Description
Turnaround Strategy In A Large Public Service Organisation A Consideration Of Successful Synergy Between Effective Leader And Clarity Of Strategy
Turnaround strategy in a large public service organisation: a consideration of successful
synergy between effective leader and clarity of strategy
Stephen Reeve, Sarah Walbank (associate)
University of Brighton Business School
[email protected]
Abstract
Between 2009 and 2011, the fortunes of a large public sector organisation operating within the field of
criminal justice, were empirically acknowledged to have been turned around. Outputs advocated by
Government sponsor were achieved by the end of the period. This was dramatic in that the movement in
measured performance was from globally low to globally high. Key to such an emphatic change scenario
appeared to be the impact and effect of a new Chief Officer, the most senior role within such an
organisation. This article will explore the nature of the leadership practice introduced; its impact on
strategic alignment around performance measures and targets; and the reverberations into
organisational culture the above may have engendered. Accepting the empirical improvements as ‘de
facto’ within the context of Government/Agency relations, the article will draw directly from the first
person narrative of the leader in question in an attempt to catalogue the features of experiential practice,
which may have had the most salience to change management practice and leadership in general.
Further, the implications of such analysis for other similar organisations will be considered. Abstracting
from this specific case, the authors suggest a possible contribution to theoretical approaches to
turnaround.
Introduction
This article examines the sector-confirmed successful turnaround of a large metropolitan criminal justice
organisation following the arrival of a new leader. It will consider leadership behaviours, which had a
significant impact in order to explore the difference a leader, might make to organisational
transformation or turnaround strategy. In 2009, staff morale was low and target culture deeply resented.
Since a poorly planned and executed merger of a number of services in 2001, there had been three
previous leaders and a short period under a Specialist Performance Improvement Action Team. In an
attempt to address the performance deficits, there had been three significant structural re-organisations,
which, in the context of additional legislative changes, had negatively impacted on employees’ attitude
both to change and senior management as well as not achieving the required performance improvements.
This was the environment into which the leader was invited by the appropriate state ministry, with a
remit to address the challenges of a troubled organisation.
Taking the personal account of the leader, this article will filter that personal narrative and test
assumptions about the effect of leadership skills on transformational change. Clearly, in any
constructivist sense, there are as many definitions of action and success or failure as numbers of
employees in the organisation, however the narrative correlation of elite interview with formal (and
institutionally acknowledged) empirical results, participant observation and theoretical analysis provides
a unique and innovative lens through which to consider corporate change. Such a method allows a deep,
insider, change-leadership perspective, as well as providing an opportunity to compare the actions
described with theory and evidence from the managing change literature. Indeed, quoting Dyer and
Wilkins (1991, pp.618), “ However, we hope that many scholars will continue to try to tell good stories
which have theoretical import”, we as authors have tried to capture the spirit of the ‘classic’ case studies,
with their context, depth and narrative much advocated by Dyer and Wilkins in their response to
Eisenhardt.
Leader recruitment context
In 2009, a new leader with a known track record for improving performance in a similar, albeit smaller
organisation, was contracted for four months with the task of ensuring the organisation meet key
performance targets in the first quarter of the new financial year. When a replacement was not found at
the end of that period The Chief Officer (CO) was asked to stay for a further 12 months. Within the first
four months this CO had rapidly improved performance and within nine months the targets which had
been set (which could only be reached via a battery of sufficiently achieved KPI’s), of achieving Trust
status for the organisation had been met.
Analysing an organisation and its need for change is the first step for a leader (Kanter et al, 1992). Even
before taking up post, the future CO had been briefed about the problems facing the organisation.
Claiming awareness of “all that was needed to be known about its failings” from a serious case review
that had attracted negative media attention, and in particular, “insufficient senior management awareness
of locality, capacity and competence issues”, he found an organisation from director level down which
had “lost its grip”. In terms of human resources, recruitment, frontline management, communication,
training and accountability, the organisation lacked a performance culture. The CO spent the first two
weeks talking to as many staff in different roles as possible and, combined with existing knowledge,
gained a clear idea of what action was needed. To his advantage the new leader found a general and high
level of disgruntlement at being perceived as a failing organisation amongst staff and he viewed this as a
motivating factor that would help make the changes that were required to radically improve performance
and meet government targets.
The leader’s personal narrative – themed in terms of change levers
This section provides a narrative of the series of strategic instructions and actions, which flowed
following the confirmation of the new CO’s position. Taking the levers of change concepts stated by this
leader as a filter, we have placed the chronological narrative within sections under the self-same headings
he himself suggests. We have placed these descriptors within meta-headings which cluster the conceptual
nature of the action descriptions.
Looking back, the leader states the task facing him as new most senior officer in terms of:
? Creating order from chaos at the corporate centre
? Engendering a new culture of joint responsibility and accountability to the senior management
group
? Setting the tone and behaviour for the organisation
? Earning the trust of middle managers
? Issuing a small number of focussed and consistent messages
? Spreading “home truths” to challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture”
? Fostering a sense of pride in organisational success to move to a “can do” culture
? Tackling Information Technology
? Tackling the endemic problems in HR
? Improving industrial relations with staff and the union
Interpreting the narrative from the series of elite interviews, author familiarity and participant experience
with the case and the leader suggested particular groupings of the above: ‘Creating order from chaos at
the corporate centre’ and ‘Engender a new culture of joint responsibility and accountability
amongst the senior management team and middle managers’ and ‘Tackling IT’ and ‘Tackling the
endemic problems in HR’ are placed under the umbrella term: From loose to tight coupling
‘Setting the Tone’, ‘Earning the trust of middle managers’, ‘Fostering a sense of pride in
organisational success to move to a “can do” culture’ and ‘Improving industrial relations with staff
and the union’: Deliberately altering the climate
‘Issuing a small number of focussed and consistent messages’ and ‘Spreading “home truths” to
challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture” ‘: Communicate effectively
From loose to tight coupling
The new CO’s first concern was that the kind of cohesive leadership expected from the Senior
Management Team (SMT) was significantly absent. Previous experience suggested that without order at
the corporate centre, change would not be forthcoming. The first step was to establish compulsory
weekly meetings of all operational and non- operational directors. The task was to ensure the
organisation met key performance indicators. Therefore performance was made the focus of SMT
meetings and everything that was discussed and planned in those meetings was guided by how it would
improve performance. As well as weekly meetings, “away days” were arranged to ensure that the SMT
developed a strong commitment to the organisational goal of achieving much improved performance.
The CO considers the most important decision was to have instructed all managers to meet weekly. As
well as the weekly meetings of the senior management team, he introduced and chaired weekly meetings
of all second line managers (assistant chief officers). The purpose of these meetings was for assistant
chief officers to provide highly detailed performance information from their areas/departments and to
examine in depth the lessons to be learned from successes and failures. For public sector managers who
had not previously been used to this degree of granularity, this represented a large cultural change, as did
the public scrutiny of their department’s performance.
The chief officer made absolutely clear to the SMT, as well as to the organisation, that a four month
period had been granted to bring about a significant improvement in performance or the government
would take alternative action. He was aided by a real sense of urgency about the task in hand, much
along the now conventional lines suggested by Kotter (1996). Gersick (1991) suggests that a crisis
serves to awaken staff from complacency or inertia. The new leader capitalised on the sense of urgency
that lay behind the appointment as CO.
The new CO was aided by an initiative that had already been developed and was ready for
implementation. ’Onwards and upwards’* (OAU) was a new accountability and performance structure
which external consultants had designed with input from operational staff to address under-performance.
Under OAU, daily team meetings were introduced to focus on every item that contributed to achieving
targets. There was also a channel for communicating upwards about best practice and impediments to
performance. Team managers were required to feed data back to their line managers at weekly meetings
and exception reports when targets were missed. This represented a huge cultural shift for managers and
staff, who were not used to such a level of accountability.
The CO set the Management Information Team (MIT) the task of producing data to aid managers by
identifying what work was outstanding and what work had not been completed on time. This team level
data was to ensure honest discussions in management meetings, counteracting the previous perceived
culture of middle management filtering information and telling SMT what they wanted to hear, described
by Kotter (ibid) as management “happy talk”.
Making the OAU strategy central to the transformation strategy, he personally monitored progress
rigorously in meetings with middle managers. This level of attention to detail ensured that the required
changes penetrated to every corner of the organisation. Generating coherence and alignment within the
senior team led almost automatically to the creation of a ‘strong guiding coalition’ Kotter (ibid). To
strengthen the senior coalition further, there was a requirement that the Directors become directly
responsible for answering to the Board about the performance of their own departments, rather than
speaking for them. The CO recalls from talking to the directors that these changes were welcomed and
indeed that the directors felt empowered by the sense of purpose and authority imbued in their role. They
also ensured that the behaviour of senior managers was consistent.
Tackling IT
Apart from the need for cultural change, probably the biggest barrier to success the chief’s plans faced
was the high number of working days lost per month as a result of the organisation’s poor IT
infrastructure. He grasped the seriousness and importance of the removal of barriers as central to
empowering people. Within two weeks the status quo was under challenge as matters were taken to
Government Ministers and weekly meetings held with the IT provider until the problem was resolved and
the system much improved. The significance of this was not only to reduce a huge source of stress but
also actively and publicly to demonstrate listening and commitment to staff, essential to the process of
building trust.
Tackling the endemic problems in HR
The CO identified that another stream crucial to the change management plan was tackling the endemic
problems within the organisation’s Human Resource function. The departure of the then Director of HR
within weeks of the new leader’s arrival provided a catalytic opportunity to look at longstanding
industrial relations problems and HR policies. The CO labels the sickness policy “of poor quality” and
other policies “ok but badly implemented, as a result of middle managers relying too heavily on HR
managers, who lacked insight into operational culture, for a decision”. In his view recruitment had
previously been guided “by a misunderstanding of the equal opportunities policy into un-businesslike
decisions” which had had a detrimental impact at all levels of the organisation. A high number of
grievances and disciplinary hearings across the organisation evidenced further the poor relationships
between staff and management.
Early on, he began the task of aligning both HR policies and the union with the performance agenda.
Under the slogan, “high on performance, high on duty of care” the CO made sure awareness of staff well-
being was not overlooked in the drive to meet targets.
