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Learning across boundaries: standing on the shoulders of giants

In this guest blog, Graeme McDonald, Director of Solace, explores some of the key issues raised in a new report

The Institute for Government’s recent report ‘Local Public Service Reform: supporting learning to integrate services and improvement outcomes’ lifts the lid on what has been learnt on the long road to more integrated service provision, and how we might improve our knowledge of what does and does not work. In this guest blog, Graeme McDonald, Director of Solace, explores some of the key issues raised in the report.

The provision of public services at a local level is predicated on variation and contrast being both a requirement and advantageous. Different communities and environments need different solutions and this variation provides the opportunity to test and refine practice at a scale that both limits risk and can be done at pace. However, and as the report rightly emphasises, failure to learn the lessons of what has been tried before or elsewhere is costly and time-intensive, and under-utilises one of the key advantages of localism – being able to experiment with different approaches in different places. Learning lessons from others is particularly important during a time of fiscal consolidation and rising demand, when capacity in local government, and indeed all over the public sector, is contracting. The report also usefully outlines a range of ways in which people involved in the integration of local services can be supported. This includes: giving people more ways to learn in real time from progress, as well as challenges and setbacks; opportunities to dig more deeply into the messy realities of implementation; creating spaces for face-to-face conversations that enable individuals to break out of organisational and professional silos; and encouraging sector- and peer-led approaches that help build the necessary trust and credibility to make learning relevant to local priorities. There is, however, an inherent tension in these conclusions in that knowledge exchange is best done in safe spaces where people feel able to share challenges and failures with their peers, as well as successes; however, we also need those same peers to break out of those same professional and organisational silos into a political environment which feels intrinsically unsafe. Providing these opportunities creates an important challenge to government, local leaders and the sector’s professional or representative bodies. At Solace we know that personalised approaches to improving leadership work. Action learning, mentoring, coaching and peer-to-peer initiatives, for example, have led many leaders to adapt their skills sets and learn how to improve services, faster. Creating a variety of spaces in which to share learning is a guiding principle of many of these approaches. Our flagship programme for aspiring chief executives, Total Leadership, seeks to create and grow a style of leadership across the whole sector that creates a renewed sense of purpose: where leaders are seen to empower staff at all levels, to innovate without fear of failure, effectively communicating and collaborating across organisational structures and being held accountable for delivering outcomes. But we need to take care not to create a ‘sheep-dip’ approach. It has to be adaptable. By working in partnership with the University of Birmingham, we are able to mould experienced professional practice with academic rigour to create a programme steeped in the realities of local government and flexible enough to respond to individuals’ needs and learning styles. That is one reason why our first cohort included aspiring chief executives not just from all aspects of UK local government, but also leaders from the private sector able to bring an exciting new perspective to the group’s learning experience. We are now seeking to extend this approach across all the programmes and support we provide, from the national graduate development programme to our programme for experienced chief executives. The approach aims to balance the creation of safe spaces where open and honest stories are shared, with an external challenge that broadens horizons and challenges thinking. In this era of greater devolution much has been made of a golden era of Victorian municipality, and the new Prime Minister has been quick to reference Joseph Chamberlain, a giant of local government’s past. We also need to need to learn from our more recent accomplishments and ensure we have the networks, capacity and culture necessary to sidestep the mistakes of our peers, and stand on the shoulders of their successes.
Graeme McDonald is Chief Executive of Solace, the representative body for UK public sector chief executives and senior managers. He writes here in a personal capacity.
Keywords
Public sector
Publisher
Institute for Government

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