Leadership Conference Supported by Architecture + Design Scotland and the Academy of Urbanism
1: Planning, agility and leadership
Learning from the City Gardens Project: Planning, agility and leadership The graffiti on the wall in the waste ground was clear about the nature and pace of modern life. Painted big, and dominating the crumbling structure, the artist had sought to capture a sense of the times. Simply it said ‘you plan, we make history’. In an increasingly diverse and globalising world, change happens rapidly. The agents of change act differently than in the past. Places change everyday, in unpredictable and perhaps uncontrollable ways. Military strategists are often asked about how they develop the strategies and tactics that enable success in the field. One assumption is meticulously planned campaigns. One reality is more responsive: militarists observe and process patterns as they happen and act upon this information. Observation, processing and action are immediate. Some basic frameworks are planned. Much of the action is informed by the people in action. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher P. Gehler draws out the implications of this environment for the military, and its leadership, in straightforward terms: “Adapt or Die”. He explains as follows: In the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment we face for the foreseeable future if we were to choose one advantage over our adversaries it would certainly be this: to be superior in the art of learning and adaptation… Rather than focussing on a fixed point in a constantly changing future, the Army should create innovative organisations that are agile within the strategic context. [Gehler in Mintzberg, 1994] Constant learning and adaptation at leadership and organisational level are important in Gehler’s description. There is an implication: not all factors can be controlled, and therefore can not be ‘led’ in the traditional sense. Placemaking is an ordering process that combines two modes of governance- spontaneous and purposive. Only the second is directly amenable to control, and therefore to leadership. Leadership in this context is all about relationships, whose influence moves between leader-dominance to follower-dominance. Given these ideas about change, and place, a focus on the leadership and management of organisations is insufficient for the next generation of leaders in economic regeneration, planning and regeneration. We need to strengthen the leadership perspective to take full account of the challenges associated with transforming particular places as well as organisations of working across boundaries with new and untried networks over extended periods in which the environment for policy changes. And we need to address the issues associated with contemporary places rather than the economic activities associated with previous decades.
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Qualities of place shaping leadership In the ‘Leadership of subregional places in the context of growth Trickett et al suggest that ‘leadership requirements differ according to the contexts of the given place and the degree to which the system is supportive of the place shaping requirement’. The effects of globalisation, and the shifts in how capital locates, fixes and produces has had a dramatic effect on places. There are both different speeds of growth and inequity within areas of growth leading to social exclusion, and a growing phenomenon of ‘uselessness’. Differential growth, over time, can make places ‘useless or functionally redundant’. Tackling this requires integration of people and place strategies at different scales. Placemaking therefore is a multi- dimensional and multi scalar activity, aimed at achieving sustainable communities through an understanding of: • The consumption habits, constraints and aspirations of different residents/households and housing market segments; • The fit between economic trajectories at the regional level and how this translates to consumption at the neighbourhood level; and • The investment strategies of key stakeholders. In developing work for the Homes and Communities Agency, Trickett et al note that the economic downturn has highlighted systematic failures in the leadership and procedures informing how places in all contexts are developed and managed. They propose a model of leadership which ‘highlights the importance of leaders understanding their local context and developing interventions and responses that are applicable to local need and circumstances. This isn’t about localising instructions from the centre. This is about forming appropriate responses from to local context, enabled by power, credibility and influence at all levels of resource allocation and decision making. Their model suggests six key ‘asks’ of place leaders in the context of place shaping. It requires leaders who: • Understand the challenges associated with transforming places as well as organisations: leadership for co-operative advantage; • Leadership across the community divide co-creating opportunity with the communities of place and practice; lead by a process of influence-reconciling competing and conflicting interests; • Operate with and through fluid ‘relational’ processes; lead without formal power-leading the leaders; • Understand the interface between different spatial scales and the intended and unintended consequences of a given intervention; a spatial literacy of place; • Have an understanding of how cross-sector synergies and resources can be brought to bear in the shaping of place: a capacity to bend mainstream resources and attract benefits in kind-to draw in sufficient resources to ‘make it happen’; • To lead and work effectively within a constantly changing policy environment: leadership of uncertainty-asking the questions without certainty of a clear answer