A Human Resources taskforce with representatives from HR, the union and all staff grades was set up to
revise HR policies that would result in a more efficient, effective and fair organisation, particularly in
relation to capability, sickness, mobility, and discipline. When completed, the training for middle
managers in the new HR policies was jointly led by the training department and union, illustrating an
improvement in industrial relations. A significant drop in the level of sickness absence during his tenure
seemed to reflect that the strategy was having an impact.
Deliberately altering the climate
This new chief officer made clear a core value that “the behaviour and tone of the CO sets the tone for
the organisation”, and therefore set out in terms of behaviour, dress, presentation and strategies to role
model the tone desired.
Standards for behaviour and tone were made explicit in a paper called ‘A Shared Responsibility – How
we achieve high performance in our organisation’. It described the behaviours all staff needed to
demonstrate “to become the organisation that we aspire to be”. The CO clarified the underlying
importance of both meeting targets and completing high quality work and in contrast to previous
leadership statements, made explicit that the consequences of not meeting targets lay in formal sanction.
Earning the trust of middle managers
Another element the leader considers key to the turnaround strategy was the support of middle managers
in implementing a new vision for the organisation. Building relationships with middle managers was
prioritised in order to build trust. The CO held meetings with all of them to hear their individual
perspectives on the problems facing the organisation and was surprised to discover that for some of them,
it was first time they had been in the CO’s office or had held a one-to-one meeting with a CO. Such
relationship building or affiliation is acknowledged as a key building block when implementing a
successful change management plan (Kanter 1992, Goleman 1998, Mento et al 2002, Jick 2003)..
Another stratagem he used to earn trust was to empower middle managers to set the pace and manage the
improvement of performance at the front line. Surprised by the ambitious pace that they suggested but
not wanting to undermine their enthusiasm he decided in favour of supporting their suggestions.
Oreg (2006) examined the link between trust in management and resistance to change, and found a strong
association between distrust, negative emotions and behaviours. He also found that a lack of trust in
management might provoke a full spectrum of resistance forms. Michaelis et al (2009) also identified
that trust in top management is likely to be associated with high levels of affective commitment to
change and a greater willingness to cooperate. Busch, Cadwallader and Parish (2008) found that
employees who enjoy good quality relationships with their managers feel more desire and duty to support
an organisational change. Such research supports the CO’s desire to win the trust not only of the SMT
but of all managers and staff.
Fostering a sense of pride in organisational success and changing the culture to “we can do it”
Experience had convinced the CO that people required a sense of achievement and pride in themselves
and the organisation in order for culture to change. Hayes (2007) contends that empowering people to
change includes creating a climate in which people believe in themselves and are confident they have the
support of others to make things happen. The CO found that the first urgent task was a backlog of 3000
incomplete assessments and so organised a completion “blitz” with a two-week deadline. Staff and
managers across the organisation were assigned to the task and many worked long hours until the job was
successfully completed. This was a significant turning point signalled by Kotter (1996) or Mento et al
(2002) as a “short term win”; evidence that “we can do it” and the provision of the motivation for people
to keep the momentum going. According to the CO, this evidence of change helped people disassociate
from failure and develop a sense of pride in their organisation, an intrinsic reward essential in the public
sector.
Improving industrial relations with staff and the union
One key aspect of tackling the overall human relations problem was addressing the poor industrial
relations with the trades union, as this was a further barrier to improving performance. The CO described
the union dimension to the problem as “off the wall”. Senior figures in the union were still opposing the
completion of performance targets and were viewed by senior management as supporting a culture of
poor performance and entrenched attitudes. They had been faced, before the leader’s arrival, with a
Director of HR who took an anti-union stance. Performance would not have improved while the trade
union and HR were at loggerheads.
The CO suggests that appointing a new acting HR Director - coincidentally at the time a new union chair
was elected, led to a huge improvement in industrial relations.
Borrowing from the South African national example, part of the strategy for tackling jointly these two
areas was called the “Truth and Reconciliation process” and was designed to expurgate the old
behaviours and allow new behaviours in. This included an event organised to support the work of the
“HR Taskforce” and to provide Board members, trade union representatives and managers with the
opportunity for a frank exchange of views on the recent management of key HR policies in order to clear
the way for the work of the HR Taskforce.
Communicate effectively
Kotter (1996) famously stated that vision is often under-communicated by a factor of ten and then
undermined by managers whose behaviour is not consistent with the message. This is echoed by Burnes
(2004) who says that managers need to send important messages “six times, in six different ways”.
The CO was clear that a communication strategy was vital to building trust and bringing change to this
organisation. Focussing on a limited number of messages was made central to the change process and all
available vehicles were used for spreading the message to all parts of the organisation. The CO
introduced a weekly briefing email which included personal updates as chief officer, and from all the
directors about their spheres of control. Its purpose was to send out key performance messages. In this as
in all media, he consciously chose direct, straightforward, clear and authoritative language to
communicate the message, very aware that to earn respect and trust as a leader, honesty or “home truths”
must lie at the heart of these communications.
Central to downward and upward communication were the daily team meetings and the weekly
managers’ meetings under the OAU strategy. Additionally messages were communicated at the six-
weekly operational managers’ leadership forums and the in-house quarterly publication. Significantly a
conference was held for all managers across the organisation where the CO addressed them with a series
of “home truths” central to the communications strategy.
The OAU strategy recognised the need for two way communication (Kanter 1992, Burnes 1996, Beer
2001) by including a channel for feeding back concerns and barriers to hitting targets to senior
management, enabling staff to become involved or for example to express frustration when progress was
hindered by the poor IT infrastructure. Evidence gathered of lost hours from IT problems in turn
strengthened the CO’s hand with the IT provider.
Oreg (2006) cites Wanberg & Banas, who found that “employees who reported receiving timely,
informative, and useful information about an organizational change presented a more positive evaluation
of the change and increased willingness to cooperate with it”. Lines (2005) found that as well as
leadership ability, fairness, and openness, participation helps to build trust in management. Van Dam et
al (2008) also stress that good communication and participation encourages staff buy-in and minimises
resistance to change. It could not be said that all staff were involved in planning this change, although
OAU had been developed in consultation with some staff representatives, but all staff potentially had a
channel for feeding back information relating to performance via their middle manager to the SMT.
Additionally a staff suggestion scheme was introduced where people submitted ideas for improvements
directly to head office.
Spreading “home truths” to challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture”
One of the major obstacles that the CO recognised at an early stage in tenure was a “cant do” culture
(Knight, 2006). Operational staff thought they were “too busy or too under resourced” for targets.
Managers, historically without support and commitment from the corporate centre, lacked the confidence
to insist targets were met. The CO’s leadership was important in challenging this mental model by
communicating about and adhering to the exigencies of performance. The CO was very clear about what
was required and made his authority absolutely clear by stating unequivocally that failure to meet targets
would not be tolerated and would face sanction. The OAU strategy further invested authority in managers
at all levels and empowered them to drive through change.
A communications strategy called “spreading home truths” was employed to change the current mental
model and bring about cultural change. In a strongly normative mimetic style (DiMaggio and Powell,
1983) the main thrust of the message was that this organisation had comparable resources to similar
organisations where performance was much higher and was therefore considerably under-performing
compared with these agencies. It was also made clear that achieving targets, however individuals
perceived this, was what staff were paid to do. The CO pointed out from personal experience that staff in
other organisations had undergone this cultural shift many years ago and this organisation needed to
catch up. This shook many staff out of their comfort zone and exposed them to a new perspective of the
external world. Heifetz and Laurie (1997) argue that challenging people and taking them out of their
comfort zone lies at the core of leadership and encourages people to find their own solutions.
Some staff took exception to the directive tone and there were complaints to the union. To these people,
not used to such plain direction, the tone appeared harsh. Advocating honesty in gaining trust, while
using the weekly email to reward areas of progress with praise, the CO was honest about what work was
outstanding.
End game?
By December 2009 the leader had fulfilled the task the government had set and achieved Trust status.
Beer (2001) identifies a series of factors which are influential in the failure of an organisation to perform
well: “unclear strategy and/or conflicting priorities, an ineffective top team, a CEO whose style is either
too top-down or too laissez faire, poor coordination and teamwork across parts of the organization that
must work together, poor vertical communication, particularly upward communication, inadequate
management and leadership development and not enough down-the-line leaders and finally, the inability
of lower-level employees to have an honest conversation with their leaders” (p241). It seemed that the
interim CO, strategising from previous experience of leadership, had dealt effectively with the bulk of
these failure factors.
Analysis of the foregoing narrative
The new CO had managed to change an organisation, which had been consistently failing throughout the
era of new public management and target culture. As authors, we were interested to know the extent to
which his experience and intuitive behaviours reflected or resonated with wider theoretical perspectives
on change. As a preliminary process, we compared the empirical activities to certain planned change
management models:
Bullock and Batten’s (1985) exploration, planning, action and integration approach showed similarity
with the change management plan in its brevity, although there was only limited time for exploration and
planning as this CO relied on a model commissioned by a predecessor. However, he seems to have
recognised that integrating change in frontline performance with back office functions was central to,
rather than after, the ‘action’ stage.
The approach of the new CO also resonates with Kanter (1992) in particular in terms of tuning into the
environment, challenging the prevailing culture, communicating a compelling aspiration and building
coalitions.
The turnaround strategy could be seen to exhibit many of the early stages of Kotter’s 8 Step Model
(1996) which outlines the need to establish a sense of urgency, form a powerful guiding coalition, plan
and create short term wins.
Jick’s (2003) model could be seen to develop Kotter’s thinking and further, as with this case, has an
emphasis on a strong leadership role as well as developing enabling structures. As with the new leader’s
home truths, Jick also attaches importance to honest communication.
Nadler and Tushman’s (1995) congruence model identified the need for the whole organisation or system
to be aligned for change to be successful. It takes into account the nature of the work and the staff as well
as the informal and formal organisation within a system. In this turnaround strategy the CO sought to
align formal processes with the day-to-day activities of staff through OAU but it could be argued lacked
the time to explore fully the areas that this model would emphasise as important especially with respect
to the people aspects. Working on the assumption that staff were already trained and capable of fulfilling
the task, the leader here assumed that a change in prioritisation and accountability would bring the
required results. Additionally goal setting and achievement, critically important to the CO’s model, do
not appear in the congruence model.
