leading change

Hub member Marion Janner has done an incredible job at leading change in mental health service in the UK with her Star Wards initiative. The link to the website gives you some insight into how effective her approach, based on her 'tweak, turn, transform' change framework is being. Well over half the acute mental health wards in the UK have signed up to Marion's initiative, and she won the backing of the Mental Health Commission and other authorities. Extraordinary achievement in leading change, I think.

Hub member Tim Clark sent me his book on change. I like it a lot. Here are some excerpts - from the flyleaf and a few sections that I enjoyed - to give you a taster. I particularly like his points about how the leaders' ability to draw out people's discretionary efforts is more important in success than strategy or other issues that are usually assumed to be primary success factors. I also like his central point that the leader's role is largely one of energy management within an organization; generating, releasing and channeling people's energy:

This is useful and powerful, as it helps us identify what's missing in largescale complex change efforts, sometimes by working backwards from the outcome (eg if your current organisation's situation is 'confusion', looking back through the horizontal line from that outcome may help you identify the cause - lack of vision or a vision that is poorly communicated or not shared or bought into). There is a downloadable version, below (click on the 'attachment' title) if you need it.

One of our members, Richard Cooke of I-Change, has some interesting articles on his website. Here are links to them. He also has a great blog post in his leadership diary in The Hub about the value of doing nothing:

• Sounding Board: The Value of a Sounding Board: or who should a leader listen to?

It's not often that you see a man claimed by some to be the world's greatest expert on leadership sitting next to a penguin. Professor John Kotter is particularly famous for his Eight Step Change Framework for leading largescale change. There's a summarised version of the Eight Steps attached as a Word document if you are interested. Just click on the 'attachments' headline below the video clip. Kotter's previous books, such as The Heart of Change, explain how the eight steps work.