Organisational Change

CLIENT: Regional Police Authority

SECTOR: Public Services

PROJECT: Leadership Academy

THEMES: Leading Change

AUDIENCE: Command Leaders

LOCATION: UK

The Organisation

The regional authority was originally formed in 1829, covers an area of over 600 square miles with a population of over 7 million, and employs over 50,000 staff and officers.

The Project Context

With the appointment of a new Commissioner of Police, there was an understanding that the Authority’s environment and expectations – and the way in which the Authority needed to interact with the public – were changing.

The Policing Pledge commitment – a set of promises to local residents on the service that the Authority would provide – encapsulated the leadership required in order to operate in a context of rapid changes to both the culture and operating scenarios.

The Requirement

ASK^® was appointed as a key partner deliverer to offer a different perspective on change and transition, based on our experience of working with client organisations worldwide.

The objectives for our work with Authority Command Leaders were to deliver:

• recognition of their responsibility as leaders to encourage the commitment of their people to organisational change
• recognition of the strategic impact of change
• development of emotionally intelligent responses to people issues
• recognition of the challenges and opportunities for leadership when delivering change
• identification of opportunities for delegation within their own team.

Our Solution

The Leading Change workshop programme was both a strategic and an operational intervention, designed to ensure that participants gained a clear view of the approaches available to them in managing change at a senior level.

Highly participative and interactive event with scope for lively discussion, the workshops incorporated facilitating change diagnostics and exercises that enabled participants to explore models of change theory – drawing on our experience of operating in a change arena with a range of global organisations. Command Leaders also had a valuable opportunity to assess how to pragmatically apply the best of the best practice to ‘close to home’ change and to transition issues relevant to them in the context of implementing the Policing Pledge.

At the end of the workshop, participants had a clear personal action and development plan, and also a greater understanding of their own leadership strengths and development needs. They also gained an enhanced recognition of the differences between individuals and how these can be used for mutual benefit.

Evaluation

Rigorous post-event evaluation clearly confirmed the programme’s value in enabling its participants to agree and design implementation of the Policing Pledge in ways that were genuinely workable and measurable in local environments.

96% of participants rated themselves as either more or much more effective as a result of the programme, and 78% felt the business impact of their achievements and improvements would be significant or very significant.

Delegate Quotes

I think we all learned about ourselves as leaders of change.”

“The real value was in being able to take the theoretical models and assessing their fit within our own Command structure.”

“The extent of the deliverer’s knowledge and experience of managing change was staggering. They were able to put complex theories across in a very useful and ‘user friendly’ way.”