The systems alignment approach of Mckinsey’s Seven S (Waterman et al. 1980) or even 8 ‘s’ (Higgins
2005) illuminates certain aspects of the CO’s turnaround change management plan in that the strategy
would have more chance to succeed if style, structure systems etc. were not in dissonance. There was a
purposeful move to align strategy with leadership style, and to improve systems, however structure was
inherited and was not altered in the short term. The attempt to alter staff behaviours and inculcate shared
values also chimes with the model. It could be said that the strategy resembled a 7 S prescription
although somewhat after the effect rather than as an integrated purposive blueprint.
Lesser resonance was found with staged-process models such as Lewin’s (1945) classic freezing, moving
and refreezing model, Bridges ending-neutral zone-new beginning model (1991) and Carnall’s (1991)
model which requires managing transitions effectively, dealing with organisation cultures and managing
organisation policies. Senge et al look at the longer-term issues of sustaining and renewing organisation
change, which while of great merit, does not seem suitable as a model to understand the impact of the
CO’s plan to improve performance within an original four month period.
If strong resonance was not to be found in the change literature, might the leadership behaviour
reflect aspects of leadership theory?
It is argued elsewhere how diverse and inconclusive current leadership theory might be (Gill, 2011;
Grint, 1997; Hughes, 2010), however certain behaviours, nuances and characteristics may be discernable
within this literature. Our analysis suggests a context and set of leadership proclivities which are firmly
‘essentialist’ in the manner suggested by Grint – a very clear and largely agreed context as a result of
history and behaviours and outward signals that are rooted fundamentally in the ‘DNA’ of the leader’s
organisational practice. Here, self-knowledge and sound awareness of the current situation allow a
contingent leadership response in the sense suggested by Grint.
There is much agreement to be found in a comparison with Adair’s (1979) work, as the CO in question
here demonstrates (albeit intuitively and experientially based) an evenly balanced focus on task,
organisational team maintenance and individuals’ needs. In the situational sense (Blanchard, 1993), there
is a notable tendency toward “selling” and to a lesser extent “participating”, where a great deal of energy
went into clarifying issues rather starkly yet engaging the enthusiasm and desire of employees to take
part in the turnaround.
Much of the expected behaviour of the transformational leader is to be found in the case, where
motivation around a specific set of values and beliefs rather than transactional motives to engage evolve
over the period in question. However the classic expectation that vision plays a key role may be less
apparent here although should a definition following Cummings and Worley (2008) be considered then
‘the core values and purpose that guide the organisation ‘ rather than an ‘envisioned future’ might
adequately cover the CO’s communicated vision.
How did the CO meet the challenge of achieving the required performance targets in four months and
sustain that to December when the fate of the organisation was to be decided? In drawing together the
different strands of his strategy the model that emerges consists of three main elements:
? Actions to link lines of accountability much more tightly
? Rhetorical reframing of the climate
? Strategically aligned communication
Actions to link lines of accountability much more tightly:
The CO’s task was to create a new legitimacy in an organisation that was deemed to be failing by its
national governing organisation and associated Ministry. With a personal motto of “duty of performance
and duty of care” he clearly divided actions into frontline and back office streams. Immediate actions
were to spell out the goals, introduce accountability throughout the organisation and ensure all the senior
managers supported the same goal. As many change management authors point out, top team alignment
is crucial in times of change but clear objectives for units and for managers as well as a performance
management system that was aligned with organisational goals introduced clarity about direction in a
complex organisational environment. This was significant because these very clear messages moved the
organisation away from a “pick and mix” culture whereby staff, showered by an overwhelming number
of different messages from senior managers, chose those which seemed manageable.
The CO recognised the need to align back office functions, in particular IT support, human resources,
management information and marketing and communications to support this performance demand. Of
immediate importance was directing that the management information team should provide weekly data
which ensured accountability in all units. This served to address the problem of “happy talk” (Kotter
1996) or as O’Reilly and Pond cited in Hayes (2007) identify, information transmitted up the
organisation which will show senders’ units in a good light thus filtering out key information relevant to
understanding or managing performance issues. Grasping the nettle of ‘loose-coupling’, inimical to a
rationalist demonstration of legitimate out-turn (Brignall, 2000), the CO forced through an alignment of
accountability for performance recursively throughout the organisational levels.
Another priority which would take a longer time to complete was to re-write HR policies to support the
desired behaviours and to address the high levels of sickness that threatened to impact on performance as
well as pockets of resistance to meeting performance targets, not to mention a whole swathe of
competence issues. The support of the union was sought in designing these new policies giving them the
legitimacy of union backing.
However, the CO did not expect or anticipate the HR department alone to bring about cultural change
and ensured that all senior managers and all departments were working on performance throughout the
chain: finance; legal resources; IT; marketing; front line operations.
Clearly the alignment of back office functions and policies could not be done overnight. The actions
which focussed on frontline performance reaped almost instantaneous rewards. Given that government
ministers had set a four month timescale for change it is perhaps not surprising that the CO adopted
“command and control” or “coercive” leadership style as Goleman (2000), or “commander” as Grint
(2009) would categorise it. However, by demonstrating recognition that the organisation owed the staff a
“duty of care” by setting out to re-write HR policies and tackling poor industrial relations, he sought to
do more than force a sullen and unmotivated workforce to fulfil its obligation.
Rhetorical reframing of the climate
Bowditch and Buona (2005 p 127) identify that the content of change communications is a powerful tool
in shaping images and mind-sets accompanying change by attempting “to stretch the imagination and to
motivate people to rethink organisation possibilities”. For the CO an important element in the change
management plan was spreading ‘home truths’ to support the cultural shift to one of being high
performance. A new rhetoric was used to challenge the shared mental model, destroy debilitating myths
and create a “can do” culture
The CO’s ‘home truths’, expressed verbally to managers at different meetings and the all-manager
conference, were designed to create a new narrative based on the straightforward principle that
employees are expected to do what the government pays them to do. This was reinforced by messages,
which set out to destroy the organisational myth, or shared mental model that this agency was more
poorly resourced than similar agencies. It also highlighted that this organisation stood alone in poor
performance when other similar agencies had for a long time been on top of the task.
The rhetoric of the Shared Responsibility document summed up the new legitimacy of the organisation in
its clear statement of purpose, individual responsibility, accountability, sanctions and behaviour.
This new legitimacy was supported by the OAU strategy which set the parameters for an (albeit intrinsic)
reward and sanction culture, by publishing local data to show who was meeting performance targets and
who was failing, down to an individual level. Managers were encouraged and empowered to manage
non-compliance with the weight of the organisation behind them.
In the rhetoric behind the “Truth and Reconciliation process” on the other hand was a recognition that
there had been flawed behaviour by managers, staff and union members, and this represented an attempt
to expunge the horrors of the previous period of unsatisfactory industrial relations in order to leave the
past behind, and clear the way to allow new behaviours in. This would include new behaviours by all
staff to support the new performance culture; by managers to hold staff to account; but also on behalf of
all staff to ensure the implementation of fairer policies across the organisation.
Strategically Aligned Communication
A sound communication strategy was vital to sending out the key messages to all corners of the
organisation. The CO used all media and fora available and kept the message simple and direct. From the
offset the tone of his communications made it clear what was expected; why it was expected and what the
consequences of failure would be. The straightforward message was communicated consistently across
all fora and at all levels, making the most of IT and face-to-face meetings. Under such a barrage of
communication no one could pretend they had not heard what was expected of them or fail to recognise
the consequences should they choose to ignore it.
In terms of a communication strategy, the CO moved the organisation from a “spray and pray” approach,
in which managers overwhelm employees with so much information they cannot tell what is significant
and are not sure how to act, to more of a “tell and sell” approach, limiting the amount of information and
explaining the reasoning behind it (Clampitt et al, 2000). Although the effectiveness of this approach lay
in the forceful diffusion of a very limited message, even more impact may have been generated if a more
sophisticated tailoring of message to medium (Quirke, 1995) had been undertaken. It is not clear that the
CO had considered such methodological specificity but the reliance on a limited message in itself may
have allowed the differing media to ‘funnel’ communication as appropriate and relevant to differing
audiences.
Discussion
From the rich personal narrative, available documentary and other empirically sourced information, the
authors consider that a transformation strategy and form of leadership practice have been implemented
which in some senses exhibit aspects to be found within the current change and leadership literatures, yet
in others provide for a different focus and the potential for some new theoretical considerations.
The turnaround strategy to be embraced by all actors in the organisation had been ignited by a
specific demonstration of leadership. As noted earlier there is no consensus in terms of the most
effective theory of leadership, however, arguably without the particular leadership examined here,
the turnaround would not have happened, i.e. the same technical (managerial, operational,
structural) features examined in this article may have been put in place, but the organisation may
have remained in stasis or been convulsed by resistance. Such an interesting combination of
effective leadership and its symbiotic relationship with technical change deserves further
exploration.
Certain key circumstances may also have played a key role in the emergent unfolding of the turnaround:
? The leadership role was always known and understood as temporary. Potentially, this very tenure
allowed the interim leader to accrete goodwill and positive action in a way politically
unachievable for a chief officer likely to be in post for a long or unknown period. This degree of
separateness (Grint, 2009) allowed for the public signalling of the ‘elephant in the room’ not
amenable to more permanent leaders. Further, the interim leader was an outsider, providing the
space for public sacrifice should all not go to plan, again allowing organisational actors to more
safely ‘give it a go’ and display followership.
? The outside change agent (Paton and Mcalmon, 2000) may have had a critical role within this
transformation programme. The hiring of outside consultants, and their performance brief, had
laid the conditions for the leader to amplify. The consultants had offered tangible processes and
activities to achieve performance improvements. Rather than a new leader having to urge
incumbent staff to generate new ideas for improving performance, the new, and politically
untainted ideas, were already in place ready for use. Again, arguably given the emphasis on
‘tight-coupled’ accountability as a plank in the turnaround, this was a fortunate godsend for the
new chief which allowed for a smoother implementation of the chosen tightened lines of
accountability.
Taking the above into consideration however, our analysis of this case suggests that there is a
degree of novelty and innovation within the strategy enough to posit a potential theoretical
contribution to change and transformation understanding.
The diamond model for organisational turnaround
Using the metaphorical 3 dimensional modelling of a diamond, we suggest 3 key considerations,
modelled as three upper facets, were critical to the interim CO’s concept of turnaround, all
interconnected and equally important.
