If there is a single factor in senior officer leadership that makes systemic failure more likely it is the loss of the confidence of peers and members. Successful senior leaders understand the need to win confidence early and to maintain it.
Where confidence is damaged an all-bets-are-off mentality can quickly pervade the leadership cadres. Unless surefootedness is detected performance suffers and plots are quickly hatched as the clamour for a replacement gathers pace.
This can happen quickly. Order can be restored and adherence to systems and processes maintained. But sometimes the death can be slow and lingering. And where this happens, standards, which may already be mixed and partially adhered to, suffer. Performance dips and the organisation can sink.
Winning confidence is challenging – and rightly so. Incoming chief executives will often inherit leadership teams who may well feel they can do a better job. Some often can. To highly competent senior leaders this is a challenge to be relished and embraced.
This will often distinguish successful organisations from those that fail. Top leaders understand the value of rigorous and challenging debate within their own team before matters reach members. They will welcome debate and challenge. Weak and failing leaders exclude and even ‘exit' those who dare to disagree with them. Nothing is more likely to precipitate failure than a team of partially competent fawning ‘yes' people.
The confidence of members is also critical. Successful senior leaders know that they will be judged partially. Little things matter. But much will depend upon the idiosyncrasies, interests and sources of information that they are able to acquire. At least one of those sources will be a member of the senior leadership team, an individual who can be used to cross-check claims and statements. Which is why those chief executives who win the confidence of their senior leadership team first are more likely to retain political support.
Consistency is another feature of successful senior leaders. Where there is a divergence between the culture espoused by the chief executive and the behaviour and commentary of members of the senior leadership team, warning lights will flash. At its most subtle, this will manifest as rolling eyes, knowing smiles and condemning grins. At its worst, open criticism is both voiced and acted on.
Some failures are less subtle. The best councils have a clear line of sight from vision to mission to work programmes and performance management. They have clear accountabilities and a rigorous and ruthless adherence to detail. Little gets missed. They are unafraid to use performance management to its full, addressing non-delivery and ultimately ensuring that the right people with the right skills are in the right jobs, uncomfortable though this often can be.
In failing organisations, such systems are partial, ill-policed and personal (where some may be singled out inappropriately). Senior leaders will openly blame members whose late interference they may suggest will prevent action. Some will even talk about colleagues being ‘in with the members' or being ‘politically connected', like some sort of cosy Cosa Nostra. And they won't acknowledge their own culpability: not defining excellence; tolerating weak performance management systems; and rarely seeing things through. They will breed a culture of non-compliance.
Sometimes impending failure is all but certain. It will have been baked-in with people appointed into positions beyond their capacity and protected. This cadre of untouchables will resist all but the most talented incoming chief executives. Smart incomers take stock before they join – carrying out research, contacting insiders and understanding the real challenges. And they make the mandate to bring about wholesale change a deal-breaker before taking on the job.
Weak senior leaders are far vaguer. They will embark on ill-thought-through ‘transformation' strategies that rarely look at the starting point or previous failed change attempts. These too will fail (in fairness about 70% of transformation strategies do). From then, they will be living on borrowed time as untouchables talk down their performance and further undermine confidence.
Successful senior officers understand these risks. They know that they will inherit previous errors and that members may want to keep sources, even less competent ones, in place. But they will recognise that this is a function of poor officer leadership; members starved of reliable intelligence will seek information elsewhere.
Success is borne of unflinching honesty and ruthless but politically sensitive action. Strong senior leaders will challenge and test member vision and distil indistinct urges into achievable, measurable and deliverable goals. They will honestly take stock, being clear about why they are where they are and without attributing blame, help move the organisation onto a sound fact-based, properly resourced plan for success. Throughout, they will keep members involved and on board and day by day win and build confidence in their leadership, in their team and well-beyond.
How to avoid failure: The MJ Insider's Guide will be published later this year, available to subscribers of The MJ. To subscribe now, go to https://subscribe.themj.co.uk/