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A key issue in all this is context. Some commentators argue that the ‘path dependency’ of a place matters more than location per se. This means that ‘initial moves in one direction elicit further moves in that same direction; in other words the order in which things happen affects how they happen; the trajectory of change up to a certain point constrains the trajectory after that point…. This requires a flexible, and informed leadership that is capable of working functional and thematic boundaries with an understanding of how the co-ordination of cross sector resources can be brought to bear on the shaping of places. It requires strengthening the integration of vertical [space] and horizontal [thematic] boundaries. This, according to Trickett et al, is a challenge to the prevailing culture where the leader makes relationships on behalf of organisations. They conclude that ‘if leadership is exercised increasingly in ‘non visible-non executive’ forms, essentially it is a cross boundary, collective and relational phenomenon-then geographically bounded political leadership has its limitations. Place shaping in Scotland: the need for better leadership? ‘Delivering Better Places’ a research initiative between the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, A+DS, and RICS with University of Glasgow suggests, on the basis of 8 case studies of place shaping projects across Europe that ‘good leadership matters because it drives forward action, breeds confidence, provides certainty for development partners, reduces risk for all involved and widens participation by architects and builders in the delivery. Without such leadership, place delivery relies on rules and regulations’. In recent decades, Scotland’s record in place-making can best be described as mixed. While some limited exemplars have been developed at particular Scottish locations, most development has been of a standard form and average quality, creating places that are mundane and crucially not well integrated. The mistake has too often been made that the pressing regeneration needs in Scotland can be met only by a cost-cutting and rapid approach to development. In reality this has simply created unsustainable places that do little to bolster Scotland’s economy or benefit the poorest in society, whom regeneration is supposed to assist. There has been a determined attempt over the past decade to improve place quality though the policy emphasis, for example, on mixed communities, urban regeneration and the low carbon economy. There is now much more shared understanding of why places matters at a time when economic, social and environmental sustainability is seen as increasingly central to public debate. The real impediment to achieving better places in Scotland is thus no longer a dispute about their value or ignorance about their qualities, but rather concern about the actual practicalities of their delivery. Demographic, economic, social, technological, cultural and environmental change all drive the development process forward. Successful real estate developers learn to anticipate these factors and turn them to their advantage as opportunities arise to initiate development at particular sites and locations. Sometimes, such developers are interested in creating better places, but more often than not, their motives are more narrowly focused on achieving financial returns. What is crucial to place quality at this stage in the development process is the extent to which place making is ingrained within the strategic thinking of those in positions of leadership and influence at the local level. Localities with a strong commitment to place-making are evident through innovative people and organisations in public life who themselves anticipate and seek to influence the external forces of changes that drive development forward. When opportunities arise, they are pro-active (often alongside developers) rather than simply reactive to the initiatives of others. So the extent to which the mindset of real estate developers is influenced at this early stage by local leaders who anticipate and even initiate development can make an important difference to the prospects of achieving place quality.
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An effective place promoter is a dynamic individual working within a supportive organisational context. The organisation empowers and enables individual action by granting that individual a measure of freedom combined with necessary power, resources and authority. Crucially, if a particular individual moves on elsewhere, the organisation provides the mechanism by which someone else can be recruited to replace the individual who has left. At its most effective, the place promoter provides the critical spark to turn a ‘vague’ aspiration into a concrete project. When this passionate driver disappears, then the emphasis and clarity often changes too. One of the place promoter’s wider tasks is to set the tone by fostering a place-making culture. This matters because it requires thinking and action that is holistic and joined-up rather than fragmented into silos and professional territories; that is proactive and place-shaping - focused on longterm place quality and resilience. Proactive place-shaping involves initiation skills (the ability to communicate place potential) and orchestration skills (the political and operational acumen to enthuse and bring together a variety of other people and organisations). Both require a welldeveloped knowledge and information base to ensure that place vision derives from substantive social, economic and environmental analysis. In the European examples such as Vauban, professional expertise in place-making was accorded a central role in the way the local authority was structured. Too often in British cities, such expertise is limited and has been relegated to lower tiers of the organisation, to the detriment of place quality. Moreover, at a political level, local authorities in the UK have suffered from greater residualisation, compared to their Northern European equivalents. In England, this has meant that government agencies such as English Partnerships (now the Homes and Communities Agency - HCA) have provided the organisational context and support for place promotion. It could be argued that, due to the greater institutional fragmentation and congestion of many different governmental bodies operating at the local level in the UK, it is more critical and vital for place promotion to see a reemergence of municipal leadership.
