My colleague Pat Toner, Director of Organisational Improvement here at Education Leeds sent me this bit of good sense this morning...

"Colleagues, I offer this from recent NHS material on leading and managing radical change. The first and most fundamental change for everyone involved (throughout the whole workforce) is to start thinking in terms of creating a 'new' organisation, even though it's migrating from an existing one. The focus of leaders needs to be on creating and sustaining commitment and trust, as this will take the organisation through the current challenges towards a new environment. In addition, we ought to consider the implementation of a set of management codes designed to promote commitment and trust and linking this with performance and productivity.Whilst this scenario involves the complete organisation, the same principles can be applied by individual line managers faced with making change within their own area of control.

Other suggestions include:

• Help the organisation to be clear about its purpose;
• Identify the beliefs and values that the new organisation wishes to put into practice, and this will become the cultural foundations within which managers and staff will be expected to behave;
• Identify the architecture that will help promote the values and beliefs (let's hope they include commitment, trust and engagement),
• Look at the 'rules' of how the organisation is meant to work (ensure the 'rules' promote commitment and trust),
• Identify the levels of skill needed to implement the 'rules' and embark on training programmes.

I hope this is helpful, Pat"

When faced with the scale and complexity of the changes we are facing in local government it is good to be reminded that culture, values, beliefs, commitment and trust must drive the change you want to see in the world!

Chris