This document summarizes key points from an interview with Professor Toby Greany about leadership challenges and opportunities in different sectors. Some of the main ideas discussed include: 1. The need for blended leadership that scans the horizon for change, rethinks business models, focuses on clients, and tells a compelling story. 2. Maintaining a strong organizational brand through understanding customers, having clarity on areas of excellence, and focusing on differentiation over cost cutting. 3. The challenges of system leadership which requires working across contexts, dealing with complex issues, collaboration, and political skills. 4. The importance of clear accountability, learning-centered approaches, and continuous professional development for leading the core business.

1. Leadership in other sectors:
challenges and opportunities
Professor Toby Greany
1.5.14
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2. Leading effective organisations in volatile environments
•Blended leadership (and management) in context
•‘Values are as important as vision’.
•Scan the horizon - create a climate of curiosity
•Rethink your business models - avoid reactive compliance
•Know when to act boldly: ‘always, always focus on the client’
•Find new ways to collaborate
•‘We are living in a digital coliseum.’
•‘Remind people why we do what we do: tell a compelling story’
•‘Your mindset needs to be one of quality and risk’.

3. Maintaining a strong organisational brand
•Sophisticated understanding of existing/potential customers
•Clarity on where you will be excellent and where ‘good enough’
•Be distinctive - “What’s your calling card of excellence?”
•Successful companies focus on differentiators other than price
and prioritise increasing revenues over cutting costs.

4. System leadership (aka ‘adaptive’, ‘resourceful’ and
‘intelligent’ leadership)
•Working beyond your context (schools) versus aligning
different services to achieve holistic outcomes (public sector)
•‘Wicked’ issues and ‘tame’ problems
•Partnership and collaboration are vulnerable strategies
•Requires political and consensus building skills and an ability
to work with ambiguity
•Keep it simple: “Partnership working is a way of doing business
– agree the protocols, agree the boundaries and get on with it.”

5. Leading the core business
•Clear accountabilities and strong management processes -
asking the right questions
•Learning centred leadership in schools and FE
•Consistent focus on professional development and learning for
staff: move from traditional models of Continuous Professional
Development (CPD) towards Joint Practice Development
•“If you want a collective approach you have to educate
collectively, not as individuals”.

6. Leading for diversity
•Remains a challenge across sectors – but some evidence of
particular issues for FE
•Must be led from the top, based on inclusive set of values: be
specific about which aspects of diversity you need to tackle next
and take time to look at the data
•Several interviewees have mainstreamed diversity: a service-
improvement issue not an ethical one
•The importance of recruitment practices: “Hire for values rather
than competencies”.

7. Talent management and leadership development
•Recruiting and developing talent a very high priority for
interviewees.
•Able to articulate what kinds of talent they were looking for and
how they would recognise it
•Move away from classroom-based programmes towards
context-based learning and open ended tasks
•Balance between individual and organisational development
•‘Grow your own’ in house approaches - 10-15 years. Rapid
and focussed feedback on performance coupled with stretching
opportunities most important.
•Evaluation challenge

8. Final questions:
•Have the needs of ETS leadership moved on since
2010?
•Does ETS leadership differ from leadership in other
sectors?
•Turnaround leadership – a particular issue for FE?