Leading Systems Change Residential 2: Leading in Complex Systems 29 th – 30 th October 2018

1. Leading Systems Change Residential 2: Leading in Complex Systems 29th – 30th October 2018 Stirling Court Hotel Stirling Welcome

2. Session 1- Welcome and introductions Lesley Hamilton, SCEL Anton Florek, Strategic Adviser, The Staff College

3. Last time…….. Anton Florek

5. Towards A Learning System • What makes A Learning System? • How will we know we are there?

6. Towards a Nurturing City A nurturing city has schools in which: • all children and young people, and their families, feel that they belong and that their lives and experiences are valued and respected. • all children and young people, and their families, feel that staff listen to their views and that, if disagreements arise, staff respond sensitively and thoughtfully and work to resolve them

7. Towards A Learning System More than anything else – • Place children at the heart of everything we do • Keep a relentless focus on learning and teaching • Be intolerant of anything that results in a weak outcome for children and young people

8. The Research Study: In Autumn 2012, The Virtual Staff College, commissioned a partnership of researchers specialising in the science and practice of social care implementation and health management - to carry out research on this emerging leadership response… Systems leadership, according to this formulation, concerns leadership that extends beyond the confines of single agencies or organisations, stretching the remit and skills of leaders into places where their usual authority, derived from organisational position, may not be recognised.

9. Systems leadership was described as all about the skillful harnessing and holdingin of the creative tension and energy in the wider system, rather than driving through change by sheer force of will and exercise of power. Systems leadership was described as being as frequently about ‘willingness to give things away’ as it was concerned with achievement of one’s own goals or promoting of one’s own agency agenda. In this respect, systems leaders were often not engaging in ‘win/win’ transactions (in the sense of ‘you win, I win’) but in a situation where an individual, whether an organisation or a person, might have to cede ground in order that the wider collective might benefit: “to gain more, you have to give away” (and thus, in a sense, ‘we win, even if I lose’).

10. Summary: Qualities, motivations and personal style are more important than specific competencies and skills. Relationships are central to leading through influence and allowing challenge and difficult conversations. Challenge, conflict and ‘disturbing the system’ are integral. Ghate, Lewis and Welbourn (2013)

11. Your capacity to innovate will depend on who is part of your alliance. Creating new products relies on creative teams. Changing entire systems, however, requires alliances of partners who will be co–innovators working alongside you and distributors who will take the product to market. Successful systems innovators create constellations of other actors aligned around them. Charles Leadbeater (2013)

12. From a Whole Systems Leadership perspective, change doesn’t take place one person at a time. Instead, as Margaret Wheatley notes, it happens “as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible”. Drawing from the lessons of complexity science, Whole Systems Leadership recognises that when many interconnected individuals and groups take many small actions, a shift happens in the larger patterns of communities, organisations, and societies. University of Minnesota and Life Science Foundation (2010)

14. We need a system which values and develops professional expertise more, and takes greater account of the experience of children and young people themselves. We need to move from a culture preoccupied with compliance to one focused on learning, where professionals have the freedom to use their expertise to assess and provide the help each individual child needs. That is not an easy journey to make. This research makes a significant contribution to the debate about how that might be achieved. (Foreword by Eileen Munro) • changed

15. organisations are traditionally inward looking, sustaining their practices and safeguarding their practitioners • organisational boundaries are risky places for practitioners who are learning from other professions – e.g. can they act on their own organisations and shape them?

16. The Focus: Learning Challenges • what common knowledge exists between providers of children’s services in your area? • where does this need to be developed further? Designing learning systems Building capacity • do the systems in your context provide the time and space to share intelligence… a) across organisations? b) between practitioners and policymakers?

17. HIGH SUPPORT HIGH CHALLENGE LOW CHALLENGE LOW SUPPORT

18. Confidence Challenge Confidence Support RESILIENCE TRUST Confidence Challenge Confidence Support Building Trust and Resilience

19. Collaborative Learning Set

20. Volatility Turbulence and countless, often conflicting, dynamics at work Uncertainty The past is no longer an accurate predictor of the future = less scope for confidence and certainty Complexity Inter-connected events and apparent randomness of results – cause and effect become indiscernible Ambiguity The combined impact of volatility, uncertainty and complexity – even experts struggle to make sense Paparone et al. ‘From the Swamp to the High Ground and Back’ (2011)

21. Critical discussion (new leaders) Making a difference People need us Social investment Challenge is good, positive If it was easy we wouldn’t do it Why do you do…. Prepare for the tough times Common Moral Purpose Somebody has to do it Opportunity for growth Problem solvers

22. To improve and develop the lives of young people Quite Simple… John Rutter Veronica Mackay Julie MacDonald Nigel Engstrand

23. Everything we do: Donald, Ross, Judi, Alison, Nancy, David Will make a positive difference to children and their families Is underpinned by our belief that everyone has the capacity to change and improve

24. Question: So, what is our common moral purpose?

25. Carole, Chave, Stewart, Tom Positive contributors to the public narrative Common Moral Purpose Develop young people and families as agents of their own narrative As a group of public servants we are driven by our own powerful narratives (literacy, public service, helping people, making things better) Our drivers motivate us to: “Death to Fake News!”

