Robin Riley

Leading with self: Positive Thinking and Motivation

January 29, 2020 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A session of positive thinking and planning, from a group exercise and a one-to-one co-coaching session, aimed at drawing up an action plan for achieving some of my professional aims. This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 28 January 2020.

What I learned:

In the exercise, imagined ourselves looking back to now from a vantage point of success, two years in the future.

We identified:

Wish – what I hope for in the future
Outcome – the benefits I will see if I achieve this
Obstacles – the obstacles in me I need to overcome to succeed
Plan – what I will do to overcome these obstacles.

For me, these were:

Wish:
* Leading a team ideally at SCS
* Working in the technology, innovation or digital field
* Doing something with impact, profile and influence.

Outcome:
* Feel happier, making a stronger contribution, using my skills, having a positive impact
* Achieving my social motivation of impact and influence

Obstacles:
* Lack of the right role
* Lack of the right networks and contacts
* Lack of career examples / behaviours

Plan:
* See below.

What I will aim to differently as a result

Generate examples tactically from the SCS behaviours, then do things that model those behaviours. The material is all publicly available!
Gain experience on how to join together a multidisciplinary team, and providing the enabling framework for teams to deliver
Be able to give examples where you mobilised people to work collaboratively
Learn to feel achievement from enabling others to do stuff (not doing it myself)
Understand the wider issues around AI e.g. cognitive biases; How do we engage people e.g. visualisation
Understand the benefits of the different factories, platforms etc.
Engage with the AI community; get on the GDS data science group; Go to events that help me move towards that skill set
Finally – Refresh my development plan to incorporate this.

Leading with Self: Emotional Intelligence

January 29, 2020 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was

A one-day session on what it means to “lead self” in the context of a changing civil service, through being present and leading with emotional intelligence. Part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme. Held in London on 28 January 2020.

What I learned

Emotional intelligence

The Emotional intelligence Framework – drawn from (Goldman, D. “Working with emotional intelligence”) – gives ways in which people can be emotionally intelligent and suggests areas to develop.

This model considers Self Vs Others and Awareness Vs Action

Awareness / self
- Self awareness: Emotional self awareness
Awareness/ others
- Social awareness: empathy, organisational awareness
Action /self
- Self management: achievement orientation, adaptability, emotional self control, positive outlook
Action / others
- Relationship management: conflict management, coach and mentor, influence, inspirational leadership, teamwork

Social Motivations

People typically have a combination of three social motivations:

Power motive: Primary test: Have an influence or make an impact on others
Achievement motive: Primary test: Meeting or exceeding a standard of excellence and or improving ones performance
Affiliation motive: Primary test: Maintaining or avoiding disruption of close friendly relations with people

People are often uncomfortable talking about power as a motivation!

Where things can go wrong:

Communication problems, including inability to listen or failure to speak up
Poor decision making processes, individual and group
Experienced experts can make poor choices and commit fundamental decisions making errors, especially under pressure

As a leader you need to be able to see when the team’s emotional engagement is blinding them to reality, for example failing to challenge assumptions, and leading to poor decisions.

Overall reflections on the day:

I find this subject hard to “do in the abstract” – I need to revisit this often and see how it can be applied at work.
I need to be braver and unafraid to challenge assumptions – especially from senior leadership.

What I will aim to do differently as a result

Get closer to the different teams and people – make more visits.
Understand what senior leaders want and worry about, talk to them.
Think about people’s motivations and how I can help them.
I will figure out a way of getting actions from these learning write ups into my task-tracking system
I will make time in my diary for leadership and reflection, and for follwing up on the actions from this course
Reflect on my social motives (impact and influence) and not to see it as bad, and reflect on the motives of others
I will aim to research how to develop greater focus, attention and self control (e.g. Pomodoro technique?)
Challenge assumptions and groupthink, have courage

Solving Kurosu

January 3, 2020 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was

This Christmas I encountered ‘Kurosu’ – a japanese grid-based logic puzzle in the same vein as Sudoku (albeit a lot simpler than Sudoku).

As a Christmas puzzle – and to top-up my coding skills development over the holiday – I set myself the challenge of writing some code to solve all such puzzles. It took a few hours over several days but I managed it in the end (probably wouldn’t be blogging about it if I hadn’t…)

My code uses simple logical induction to eliminate the puzzle grid’s non-solutions, row-by-row and column-by-column.

You can find it at: https://github.com/rr-coding/kurosu-solver

If you don’t want to run it youself you’ll have to take my word for it that it works!

What I learned

Part of the challenge was that I wasn’t allowed to look at anyone else’s solution to this until after mine was working.

I confess admiration for this (very different) solution, which takes a more combinatorial / number-crunching approach – generating the set of all possible valid solutions then simply testing which one is at a hand. Plus – his taut PERL scripting makes my Python look laughably clunky and byzantine!

