Latest research findings from new RSA study on how council managers might achieve more significant innovations with their public sector partners.

1. TRANSFORMING TOGETHER:
LEADING FOR PEOPLE & PLACE

2. Research aim
To discover how
council senior
managers might
achieve more
significant
innovaFons with
their public sector
partners

3. The councils involved

4. Examples of
partnership
innovaFons
studied
Health &
social care
integraFon
Shared care
records
Waste
management
Community
banking
Carers’
support
Private
renters
support
Mental health &
homelessness
EmoFonally
healthy
schools

5. The process
Interviewed:
• Council senior managers
• Their partners
• Council leaders
Held feedback meeFng with
council senior managers

6. THE
FINDINGS

7. CONVENE
AROUND
PLACES

8. Focus on local ciFzens and places
Image from Redbridge
Health & Well Being
Convene around places

9. “The council didn’t just formulate a
document and say to partners: ‘Would you
like to come along to this launch and give
this some support?’ We sat down with
partners first and said: ‘Over the next 20
years the public sector as a whole is going
to change. We need to work together now
to think about what our place is going to be
like over the next 20 years.’”
Iain Malcolm, Leader, South Tyneside
Council

10. “We have really focused on this plan not
being the plan of one organizaFon, but a plan
for the borough as a place.”
Senior Manager, CCG
“It’s not like your normal partnerships: it’s a
system-wide holisFc approach. It’s all about a new
relaFonship between ciFzen and state, an
integrated service, an engaged workforce,
confident communiFes, self reliant and
independent residents.”
Chief Execu@ve, Council

11. Develop honest, commi]ed relaFonships
Convene around places

12. “Developing trust between partners takes lots of
Fme and energy. We have deliberately invested in
that. We have worked really hard on
relaFonships.”
Chief Officer, CCG
“It is always about people. Where people trust
you, and you’ve got their respect, and you respect
them, then suddenly the barriers between
organizaFons can be levelled.”
Council leader

13. Take a system focus
Thinking
& acFng
systemically

14. “If you look at the projecFons for the next
few years, I don’t think there is any other
way than working as a system. I don’t
think any one organizaFon can solve the
problems facing us.”
Senior Manager, CCG
“We took a whole systems approach. What
was important for local residents? What do
good integrated services look like?”
Senior Manager, Health Service

15. Take a system focus
Agree a clear purpose,
outcomes & prioriFes

16. “You must have an
absolutely clear
understanding of what is
your vision.”
Chief Officer, CCG
“If you feel you have got a common agenda,
then you feel you can take on the world.”
Transforma@on Lead, CCG
“We had a very strategic
objecFve and we did
everything we could to
make it work.”
Senior Manager, Council

17. Take a system focus
Encourage
long term
poliFcal
leadership

18. “Councillors make a big difference. In the
next door council the poliFcians are very
tradiFonal. This council leader speaks for
innovaFon.”
Senior Manager, Health Organiza@on
“Leading poliFcians have been
consistently supporFve of it. That is
really significant in ge`ng the iniFal
impetus going.”
Chief Officer, CCG

19. Develop an entrepreneurial edge
Be opFmisFc,
courageous,
& creaFve

20. “We have a group of poliFcians from a
commercial background, with an open mindset.
And we have chief officers, a team that have
been built by the chief execuFve, who equally
want to push the barriers and challenge the
status quo. And so we empower each other to
push those boundaries.”
Council Leader
“The senior managers have been
creaFve, brave and trusFng, risk
enabling, tenacious at all levels.”
Project Manager, Council

21. Be passionate, persuasive
& persistent
Develop an entrepreneurial edge

22. “
“You have to have passion and
values. You need to care to move
things forward.”
Strategic Lead, Council
“The passion for change and
transformaFon can drive away
barriers. You have got to be
tenacious and passionate, and to
really feel that you are going to
make a difference.”
Joint Health & Social Care Lead

