Out of the comfort zone: Professional Development and Strategic Organisational Understanding
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This was a conference presentation I gave to the SA NT Public Sector Women in Leadership Summit (conference) in March 2015. It was based on my work across all areas of Local Government and linked into Jaques' Requisite Organisation Theorem.
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Out of the comfort zone: Professional Development and Strategic Organisational Understanding
- 1. Out of the Comfort Zone: Professional Development March 2015 informed
- 2. Background 2 Task: In 2013 the Elected Members of City of Burnside asked the CEO to develop a succession plan so that each of the three General Managers were “chair-ready”. Solution: General Manager Rotation
- 3. 3
- 4. “Team” 4
- 6. CEO GM, Community & Development Services Manager City Development and Safety Manager, Library Manager, Community Services Manager, Customer Service GM, Corporate Services Chief Financial Officer Manager, People and Culture Manager, IT Strategic Planning Officer Governance Officer GM, Urban Services Manager, Operations Manager Engineering Manager Assets 6
- 7. 7 Source: Think One Team by Graham Winter
- 10. Impact on the next tier • A new GM every few months • Managers needed to “train” two new GMs • Different management styles • Needed to quarantine their staff from any sense of instability • Role of Managers as technical and operational lead reinforced 10
- 11. 11 Source: McMorland, J., Are you big enough for your job? Is your job big enough for you? Exploring Levels of Work in organisations, University of Auckland Business Review Vol 7 No 2 Levels of Work – the theories of Elliot Jaques (1917 – 2003)
- 13. Barriers • Continuity for large ongoing projects • Confusion about who to contact for subject matters • Contact with the outside world – customers, agencies, Elected Members 13
- 14. Risk! 14
- 15. Comparison • City of Playford • 2 GMs, 9 Group Managers • Rotated two units per annum • Aim: to ensure either of the GMs could step into the CEO role at any time • CEO focus on being a generalist • Underpinned by Requisite Organisation theorem (Jaques) 15
- 16. Professional Development • No 1 skill EMs want from their CEO: manage the organisation and don’t send us broke! • CEOs have to be across the whole of the business: Roads Rates Rubbish & the Rest! 16
- 17. Would I do it again? • Yes! • But… • The organisation needs to be in the right place • Everyone needs to be on board • Needs to be for a longer period 17
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Louise Miller Frost. After twenty odd years in the health sector – private, public and NGO – five years ago I moved into local government. I am one of three general managers at City of Burnside and I am here with you today to tell you the story of an amazing professional development experience that we underwent at City of Burnside last year.
- So this is where it started – a succession plan for the CEO. The decision was taken in late 2013 and the rotation began in early 2014. Luckily my boss is fairly resilient and wasn’t threatened by the idea that we – the three general managers - were being trained for his job. The idea of the rotation was formed by the exec – the CEO and the three GMS - at the annual exec strategic planning day as the way of satisfying the requirement.
- The theory behind the rotation was the walk a mile in my shoes experience – that you never really understand what someone else is experiencing – or in this case, what the job is like, the issues and constraints – until you have actually lived it every day. The rotations, which were initially going to be for 6 months each, and eventually ended up being 4 months each in order to fit before the local government elections, began in early 2014. At this stage we had been together as an exec team for two years, so we had been through the forming, storming and norming stages and we knew each other fairly well.
- So this is the exec team: Paul, the CEO on the left, Graeme, GM Urban Services, myself , GM Community and Development Services and Nigel, GM Corporate Services. The rotation was fairly demanding of us: it required strong relationships, at exec level Commitment to the rotation and to ensuring things didn’t get dropped Competition needed to sit on the backburner – and we are all three quite competitive personalities Excellent communication for hand-over and problem solving
- Like most organisations, we were organised into silos. Now silos make sense – it makes no sense to scatter like functions around the organisation. But the structure determines the way we behave and so of course it does mean that loyalties and understanding tend to run up and down the organisation within the silos and not across the organisation. People make decisions with the bests intentions – but silos can make teams competitive for resources.
- These are our three silos – community and development services, corporate services and urban services In my core role I have community services, library, rangers which is parking, animal control, bushfire risk management, bylaw compliance, public health, and development services. Corporate services, Nigel, has IT, HR, finance, procurement, strategic planning and governance. And Graeme in Urban Services, has the depot, which is the road crews, parks teams etc, engineering and asset management. As an exec team however, we are responsible for the smooth sailing of the entire organisation
- This diagram comes from a book called Think One Team, by Graham Winter. It looks at what an ideal culture would be where the silos - to use his term – have windows in them. And you can see how when we are working as one team, we are sharing the big picture, the reality, ideas and energy, the load, and the wins and losses. In short, for the exec team, reinforcing that we are one team with the aims for the best of the organisation, rather than leading disparate teams.