26. Children Values Service Communities Personal Agency Societal/ Citizenship Roots Positive difference Common Moral Purpose Hope

27. Common Moral Purpose Our common moral purpose is to serve every child/ young person to ensure and enable that they benefit from a happy, challenging, fulfilled learning experience so that they are ready to take their place in society David, John, Richard, Helen, Peter

28. To equip our young people to effectively contribute to society Common Moral Purpose Wendy, Sarah, Lorna, Shona, Vicky, Jeremy

29. Vison Understanding Clarity Agility

30. Tame, critical and wicked issues Grint (2005) defines leadership by the type of problem an organisation faces. He categorises problems as tame, critical or wicked: Tame problems are where the causes of the problem are known and can be tackled by applying known processes through conventional plans and projects. Tame problems require management. Critical problems threaten the operations of the organisation in the short term. Decisive action is called for and people are required to follow the call for action in a highly disciplined way. With this type of problem a leader takes charge. Critical problems require commanders (often this is confused with leadership). Wicked problems involve complex challenges that can rarely be solved and which tend to have multiple stakeholders who have different perceptions of both the problem and the solution. Wicked problems require leadership which is best displayed as asking intelligent questions.

31. Wicked “Closing the gap” – poverty related Teacher recruitment – education workforce? Mental health and wellbeing Building community engagement Core purpose of schools

32. Tame Wicked Day to day management of staff Recruitment Course Choice ASN budget cuts Mental health needs of young people The capacity of the building Community involvement Time Tabling Dealing with complaints Can grow!

33. Wicked Tame • Handling Complaints (parents) • Managing service budgets • Staffing problems (HR) • Create budget savings • Social Media • Cuts/ charging for services (transition from-to) • Impact of poverty – supporting most vulnerable • Scottish National Standardised Assessments • Challenge of pupils’ mental health • Timetabling • Public expectation of use of resources/ services • Dealing with professional association • State’s responsibility

34. Wicked Tame Teacher recruitment/ retention Workforce planning? Priority to produce workforce The core purpose of schools

35. W I C K E D Complaints - some Closing the poverty related gap Austerity issues T A M E Children’s mental health Recruitment Poverty/ inequalities GIRFEC agenda Building community capacity Procurement Political landscape Complaints - complex 1140 Hours (early learning and childcare entitlement) Child protection/ ACE’s Staffing

36. Ask different types of questions; • Take on multiple perspectives; • Develop a systemic vision; • Look at the whole picture; take a step back to see what’s possible.

37. Session 2 Moral Authority, Leadership at Local Level Anton Florek

38. This creates dependency particularly in the most vulnerable They stop believing change for them is possible Belief: our users are passive recipients of services The need increases The public sector spends more and achieves less

39. What is Social Capital? Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social interactions. Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society – it is the glue that holds them together. World Bank

40. Social capital is about the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity. Dekker and Uslaner (2001) …the web of cooperative relationships between citizens that facilitate resolution of collective action problems Brehm and Rahn (1997)

41. Collective rather than individual social capital: place based social capital citizen capital

42. What is co-production? Investing in strategies that develop the emotional intelligence and capacity of local communities; Devolving real responsibility, leadership and authority to ‘users’, and encouraging self-organisation rather than direction from above; Offering participants a range of incentives which help to embed the key elements of reciprocity and mutuality.

43. The cultural change needed for this… recognising people as assets – start by asking what people can offer building on existing capability mutuality and reciprocity – creating expectation and opportunity for people to support each other blurring distinctions between professionals and users the local authority facilitating rather than delivering.

44. The Challenge in Co-production: Recognising that some expertly staffed and well-run services don’t deliver the best results for the people they should benefit because the services do not reach them; they see them as hard to reach or as having deficits. The need is to believe that residents have aspirations and resources, but can feel powerless and stigmatised by the way we provide services and that this unintentionally reinforces social isolation. The key challenge is to fundamentally shift the nature of the relationships our services have with our citizens so we also shift the balance of power.

45. Implementing Co-production This requires complementary cultural shifts in: The way staff work across agencies, specifically the way they interact with service users and residents, by replacing the passive dependent citizenship with a belief that residents have strengths and resources to bring to the table How services and new models of delivery are developed by nurturingmuch closer interaction between the community and professionals and encouraging the design and delivery of localised solutions embracing public sector, commercial and voluntary contributions.

46. Redefining co-production ...a means to delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours. Where activities are co-produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become more effective agents of change. Boyle and Harris (2009) “The Challenge of co-production” Nesta

48. Human capital is created in diverse contexts, in the family and home, in communities, in the workplace and in many other social settings. The arena for policy intervention is therefore wide. OECD (2001)

49. Social prototyping can be thought of as a process of design through trial and error, conducted transparently and openly. • profoundly “social”, in partnership • collaborative trial and error • at the level of action, moving beyond the table/studio/desk. What is Social Prototyping?

50. Traditional planning approach Static participation, ownership and quality Implementation Research Design Launch Initial idea Design (Re) design (Re) design Social Prototyping Reframe Reframe Reframe Test Test Test Increasing participation, ownership and quality Social prototyping approach