The central focus of the council’s leadership and management development strategy is ‘Building capacity to deliver better outcomes’. This programme has been designed to advance that goal by building capacity through equipping managers with the tools to engage employees,customers, and partners to deliver excellent high quality services in extremely challenging economic times against a conflicting background of increasing need and constrained resource.
PLANNING / · a clear rationale, defined processes and focus on stakeholder needs· contributes to organisation’s goals and addresses current or emerging challenges
These outcomes are aligned with the key corporate strategies in relation to People, Improvement and Customer Service.
The Programme outcomes:
- To improve the council performance by developing management and leadership capacity to deliver an customer/ outcome focused approach to service delivery
- To increasemanager’s capacity to deliver effective transformational change by enabling and encouraging them to take a collaborative and inclusive approach.
- Developing managers personal effectiveness in relation to problem solving through the use of active listening, asking powerful questions, brainstorming, coaching, checking understanding and summarising.
- Promoting the council’s modernisation agenda resulting in efficiencies and significant improvements to the services delivered.
The design of this programme involved working in partnership with key stakeholders including the Chief Executive, Corporate Management Team, Business Improvement Leads, Quality Development Officers, Human Resources and Central Administration staff to deliver an engaging, dynamic, original, 2 day programme of events which would help improve efficiency and effectiveness across the council
- Delivered internally and collaboratively within existing budgets and resources.
- A multi-disciplinary project team formed to develop content and deliver the Programme.
- Events were organised in peer groups to ensure the maximum benefit is gained from the discussions and networking.
- Included all senior managers and Head Teachers.
- Corporate Management Team support and involvement in delivering the Programmeby opening and introducing sessions as well as by being on hand to gather immediate feedback from participants.
- Making the programme relevant to managers by asking them to bring a challenging situation from their service.
- Pilot used to evaluate the Programme before roll outand first hand feedback used to determine optimum size and composition of groups and ensure effective use of time at these events.
- Working in collaboration with the Improvement Service and the Scottish Social Services Council, local authority facilitators were trained to deliver action learning setsand help create a bank of knowledge and experience which could be shared internally and externally.
DELIVERING / · implemented in all relevant areas and across all the required stakeholders
· carried out in a structured and logical way , using robust and sustainable methods
This programme has been rolled out to over 200 senior managers, covering all service areas including all Head Teachers, between March and November 2012. The Programme comprises of 16 workshops, with senior managers from all council services. Follow up reviews will be held 3 months after the end of the Programme to establish what improvements have been implemented as a result of attendance at the programme.
This includes reviewing progress and measuring tangible benefits to individual challenges and any process with identified continuous improvement ideas.
The methods used to achieve the aims included:
- Presentation/ discussion on leadership and management providing managers with an understanding of the current council perspective.
- Case consultation which offers an action learning approach to resolving work related problems/issues on the basis managers can learn best from one another. The consultation process empowers managers to tackle their own problems and implement their own solutions.
- An introduction to Rapid Improvement Events (RIE) where managers are taken through the process using real RIE data to fully understand how RIEs can be applied and the potential benefits. This involves –
- Gathering data to act with full knowledge of the systems performance
- Articulating the purpose of the service, deciding whether current processes align to this
- Looking at processes from a customers’ perspective. Re-designing the service, ensuring any ‘waste’ is removed
- Building an action plan to deliver the changes, to identify and embed appropriate measures to monitor performance
- Considering how this approach can assist when incorporating Corporate initiatives e.g. Citizen Led Inspections, Worksmart (flexible working), Electronic Document records Management & Co-production.
- The issues that managers brought were captured under general themes to help inform future management and leadership programmes. Areas suggested for RIE’s were also captured for further review and progress.
Through the use of action learning sets and Rapid Improvement Events (RIE’s), the council has been able to identify dynamic, original, creative and value for money solutions to a significant number of challenges facing the council. The application of both these techniques has resulted in a number of services being proactively re-designed with the involvement and participation of key stakeholders to remove inefficiency, avoid duplication of effort and prioritise actions to ensure services are affordable, sustainable and incorporate the needs and aspirations of all our customers.
INNOVATION + LEADING PRACTICE / ·Demonstrates leading practice, and is capable of replication elsewhere·Achieves genuine innovation or new ways of working
In keeping with the aspiration of the Christie Commission recommendation:
‘Implementing new inter-agency training to reduce silo mentalities, drive forward service integration and build a common public service ethos’
In this Programme the application of action learning sets and RIE’sareused as practical, creative and sustainableapproaches to collaborative working as it promotes engagement with peers, employees and public sector partners. These approaches and techniques are relatively simple to apply but have a wide application that transcend organisational boundaries providing a methodology for achieving common understanding across public sector partners.
The benefits to the council of fostering this type of approach to leadership and management development are:
- Building trust across services by enabling an understanding
- Motivating people through engagement
- Developing managers resilience
- Balancing delivery and support
- Thinking differently about team and organisational boundaries
- Actions reflect financial constraint and affordability
- Fostering shared responsibility for measurable outcomes
There are common types of issues across the council and that case consultation and rapid improvement can be used in an inclusive way at all levels, to deliver service improvements.
RIE’s also engages both employees and managers in:
- Improved customer experience
- Efficient process re-design across the whole process
- Measurable improvements & potential for realising cashable savings
- Meaningful measures for running an effective system & continuous improvement
- Empowerment and an increase in staff morale
- Services to work without constant checking/approval
Both approaches look at our challenges and processes from a customer’s perspective whereby we gather and analyse statistical data obtained from customer interactions and use this information to feedback to our key stakeholders to create an action plan
RESULTS + IMPACT / · a convincing mix of customer and internal performance measures·demonstrates howbetter outcomes are being achieved
· a full range of relevant results– either already achieved or with potential to deliverover time
Initial Evaluation shows that:
- 90% of participants rated the programme as good or excellent
- 98% of rated the facilitation as good or excellent
- 95% of participants rated the case consultation process as good or excellent
- 98% of participants responded that Day 2 they were given a comprehensive overview of RIE
- 95% of participants can now identify where they could apply RIE in their area
Managers benefited from the programme as follows:
- Networking with colleagues from different services gave a broader understanding and appreciation of challenges facing different areas of the council
- Sharing ideas and gaining different perspectives
- Reflecting on their own practices whilst learning from others
- Dealing with and resolving real life issues and challenges
- Enhancing questioning, listening, brainstorming, continuous improvement, feedback and communication skills
Long term evaluation methods:
- Improved employee engagement reflected in the results councils Annual Employee Consultation Survey and other aspects of employee feedback.
- RIE’s are implemented to improve service delivery, efficiency and specific and substantial cost savings identified.
- Additional follow-up events specifically identified as a result of this programme and the analysis of the issues brought by participants.
- Action plans for service improvement devised, implemented and reviewed with line managers
- Greater collaboration using RIE’s with internal and external partnersto maximise opportunities for greater efficiencies to be made in relation to the Single Outcome Agreement
- Council continues to receive external recognition from CSE, IiP, EFQM and internally through WLAMas a result of actions delivered by this programme, through improved customer feedback and increased staff engagement.
Examples of participant feedback and comment from the programme include
“an excellent approach to problem solving”
“generated several potential options for me to implement back in the office”,
“very helpful hearing the views of others”,
“this was a great way to look at a problem from different angles”,
“a good insight on how to review processes and work smarter”,
“RIE seems to be effective tool for continuous improvement and I am keen to try out in my service area”.
COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2013 Page | 1