Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive, CST
In July last year, the Leadership College for Government published research and analysis on future Issues for public service leaders. I found this incredibly helpful and intend to provide a reflective interpretation on some of this for trust leaders.
The changing role of the state
The Leadership College for Government suggest that even before the pandemic, there was research evidence pointing to wider currents in public opinion and government policy pushing towards support for higher levels of government spending and intervention.
Whichever party or parties form a government following the next election, I think that the Leadership College for Government is right – they will have to grapple with the changing role of the state.
The Leader of the Labour Party has recently said that if Labour were to win the next election, they would bring forward a ‘Take back control’ Bill. This would transfer power from Westminster to communities. Sir Keir said that the legislation would hand sweeping powers to people, towns and cities and that the Bill would be "a centrepiece" of Labour plans if it wins the next general election.
In the Labour Leader’s Leeds speech in December, he pledged to devolve new powers over skills, transport, planning and culture. The speech focused on creating economic activity and education was not mentioned.
This speaks directly to the contested role of the state and the way in which political parties shape and change state institutions and state actors. It is potentially very important for us, as Trust Leaders, to engage with this and be able to influence it.
Rising complexity
Another headline from the Leadership Office for Government’s article relates to rising complexity: "Rising complexity in the provision of public services has been a key trend for some time but pre-existing issues around an ageing population, service integration, finance and funding have now been complicated by the long tail of COVID-19 and the large backlog in many services it has generated.”
I think the theme of rising complexity is important – but I do not think it is linked solely to Covid. Although, of course, Trust Leaders are still dealing with Covid infection in the community and its impact on staff and pupils, concerns about school attendance post-Covid, the widening gap in education attainment and parental expectations in a post-Covid world.
But rising complexity was there before Covid. The term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) has become a bit of a cliché. VUCA was introduced to leadership training in the early 2000s but has been around since the late 1980s. It was first used by an American Army War College where it was intended to reflect the perceptions at the end of the cold war.
A Cambridge Core Blog in November 2021, offers the following explanation:
- Volatility is all about the speed of changes happening in the world, such as, globalisation, climate change and technology.
- The speed of the changes we are experiencing inevitably leads to uncertainty. To what extent can we predict the future and how do we prepare? Do we have the knowledge to interpret the facts we are facing? Or are we, perhaps, dealing with an information gap?
- Complexity is about the numbers of factors we need to consider, the interconnectivity of our environment and the ability to analyse it.
- Ambiguity has to do with the ability to interpret what’s in front of us.
This blog ends on this optimistic note:
"As much as VUCA can mean different things to different organisations, all of them have two things in common:
VUCA is an opportunity for organisations to advance.
the skillset needed to address VUCA is agility: the ability to quickly learn, adapt, change and succeed in a highly turbulent environment.”
In both global and domestic politics, we have certainly seen volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It is likely that this will continue, and the impact this is having and will have on our schools and trusts – as well as the pupils, families and communities we serve – means that we will need a mindset that helps us deal with rising complexity.
New expectations of leadership
Leadership Office for Government’s view is that during the pandemic there was a big shift in the expectation of what the job of a public service leader entails. They offer a view that many have become more involved in day-to-day management and communication with staff, dovetailing with pre-existing agendas around well-being, diversity and resilience.
While I think this is right, I also think that Trust Leaders increasingly need to look beyond their own institutions. This is not to turn schools away from their core business of education and make them instruments to advance a government’s social agenda. It is rather because the problems experienced by our pupils, families and communities cannot be solved by schools on their own. CST has long advocated that Trust Leaders have a civic duty to work with other civic actors for the wider common good.
The Leadership Office for Government’s article states:
"Many service innovations developed over the past year were similarly considered to have been the product of greater collaboration. And locally-led responses to the pandemic, which were seen by participants and in the evidence review as being more responsive to circumstances than centrally-run efforts, were similarly helped by the collaborative working of different services.”
The research also pointed towards further questions for research on the nature of collaboration between public services:
- defining better what collaboration between public services is so that it can be assessed more easily
- understanding the circumstances where more collaboration might be less effective
- investigating how the focus of public service collaboration can be made more proactive.
I believe it is right that public sector leaders need to link the short-term and long-term: providing a space where longer-term issues can be considered away from the day-to-day demands of leaders’ jobs and they can speak with their peers. It is these types of spaces that CST has tried to create.
As your sector body, we will continue to provide a voice for Trust Leaders, ensuring your experiences are heard and acting as a convenor of your views, whilst also building the sector’s capacity to collaborate.
As Peter Senge points out, the deep changes necessary to accelerate progress require leaders who catalyse collective leadership [1]. It requires leaders who act collectively and strategically on – not just in – the system. This is the new expectation of leadership.
References:
[1] Senge, P. (2006) The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, Random House.
The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
