27 September 2016

Welcome

Adaptive/System Leadership Masterclass

Dr Muna Abdel Aziz, Acting Director of Public Health, Warrington Council

#PHLeadership

Overview

• Champs Collaborative, established in 2003, is made up of many members and partners across Cheshire & Merseyside

• It has a nationally recognised collective way of working and a strong track record in improving health outcomes

• Key priorities include high blood pressure, suicide prevention and mental health and wellbeing for children and young people

• Priorities agreed with Directors of Public Health, PHE North West and NHS England Cheshire & Merseyside

• Collaborative supporting Devolution and leading additional workstreams on licensing and workplace health

• Ensured public health priorities included in the C&M STP – alcohol harm, high blood pressure and AMR

• Led by the eight Local Authority Directors of Public Health and reports to nine Local Authority Chief Executives

27 September 2016

Introduction

Adaptive/System Leadership Masterclass

Joyce Redfearn

#PHLeadership

using the material of Ronald Heifetz and the inspiration from Chris and Mari from Leading Communities

An introduction to adaptive leadership

In a world of complex challenges, how do we manage change ?

What are your big change challenges ?

Why are they important to you ?

4

Programme

Complexity theory Refresh on Adaptive and on System leadership

Refresh on some tools and techniques Working on your key challenges Reflecting on complex change

Cynefin model

David J. Snowden & Mary E. Bone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,’ Harvard Business Review, November 2007

Identify the Adaptive Challenge

Regulate

the distress

Create the Holding Environment

The Six Principles for Leading Adaptive Work

• Create the heat • Sequence & pace the work • Regulate the distress

Protect the voices of Leadership from below

• Resume responsibility • Use their knowledge • Support their efforts

Get on the Balcony

Give back

the work

• Work avoidance • Use conflict positively • Keep people focussed

• Ensuring everyone's voice is heard is essential for willingness to experiment and learn • Leaders have to provide cover to staff who point to the internal contradictions of the organisation

• May be a physical space in which adaptive work can be done • The relationship or wider social space in which adaptive work can be accomplished

• A challenge for which there is no ready made technical answer • A challenge which requires the gap between values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours to be addressed

• A place from which to observe the patterns in the wider environment as well as what is over the horizon (prerequisite for the following five principles)

Maintain

Disciplined Attention

7

Adaptive challenge •Goal is not known •Leader likely to be contributing •Adaptive and systemic approach needed •Innovation required •Habits and assumptions must change

•True leadership needed •Real progress the only thing that counts •Presence required

Technical problem •Problem understood •Outcome understood •Authority and command work •World view not threatened

•Structural authority more important •Power games likely •Charisma very helpful

Adaptive over technical challenges

Other indicators

•People would rather avoid the issue •Recurring problem •It’s uncomfortable work •Failure to resolve competing priorities •Moving forward feels risky •There may be casualties •People must work across boundaries •Progress cannot be linear

Skills for Systems Leadership

What is systems leaderhip?

Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional times (Virtual Staff College)

Systems thinking

tem thinking st thinking Holistic: synthesise then analyse over Reductionist: analyse then synthesise

Understand the whole system, tailor for different levels of delivery (personalise)

over Break into functions, discrete services, specialist roles and standardise

Valuing outcomes and experience over Costing activity and transactions

Beliefs, principles, environment, culture over Planning and milestones

Creating an adaptive, autonomous, edge of chaos, learning environment

over Target setting, bureaucracy, and perception of order and control

Managing risk and encouraging innovation over Wary of risk and innovation

Partnership delivery models over Contractual / adversarial relationship with providers and often partners

Intrinsic motivation through recognition, pride, sense of control, visible impact on citizens

over Extrinsic motivation through carrot and stick

Belief in staff and citizens with appreciative models for service design

over Mistrust of staff and desire to control, mistrust of citizens and desire to do services to them

Valued personal relationship with citizens over Transaction / process based relationships with citizens

User / outcome centric view over Top down view

Absorbing complexity over Reducing complexity

Systems/Adaptive Leadership • Focus on purpose, users, benefits

• Saying ‘yes to the mess’; experiments; diversity; different perspectives; curious