Figure 1
All three of the above facets support each other iteratively and with strong features of positive
feedback such that if any one is not present, holistic effectiveness drops significantly (the whole is
less than the subtraction of its parts!). However, most importantly, we suggest that the apex of this
upper pyramid represents authentic transformational leadership, and this very leadership allows the
three ‘technical’ facets to work in an integrated manner within the organisation.
The very deliberate choice of tight-coupling reflects several pressures – the coercive mimetic of the
state; a neo-classical nod towards objective efficiency; a way to gain traction and clarity in an
environment of seething loose-coupled agenda; and a way to send the message about the new
climate and expectations. This would appear to be particularly pertinent within the large public
sector organisational space, where the authors would argue; it may be far more useful and effective
than the generation of new ‘vision’.
As argued earlier, the loneliness of the new leader (Grint, 2009) allows for legitimately forceful,
instructing and coercive behaviour. In this case, the leader requires acknowledgement of, and
engagement with, a performance culture. If not, legitimate and formal sanction may follow. This
‘stick’ is accompanied however by a very sophisticated ‘carrot’, that of care and interest in staff,
where previously it may have been significantly lacking. The emphasis on trust and the building of
reciprocal trust is an intrinsic part within the overall coercive dynamic. Smollan (2006,p.152)
identified that “trustworthiness of managers will influence employees’ response to change and this
derives from perceptions of procedural justice”. Woodward and Hendry (2004 p159) identify that
scepticism and cynicism result from “experiences of earlier, unsuccessful change initiatives and
lack of effective leadership practises and lack of participation in decisions.” They contend that if
change managers do not pay sufficient attention to the people aspects of organisational change the
outcome is likely to be negative. By placing the importance of duty of care with performance the
CO was not only trying to overcome barriers to change but also demonstrating particular awareness
of the people aspects of change. This level of sophistication extends the more usual simplicity of
the coercion elements found in Dunphy and Stacey’s matrix (1998) or Kotter and Schlesinger’s
(1979) coercion, or Grint’s commander concept (op cit.).
Although perhaps leaning toward command, such dualism would appear to have been largely
welcomed within an organisation where morale had been lost, “Under conditions of change,
followers look up to their leaders as a source of certainty and may thus be more attentive to
their guidance and actions.” (Oreg and Berson, 2011,p.632). Indeed, evidence would suggest
that the personal attributes ‘radiating’ from the new leader allowed for both a diminution in
the likelihood of resistance amongst potential (and actual) followers; and a shift toward
motivation to embrace the leader-inspired changes. (ibid). The transformational
characteristics of the CO’s approach may also be deemed to have encouraged a ‘person-
organisation’ congruence (Hoffman et al, 2011) where staff seem to have eagerly embraced
the shape and feel of the organisation offered by, and reflected in, the behaviours of the new
leader, “perceptions of congruence with organizational values, rather than perceptions of
congruence with leader values, ultimately facilitate work unit effectiveness.” (ibid. p.791).
It appears likely that the authentic behaviours (Zhu et al, 2011) of the CO allowed followers,
in a catalytic manner, to connect with organisational values more closely related to their own
personal value set. Thus trust was established between staff and the leader not just by the
transformational aspects of the new leadership process, but by the very authenticity of the
leadership behaviours (themselves formed from and steeped in a cultural landscape well
known to staff).
A communications plan which set out to convey the messages intrinsic to the other two facets
allowed the new thinking to permeate seemingly all the nooks and crannies of the organisation. The
communications network seems to have been considered strategically in terms of its capability to
deliver the appropriate message (Barrett, 2002); and the variety of forms (serendipitously or
purposefully) directed toward differing roles and groups of staff demonstrates much of the strategic
diversity advocated by Quirke (1995). Further, the tight focusing of the message on the tight-
coupling of lines of accountability left little room for misunderstanding or different interpretation.
The lower half of the metaphorical diamond represents a further 3 facets which connect into the
upper pyramid: the apex here being resultant performance and the facets model commitment
gained, trust given and climate impacted.
Figure 2
The lower apex of the diamond then represents performance – the kind exhorted by the leader, and
willingly given by the staff. Connecting both ‘halves’ of the model gives the diamond construct
itself (figure 3).
Figure 3
We suggest the above model reflects a process set in train where authentic leadership signalled a
moral code and attracted trust. Leadership actions validated the communications; the
communications about the actions affected the organisational climate; positive reinforcement of
appropriate actions deepened the commitment to the new behaviours; the new behaviours modelled
and further changed the climate; communications signalled the changing climate etc. etc. The
mutually supporting strength of the diamond’s facets gave the momentum and impetus for this
particular transformation strategy to succeed. Empirical public domain and organisation-private
targets were met. The dynamics of this process flow are mapped in figure 4.
Figure 4
Specific use for the turnaround diamond
Our reflections suggest that the success and seeming effectiveness of the diamond may be
circumscribed to ‘punctuating’ transformations or turnarounds, as opposed to incrementally
improving endemic change, and further, more effectively associated with specific categories of
managed change:
The choice of agenda to shift and focus on ‘tight-coupling’ may be an issue of more importance
within the public and voluntary sectors, where multiple relations and co-existing paradoxes might
be more prevalent than in the ‘clearer’ private sector.
‘Tight-coupling’ may represent such a strong threat to many groups within organisations that it
may never gain the political traction to do the work we ascribe to it.
Comprehensive understanding of (particularly) change communications needs to be in place,
unsophisticated or poor communications networks may undermine the direction of travel.
There should be an organisational readiness or facility to allow in outside change agents, for
ground preparation as much as for the strategy itself. This may include both the groundwork team
and the new leader
Curiously, a definitive fixed term for the acknowledged leader may be crucial in ‘allowing’ an
organisation to follow new, coercive instructions. The sacrifice at the end of the period gives cover
to all competing groups or political agenda in the interim.
Conclusion
Described by a member of the senior management team as a “transformational leader” because he “has
been responsible for transformational change in this organisation by focussing SMT entirely on
performance”, how is the CO’s leadership to be interpreted? It would be overly simplistic to take from
the analysis that acting authoritatively or coercively in itself generated the employee behaviours which
turned the organisation around and achieved the outcomes set. Aspects of the kind of coercion or
manipulation suggested by Kotter and Schlesinger where (as they would claim), time and urgency was of
the essence were apparent, but much more importantly were the actions and strategies that chime with
“Negotiation and Agreement” and “Facilitation and Support” from their framework. Along the lines
suggested by Adair (1979), this leader was as concerned with individuals’ and groups’ capacity to
perform effectively, morally appropriately in terms of held values and safely as he was by the task in
hand.
Set against a backdrop of Gill’s (2011) six themes and associated practices of leadership, five of these
principles are clearly visible. The communication of a ‘valid and appealing purpose’ for the organisation
seems to have been demonstrated convincingly; the ‘identification, demonstration, promotion and
reinforcement of shared values’ were to the fore in the strategy; the proposed strategies seemed to be
rational and flowed from the set of shared values; staff were ‘handed back’ the power to perform
professionally and autonomously (although clearly within the remits of the overall performance agenda);
and the leader’s ability to ‘influence, motivate and inspire people to want to do what needs to be done’
seems to have been reflected fractally throughout the organisation.
Our contention is rather that this leader combined authenticity with authority, acted as commander yet
was deeply interested in employee well being, and was very transparent in modelling publicly the values
and expectations for the organisation. This brought about the staff willingness and enthusiasm to
‘perform’, not merely the fear of autocratic control and sanction. In some sense, the staff were given
permission to follow authoritative instruction, powerful and valuable because it allowed alignment
between their personally held professional values and the apparent direction of the organisation. The CO
had legitimised the ‘right’ set of behaviours to be chosen from a welter of different forms of behaviour
previously deemed equally legitimate.
Robbins (2005) defines transformational leaders as those who change “followers awareness of issues by
helping them to look at old problems in new ways; they are able to excite, arouse, and inspire followers
to put extra effort to achieve group goals” (cited in Hughes 2006). Performance did improve
dramatically after the CO arrived and Trust status was gained in December 2009. Given the extra effort
made by staff to win Trust status, it would appear that the CO’s leadership did indeed arouse many
people to change their behaviour.
We contend that the empirical out-turn evidenced in this case may be explained by the combination
of an authentically transformational leader pursuing a turnaround strategy described by the
turnaround diamond. Certain attributes were made very clear to observers (particularly staff) and
these concepts and behaviours were capable of promoting ‘moral uplift’ amongst followers. “These
components include possessing moral characteristics (e.g., moral values, integrity, and honesty),
individual moral behaviours (e.g., doing the right things), morality in decision-making processes
and procedures at work (e.g. holding to moral values), moral role modelling through visible moral
action, moral reward and discipline, and communicating ethics and values to followers and to the
group. We suggest that these core moral components equip authentic transformational leaders to
set high standards for moral/ethical actions, and to lead in ways that result in followers emulating
the moral perspectives and moral actions of these leaders” (Zhu et al, p.6, op cit.).
Professional front line and administrative staff reacted well to this form of leadership, to such an
extent that the key indicators of turnaround were achieved. It might be argued that at the meso-
level, some middle managers, either not understanding the nature of authentic transformational
leadership, or indeed by acting amorally in terms of ‘just getting things done’ to provide
appropriate signals whilst abandoning other activities, may have been reacting more to overt
coercion and reward. However, clearly enough of the ‘right stuff’ in most of the organisation was
going on for the leader’s strategy to be considered successful.
Declaration of a morally courageous, almost one-dimensional strategy (performance), drove an
integrated series of activities weaving together tightened accountability; rhetorical reframing and
reinforcing of a new climate and limited and focused powerful communications. A demoralised
staff seemed ‘ready’ to accept the authentic leadership behaviours; was persuaded to attempt the
accountability route and was confirmed and convinced by supportive communication.
Over time, an evolving culture may demonstrate whether once and for all change occurred at this critical
juncture. Whether the turnaround could be sustained and the climate could drive new and successful
organisational structures and relationships provides potential for future research.