- The first rotation started in March 2014. I moved from community and development services into the corporate services. I actually asked for the rotation to go that way because I wanted to be in corporate services for budget season. During this period we were without an HR Manager, so I was covering that as well, and just as we recruited for HR and in the run-up for the LG election, we lost the Governance person. Consequently I covered that as well, which was great experience. Fair to say I was incredibly busy but having a great time. Nigel moved from Corporate into urban services where he went out on the road with the depot gangs (photo), as well as leading engineering and assets, and Graeme moved from urban services to community and development services where they discovered that despite his business like exterior, he is actually a really nice man, with a strong commitment to the community. Then we did another round. I didn’t go out on the road with the depot but did make it my business to be at their team meetings, whs meetings and the like, Graeme move to corporate and Nigel moved to community. We all moved back to our substantive positions just before November 2014 in time for the local Government elections. In each rotation we immersed ourselves in the job – there were lots of handover conversations and follow up emails in order to make sure things were transferred seamlessly, but we were managing the budget of the area we were in, writing council papers relating to the business of the unit we were in, answering emails, phone calls and questions in council on the units we were in – truly walking a mile in the shoes.
- This is perhaps more an impact on the entire organisation than just the GMs. I mentioned before about the tendency to silo. Traditionally, execs often see themselves as being part of the team they lead – which I would argue is incorrect. As a result of us each having worked in each of the units, the organisation could see more clearly that we (the execs) were a team, and the managers collectively were a team – so horizontal teams across the organisation instead of vertical teams. The conversations at the exec table were different because we each knew each others business much better, and we were focussed on the organisation as a whole.
- The rotation of course not only affected the exec – there was a major effect on the managers, the next tier down. For them, it was like having a new boss every few months. They had to get used to a different leadership and communication style, get us up to speed on specific issues that were occurring, and maintain stability for the staff underneath them.
- One of the most interesting things about the rotation was how it reinforced the division of labour amongst the strata of the organisation. This Is Jaques’ theory on levels of work, and working from the bottom up you can see that front line staff are dealing with services and their theme is quality – very operational and often customer-focussed. As you move up the strata, the work starts being increasingly more about working on the business – more strategic Or, to use a much simpler diagram that a former boss of mine used:
- Strategic v operational - Generalist v technical specialist So the rotation meant that the managers became much clearer that their role was as technical lead and we – the general managers – were in fact generalists. They could see that their role was more operational and more technical specialist than ours, and ours was more strategic and more generalist.
- So needless to say, this wasn’t a perfect world. Moving out of your comfort zone takes effort and concentration. Suddenly instead of relying on automatic responses – because we know our areas so well – we were being asked questions and needing to write papers on things we knew nothing about. I was once told that the important thing about juggling lots of balls is knowing which ones are the glass balls and which ones are the rubber balls. Rubber balls obviously can be dropped and they bounce. Glass balls don’t bounce. They are the ones you have to pay attention to. So we had a few glass balls that we were juggling. We had a couple of major capital builds that didn’t lend themselves to changing executive leads – redevelopment of the swimming pool and Glenunga Hub. We also had a major consultation around development in Burnside, and the election project. These all travelled with the responsible exec and did not rotate. We had confusion about who to contact for issues – both from within and without the organisation. We managed this through good customer service – we forwarded it on to the relevant person for response. There were however a few broadcast emails floating around as people tried to work out who to contact.
- This exercise has risk. Essentially, the organisation has Three “new” GMs on board, each learning their role and their units at the same time There were some key areas where the third tier – the Managers – had to be particularly strong to keep business continuity – in particular, without a strong CFO, the risk would have been enormous. There is also a risk for the organisation in training all three of its GMs to be CEOs. They might all get jobs as CEOs and leave – worse, they might all leave at the same time! (and indeed on my next slide I will give you an example of where this occurred) It takes a mature and confident organisation to continuously train its employees to be the best they can, knowing that this means they will eventually move up or move on. Source http://blog.hrsmart.com/2014/03/can-your-company-afford-not-to-provide.html
- When I was invited to do this presentation today, I did a little research to see if any other local government organisation had done a similar exercise. I couldn’t find any direct comparisons, but City of Playford did a similar exercise a few years ago. At the time they had two GMs and nine managers and rather than swap jobs they rotated a couple of the units each year. Again this was driven by the CEO wanting the GMs to be generalists. Both those GMs have since left and become CEOs at different councils. Benefits - more stability, longer time period,
- So why was this great professional development? So often when you rise through the ranks of an organisation you come up a particular technical stream and you are promoted because you are good in that stream. But there comes a time when you need to be a generalist – to be a General Manager, or a CEO – you need to be able to manage the whole organisation and understand the business of the whole organisation, not just your technical stream. And for us, this was a great way of not only understanding it, but actually doing it. I've managed a $50million dollar budget, but I've never managed a finance department before. I'm not an accountant; so I'm not going to get that on my resume any other way. Likewise, I have now managed engineers, road crews, etc.
- I loved it – I liked variety and I like being challenged to think on my feet so it worked really well for me. I think it is fair to say that across the organisation, we didn’t all enjoy it as much as I did, and while most of the managers liked the challenge and the fact that it reinforced their roles as technical leads, and liked getting to know all three GMs better, there were some who found it challenging. If we were to do it again, or if another organisation were considering doing this, I would say that the organisation has to be in a strong and stable position. The operational leads – the Managers – have to be good operators to provide the stability. Essentially, while you can always pull the plug at any stage, it is like having three new executives start at the same time, each not really knowing the business of the area they are leading. And that can be a risk to an organisation. It also requires commitment. From the CEO, from the GMs involved, and from the Managers. I would also suggest longer periods would be better, like the Playford model where it was year about.