Leading Systems Change

Residential 1:

Leading in Complex Systems

April 23th – 24th 2018

Westerwood Hotel

Cumbernauld

Welcome

Session 1- Welcome and Introductions

Anton Florek, Strategic Adviser, Staff College

Session 2 - Leading across systems:

an introduction to systems leadership

Anton Florek

In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise. Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science (1992)

In this world of rapid, complex change, no one can really know the future and lead others there. An individual leader can’t neatly choose the right outcome and chart a course alone, because there are too many unpredictable variables in the mix. We need a new model of leadership, which we call Whole Systems Leadership. University of Minnesota and Life Science Foundation (2010)

Activity

Think of a system which you rely on: • How does it work? • What is your role in making it effective?

Towards a definition

A set of elements (or interactions) that are brought together, sometimes by design but often through evolution, to achieve a purpose. Though systems share family resemblances they also have their own personalities. We now live with systems inherited from different eras, with quite different models of organisation. Charles Leadbeater (2013)

Activity

Now repeat the exercise but thinking of the school system in Scotland: • How does it work? • What is your role in making it effective?

A self-contained organization

clear boundaries,

single chain of command,

unambiguous sense of purpose,

and a unified professional culture

A partnership

overlapping boundaries,

shared leadership,

multiple objectives,

a variety of professional cultures.

Children’s services

Context for Systems Leadership

According to Adam Kahane, author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, these conditions demand leadership that is:

Systemic - not piecemeal or divided into isolated silos

Participative - involving many people’s ideas, energy, talent, and expertise

Emergent - able to move and adapt nimbly in a minefield of uncertainty

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.

The findings of the study suggest that systems leadership is characterised by a collective form of leadership: systems leadership is ‘leadership as participation’ rather than ‘leadership as performance’.

Although it is individuals and not systems that produce change, systems leadership by definition is the concerted effort of many people working together at different places in the system and at different levels, rather than of single leaders acting unilaterally.

Systems leadership was described as all about the skillful harnessing and holding in 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’).

Characteristics of Whole Systems Leadership There are six core characteristics:

• Deep listening: Conversations have the power to transform our understanding and generate innovative options for action. A key component of successful conversations is deep listening, which means listening to learn and temporarily suspending judgment.

• Awareness of systems: Whole Systems Leadership understands communities, organisations, and groups as adaptive, changing systems. With an awareness of systems, you get a fuller perspective of the situation, which expands and refines your options for action.

• Awareness of self: Developing self-awareness is the necessary beginning to developing skillful ways to respond to situations. If you are not aware of your motivations, feelings, and beliefs, you cannot make effective decisions about how to behave.

• Seeking diverse perspectives: A whole systems approach thrives on the respectful inclusion of all voices. From this viewpoint, conflicting opinions do not present a problem; rather, they present a potential resource that can sharpen thinking and lead to innovative options for action.

• Suspending certainty, embracing uncertainty: Suspending certainty enables you to

see beyond your habitual lenses to get a broader and potentially more accurate view of what is going on. It also creates room for diverse views so that new or different knowledge can come forth.

• Taking adaptive action: Adaptive action means learning from everything you do. It

means taking time to recognise patterns and reflect on their meaning before jumping to a solution. It balances an inclusive, deep listening approach with a bias towards action.

University of Minnesota and Life Science Foundation (2010)

Systems leadership is achieved through:

• influence and ‘nudge’, not formal power

• alignment around common vision or purpose: improved outcomes for service users

• a focus on the outcomes and results, no the process

• strong but robust and honest relationships

• a mind set, rather than specific actions and behaviours.

Improving outcomes for service users

Ways of feeling Personal core values

Commitment

Ways of perceiving Balcony & dance floor The unseen & unpredicted Diverse views Sensitivity to narratives

Ways of thinking Curiosity Synthesising complexity Sense-making

Ways of doing Narrative Enabling & Supporting Repurposing & Reframing

Ways of relating Mutuality & Empathy Honesty & Authenticity Reflection Self Awareness

Ways of being Courage to take risks Resilience & Patience

Drive, energy, optimism Humility

Systems leadership flourishes when…

• the authorising environment, whether organisational or systemic, tolerates risk and accepts multiple pathways to outcomes;

• there is willingness to cede organisational goals for collective ambition;

• positional authority is not the only source of legitimacy;

• it builds on local and place-based initiatives and networks.

Ghate, Lewis and Welbourn (2013)

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)

What is distinctive about leadership in complex systems?

Parts Seeing the whole

My view Multiple perspective

Simple problems Complex / wicked /

Messy problem

Leaders must hold themselves to account via their organisations and each other for modelling the behaviours they expect of others, and for the organisational and systems outcomes to which they aspire.

Leaders must identify and remove organisational, cultural and bureaucratic barriers which stop their staff collaborating.

Talk of service transformation and integration needs to be rooted in honesty about what organisations and systems need to do to make collaborative, citizen-focused services a reality.

The very features that make systems so powerful – the way they bring together different components to achieve a purpose – also make them difficult to change. Setting out to change an entire system, in all its complexity, often seems hopelessly ambitious. The result is that would be systems reformers do little more than tinker at the edges, changing a part of a system but leaving the rest untouched.

Charles Leadbeater (2013)

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)

Activity:

What might new alliances look like

and who might be the key players in them?

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)