Mid Sussex District Council serves the 127,000 people living in Mid Sussex – an area of 128 square miles in the heart of Sussex. The Council comprises 54 councillors, elected every four years to ensure that Council services and activities meet the needs of the district.
Following the appointment of a new Chief Executive in 2004, Mid Sussex District Council entered a period of considerable change. One of the key challenges to the organisation was to further develop its staff, not only to survive this change, but to actually embrace and drive the change forward.
Crucial to the success of managing the internal ‘change agenda’ was the focus on equipping and enhancing the leadership skills of middle managers.“Our middle managers are effectively our ambassadors, our champions to embed the change,” said Marissa Bartlett, Head of Organisational Development at Mid Sussex District Council.“We wanted to create a unique development programme for them which was innovative, exciting and had the potential to transform not just the individuals involved but the organisation as a whole”.
The Council approached Roffey Park with a view to working with them to develop a programme to meet their needs.“Roffey Park was an obvious choice for us”, said Marissa Bartlett.“They have a team of skilled and experienced consultants and all of the consultants delivering the programme were involved in research and development work. As a result they were able to share with participants some of the most leading-edge thinking on management and leadership practice”.
The Fast Track Development Programme was developed in partnership between Roffey Park and Mid Sussex District Council. The skills sets of middle managers in the Council were analysed and gaps were identified and prioritised.The result was a year long programme to enhance participants’ leadership and management skills and to improve their understanding of the key issues facing the Council – both now and in the future.
The Programme
The workshop modules, facilitated over the duration of the programme by Roffey Park’s consultants, included leadership development, emotional intelligence, personal effectiveness and influence, performance management, political intelligence, managing organisational and personal change, as well as managing strategic alliances and partnerships to achieve results.
“In each module participants explored their current practices, identifying personal learning needs and the ways to satisfy these using the latest management theories and models as necessary,” said Marissa Bartlett.“A unique dimension was the focus on the ‘self’, each individual’s role and the part they could play in transforming their own and others’ behaviour.” The modules were delivered at Roffey Park’s residential centre in West Sussex.“Roffey Park’s facilities are excellent,” said Marissa.“We were also able to take advantage of Roffey Park’s experience in the private sector which means they were able to share with the participants current ideas and best practice from a range of different commercial environments.”
One of the challenges of working in the highly political environment of local government is reconciling the tension and balance between satisfying Officer and Member expectations. To overcome this, the programme used a new approach to engage Members as well as Officers by bringing these two groups together to better understand each other. Each participant was assigned a Councillor to be a Member mentor throughout the programme.
We wanted to ensure that we received some immediate organisational benefit from the programme,” said Marissa. “Participants were encouraged to work in pairs on a corporate project which was practical and closely aligned to organisational and corporate objectives.” Participants combined their day-to-day roles with projects that included delivering a healthy eating campaign to disadvantaged communities within the District; researching and then implementing mobile technology solutions for Building Control Officers as well as devising a conference for local secondary school children on business skills.
“These corporate projects created an immediate organisational benefit”, said Marissa.“They have far surpassed expectations and have proved that middle managers, given the right motivation, can deliver exciting and innovative projects – over and above their normal sphere of work.”
Prepared for the future
A robust evaluation was carried out during the course of the programme and then again soon after it finished. The evaluation based on 360 degree feedback showed that for participants there had been significant personal growth, skills development, improvement in management and leadership practice and increased personal capacity.
The programme has been an overwhelming success for the Council and as a result a third cohort are currently embarking on the same journey. At the Council’s second re-accreditation for Investors in People, the assessor complimented the Council on delivering such an inclusive and engaging people development opportunity.
“The change agenda in local government is ambitious and challenging”, said Marissa. “This fresh approach to people development, engaging with external centres of excellence such as Roffey Park to provide inspiring opportunities has been transformational. The programme has enthused and motivated our managers who may well go on to become Local Government leaders of the future. These staff are now prepared to embrace change with confidence and the services they manage will be more efficient and led by people who work well together and want their Council to be the best it can be.”
At the launch of the second programme the Chief Executive John Jory testified to the impact the programme had had on the Council’s Audit Commission assessment regarding “Use of Resources”. He said “the assessor commented on how the management group had grown in confidence and competence since the last assessment. I believe the programme has been a significant contributor towards this assessment”.
“The programme continues to inspire and enhance service delivery through implementing innovative ideas”, said Marissa. “The Council’s people believe themselves to be winners and have a renewed pride – courtesy of Fast Track”.