But I’m trying not to feel completely inadequate – my approach roughly emulates the process a human would use to solve the grid and needs relatively few (4 or so) iterations to settle on a solution.

What I will aim to do differently as a result

Keep brushing up on my coding – still so much to learn
Reflect on different approaches to coding and problem solving – think about efficiency not just efficacy of code

Note: I went back and edited this post into my usual learning format after publishing it.

Future Leaders Scheme – End-of-Scheme reflection and discussion

November 11, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was

A meeting to reflect on our collective learning with a cohort of people who had completed the Civil Service Future Leaders Scheme in 2017/18/19, chaired by Director-General at MOD and held in February 2019.

In this blog post I have pasted the content of the end-of-scheme learning template that I completed in preparation for the meeting.

What I learned

What was your key learning from the Scheme?

Better grounding in commercial considerations
Importance of self-organising, planning and review for my learning
Preparation and considering my approach before meetings and engagements
The value of coaching with my team leaders and as a general approach to conversations
The need to ‘bring the outside in’ and harness external perspectives whenever the organisation needs to learn, grow, change or do new things
Importance of planning and directing senior conversations
Understanding my leadership style, and ensuring that I embody this

What has been your most important learning about yourself during your time on the scheme?

I have a distinctive leadership style with helpful and unhelpful elements
There is a place for my leadership style in the SCS (previously I had though there was not)
I am able to adapt my leadership style to suit
I need (and am broadly able) to create structure, context and continuity for myself as well as for the team
I need support on project management / team co-ordination tasks
My learning and development needs to be planned and managed
Reflection is a powerful tool that I am able to use

What has been your greatest challenge over the past 2 years and how have you addressed this?

Aside from on-the-job challenges, the greatest challenge has been finding time/energy to dedicate to learning and development. I have addressed this by:

Booking time in diary for learning, booking onto courses and insisting upon attending these even under sever diary pressures;
Making my learning public, making a public commitment to act upon learning and therefore more likely to follow through
Using some hours every week ‘dead time’ to focus on technical skills development. I have used the time to complete an online Python course (coding skills for data / analytics).

What were your departmental and corporate contributions during your time on the scheme?

Arranged and hosted 2 x Action Learning Sets at MOD
As part of the Experiment Group work, I developed, executed and analysed a randomised digital survey (analogous to a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)) of the FLS cohort (80 responses) – which showed that allowing flexible working makes a very significant difference to the number of candidates who will apply for an SCS post.
Contributed to early phases of corporate challenge (was not able to participate in later stages)
Set up the ‘lift lobby group’ of people involved in defence change programmes.
Began publicly sharing (blogging) my learning

Overall comments on your experience of the scheme and what your next steps will be?

I feel I have developed tremendously while on the FLS.
Some of this development is likely due to my being on temporary promotion to SCS this year – however I feel I have developed much more during this stint on promotion than during my previous stint, with FLS being the key difference.
I posit that the FLS has given me a framework and discipline to reflect upon and contextualise, and so truly learn from, my experiences – rather than simply experiencing them!

What I will aim to do differently as a result

Looking to the future:

I want to continue learning about leadership and management
I will continue to develop my technical skills and pursue becoming an intelligent customer for Machine Learning and AI.
I will continue to seek out and apply for SCS1 opportunities
I will aim to seek out a delivery role, and leadership roles.
I will consider opportunities outside central Govt Departments
I wish to stay in the digital/data/information field but would consider opportunities elsewhere that gave me the leadership and delivery opportunities I need.

Deputy Director Leadership Programme – additional reflections

September 26, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

Some reflections on my overall learning, plus some miscellaneous learning from my notes, derived from the two days of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

Focus on personal impact:

Focus on the key six or so relationships (boss, close peers, direct reports) where you can make a difference.
Where can I take a leadership position? How can I be useful to the wider programme?

Find the bandwidth to be a leader:

Carve out time in the diary!
Carve out time within the framework you are already operating in… so for example, Use 5 or 10 mins within existing meetings – do some reflection, ask how we are doing, how are people feeling, do we understand what we are doing and why?
Just do it! Stop operating and start leading. Just stop doing the operator or manager work – give it to someone else. You are making the conscious choice to be in a different mode.