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Planning and leading: an oxymoron? From old American cities to British new towns, from the richest countries to the poorest, planners have difficulty in explaining who they are and what they should be expected to do. If they are supposed to doctor sick societies, the patient never seems to get well. Why can’t the planners ever seem to do the right thing? [Mintzberg, 1994, 134] Henry Mintzberg in ‘The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning’ develops a discussion and distinction between processes of formal planning and responsive ideas around strategy. Mintzberg essentially argues that planning, as a formalised process, is essentially conservative. Its function is to operationalize strategy, to deliver on visions, not to create them. He suggests a fundamental difference in the thinking of formalised processes and creative processes in terms of the ability to shape and respond to change: ‘whereas planning is concerned managing categories, creativity is concerned with the constant re-ordering of categories. Mintzberg defines planning as ‘a formalised procedure to produce an articulated result, in the form of an integrated system of decisions’. He suggests that ‘formalisation’ means three things [i] to decompose [ii] to articulate and [iii] to rationalise the process by which decisions are made and integrated in organisations. This formal, and rational process, underpinned by analysis is necessary for planning to control the environment of decision making and enable the conditions for certainty and clarity. This though raises a fundamental problem, as identified by Gibney in a place context: not all phenomena can be controlled, and the nature of change in place is about both purposive and spontaneous change. This presents a problem for the ‘integration’ role of planning in that the nature of places and complex organisations ‘consists not of the ‘single decision making centre’ but of a multitude of centres…and various logics of action…..’. As a consequence ‘managers make greater use of their own personal views of company strategy than they do of real strategy as envisaged by the top executives…’. The suggestion is that ‘instead of integrating the efforts of people, planning enhances the conflict between them’. [p106] In a study of strategic planning following the 1970’s oil crisis, Gomer drew out some conclusions about the role and impact of planning in relation to crises. Gomer suggested that formal planning lent some evaluative support to problem solving activities related to the crisis, but did not provide ‘early warning’ or make the organisation more sensitive to environmental change….in other words, planners did not contribute to the recognition phase of the response process.’ Instead, planning emerged as a lagging system, more concerned with the output from strategy making than the input to it.’ In this context, Gomer suggested that planning was less useful as a responsive and reflexive tool for addressing the changing nature of change, and more useful as a process for the implementation of measures’ [107]….companies plan when they have intended strategies, not in order to get them. In other words, one plans not a strategy but the consequences of it. Planning gives order to vision, and puts form on it for the sake of formalised structure and environmental expectation. One can say that planning operationalizes strategy. [Mintzberg, p111]
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These ideas about planning lend themselves more towards the concept of management than leadership. However, ‘Leadership complements management; it doesn’t replace it� (John Kotter, 1990, p. 103) The differences and interdependencies between leadership and management are summarised as follows Leadership is about: Coping with change Articulating long-term vision & direction Communicating with people, across & outwith organisation Motivating & inspiring, involving people & satisfying needs for recognition self-esteem ability to live up to ideals
Management is about: Coping with complexity by instilling order & consistency Planning & budgeting to achieve immediate goals & targets Organising & staffing, creating efficient hierarchies & structures Controlling & problem solving, containing risks of failure
One of the differences between the idea of leadership and management seems to be responsiveness to change, and the power to act quickly. Although much of the literature on place and place-making emphasises the role of the public sector, it often makes the mistake of assuming the public sector is a unified idea. It also tends to avoid critical debate about the tensions in requirement placed on the operation of professionals and politicians in the public domain, particularly around accountability. These factors, in addition to a tendency for formalising and predictability as a mode of operation, can influence and affect the leadership influence of planning in a changing set of contexts at place level.
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Responsiveness to change in the public sector setting: agility versus accountability In responding to the Demos paper on Agility, Gallop concludes that the 20th century model of the bureaucracy which prized hierarchy, specialisation, efficiency and standardisation has been found wanting in the era of globalisation and rising public expectations. The failure to put in place a fit for purpose framework to address contemporary contexts has, in his view, left a bewildering variety of objectives which our public servants are expected to pursue, both individually and collectively. • We ask them to be fully accountable and yet on the other hand we ask them to be creative and innovative. • We ask them to be efficient and on the other we insist that they be effective and produce real change in the community. • We ask them to be inspirational and purposeful in respect of their agency responsibilities and on the other, we expect them to join up, co-operate and compromise with others. • We ask them to perform to particular targets and at the same time to be agile and flexible in the way they operate. He highlights that all of these objectives, and the performance against them, happens in a context of constant political anxieties and tensions, and media pressure. In short, Gallop suggests that the framework for adaptability and leadership as a responsive process is highly constrained for participants in the public sector. However, the author agrees with the need for greater ‘agility’ to better direct interventions and actions to achieve better outcomes for citizens. In this, he identifies three themes: • Firstly, working effectively in a world of constant, and sometimes rapid change. • Secondly, dealing with complex problems in an uncertain environment. • Thirdly, handling crises, be they natural or human induced. In underpinning his discussion of each of these themes, he describes four areas of public sector work, each of which inform the making and management of place: • • • •
Law making, rule making and policy development, Service delivery, Tax collection and the management of government finance, and Monitoring and enforcing of laws and regulations.