This article explores an approach to a turnaround strategy, analysing reaction to the exigencies of a
poorly performing public sector organisation. The strategy’s components and outcomes may be case-
specific or even unique; however such a model may be appropriate for use in other circumstances.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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doc_788802043.pdf
Turnaround Strategy In A Large Public Service Organisation A Consideration Of Successful Synergy Between Effective Leader And Clarity Of Strategy
Turnaround strategy in a large public service organisation: a consideration of successful
synergy between effective leader and clarity of strategy
Stephen Reeve, Sarah Walbank (associate)
University of Brighton Business School
[email protected]
Abstract
Between 2009 and 2011, the fortunes of a large public sector organisation operating within the field of
criminal justice, were empirically acknowledged to have been turned around. Outputs advocated by
Government sponsor were achieved by the end of the period. This was dramatic in that the movement in
measured performance was from globally low to globally high. Key to such an emphatic change scenario
appeared to be the impact and effect of a new Chief Officer, the most senior role within such an
organisation. This article will explore the nature of the leadership practice introduced; its impact on
strategic alignment around performance measures and targets; and the reverberations into
organisational culture the above may have engendered. Accepting the empirical improvements as ‘de
facto’ within the context of Government/Agency relations, the article will draw directly from the first
person narrative of the leader in question in an attempt to catalogue the features of experiential practice,
which may have had the most salience to change management practice and leadership in general.
Further, the implications of such analysis for other similar organisations will be considered. Abstracting
from this specific case, the authors suggest a possible contribution to theoretical approaches to
turnaround.
Introduction
This article examines the sector-confirmed successful turnaround of a large metropolitan criminal justice
organisation following the arrival of a new leader. It will consider leadership behaviours, which had a
significant impact in order to explore the difference a leader, might make to organisational
transformation or turnaround strategy. In 2009, staff morale was low and target culture deeply resented.
Since a poorly planned and executed merger of a number of services in 2001, there had been three
previous leaders and a short period under a Specialist Performance Improvement Action Team. In an
attempt to address the performance deficits, there had been three significant structural re-organisations,
which, in the context of additional legislative changes, had negatively impacted on employees’ attitude
both to change and senior management as well as not achieving the required performance improvements.
This was the environment into which the leader was invited by the appropriate state ministry, with a
remit to address the challenges of a troubled organisation.
Taking the personal account of the leader, this article will filter that personal narrative and test
assumptions about the effect of leadership skills on transformational change. Clearly, in any
constructivist sense, there are as many definitions of action and success or failure as numbers of
employees in the organisation, however the narrative correlation of elite interview with formal (and
institutionally acknowledged) empirical results, participant observation and theoretical analysis provides
a unique and innovative lens through which to consider corporate change. Such a method allows a deep,
insider, change-leadership perspective, as well as providing an opportunity to compare the actions
described with theory and evidence from the managing change literature. Indeed, quoting Dyer and
Wilkins (1991, pp.618), “ However, we hope that many scholars will continue to try to tell good stories
which have theoretical import”, we as authors have tried to capture the spirit of the ‘classic’ case studies,
with their context, depth and narrative much advocated by Dyer and Wilkins in their response to
Eisenhardt.
Leader recruitment context
In 2009, a new leader with a known track record for improving performance in a similar, albeit smaller
organisation, was contracted for four months with the task of ensuring the organisation meet key
performance targets in the first quarter of the new financial year. When a replacement was not found at
the end of that period The Chief Officer (CO) was asked to stay for a further 12 months. Within the first
four months this CO had rapidly improved performance and within nine months the targets which had
been set (which could only be reached via a battery of sufficiently achieved KPI’s), of achieving Trust
status for the organisation had been met.
Analysing an organisation and its need for change is the first step for a leader (Kanter et al, 1992). Even
before taking up post, the future CO had been briefed about the problems facing the organisation.
Claiming awareness of “all that was needed to be known about its failings” from a serious case review
that had attracted negative media attention, and in particular, “insufficient senior management awareness
of locality, capacity and competence issues”, he found an organisation from director level down which
had “lost its grip”. In terms of human resources, recruitment, frontline management, communication,
training and accountability, the organisation lacked a performance culture. The CO spent the first two
weeks talking to as many staff in different roles as possible and, combined with existing knowledge,
gained a clear idea of what action was needed. To his advantage the new leader found a general and high
level of disgruntlement at being perceived as a failing organisation amongst staff and he viewed this as a
motivating factor that would help make the changes that were required to radically improve performance
and meet government targets.
The leader’s personal narrative – themed in terms of change levers
This section provides a narrative of the series of strategic instructions and actions, which flowed
following the confirmation of the new CO’s position. Taking the levers of change concepts stated by this
leader as a filter, we have placed the chronological narrative within sections under the self-same headings
he himself suggests. We have placed these descriptors within meta-headings which cluster the conceptual
nature of the action descriptions.
Looking back, the leader states the task facing him as new most senior officer in terms of:
? Creating order from chaos at the corporate centre
? Engendering a new culture of joint responsibility and accountability to the senior management
group
? Setting the tone and behaviour for the organisation
? Earning the trust of middle managers
? Issuing a small number of focussed and consistent messages
? Spreading “home truths” to challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture”
? Fostering a sense of pride in organisational success to move to a “can do” culture
? Tackling Information Technology
? Tackling the endemic problems in HR
? Improving industrial relations with staff and the union
Interpreting the narrative from the series of elite interviews, author familiarity and participant experience
with the case and the leader suggested particular groupings of the above: ‘Creating order from chaos at
the corporate centre’ and ‘Engender a new culture of joint responsibility and accountability
amongst the senior management team and middle managers’ and ‘Tackling IT’ and ‘Tackling the
endemic problems in HR’ are placed under the umbrella term: From loose to tight coupling
‘Setting the Tone’, ‘Earning the trust of middle managers’, ‘Fostering a sense of pride in
organisational success to move to a “can do” culture’ and ‘Improving industrial relations with staff
and the union’: Deliberately altering the climate
‘Issuing a small number of focussed and consistent messages’ and ‘Spreading “home truths” to
challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture” ‘: Communicate effectively
From loose to tight coupling
The new CO’s first concern was that the kind of cohesive leadership expected from the Senior
Management Team (SMT) was significantly absent. Previous experience suggested that without order at
the corporate centre, change would not be forthcoming. The first step was to establish compulsory
weekly meetings of all operational and non- operational directors. The task was to ensure the
organisation met key performance indicators. Therefore performance was made the focus of SMT
meetings and everything that was discussed and planned in those meetings was guided by how it would
improve performance. As well as weekly meetings, “away days” were arranged to ensure that the SMT
developed a strong commitment to the organisational goal of achieving much improved performance.
The CO considers the most important decision was to have instructed all managers to meet weekly. As
well as the weekly meetings of the senior management team, he introduced and chaired weekly meetings
of all second line managers (assistant chief officers). The purpose of these meetings was for assistant
chief officers to provide highly detailed performance information from their areas/departments and to
examine in depth the lessons to be learned from successes and failures. For public sector managers who
had not previously been used to this degree of granularity, this represented a large cultural change, as did
the public scrutiny of their department’s performance.
The chief officer made absolutely clear to the SMT, as well as to the organisation, that a four month
period had been granted to bring about a significant improvement in performance or the government
would take alternative action. He was aided by a real sense of urgency about the task in hand, much
along the now conventional lines suggested by Kotter (1996). Gersick (1991) suggests that a crisis
serves to awaken staff from complacency or inertia. The new leader capitalised on the sense of urgency
that lay behind the appointment as CO.
The new CO was aided by an initiative that had already been developed and was ready for
implementation. ’Onwards and upwards’* (OAU) was a new accountability and performance structure
which external consultants had designed with input from operational staff to address under-performance.
Under OAU, daily team meetings were introduced to focus on every item that contributed to achieving
targets. There was also a channel for communicating upwards about best practice and impediments to
performance. Team managers were required to feed data back to their line managers at weekly meetings
and exception reports when targets were missed. This represented a huge cultural shift for managers and
staff, who were not used to such a level of accountability.
The CO set the Management Information Team (MIT) the task of producing data to aid managers by
identifying what work was outstanding and what work had not been completed on time. This team level
data was to ensure honest discussions in management meetings, counteracting the previous perceived
culture of middle management filtering information and telling SMT what they wanted to hear, described
by Kotter (ibid) as management “happy talk”.
Making the OAU strategy central to the transformation strategy, he personally monitored progress
rigorously in meetings with middle managers. This level of attention to detail ensured that the required
changes penetrated to every corner of the organisation. Generating coherence and alignment within the
senior team led almost automatically to the creation of a ‘strong guiding coalition’ Kotter (ibid). To
strengthen the senior coalition further, there was a requirement that the Directors become directly
responsible for answering to the Board about the performance of their own departments, rather than
speaking for them. The CO recalls from talking to the directors that these changes were welcomed and
indeed that the directors felt empowered by the sense of purpose and authority imbued in their role. They
also ensured that the behaviour of senior managers was consistent.
Tackling IT
Apart from the need for cultural change, probably the biggest barrier to success the chief’s plans faced
was the high number of working days lost per month as a result of the organisation’s poor IT
infrastructure. He grasped the seriousness and importance of the removal of barriers as central to
empowering people. Within two weeks the status quo was under challenge as matters were taken to
Government Ministers and weekly meetings held with the IT provider until the problem was resolved and
the system much improved. The significance of this was not only to reduce a huge source of stress but
also actively and publicly to demonstrate listening and commitment to staff, essential to the process of
building trust.
Tackling the endemic problems in HR
The CO identified that another stream crucial to the change management plan was tackling the endemic
problems within the organisation’s Human Resource function. The departure of the then Director of HR
within weeks of the new leader’s arrival provided a catalytic opportunity to look at longstanding
industrial relations problems and HR policies. The CO labels the sickness policy “of poor quality” and
other policies “ok but badly implemented, as a result of middle managers relying too heavily on HR
managers, who lacked insight into operational culture, for a decision”. In his view recruitment had
previously been guided “by a misunderstanding of the equal opportunities policy into un-businesslike
decisions” which had had a detrimental impact at all levels of the organisation. A high number of
grievances and disciplinary hearings across the organisation evidenced further the poor relationships
between staff and management.
Early on, he began the task of aligning both HR policies and the union with the performance agenda.
Under the slogan, “high on performance, high on duty of care” the CO made sure awareness of staff well-
being was not overlooked in the drive to meet targets.
