1. Solace is a growing membership body with over 1400 members
An increasing proportion of our members are senior managers making it more important that Solace work, and our emerging business plan, reflects the breadth of senior leadership in the sector – not just CEOs
Solace remains recognised and influential both within Government and across the local government family

2. Solace is about two main things:
Career spanning professional bodies providing high levels of support and challenge to its members
To promote progressive local government reform which create ‘productive places and people with no one left behind’
We want Solace to become the professional body of choice for all current and future leaders and managers in and around local government. Central to that is providing development programmes and events that support individuals throughout their careers.

3. Our main leadership programmes include:
National graduate development programme
Springboard programme for aspiring middle managers
Transform programme – for middle to senior manager focused on delivering significant change
Total Leadership programme – for aspiring CEOs
Ignite programme – for established CEOs
We also provide courses to support individuals starting new roles at Head of Service, Director and CO level, as well as subject specific courses in areas such as commercialisation, running elections and coaching and mentoring. For those interested, we also provide tailored leadership and management programmes for individual local councils.
For more information speak to Julie Howarth, , or

4. Leadership in Complex Systems
‘’For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong…’’ (H. L. Mencken)
‘’If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more. You are a leader’’. (John Quincy Adams)

5. moving towards system leadership
FROM TO
Organisational Ownership
Shared responsibility for outcomes and for removing obstacles
Organisations as a series of structures
Organisations as complex interrelated systems
Leadership of organisation
Leader within a system. Moving from telling to influencing
Individual development/organisational development
Development with partners
Organisational governance
Cross Organisation governance
Data to inform/evidence decisions
Analysis of interconnections plus dependencies
Single budget
Integrated budgets
Hard structures
Adaptive structures
Self Reflection
Seeking feedback

6. One Year into Essex : Personal Reflections
A recognition that we are players in a wider system and
There are examples of some great “system” leadership
However:
Many parts of the “system” are broken
History is holding us back
Many actions and behaviours are too often based on unchallenged assumptions
Some structural tensions
We tend to focus on the “doing” rather than investing in the “how”
Our leadership networks are under-developed
We do a lot of advocating and not enough proper listening
Therefore , there is not enough TRUST in our system

7. So, why aren’t we better at it?
It’s really time consuming and difficult
Our organisational performance management systems
haven’t kept up
We don’t share and analyse data together
Conflict with organisational loyalty
Ego