Miscellaneous points

People watch what you do and how you act, be aware of the shadow you cast.
Be a lateral thinker – think of it like a dating agency – how can you join together different unconnected parties to the common good?
Like a lobster, it’s good to feel uncomfortable as you grow
The importance of being able to manage between ambiguity and clarity

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Re-engage on leadership and learning
Get back into coaching and mentoring (myself and others)
Carve out leadership time
Make the conscious decision to lead not just do work

Some specific actions:

Adapt and update my leadership statement
Update my learning and development plan
Make time for leadership thinking and review
Re-engage on networking and stakeholder engagement
Put in new learning time (Thursday and Tuesday nights)
Get this blog into better shape and be more disciplined in publishing my learning
Start gathering shareable data about my work and consider how to publish it
Set up some self-coaching – e.g. some automated tweets or a similar tool
Complete an exercise to capture my reflections from my time as Hd C&MI
Write up the EOY feedback and make this the basis of the next phase of learning

Leading with Self: The personal leadership statement

September 17, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A talk, group and individual exercise led by Dionne Corradine. This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

A personal leadership statement can help crystallise your leadership style, your aspirations, and what you offer to the people you work with. It can also be used as part of your objectives and to measure your progress.

A personal leadership statement takes time to develop and should be considered a work in progress – it can be a blend of where you are and where you want to be. It should answer the question “Why should anyone be led by me?”

We conducted a brief exercise to generate a first-draft personal leadership statement. Here is my draft:

PERSONAL LEADERSHIP STATEMENT – Ten-minute draft

What do I stand for?

The power of science, technology and information to do public good

The Integrity, impartiality and objectivity of the Civil Service

Experimentation and taking decisions based on evidence

The importance of collaboration

Development and growth for all

Why follow me? Because I am:

Inspiring:

Try to see where the future is going and get there early

Always work collaboratively, cohering teams into action

Work to set a compelling vision and concepts

Work to engage people and stakeholders in that vision

Confident:

Enjoy communicating, engaging and influencing

See and do things differently

Practice open leadership, working out loud and being open to feedback

Volunteer and step in when things are going wrong

Try to influence thinking outside my area

Aim to be aware of myself, my impact and be reflective

Empowering:

Create a team that’s fun, supportive, loyal to each other

Keep myself and my team at the leading edge, by driving change and developing forward-leaning skills

Try to help my team achieve their development dreams

Encourage and reward reasonable challenge, listen to evidence

Enable teams to do new things in new ways

Things I’m trying to be better at:

Servant leadership

Planning and managing the pipeline of work

Staying always a leader, not a manager or operator

Maintain technical skills and being an intelligent customer

Coaching and mentoring my team leaders

Maintaining and growing my and my team’s networks

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Develop the statement above and then try to live it!
Bake my leadership statement into my personal objectives
Build in review / reminder points
Consider ways to test my performance against the statement
Get hold of the speaker’s slides for this session as they contained lots of useful thinking.

Leading with self: Strengths and Shadows

September 17, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A talk, self and group exercises on Strengths and Shadows. This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

A ‘strength’ is defined as a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance (Alex Linley, 2008).

It often feels weird to talk about your own strengths.

A quick three-minute estimate of my strengths, in no particular order:

Communicating and engaging people, through different styles and channels, both written and verbal
Selling concepts, ideas and messages
Operating in the vision, concepts and ideas space, seeing the bigger picture, developing conceptual models and using metaphors
Analytical problem solving
Crisis management and working at pace
Innovating, being comfortable doing things that have not been done before

There is a simple quadrant model for addressing strengths and weaknesses; high capability and use versus low capability and use, and high engagement versus low engagement.

Strengths (High capability and use, high engagement)
Definition: Energises and is enjoyable. Performed frequently and so capability and refinements are developed.
Coaching Strategy: Build
Potential Strengths (Low capability and use, high engagement)
Definition: Energises and is enjoyable, but has not yet been developed, through lack of opportunity
Coaching Strategy: Develop
Fragile Strengths / learned behaviour (High capability and use, low engagement)
Definition: Not enjoyable, but have been trained to do these things through work
Coaching Strategy: Develop
Weaknesses (Low capability and use, low engagement)
Definition: Not enjoyable, not developed through the role
Coaching Strategy: Work around

Strengths, when overdone can be “shadows”. Some examples of strengths becoming shadows:

Strength <> Shadow
Confident <> Arrogant
Team Player <> Dependent
Networker <> Avoids Tasks
Relationship Builder <> Creating Dependency
Preventer <> Risk Avoider

For example in my own case: Analytical Problem solving is a strength but its shadow is diving into the detail or ignoring potential partners in the problem

Don’t be afraid to say “I need time to reflect on it”

Think about energy – where does your energy come from? Planning and setting out time for these activities generates anticipation, which can itself generate energy.

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Make a plan to address strengths, weaknesses and shadows and incorporate into my learning plan
Plan in some ‘energy building’ reward times.

Introducing the Strategic Framework: Leading with System – Tracey Waltho, Cabinet Office

September 17, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A talk with discussion on the Strategic Framework. This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

The strategic framework is a way of organising thinking and effort across Government and for addressing the big national challenges. It is expressed as outcomes for citizens.