A Human Resources taskforce with representatives from HR, the union and all staff grades was set up to
revise HR policies that would result in a more efficient, effective and fair organisation, particularly in
relation to capability, sickness, mobility, and discipline. When completed, the training for middle
managers in the new HR policies was jointly led by the training department and union, illustrating an
improvement in industrial relations. A significant drop in the level of sickness absence during his tenure
seemed to reflect that the strategy was having an impact.
Deliberately altering the climate
This new chief officer made clear a core value that “the behaviour and tone of the CO sets the tone for
the organisation”, and therefore set out in terms of behaviour, dress, presentation and strategies to role
model the tone desired.
Standards for behaviour and tone were made explicit in a paper called ‘A Shared Responsibility – How
we achieve high performance in our organisation’. It described the behaviours all staff needed to
demonstrate “to become the organisation that we aspire to be”. The CO clarified the underlying
importance of both meeting targets and completing high quality work and in contrast to previous
leadership statements, made explicit that the consequences of not meeting targets lay in formal sanction.
Earning the trust of middle managers
Another element the leader considers key to the turnaround strategy was the support of middle managers
in implementing a new vision for the organisation. Building relationships with middle managers was
prioritised in order to build trust. The CO held meetings with all of them to hear their individual
perspectives on the problems facing the organisation and was surprised to discover that for some of them,
it was first time they had been in the CO’s office or had held a one-to-one meeting with a CO. Such
relationship building or affiliation is acknowledged as a key building block when implementing a
successful change management plan (Kanter 1992, Goleman 1998, Mento et al 2002, Jick 2003)..
Another stratagem he used to earn trust was to empower middle managers to set the pace and manage the
improvement of performance at the front line. Surprised by the ambitious pace that they suggested but
not wanting to undermine their enthusiasm he decided in favour of supporting their suggestions.
Oreg (2006) examined the link between trust in management and resistance to change, and found a strong
association between distrust, negative emotions and behaviours. He also found that a lack of trust in
management might provoke a full spectrum of resistance forms. Michaelis et al (2009) also identified
that trust in top management is likely to be associated with high levels of affective commitment to
change and a greater willingness to cooperate. Busch, Cadwallader and Parish (2008) found that
employees who enjoy good quality relationships with their managers feel more desire and duty to support
an organisational change. Such research supports the CO’s desire to win the trust not only of the SMT
but of all managers and staff.
Fostering a sense of pride in organisational success and changing the culture to “we can do it”
Experience had convinced the CO that people required a sense of achievement and pride in themselves
and the organisation in order for culture to change. Hayes (2007) contends that empowering people to
change includes creating a climate in which people believe in themselves and are confident they have the
support of others to make things happen. The CO found that the first urgent task was a backlog of 3000
incomplete assessments and so organised a completion “blitz” with a two-week deadline. Staff and
managers across the organisation were assigned to the task and many worked long hours until the job was
successfully completed. This was a significant turning point signalled by Kotter (1996) or Mento et al
(2002) as a “short term win”; evidence that “we can do it” and the provision of the motivation for people
to keep the momentum going. According to the CO, this evidence of change helped people disassociate
from failure and develop a sense of pride in their organisation, an intrinsic reward essential in the public
sector.
Improving industrial relations with staff and the union
One key aspect of tackling the overall human relations problem was addressing the poor industrial
relations with the trades union, as this was a further barrier to improving performance. The CO described
the union dimension to the problem as “off the wall”. Senior figures in the union were still opposing the
completion of performance targets and were viewed by senior management as supporting a culture of
poor performance and entrenched attitudes. They had been faced, before the leader’s arrival, with a
Director of HR who took an anti-union stance. Performance would not have improved while the trade
union and HR were at loggerheads.
The CO suggests that appointing a new acting HR Director - coincidentally at the time a new union chair
was elected, led to a huge improvement in industrial relations.
Borrowing from the South African national example, part of the strategy for tackling jointly these two
areas was called the “Truth and Reconciliation process” and was designed to expurgate the old
behaviours and allow new behaviours in. This included an event organised to support the work of the
“HR Taskforce” and to provide Board members, trade union representatives and managers with the
opportunity for a frank exchange of views on the recent management of key HR policies in order to clear
the way for the work of the HR Taskforce.
Communicate effectively
Kotter (1996) famously stated that vision is often under-communicated by a factor of ten and then
undermined by managers whose behaviour is not consistent with the message. This is echoed by Burnes
(2004) who says that managers need to send important messages “six times, in six different ways”.
The CO was clear that a communication strategy was vital to building trust and bringing change to this
organisation. Focussing on a limited number of messages was made central to the change process and all
available vehicles were used for spreading the message to all parts of the organisation. The CO
introduced a weekly briefing email which included personal updates as chief officer, and from all the
directors about their spheres of control. Its purpose was to send out key performance messages. In this as
in all media, he consciously chose direct, straightforward, clear and authoritative language to
communicate the message, very aware that to earn respect and trust as a leader, honesty or “home truths”
must lie at the heart of these communications.
Central to downward and upward communication were the daily team meetings and the weekly
managers’ meetings under the OAU strategy. Additionally messages were communicated at the six-
weekly operational managers’ leadership forums and the in-house quarterly publication. Significantly a
conference was held for all managers across the organisation where the CO addressed them with a series
of “home truths” central to the communications strategy.
The OAU strategy recognised the need for two way communication (Kanter 1992, Burnes 1996, Beer
2001) by including a channel for feeding back concerns and barriers to hitting targets to senior
management, enabling staff to become involved or for example to express frustration when progress was
hindered by the poor IT infrastructure. Evidence gathered of lost hours from IT problems in turn
strengthened the CO’s hand with the IT provider.
Oreg (2006) cites Wanberg & Banas, who found that “employees who reported receiving timely,
informative, and useful information about an organizational change presented a more positive evaluation
of the change and increased willingness to cooperate with it”. Lines (2005) found that as well as
leadership ability, fairness, and openness, participation helps to build trust in management. Van Dam et
al (2008) also stress that good communication and participation encourages staff buy-in and minimises
resistance to change. It could not be said that all staff were involved in planning this change, although
OAU had been developed in consultation with some staff representatives, but all staff potentially had a
channel for feeding back information relating to performance via their middle manager to the SMT.
Additionally a staff suggestion scheme was introduced where people submitted ideas for improvements
directly to head office.
Spreading “home truths” to challenge organisational myths that supported a “can’t do culture”
One of the major obstacles that the CO recognised at an early stage in tenure was a “cant do” culture
(Knight, 2006). Operational staff thought they were “too busy or too under resourced” for targets.
Managers, historically without support and commitment from the corporate centre, lacked the confidence
to insist targets were met. The CO’s leadership was important in challenging this mental model by
communicating about and adhering to the exigencies of performance. The CO was very clear about what
was required and made his authority absolutely clear by stating unequivocally that failure to meet targets
would not be tolerated and would face sanction. The OAU strategy further invested authority in managers
at all levels and empowered them to drive through change.
A communications strategy called “spreading home truths” was employed to change the current mental
model and bring about cultural change. In a strongly normative mimetic style (DiMaggio and Powell,
1983) the main thrust of the message was that this organisation had comparable resources to similar
organisations where performance was much higher and was therefore considerably under-performing
compared with these agencies. It was also made clear that achieving targets, however individuals
perceived this, was what staff were paid to do. The CO pointed out from personal experience that staff in
other organisations had undergone this cultural shift many years ago and this organisation needed to
catch up. This shook many staff out of their comfort zone and exposed them to a new perspective of the
external world. Heifetz and Laurie (1997) argue that challenging people and taking them out of their
comfort zone lies at the core of leadership and encourages people to find their own solutions.
Some staff took exception to the directive tone and there were complaints to the union. To these people,
not used to such plain direction, the tone appeared harsh. Advocating honesty in gaining trust, while
using the weekly email to reward areas of progress with praise, the CO was honest about what work was
outstanding.
End game?
By December 2009 the leader had fulfilled the task the government had set and achieved Trust status.
Beer (2001) identifies a series of factors which are influential in the failure of an organisation to perform
well: “unclear strategy and/or conflicting priorities, an ineffective top team, a CEO whose style is either
too top-down or too laissez faire, poor coordination and teamwork across parts of the organization that
must work together, poor vertical communication, particularly upward communication, inadequate
management and leadership development and not enough down-the-line leaders and finally, the inability
of lower-level employees to have an honest conversation with their leaders” (p241). It seemed that the
interim CO, strategising from previous experience of leadership, had dealt effectively with the bulk of
these failure factors.
Analysis of the foregoing narrative
The new CO had managed to change an organisation, which had been consistently failing throughout the
era of new public management and target culture. As authors, we were interested to know the extent to
which his experience and intuitive behaviours reflected or resonated with wider theoretical perspectives
on change. As a preliminary process, we compared the empirical activities to certain planned change
management models:
Bullock and Batten’s (1985) exploration, planning, action and integration approach showed similarity
with the change management plan in its brevity, although there was only limited time for exploration and
planning as this CO relied on a model commissioned by a predecessor. However, he seems to have
recognised that integrating change in frontline performance with back office functions was central to,
rather than after, the ‘action’ stage.
The approach of the new CO also resonates with Kanter (1992) in particular in terms of tuning into the
environment, challenging the prevailing culture, communicating a compelling aspiration and building
coalitions.
The turnaround strategy could be seen to exhibit many of the early stages of Kotter’s 8 Step Model
(1996) which outlines the need to establish a sense of urgency, form a powerful guiding coalition, plan
and create short term wins.
Jick’s (2003) model could be seen to develop Kotter’s thinking and further, as with this case, has an
emphasis on a strong leadership role as well as developing enabling structures. As with the new leader’s
home truths, Jick also attaches importance to honest communication.
Nadler and Tushman’s (1995) congruence model identified the need for the whole organisation or system
to be aligned for change to be successful. It takes into account the nature of the work and the staff as well
as the informal and formal organisation within a system. In this turnaround strategy the CO sought to
align formal processes with the day-to-day activities of staff through OAU but it could be argued lacked
the time to explore fully the areas that this model would emphasise as important especially with respect
to the people aspects. Working on the assumption that staff were already trained and capable of fulfilling
the task, the leader here assumed that a change in prioritisation and accountability would bring the
required results. Additionally goal setting and achievement, critically important to the CO’s model, do
not appear in the congruence model.