Looking at two issues, rules and policies and service delivery, it is possible to draw out some issues for leadership in place. In respect of rules and policies, there is increasing pressure for agility from both politicians and public servants. Enabling this to happen will require initiation by the political arm of government. These changes may sit uneasily with or even contradict the ideological and policy traditions of the party in government. This makes their management a particularly sensitive issue. This requires a leadership of action by individuals and the organisation of government.
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In terms of service delivery, it is important to distinguish between human services [health, education etc] and infrastructure [roads, telecommunications, utilities]. Increasingly, in both services, the issue is about moving from provision of particular services to meet particular needs to the provision of bundles of services to solve particular problems. This necessitates creative and ongoing engagement with customers, and careful planning of capital investment. The big challenge, however, lies in the move away from “consequences” to “causes”. This is about for example, the move from just a focus on say schools to educate around an agreed curriculum, to the provision of this plus education in personal capacities as well as particular knowledge. Public expectations are pushing governments to press deeper in the quest for solutions to problems. This raises issues of leadership in terms of the purpose of processes like planning, and the way in which collaboration across service areas is enabled and operated. If agility or responsiveness is a key condition of leadership in the private and public sector, then it needs to be expressed in practical, actionable terms. A study by consultants AT Kearney on service delivery and agility defined narrowly as “making government faster, more flexible and more responsive to the needs of customers” concluded that there were six aspects of agility: • • • • • •
organisational flexibility focussed leadership a culture of research and innovation attention to the management of customer relationships support for e government commitment to systems of performance management
In looking at the most successful agencies, the biggest impact came from giving priority to customer service, organisational change capabilities and leadership. In particular a commitment to and consistent support for change from the top was seen as crucial. Central to all this us trust. Trust is about the nature of the relationships between politicians and public servants, between public organisations and citizens but also in the creation of space for experimentation. This requires different approaches to planning and delivery of services, engagement with customers in the planning and delivery process and a concept of agility that is more than ‘the capacity to respond rapidly and effectively to the latest media crisis’.
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References Allen, John, Massey, Doreen and Pryke, Michael. Unsettling Cities: Movement/Settlement (Understanding Cities), Routledge, London and Open University, Milton Keynes, 1999 Adams, David, Tiesdell, Steve, Weeks, George. Delivering Better Places, A+DS, RICS, Scottish Government, 2010 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/336587/0110158.pdf Bartlett, Jamie. Towards Agile Government, Demos, London, 2008 www.demos.co.uk/publications/towardsagilegovernment Chisolm, Sharon [ed]. ‘Investing in Better Places: International Perspectives’ , The Smith Institute, 2010. http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Investing%20in%20Better%20Places.pdf Collinge, Colin and Gibney, John. Connecting place, policy and leadership, Policy Studies, Vol 31, Number 4, July 2010, pp 379-392 Collinge, Chris and Gibney, John.Placemaking and the limitations of spatial leadership: reflections on the Oresund, in Policy Studies, Vol 31, Number 4, July 2010, pp457-474. Eds: John Gibney and Chris Mabey Gallop, Geoff. Agile Government. University of Sydney, 2008 www.demos.co.uk/files/File/AgileGovernment_Geoff_Gallop.pdf Kotter, John. A force for change: how leadership differs from management, Free Press, New York, 1990 Mabey, Chris and Freeman, Tim.Reflections on leadership and place, in Policy Studies, Vol 31, Number 4, July 2010, pp429-440Eds: John Gibney and Chris Mabey Markusen, Anne (2004) Targeting occupations in regional and community economic development, Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol 70 No 3 Summer 2004, pp253-268 Markusen, Ann (2006) The artistic dividend: urban artistic specialisation and economic development implications, Urban Studies, Vol 43 No 10 Sep 2006, pp1661-1686 Mintzberg, Peter.The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Free Press, New York, 1994 Parkinson, Michael et al. Competitive European Cities: Where do the Core Cities Stand? ODPM, London, 2004. Trickett, Lisa and Lee, Peter.Leadership of ‘subregional’ places in the context of growth, in Policy Studies, Vol 31, Number 4, July 2010, pp429-440Eds: John Gibney and Chris Mabey
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