I’ve always been careful not to make sweeping statements, particularly when I’ve been in leadership appointments. For that reason, I’ve studiously avoided any suggestion that we should implement something in SCC just because it had worked in the Army. This week, some of you may read or hear about an interview I have given to the Local Government Chronicle (LGC) magazine, which talks about my approach and impressions of local government. The headline, “Council Leaders would benefit from Military-style Training”, is entirely misleading: those of you who read the article will notice that I do not advocate anything of the sort. My observation that we talk about leadership a lot in local government, but have no formal development structure, while the armed services talk rather less about it, but have a system of selecting, educating and developing their leaders, is no more than many of you will have heard at the Senior Managers’ Conference, the Business Brief, my blog and the Chief Executive’s Update. The reason that I do not make a link is that such a system simply would not work in local government. Everybody in the armed services has the same employer, a standardised appraisal reports system, and can be moved from job to job with or without their consent; none of those conditions apply to us.
I raise this because I want my Staffordshire colleagues to be reassured that we will continue to develop our leaders internally in a manner that fits our requirements and conditions. The aim is to form even more cohesive teams with a common purpose to serve the people of Staffordshire. Building trust and mutual confidence will allow us to delegate effectively, and align responsibility with accountability and authority.
For those of you about to depart on summer holidays, I hope that you have a relaxing and enjoyable break. I look forward to seeing you on your return. For us, our break will be moving house to Staffordshire, which is a great relief; I’m not sure that I want to spend any more time sitting in traffic at the M6/M5 interchange.