people need to know
Purpose………………WHY?
Picture……………..…WHAT?
Plan…………………....HOW?
Part to play………….HOW?
To achieve change you need
vision
skills
incentive
resource
action plan
change
skills
incentive
resource
action plan
confusion
vision
X
incentive
resource
action plan
anxiety
vision
skills
resource
action plan
slow change
vision
skills
incentive
X
action plan
frustration
vision
skills
incentive
resource
X
Colin Livingstone,
Steria Consulting
X
X
false starts
George Levvy
Think about the best organisation you’ve
worked in and the worst. How did they differ?
What were the key differences between them?
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The leader’s job
Creating the conditions for success
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Ulrich, Zenger & Smallwood
(Results-Based Leadership, 1999)
Set direction
Demonstrate
personal
character
Mobilise
individual
commitment
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Engender
organisational
capability
Setting (providing?) direction
• Understand external events
• Focus on the future
• Turn vision into action
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Mobilising individual commitment
• Build collaborative relationships
• Share power and authority
• Manage attention
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Engendering capability
•
•
•
•
•
Build organisational infrastructure
Leverage diversity
Deploy teams
Design human resource systems
Make change happen
George Levvy
Demonstrating personal character
• Live values by practising what is preached
• Have and create a positive self-image
• Possess cognitive ability and personal charm
George Levvy
In current circumstances and looking to the next
few years, which of these are the most
challenging?
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What could stop you providing that kind of
leadership to those you lead?
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What do / will you need in order to provide that
kind of leadership?
George Levvy
‘Homework’: on your own or in pairs
What is your purpose and what are your core
values?
How do you pursue those in your work?
George Levvy
Kotter
Leadership
Management
• Setting direction
• Planning & budgeting
• Aligning people
• Organising and staffing
• Motivating and inspiring
• Controlling and problem
solving
George Levvy
Leadership vs management
• What vs how
• Doing right thing vs doing things right
• Coping with change vs coping with
complexity (Kotter)
• Etc, etc
George Levvy
Leadership is not about
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
George Levvy
Budgeting
Operational planning
Strategic planning
Running projects
Functional tasks
Controlling
Being ‘productive’
DOING STUFF
Etc, etc
Friday
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Effectiveness
George Levvy
• Who is the most effective executive /
person you have ever known?
• What did they do that made them
effective?
George Levvy
Drucker on effectiveness
Effective executives
• Ask ‘What needs to be done?’ and ‘What is right
for the enterprise?’
• Undertake no more than two top priority tasks
• Delegate any other high priority tasks
George Levvy
In pairs
In your work, what’s the one most important
thing for you right now?
George Levvy
Strategy
Phase 2
George Levvy
Strategy
• A diagnosis
• A guiding policy / approach
• A set of coherent actions
George Levvy
Developing an approach
Think about the diagnosis (the challenge) we
reached yesterday regarding Culture & Sport
service
OR
The strategic challenge facing your service
How might you tackle it (one or more specific
approaches)?
George Levvy
Approaches
• A role (task/purpose/aim)
• A destination
(A ‘proximate objective’ – Rumelt)
George Levvy
Critical success factors (CSFs)
‘….the essential areas of activity that must be
performed well if you are to achieve the
mission, objectives or goals for your business
or project.’
www.mindtools.com
George Levvy
CSFs (2)
• Qualitative
• ‘areas of activity that should receive constant and
careful attention from management.’
• ‘…help everyone in the team to know exactly
what's most important ‘
John F Rockart
• 3-5
George Levvy
OUTCOME
CSF
George Levvy
CSF
CSF
CSF
CSF
Managing implementation:
Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan & Norton)
•
•
•
•
Linking strategy to actions
Monitoring progress
Starts from CSFs
Four perspectives
– Financial
– Customer
– Internal business process
– Innovation & learning
George Levvy
Managing implementation (2)
Plan
Implement
Review
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Managing implementation (3)
Outcome focus
eg Turning the Curve
http://www.sunderlandchildrenstrust.org.uk/content/sunderland-turningthe-curve-v1.1.pdf
George Levvy
Plans are nothing; planning is everything
Dwight D Eisenhower
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Teams / collaboration
George Levvy
Groups of 3 or 4
Think of the best & worst teams you have been
part of
• What were the three key things that made the
good team so good?