• Encouraging connections, conversation, relationships, building networks/coalition

• Challenging habits and assumptions;

• Reducing power differentials – those who do the work – do the change

• Containing anxiety

Far from certainty

Far from agreement

Close to agreement

Near to certainty

Ordinary Management

• Technical/rational decision making

• Simple structures • Effective procedures • Monitoring/co-ordination

• Providing direction

After Ralph Stacey

Technical problems vs adaptive challenges

11

For a complex / adaptive change

• Think about what has worked for you in the past

• Feed back the stand out elements and capture as a table

Leading change in a new era

Ways of knowing

strategy

head

narrative

heart

Shared understanding leads to

action

hands

A frame is: “a set of internalised concepts and values that allow us to accord meaning to unfolding events and new information.”

Don’t think of an elephant!

3 key points on frames

Frames trump facts

Don’t just negate, reframe

Once you have established a new frame and it has become widely accepted, ideas that were previously

unthinkable become “common sense”

Networks for change agents

As a change agent my centrality in the informal network is more important than my position in the

formal hierarchy If you want to create small scale change work through a

cohesive network If you want to create big change create bridge networks

between disconnected groups

Network secrets of great change agents, Tiziano & Casciaro, HBR July/August 2013

Creating the holding environment

• How will you regulate distress and who will

feel it? • How will you keep the challenge as a priority

for people? • Who are the people who you need to give the

work back to? • How will you protect Leadership from below?

19

Building an organisation/system that can “do” complexity and ambiguity

• Myron Rogers´ 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

Identifying an adaptive/system challenge

Your challenge will be one which: • Does not have a ready made technical answer – and you

don’t know the answer to it already • Genuinely systemic and involve stakeholders from across

multiple systems • Not something you can do on your own • One you do not have the positional authority to impact in a

significant way – so you will need to use influence • Requires the gap between values, beliefs, attitudes and

behaviours to be addressed

21

Working on system leadership challenge

• Groups of 4

• Client has 5 mins to explain challenge and how approaching

• One good question about the approach from each person

• Response from client

• Other 3 lead a debate on what strikes them on approach to change what is good and what would be even better if ….10 mins

• Client is drawn back into conversation to respond on what resonates and helps them build on their approach 5 mins

• Collective reflection and capture of a few key points on managing system challenges 5mins

•

•

Systems/Adaptive Leadership • Focus on purpose, users, benefits

• Saying ‘yes to the mess’; experiments; diversity; different perspectives; curious

• Encouraging connections, conversation, relationships, building networks/coalition

• Challenging habits and assumptions;

• Reducing power differentials – those who do the work – do the change

• Containing anxiety

Far from certainty

Far from agreement

Close to agreement

Near to certainty

Ordinary Management

• Technical/rational decision making

• Simple structures • Effective procedures • Monitoring/co-ordination

• Providing direction

After Ralph Stacey

Technical problems vs adaptive challenges

23

Schon’s reflection-in and reflection-on action

Reflection-in-action thinking while doing

Reflection-on-action after the event thinking

Real situations are complex & messy: • Examine experiences & response as

they occur • Develop ‘professional artistry’ • Draw on practical experience &

theory

Gain insight & improve practice: • Review

• Describe • Analyse • Evaluate

Revise, modify & refine expertise

Taking care of yourself

• Depart from the default habit of authoritative certainty

• Take care of emotional and physical wellbeing

• Give yourself chance to be both optimistic and realistic

• Find sanctuaries where you can reflect and gain perspective

• Reach out to confidants …not in work

• Don’t lose yourself in your role

Further links

Adaptive Leadership http://apps.carleton.edu/events/convocations/audio_video/?item_id=626739&av_file_id=626743 Leadership without easy Answers The Practice of Adaptive Leadership Complexity Model Cynefin complexity model David J. Snowden & Mary E. Bone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,’ Harvard Business Review, November 2007 System Leadership The dawn of system leadership by Peter Senge et al Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter 2015 www.opm.co.uk Systems Leadership: A view from the bridge