The systems alignment approach of Mckinsey’s Seven S (Waterman et al. 1980) or even 8 ‘s’ (Higgins
2005) illuminates certain aspects of the CO’s turnaround change management plan in that the strategy
would have more chance to succeed if style, structure systems etc. were not in dissonance. There was a
purposeful move to align strategy with leadership style, and to improve systems, however structure was
inherited and was not altered in the short term. The attempt to alter staff behaviours and inculcate shared
values also chimes with the model. It could be said that the strategy resembled a 7 S prescription
although somewhat after the effect rather than as an integrated purposive blueprint.
Lesser resonance was found with staged-process models such as Lewin’s (1945) classic freezing, moving
and refreezing model, Bridges ending-neutral zone-new beginning model (1991) and Carnall’s (1991)
model which requires managing transitions effectively, dealing with organisation cultures and managing
organisation policies. Senge et al look at the longer-term issues of sustaining and renewing organisation
change, which while of great merit, does not seem suitable as a model to understand the impact of the
CO’s plan to improve performance within an original four month period.
If strong resonance was not to be found in the change literature, might the leadership behaviour
reflect aspects of leadership theory?
It is argued elsewhere how diverse and inconclusive current leadership theory might be (Gill, 2011;
Grint, 1997; Hughes, 2010), however certain behaviours, nuances and characteristics may be discernable
within this literature. Our analysis suggests a context and set of leadership proclivities which are firmly
‘essentialist’ in the manner suggested by Grint – a very clear and largely agreed context as a result of
history and behaviours and outward signals that are rooted fundamentally in the ‘DNA’ of the leader’s
organisational practice. Here, self-knowledge and sound awareness of the current situation allow a
contingent leadership response in the sense suggested by Grint.
There is much agreement to be found in a comparison with Adair’s (1979) work, as the CO in question
here demonstrates (albeit intuitively and experientially based) an evenly balanced focus on task,
organisational team maintenance and individuals’ needs. In the situational sense (Blanchard, 1993), there
is a notable tendency toward “selling” and to a lesser extent “participating”, where a great deal of energy
went into clarifying issues rather starkly yet engaging the enthusiasm and desire of employees to take
part in the turnaround.
Much of the expected behaviour of the transformational leader is to be found in the case, where
motivation around a specific set of values and beliefs rather than transactional motives to engage evolve
over the period in question. However the classic expectation that vision plays a key role may be less
apparent here although should a definition following Cummings and Worley (2008) be considered then
‘the core values and purpose that guide the organisation ‘ rather than an ‘envisioned future’ might
adequately cover the CO’s communicated vision.
How did the CO meet the challenge of achieving the required performance targets in four months and
sustain that to December when the fate of the organisation was to be decided? In drawing together the
different strands of his strategy the model that emerges consists of three main elements:
? Actions to link lines of accountability much more tightly
? Rhetorical reframing of the climate
? Strategically aligned communication
Actions to link lines of accountability much more tightly:
The CO’s task was to create a new legitimacy in an organisation that was deemed to be failing by its
national governing organisation and associated Ministry. With a personal motto of “duty of performance
and duty of care” he clearly divided actions into frontline and back office streams. Immediate actions
were to spell out the goals, introduce accountability throughout the organisation and ensure all the senior
managers supported the same goal. As many change management authors point out, top team alignment
is crucial in times of change but clear objectives for units and for managers as well as a performance
management system that was aligned with organisational goals introduced clarity about direction in a
complex organisational environment. This was significant because these very clear messages moved the
organisation away from a “pick and mix” culture whereby staff, showered by an overwhelming number
of different messages from senior managers, chose those which seemed manageable.
The CO recognised the need to align back office functions, in particular IT support, human resources,
management information and marketing and communications to support this performance demand. Of
immediate importance was directing that the management information team should provide weekly data
which ensured accountability in all units. This served to address the problem of “happy talk” (Kotter
1996) or as O’Reilly and Pond cited in Hayes (2007) identify, information transmitted up the
organisation which will show senders’ units in a good light thus filtering out key information relevant to
understanding or managing performance issues. Grasping the nettle of ‘loose-coupling’, inimical to a
rationalist demonstration of legitimate out-turn (Brignall, 2000), the CO forced through an alignment of
accountability for performance recursively throughout the organisational levels.
Another priority which would take a longer time to complete was to re-write HR policies to support the
desired behaviours and to address the high levels of sickness that threatened to impact on performance as
well as pockets of resistance to meeting performance targets, not to mention a whole swathe of
competence issues. The support of the union was sought in designing these new policies giving them the
legitimacy of union backing.
However, the CO did not expect or anticipate the HR department alone to bring about cultural change
and ensured that all senior managers and all departments were working on performance throughout the
chain: finance; legal resources; IT; marketing; front line operations.
Clearly the alignment of back office functions and policies could not be done overnight. The actions
which focussed on frontline performance reaped almost instantaneous rewards. Given that government
ministers had set a four month timescale for change it is perhaps not surprising that the CO adopted
“command and control” or “coercive” leadership style as Goleman (2000), or “commander” as Grint
(2009) would categorise it. However, by demonstrating recognition that the organisation owed the staff a
“duty of care” by setting out to re-write HR policies and tackling poor industrial relations, he sought to
do more than force a sullen and unmotivated workforce to fulfil its obligation.
Rhetorical reframing of the climate
Bowditch and Buona (2005 p 127) identify that the content of change communications is a powerful tool
in shaping images and mind-sets accompanying change by attempting “to stretch the imagination and to
motivate people to rethink organisation possibilities”. For the CO an important element in the change
management plan was spreading ‘home truths’ to support the cultural shift to one of being high
performance. A new rhetoric was used to challenge the shared mental model, destroy debilitating myths
and create a “can do” culture
The CO’s ‘home truths’, expressed verbally to managers at different meetings and the all-manager
conference, were designed to create a new narrative based on the straightforward principle that
employees are expected to do what the government pays them to do. This was reinforced by messages,
which set out to destroy the organisational myth, or shared mental model that this agency was more
poorly resourced than similar agencies. It also highlighted that this organisation stood alone in poor
performance when other similar agencies had for a long time been on top of the task.
The rhetoric of the Shared Responsibility document summed up the new legitimacy of the organisation in
its clear statement of purpose, individual responsibility, accountability, sanctions and behaviour.
This new legitimacy was supported by the OAU strategy which set the parameters for an (albeit intrinsic)
reward and sanction culture, by publishing local data to show who was meeting performance targets and
who was failing, down to an individual level. Managers were encouraged and empowered to manage
non-compliance with the weight of the organisation behind them.
In the rhetoric behind the “Truth and Reconciliation process” on the other hand was a recognition that
there had been flawed behaviour by managers, staff and union members, and this represented an attempt
to expunge the horrors of the previous period of unsatisfactory industrial relations in order to leave the
past behind, and clear the way to allow new behaviours in. This would include new behaviours by all
staff to support the new performance culture; by managers to hold staff to account; but also on behalf of
all staff to ensure the implementation of fairer policies across the organisation.
Strategically Aligned Communication
A sound communication strategy was vital to sending out the key messages to all corners of the
organisation. The CO used all media and fora available and kept the message simple and direct. From the
offset the tone of his communications made it clear what was expected; why it was expected and what the
consequences of failure would be. The straightforward message was communicated consistently across
all fora and at all levels, making the most of IT and face-to-face meetings. Under such a barrage of
communication no one could pretend they had not heard what was expected of them or fail to recognise
the consequences should they choose to ignore it.
In terms of a communication strategy, the CO moved the organisation from a “spray and pray” approach,
in which managers overwhelm employees with so much information they cannot tell what is significant
and are not sure how to act, to more of a “tell and sell” approach, limiting the amount of information and
explaining the reasoning behind it (Clampitt et al, 2000). Although the effectiveness of this approach lay
in the forceful diffusion of a very limited message, even more impact may have been generated if a more
sophisticated tailoring of message to medium (Quirke, 1995) had been undertaken. It is not clear that the
CO had considered such methodological specificity but the reliance on a limited message in itself may
have allowed the differing media to ‘funnel’ communication as appropriate and relevant to differing
audiences.
Discussion
From the rich personal narrative, available documentary and other empirically sourced information, the
authors consider that a transformation strategy and form of leadership practice have been implemented
which in some senses exhibit aspects to be found within the current change and leadership literatures, yet
in others provide for a different focus and the potential for some new theoretical considerations.
The turnaround strategy to be embraced by all actors in the organisation had been ignited by a
specific demonstration of leadership. As noted earlier there is no consensus in terms of the most
effective theory of leadership, however, arguably without the particular leadership examined here,
the turnaround would not have happened, i.e. the same technical (managerial, operational,
structural) features examined in this article may have been put in place, but the organisation may
have remained in stasis or been convulsed by resistance. Such an interesting combination of
effective leadership and its symbiotic relationship with technical change deserves further
exploration.
Certain key circumstances may also have played a key role in the emergent unfolding of the turnaround:
? The leadership role was always known and understood as temporary. Potentially, this very tenure
allowed the interim leader to accrete goodwill and positive action in a way politically
unachievable for a chief officer likely to be in post for a long or unknown period. This degree of
separateness (Grint, 2009) allowed for the public signalling of the ‘elephant in the room’ not
amenable to more permanent leaders. Further, the interim leader was an outsider, providing the
space for public sacrifice should all not go to plan, again allowing organisational actors to more
safely ‘give it a go’ and display followership.
? The outside change agent (Paton and Mcalmon, 2000) may have had a critical role within this
transformation programme. The hiring of outside consultants, and their performance brief, had
laid the conditions for the leader to amplify. The consultants had offered tangible processes and
activities to achieve performance improvements. Rather than a new leader having to urge
incumbent staff to generate new ideas for improving performance, the new, and politically
untainted ideas, were already in place ready for use. Again, arguably given the emphasis on
‘tight-coupled’ accountability as a plank in the turnaround, this was a fortunate godsend for the
new chief which allowed for a smoother implementation of the chosen tightened lines of
accountability.
Taking the above into consideration however, our analysis of this case suggests that there is a
degree of novelty and innovation within the strategy enough to posit a potential theoretical
contribution to change and transformation understanding.
The diamond model for organisational turnaround
Using the metaphorical 3 dimensional modelling of a diamond, we suggest 3 key considerations,
modelled as three upper facets, were critical to the interim CO’s concept of turnaround, all
interconnected and equally important.