• What were the three key things that made the
bad team so bad?
George Levvy
• Team members openly admit weaknesses & mistakes
• The most important - & difficult – issues are put on the
table to be resolved during team meetings
• Team members leave meetings confident that their
peers are completely committed to the decisions that
were made, even if there was initial disagreement
• Team members challenge one another about their
plans & approaches and about their actions &
behaviours
• Team members willingly make sacrifices in their
departments or areas of expertise for the good of the
team / organisation
George Levvy
Inattention to
•
•
The Five Dysfunctions of a
Team
Patrick Lencioni 2002
RESULTS
Absence of
ACCOUNTABILITY
Lack of
COMMITMENT
Avoidance of
CONFLICT
Absence of
TRUST
Trust
• Confidence that other team members’
intentions are good
• Hence no reason to be self-protective, so
able to be vulnerable with one another –
won’t be used against them
• Hence able to focus completely on job in
hand
George Levvy
Building Trust
• Allow & invest time
• Techniques
• Personal & professional histories
• Team effectiveness exercises
• Personality profiling, eg MBTI -> understanding &
empathy
• Manage emotions
• Take the first risk
George Levvy
Results
Team members committed to collective aims &
objectives of the team before their individual and
functional ones
George Levvy
George Levvy
In groups of 3 or 4
You are a leader of a new collaboration involving
other parts of your local authority and also
other organisations
What are the major challenges of leading a
collaboration of this sort?
George Levvy
How will you carry out your job as leader of the
collaboration? What will you concentrate on?
George Levvy
Collaborative leadership
(Arnoud de Meyer)
• Collaboration: ‘co-act[ing] with others in order
to succeed in implementing change’
• Listening
– Weak signals
– Internal & external
• Influencing
• Adapting
George Levvy
Collaborative leadership: ‘insights’
• Mindset
• Reducing transaction costs – trust & informal
relationships
• Seeing beyond borders of the organisation
• Building consensus – ensure and exploit
diversity
• Networking – weak ties
• Managing dualities
George Levvy
George Levvy
Reviewing and planning
George Levvy
In pairs
What have been the most important things you
have learned or concluded over the past 3½
days?
What actions are you going to take as a
consequence?
How will you ensure you actually do them?
George Levvy
George Levvy
07768 601 833
george@levvy.co.uk
George Levvy
Effective partnerships
(Learning Skills & Improvement Service)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
involve agencies working together for mutual benefit
have an aim that is agreed and understood by all the partners
put the learner at the centre of partnership working
focus on a high-quality learning experience leading to sustainable
progression
have clear, effective leadership
identify the role of each partner, which is understood by others in the
partnership
share ownership of the partnership and partners feel they benefit from
the collaboration
have dedicated time and resources for administration and operation
recognise different organisational cultures within the partnership
have a supportive atmosphere, where suggestions, ideas and tensions are
addressed.
George Levvy
Situation analysis - some key tools
• Stakeholder analysis (NB input into
outcomes)
• PEST(LIED)
• SWOT
• Force field analysis
• Risk analysis
• Scenario analysis
• Cost benefit analysis
www.mindtools.com
George Levvy
PESTLIED analysis
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
George Levvy
Political
Economic
Social
Technological
Legal
International
Environmental
Demographic
SWOT analysis
•
•
•
•
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Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Risk analysis
• Likelihood (H/M/L)
• Impact (H/M/L)
• Management
George Levvy
Risk analysis (2)
• Human
• Operational
• Reputational
• Procedural
• Project
George Levvy
• Financial
• Technical
• Natural
• Political
• Other
Context: Stakeholder Analysis
High
P
o
w
e
r
Low
Keep satisfied
Encourage and influence
Monitor
Keep informed
Interest
High