23. Develop an entrepreneurial edge
Track, reflect,
learn & adapt

24. “We’re really specific in our plans. What
are we going to do, who is going to do it,
when is it going to be done by, and how
are we going to know if it has worked.”
Chief Execu@ve, Council
“It’s important how you nurture
learning. How you learn from
small failures.”
Senior Manager, Council
“We evolve and develop ideas.”
Senior Manager, Health
Organiza@on

25. Build a shared ethos
Empower middle managers
& engage the frontline workforce

26. “To be innovaFve you have got to have
people with the right mindset. So much
depends on middle managers, whether
they have a ‘can do’ a`tude and are
prepared to take a risk.”
Senior Manager, Health Organiza@on
“Across all the organizaFons we needed to
change the way the workforce did things, and
to ensure they understood why they were
changing the way they were doing things, to
make any of this integraFon work.”
Project Lead, Council

27. Develop a shared ethos
AcFvely involve service users & ciFzens

28. “If you have the confidence to go and talk to
people it is amazing what they come up with.
There is an entrepreneurial spirit in the
community.”
Council Leader
“We have become much more of a
listening council. We know that
communiFes can come up with a
much be]er soluFons.”
Senior Manager, Council

29. Build a shared ethos
Devote Fme, energy, &
resources to the process

30. “Social workers have commi]ed Fme to do
things that they might not have otherwise
been released to do. And they are doing that
because they want to help along the
integraFon programme.”
Chief Execu@ve, Voluntary Organiza@on
“When I first became a chief exec 15 years ago
people told me change happens where you
put your energies. You need to put your
energies into the right things in the right way.”
Chief Execu@ve, Council

31. PotenFal challenges
• Partners don’t share interests & prioriFes
• Capacity issues
• Lack of finances
• Slow, cumbersome, inappropriate bureaucraFc
processes
• Different organizaFonal cultures
• Key leaders leaving
• OrganizaFons undergoing internal transformaFons

32. “It is hard, it’s the
most interesFng
thing, but it’s hard.”
Chief Execu@ve,
Council
“Partnerships are easy to put onto
paper. But inherently there are
very different cultures in local
authoriFes and in health, which
you don’t address overnight. That
is something that takes years to
deal with.”
Chief Officer, CCG
“There are so many silos
across a complex system,
with people operaFng in
their own li]le bubbles.”
Integrated Services
Manager, Health
Organiza@on

33. NaFonal hindrances
• Ever changing naFonal prioriFes and
iniFaFves
• Regulators
• Different geographical boundaries for
different iniFaFves
• NHS England’s:
– Top down approach
– Performance measures
– Sustainable transformaFon plans issues

34. ““I can’t believe how difficult it is to work in
this environment anymore. I joined the Health
Service in 1988. The change has been
phenomenal and I don’t think the public know
the half of it.”
Transforma@on Lead, CCG
“NaFonally there is lots of talk about health
and social care integraFon, but the regulatory
system isn’t driving it. It’s not pulling them
apart, but it’s not encouraging it.”
Chief Officer, CCG

35. PosiFve NaFonal AcFons
• Enabling guidance and
legislaFon e.g. NHS ‘Five
Year Forward View’ & Welsh
Government ‘Well Being of
Future GeneraFons Act 2014’
• DevoluFon

36. “The NHS’s ‘Five Year Forward View’ and
‘Future in Mind’ guidance underpins
everything we want to achieve. We are
working on how we adapt and translate
them for local area.”
Strategic Lead, CCG
“The Welsh
Government’s ‘Well
Being of Future
GeneraFons Act
2014’ took us to a
different level.”
Project Lead, Council
“DevoluFon has been
amazing, giving us
flexibility. We would
never be doing what we
are doing now without it.”
Chief Execu@ve, Council

37. THE TRANSFORMING TOGETHER FRAMEWORK

38. More details
The full report:
h]ps://www.thersa.org/discover/publicaFons-
and-arFcles/reports/transforming-together-
leading-for-people-and-place
Authors:
Joan Munro: joan.munro@btopenworld.com
Ian Burbidge: ian.burbidge@rsa.org.uk
Jack Robson: jack.robson@rsa.org.uk