Figure 1
All three of the above facets support each other iteratively and with strong features of positive
feedback such that if any one is not present, holistic effectiveness drops significantly (the whole is
less than the subtraction of its parts!). However, most importantly, we suggest that the apex of this
upper pyramid represents authentic transformational leadership, and this very leadership allows the
three ‘technical’ facets to work in an integrated manner within the organisation.
The very deliberate choice of tight-coupling reflects several pressures – the coercive mimetic of the
state; a neo-classical nod towards objective efficiency; a way to gain traction and clarity in an
environment of seething loose-coupled agenda; and a way to send the message about the new
climate and expectations. This would appear to be particularly pertinent within the large public
sector organisational space, where the authors would argue; it may be far more useful and effective
than the generation of new ‘vision’.
As argued earlier, the loneliness of the new leader (Grint, 2009) allows for legitimately forceful,
instructing and coercive behaviour. In this case, the leader requires acknowledgement of, and
engagement with, a performance culture. If not, legitimate and formal sanction may follow. This
‘stick’ is accompanied however by a very sophisticated ‘carrot’, that of care and interest in staff,
where previously it may have been significantly lacking. The emphasis on trust and the building of
reciprocal trust is an intrinsic part within the overall coercive dynamic. Smollan (2006,p.152)
identified that “trustworthiness of managers will influence employees’ response to change and this
derives from perceptions of procedural justice”. Woodward and Hendry (2004 p159) identify that
scepticism and cynicism result from “experiences of earlier, unsuccessful change initiatives and
lack of effective leadership practises and lack of participation in decisions.” They contend that if
change managers do not pay sufficient attention to the people aspects of organisational change the
outcome is likely to be negative. By placing the importance of duty of care with performance the
CO was not only trying to overcome barriers to change but also demonstrating particular awareness
of the people aspects of change. This level of sophistication extends the more usual simplicity of
the coercion elements found in Dunphy and Stacey’s matrix (1998) or Kotter and Schlesinger’s
(1979) coercion, or Grint’s commander concept (op cit.).
Although perhaps leaning toward command, such dualism would appear to have been largely
welcomed within an organisation where morale had been lost, “Under conditions of change,
followers look up to their leaders as a source of certainty and may thus be more attentive to
their guidance and actions.” (Oreg and Berson, 2011,p.632). Indeed, evidence would suggest
that the personal attributes ‘radiating’ from the new leader allowed for both a diminution in
the likelihood of resistance amongst potential (and actual) followers; and a shift toward
motivation to embrace the leader-inspired changes. (ibid). The transformational
characteristics of the CO’s approach may also be deemed to have encouraged a ‘person-
organisation’ congruence (Hoffman et al, 2011) where staff seem to have eagerly embraced
the shape and feel of the organisation offered by, and reflected in, the behaviours of the new
leader, “perceptions of congruence with organizational values, rather than perceptions of
congruence with leader values, ultimately facilitate work unit effectiveness.” (ibid. p.791).
It appears likely that the authentic behaviours (Zhu et al, 2011) of the CO allowed followers,
in a catalytic manner, to connect with organisational values more closely related to their own
personal value set. Thus trust was established between staff and the leader not just by the
transformational aspects of the new leadership process, but by the very authenticity of the
leadership behaviours (themselves formed from and steeped in a cultural landscape well
known to staff).
A communications plan which set out to convey the messages intrinsic to the other two facets
allowed the new thinking to permeate seemingly all the nooks and crannies of the organisation. The
communications network seems to have been considered strategically in terms of its capability to
deliver the appropriate message (Barrett, 2002); and the variety of forms (serendipitously or
purposefully) directed toward differing roles and groups of staff demonstrates much of the strategic
diversity advocated by Quirke (1995). Further, the tight focusing of the message on the tight-
coupling of lines of accountability left little room for misunderstanding or different interpretation.
The lower half of the metaphorical diamond represents a further 3 facets which connect into the
upper pyramid: the apex here being resultant performance and the facets model commitment
gained, trust given and climate impacted.
Figure 2
The lower apex of the diamond then represents performance – the kind exhorted by the leader, and
willingly given by the staff. Connecting both ‘halves’ of the model gives the diamond construct
itself (figure 3).
Figure 3
We suggest the above model reflects a process set in train where authentic leadership signalled a
moral code and attracted trust. Leadership actions validated the communications; the
communications about the actions affected the organisational climate; positive reinforcement of
appropriate actions deepened the commitment to the new behaviours; the new behaviours modelled
and further changed the climate; communications signalled the changing climate etc. etc. The
mutually supporting strength of the diamond’s facets gave the momentum and impetus for this
particular transformation strategy to succeed. Empirical public domain and organisation-private
targets were met. The dynamics of this process flow are mapped in figure 4.
Figure 4
Specific use for the turnaround diamond
Our reflections suggest that the success and seeming effectiveness of the diamond may be
circumscribed to ‘punctuating’ transformations or turnarounds, as opposed to incrementally
improving endemic change, and further, more effectively associated with specific categories of
managed change:
The choice of agenda to shift and focus on ‘tight-coupling’ may be an issue of more importance
within the public and voluntary sectors, where multiple relations and co-existing paradoxes might
be more prevalent than in the ‘clearer’ private sector.
‘Tight-coupling’ may represent such a strong threat to many groups within organisations that it
may never gain the political traction to do the work we ascribe to it.
Comprehensive understanding of (particularly) change communications needs to be in place,
unsophisticated or poor communications networks may undermine the direction of travel.
There should be an organisational readiness or facility to allow in outside change agents, for
ground preparation as much as for the strategy itself. This may include both the groundwork team
and the new leader
Curiously, a definitive fixed term for the acknowledged leader may be crucial in ‘allowing’ an
organisation to follow new, coercive instructions. The sacrifice at the end of the period gives cover
to all competing groups or political agenda in the interim.
Conclusion
Described by a member of the senior management team as a “transformational leader” because he “has
been responsible for transformational change in this organisation by focussing SMT entirely on
performance”, how is the CO’s leadership to be interpreted? It would be overly simplistic to take from
the analysis that acting authoritatively or coercively in itself generated the employee behaviours which
turned the organisation around and achieved the outcomes set. Aspects of the kind of coercion or
manipulation suggested by Kotter and Schlesinger where (as they would claim), time and urgency was of
the essence were apparent, but much more importantly were the actions and strategies that chime with
“Negotiation and Agreement” and “Facilitation and Support” from their framework. Along the lines
suggested by Adair (1979), this leader was as concerned with individuals’ and groups’ capacity to
perform effectively, morally appropriately in terms of held values and safely as he was by the task in
hand.
Set against a backdrop of Gill’s (2011) six themes and associated practices of leadership, five of these
principles are clearly visible. The communication of a ‘valid and appealing purpose’ for the organisation
seems to have been demonstrated convincingly; the ‘identification, demonstration, promotion and
reinforcement of shared values’ were to the fore in the strategy; the proposed strategies seemed to be
rational and flowed from the set of shared values; staff were ‘handed back’ the power to perform
professionally and autonomously (although clearly within the remits of the overall performance agenda);
and the leader’s ability to ‘influence, motivate and inspire people to want to do what needs to be done’
seems to have been reflected fractally throughout the organisation.
Our contention is rather that this leader combined authenticity with authority, acted as commander yet
was deeply interested in employee well being, and was very transparent in modelling publicly the values
and expectations for the organisation. This brought about the staff willingness and enthusiasm to
‘perform’, not merely the fear of autocratic control and sanction. In some sense, the staff were given
permission to follow authoritative instruction, powerful and valuable because it allowed alignment
between their personally held professional values and the apparent direction of the organisation. The CO
had legitimised the ‘right’ set of behaviours to be chosen from a welter of different forms of behaviour
previously deemed equally legitimate.
Robbins (2005) defines transformational leaders as those who change “followers awareness of issues by
helping them to look at old problems in new ways; they are able to excite, arouse, and inspire followers
to put extra effort to achieve group goals” (cited in Hughes 2006). Performance did improve
dramatically after the CO arrived and Trust status was gained in December 2009. Given the extra effort
made by staff to win Trust status, it would appear that the CO’s leadership did indeed arouse many
people to change their behaviour.
We contend that the empirical out-turn evidenced in this case may be explained by the combination
of an authentically transformational leader pursuing a turnaround strategy described by the
turnaround diamond. Certain attributes were made very clear to observers (particularly staff) and
these concepts and behaviours were capable of promoting ‘moral uplift’ amongst followers. “These
components include possessing moral characteristics (e.g., moral values, integrity, and honesty),
individual moral behaviours (e.g., doing the right things), morality in decision-making processes
and procedures at work (e.g. holding to moral values), moral role modelling through visible moral
action, moral reward and discipline, and communicating ethics and values to followers and to the
group. We suggest that these core moral components equip authentic transformational leaders to
set high standards for moral/ethical actions, and to lead in ways that result in followers emulating
the moral perspectives and moral actions of these leaders” (Zhu et al, p.6, op cit.).
Professional front line and administrative staff reacted well to this form of leadership, to such an
extent that the key indicators of turnaround were achieved. It might be argued that at the meso-
level, some middle managers, either not understanding the nature of authentic transformational
leadership, or indeed by acting amorally in terms of ‘just getting things done’ to provide
appropriate signals whilst abandoning other activities, may have been reacting more to overt
coercion and reward. However, clearly enough of the ‘right stuff’ in most of the organisation was
going on for the leader’s strategy to be considered successful.
Declaration of a morally courageous, almost one-dimensional strategy (performance), drove an
integrated series of activities weaving together tightened accountability; rhetorical reframing and
reinforcing of a new climate and limited and focused powerful communications. A demoralised
staff seemed ‘ready’ to accept the authentic leadership behaviours; was persuaded to attempt the
accountability route and was confirmed and convinced by supportive communication.
Over time, an evolving culture may demonstrate whether once and for all change occurred at this critical
juncture. Whether the turnaround could be sustained and the climate could drive new and successful
organisational structures and relationships provides potential for future research.
This article explores an approach to a turnaround strategy, analysing reaction to the exigencies of a
poorly performing public sector organisation. The strategy’s components and outcomes may be case-
specific or even unique; however such a model may be appropriate for use in other circumstances.
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