Philip Atkinson
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‘Without Leadership there is no Change’

16/11/2016

 
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We have seen a lot of interesting changes in the last few years that will have a major impact on our organisations in the private and public sector.  The Indy Ref and the changes under way in Scotland are the tip of the iceberg compared to the implications of Brexit, the US elections and, possibly, IndyRef2.

Until Leadership Behaviour Changes – Nothing Changes

Our organisations, especially our public services, need to be led by clarity of direction out of ‘change overwhelm’ to change certainty.  This transition will not be granted by the ‘tooth fairy’ or happen by accident.  It has to be a resilient purposeful course of action based on replacing administrative proficiency with strong leadership behaviours. So as you can imagine, I was really looking forward to finding some answers to the culture of ‘uncertainty’ by attending a well-publicised MACKAY HANNAH conference entitled ‘Scotland’s Public Services: What’s Coming Next’ - with three key strands:
  1. The next five years – what do we know?
  2. Preparing for the unexpected
  3. Harnessing opportunity
The conference, which was held at the prestigious Edinburgh offices of Morton Fraser, was ably chaired by Sarah Boyak and had quality speakers including Sir Paul Grice, Lynda Towers, Alex Bell, Andy Mciver, Don Peebles, Mark Taylor, Diarmaid Lawlor, Andrew Kerr and Gary Devlin, all experts in analysis of organisations in the public sector.
​ 

I am curious and want to know how the level of thinking needs to change so as to take us to the next level of service to others and performance.  I am aware that the level of thinking that got us to where we are today will have to change radically to get to where we need to be.  We need expansive, creative thinking, decisiveness and bravery that will get us out from our collective ‘stuckness’ and develop strategies for change that deliver.

Accelerating Change
 

Delegates talked about the dizzying rate of change and the importance of vision and leadership.  Although Leadership was talked about a great deal, there did not seem to be a shared strategy of how to bring it about, which is highly frustrating!
The conference was great, but it would have been even better to have workshops devoted less to theory and more to policy implementation – but we did not have the time.

To me it seemed to be a missed opportunity to talk about challenging from the current position that many organisations find themselves in from change-overwhelm fear and inertia, to actively leading out of the chaos.  I guess this is just one start of many.

My belief is that we have to shape the future and that means questioning how we do things, taking a good look in the mirror and becoming focused on building resilient cultures that can weather rapid change, are focused with clarity on our end users whether they be customers, clients, citizens, or users and start leading rather than just talking about the process.

Here I have very short video on Leadership which may interest you, and a reasoned article published on Leadership unsurprisingly entitled ‘Without Leadership there is No Change’.  I would love to know what you are thinking so please respond and we can be part of the change process in shaping the future of our Nation and its organisations.
Here’s the video and the article below.

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    Philip Atkinson is a strategic advisor, trainer, mentor and author of books and articles on organizational change and leadership

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