Thanks to my stellar upbringing, I have turned out to be a rather \u2018forthright\u2019 woman, chock full of opinions.\u00a0\u00a0As I get older, experience is only galvanizing my resolve. I\u2019m getting worse.\u00a0\u00a0Most recently I was outraged at a children\u2019s party and felt the need to get into an argument with Mrs Christmas \/ Santa\u2019s Elf (it\u2019s hard to discern elf ears mid-injustice).\u00a0\u00a0She was about to turn away a mum and her two kids who had been queueing to see Father Christmas, because we, the party, had a 12pm group appointment already scheduled in his diary.\u00a0\u00a0She told the mum that the front desk shouldn\u2019t have sold them their tickets and that she should go and see them to see when they could attend. The previous helper of Santa had clearly informed us that our party would get to see him immediately after the two kids in front, they had already been waiting a while, because we had been as well, so I could not believe that this new helper was now considering turning them away?! I must have done some kind of \u2018how long does it ever take to see Santa though?\u2019 calculation in my head and reached the conclusion that we would only have to wait a few minutes – \u201cWill you leave out a mince pie for me? Rudolf likes a carrot. *Optional alcohol joke for the adults in the room*. What would you like for Christmas? Oh great, here\u2019s a toy that you haven\u2019t asked for that I have millions of. Smile at the camera. See you on Christmas Eve!\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0#leansanta #scrooge<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Imagine my HORROR when Santa spent the next FIFTEEN to TWENTY MINUTES conversing with TWO CHILDREN, either because he\u2019s just really super interested in making their experience memorable and\/or they were proving a point to the irritating parent outside who MADE them abandon their schedule.\u00a0\u00a0Either way, Santa had no conception of operational efficiency.\u00a0\u00a0Which is ironic because he is meant to be THE master of complex global logistics.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
So yes, picture me, standing with the lovely parents who had organized a really great party waiting outside some fire doors, increasingly glowing crimson that I had railroaded my opinions all over their event.\u00a0\u00a0The second half of the party arrived in the queue for their appointment at 12.15 and we STILL hadn\u2019t gone in. Badtimes. I made a mental note to rein myself in in future (even if I was right). I felt so bad I even attempted to keep a group of 5 year olds entertained by leading a chorus of Away in a Manger. The second group got into see Santa at 12.40ish, some 25 minutes after the tiny people had started queueing.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Once inside, I quickly understood why my Santa timing was so out of kilter.\u00a0\u00a0Santa LOVED to talk.\u00a0\u00a0When we were finally able to escape Santa\u2019s rambling tales, I ran for the hills, sent multiple Whatsapp messages of apology and felt deep remorse for at least the next 48 hours. (That\u2019s a lie, it\u2019s still there).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
But I had genuinely tried to do the right thing, and yet it didn\u2019t work out? This feeling is not new to me. In work, I feel like I\u2019m often trying to do the right thing, sort out a problem because something has gone wrong somewhere, so I try to understand why it\u2019s gone wrong and what we can do to stop it happening again.\u00a0\u00a0The actual problem is however, is that this kind of activity is often experienced as interference within someone else\u2019s area of jurisdiction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
This is a real shame I think \u2026.\u00a0\u00a0I get it though. I HATE it when people try to think that they can do my job better than me! I genuinely do always try to listen to feedback, can and do recognize when it is correct and I think, most importantly, I guarantee that I will always confess when I have indeed messed up.\u00a0\u00a0But yeah, don\u2019t try to do my job for me ok? \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Increasingly, to me at least, the answer to all of this is \u2018Systems Leadership<\/a>\u2019 and it\u2019s an approach to leadership that we are investigating and offering more and more within our Executive Education portfolio.\u00a0\u00a0I like this paragraph from The King\u2019s Fund publication \u2018The Practice of System Leadership. Being Comfortable with Chaos<\/a>\u00a0to help to describe the approach.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u201cEffective system leaders are not heroic individuals who, through force of will or personality, achieve changes that others find impossible. (ahem<\/em>) Rather, they recognise the need to build alliances and collaborations by engaging their peers and many others in working towards a better future. They lead through influence and persuasion, recognising that delivering sustainable improvements usually takes time. They are also resilient in the face of obstacles, keeping faith with their purpose even when they encounter resistance. They have learnt how to work across organisational boundaries through networks that bring together services around the needs of populations and people who use these services. In the words of one of the leaders interviewed for this report, system leaders succeed by \u2018being comfortable with chaos\u2019\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n To me, Systems Leadership helps to describe the way that many of our leadership programmes have been constructed, (they are not chaotic, they are exceptionally well organised btw \ud83d\ude00 ) putting operations management principles squarely beside an examination of leadership, fully understanding of the need to lead the progression of work across organisational boundaries. I\u2019m really appreciating the new elements that \u2018Systems Leadership\u2019 is bringing however. The need to build a coalition and to not pursue an ideal, but to progressively move towards better, but accepting of yes, the chaos, is a really positive expression of the sort of direction and hope that 2020 needs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n I don\u2019t feel that I had the time to build a coalition within the \u2018for the love of God just let them see Santa\u2019 (and maybe tell Santa that even if\u00a0he<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0doesn\u2019t see it as such, we\u2019re running a business here) predicament but I\u2019m going to try to do more network building across the University in 2020 so that I can hopefully be slightly less irritating and slightly more effective.\u00a0Plus once beyond the fire doors, every child loved their 20-25 minute moment in the sun with Santa. Bah humbug!<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to my stellar upbringing, I have turned out to be a rather \u2018forthright\u2019 woman, chock full of opinions.\u00a0\u00a0As I get older, experience is only galvanizing my resolve. I\u2019m getting […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-systems-leadership","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2019\/12\/Santa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1009,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/1009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}