What can those working on "the Big Society" learn from successful collaboration leaders?

Last week I went to a conference on the ‘big society’, organised by the centre right think tank, Reform. I wanted to find out where the mood music on ‘big society’ had got to now that the idea has been in the public consciousness for a year. (The concept ‘got legs’ in the UK political scene after Cameron talked about it in a leadership debate in April 2010, though many Conservatives would say they had been working up the policy intent for 3 or 4 years before that.) The idea of devolving power to local communities, getting government out of the way, increasing networks and connections at a local level.... this all sounds rather like promoting collaboration to me!

Naturally, it being a conference, there were plenty of people with strong opinions, eager to have their say. Bernard Jenkin, MP for Harwich and North Essex, was on one of the panels. He chairs the Public Accounts Select Committee, which has just launched an inquiry into the Big Society. He said something I’ve been thinking for a while. 

“The Big Society requires civil servants to have new skills, the skill of getting things going in communities.This is potentially a huge culture change for government and how it goes about the business of government.” 

He has written to all Permanent Secretaries of government departments (the big bosses) to ask them how they are taking forward Cameron’s promise last year that this would turn ‘Whitehall on its head’. 

Patrick Butler, Guardian journalist, also criticised the issue of implementation, although blamed this on the politicians. He said that the Big Society had been Cameron’s Hurricane Katrina moment. The cuts to local authorities were affecting the NGO sector the most, including excellent charities that were actually critical to the success of the big society. In Patrick’s view, the failure to ensure the role of the State in creating the big society infrastructure (for example by rewarding and supporting organisations that could be at the vanguard) was an error, and a result of the non-intervention dogma.

All this brought me back to the polarity I saw at play in my visits in the USA and Canada. In order to get collaboration happening on the ground, you needed strong, possibly even formidable leadership. At the same time, the group of leaders had to lead the constellation of organisations towards devolved power, where local ‘agents’ (as Service Canada called them) could take decisions on the ground to make things work for the citizen. In this way, silos were broken down, and collaboration enhanced. 

Beth Follini, a Quaker and executive coach I had lunch with last week, has written an article with the Dutch academic Ursula Glunk on how polarities are often badly dealt with by leaders.

People find it extremely difficult to deal with paradoxical tensions. Often, we do not see that in order to gain and maintain the benefits of one pole, we must also pursue the benefits of the other. Instead we tend to fall into one of the following polarity traps (Cameron et al., 2006; Johnson, 1991; Lewis, 2000; The Polarity Pathway Group, 2009):

(1) Clinging to one pole and overemphasizing it while projecting and repressing the other. Using the metaphor of breathing, this trap is comparable to either merely inhaling or merely exhaling.

(2) Obsessively swinging from one pole to the other, from overemphasis on one side to overemphasis on the other side. In terms of the breathing metaphor, this trap could be compared to hyperventilation.

(3) Creating a lukewarm compromise between the poles that lacks all vitality. Again translating it to the breathing metaphor, this trap is analogous to shallow breathing.

The dynamics of such reactions are often vicious, leading to either/or thinking, lowered creativity and effectiveness, difficulties to collaborate, and decreased alignment between words and deeds. A typical illustration that many executive coaches will recognize from their practice is the manager who speaks the language of empowerment while being at the same time heavily attached to keeping control, having the deep belief that without this control chaos will take over.

(From ‘Polarities in Executive Coaching’, Ursula Glunk and Beth Follini, Journal of Management Development Vol. 30 No.2, 2011)

It’s the both/and that is the way forward. Applying Beth and Ursula’s prescription for handling polarities, in the same article, to the Big Society, would be interesting. They recommend

1. Discovering polarized thinking. Perhaps Eric Pickles’ (the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) clear commitment to decentralisation is a good example. He is very very against the idea that Government can be the answer. My experience working in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in 2005-6 is at the opposite end of the pole.  We never answered the question, ‘What role can the Government play in promoting or pushing this policy’ with the answer, “none”.
2. Exploring and embracing each pole. Beth and Ursula comment, “The client learns to look at the up- and downside of each pole. What serves the client here? What does not serve the client?”. Patrick Butler’s challenge to Government is that Government has  become over zealous in rejection of its role of Government. There are upsides to getting Government out of the way though, well articulated by Oliver Letwin MP at the Reform conference last week. I paraphrase: 

“What is the best way of ensuring a lot of innovation? Have a wide range of providers and ensure contestability. By empowering at a local level, and liberalising, we open up the space to a huge number of bodies and individuals to act and participate. When we do this, the ‘them’ becomes ‘us’, decreasing frustration and increasing empowerment.”

1. Softening the boundaries – At this stage, the client starts to understand what has been holding the two poles apart. The concept of the boundary keeper is introduced, an imagined figure whose job it is to hold the two poles apart. I start wondering who this boundary keeper is. The media, forcing political parties in to ‘dividing lines’ between ‘The State can solve this’ and ‘let the power go’? Parties themselves, with inherently different philosophies and the desire for differentiation?
2. Stepping into transformation – “This final step naturally flows from the work with the boundary keeper. The client is invited to return to the poles and to look at both at the same time – noticing what it feels like to hold both and what has shifted for instance if one pole was favoured?” What is it like to hold leading from the front, and devolving power, at the same time?

It made me hope that, as Permanent  Secretaries take forward their departmental culture change and reply to Bernard Jenkin MP on what they are up to, (if they choose to give such a letter a fulsome reply!) that they do not throw babies out with bathwaters, and are alive to the benefits of each pole - strong leadership AND devolving power at the same time.