It is long term – up to 2030 – can be seen as applying to both the citizen and the state, and posits that most government activity can be divided into one or more of the following six pillars:

Security – a UK that is safe and secure for citizens
Prosperity – a UK that is prosperous and productive
Influence – A UK that is globally influential
Sustainability – A UK that is sustainable and enduring for all current and future citizens
Inclusion – all citizens feel included in a UK that’s fair and just, with a strong sense of community and cohesion
Wellbeing – All citizens are cared for and live long, healthy lives

In discussion – most, perhaps all of us were in roles that spanned several, perhaps all, of the six pillars.

Senior leaders across Depts are engaged in ‘demonstrator projects’ that work across Departmental boundaries.

The ambition for each strategic framework project:

Citizen-centred – put the citizen’s needs and views at the core of the outcome
Open and inclusive – act with deep empathy and respect for the user and in our teams
Adaptive – listen and evolve in response to user needs
Human approach – consider people’s lives as a whole and structure outcomes around this
Joined-up – work across the public sector system as a whole, from problem definition to delivery of solutions
Long-term – set clear bold goals that endure based on outcomes that matter to the citizen
Trusted – we earn a reputation of reliably delivering on the issues that matter to citizens, businesses and and beyond

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Work across Departmental boundaries – perhaps use the Action Learning Sets as an opportunity to explore opportunities to do this.

Noting that these ambitions could easily apply to digital services – use the ‘ambitions’ above to think about digital projects.

Leading through complexity and change

September 17, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A crisis management case study (based on a real DFID example), talked through in respect of the actions and behaviours required of senior leaders, followed by some reflections on crisis experience from a leader, and a group exercise on our own responses to crises and change.

This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

As a group we identified some early things the senior leaders would have to consider:

What we are going to do:

The overall principles we would adopt
This is primarily about partnership and the stakeholders to be managed
What are the key risks – what action do we take against each?
What levers do we have on this problem?
The need for internal communications and keeping an eye on staff impact

Reflection during a crisis:

Are we the right people to be leading this? Do we need to change leadership style or change leaders?
Capture the lessons – as a case study to inform the response to the next crisis
Is there an opportunity for a positive outcome from this crisis?
Setting the context for the multi-disciplinary team
Crisis management expertise – Is there a template we could follow?

Reflections on crisis management from a senior leader:

It’s really difficult to get into crisis mode, but easy to identify a crisis in retrospect! Someone in the team needs to be able to see when you are in crisis – maybe you!
It’s better to over-react early than under-react, or you will always be playing catch-up.
Try to get to the right policy answer as quickly as possible – otherwise you will be dragged to the right answer eventually.
Keep the ability to see beyond the invested position – be able to be disinterested and impartial.
What are our levers? Need to understand what realistically can be done
A simple tool – think what I need to do for my Organisation / Team / Self
It’s important for the senior leaders to understand their own strengths / weaknesses and what value they can bring.
Never waste a good crisis – look for opportunities for your organisation (and where applicable the wider UK) to take a leadership position – find a way for the energy of the crisis to be channelled into something valuable and enduring.

Outcomes of the group exercise on Complexity and Change

When a shock happens…

What do I think my teams will be thinking and feeling?

Uncertainty, afraid of the future, worry they will not be supported
Think about their hierarchy of needs.

What are your own personal thoughts and feelings?

Regret / paralysis – feeling responsible when I am not
Worry about being under scrutiny
Worry about my decision-making and judgement under pressure

What you would want people to say about your leadership style

Decisive, sets clear context and priorities
Leads under pressure
Keeps team welfare in mind

What action could you take now to better prepare yourself and your team?

Have someone you can trust that you can talk to
Understand your stress behaviours
Take care of well-being and promote this behaviour in your team

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Try to recognise when a crisis is happening – don’t be the boiled frog.
Be more open with my bosses when things are not going well (on any front) – be less afraid to ‘cry wolf’
Familiarise myself with the crisis management structures and learning in Government
Have a ‘buddy’ (or more than one) to baseline with in the event of a crisis
Adopt the PERMA framework to undertake some team well-being and hence resilience building.

Setting the Context – Leading with the Civil Service – Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, DFID

September 17, 2019 / RR / 0 Comments

What it was:

A talk from a senior leader about setting the global context, followed by group discussion.

This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 16 and 17 September 2019.

What I learned:

When people are stressed, as senior leaders we can rise up a level and set the context. Think what is the global context for your team – e.g. PESTLE – and then relate this down the chain.

The UK will need a clear view on what it excels at: for example higher education, rule of law / rules-based systems and compliance (some countries want to disrupt the rules-based system). We are open to innovation and ideas. The prevalence of the English language is hugely beneficial.

An interesting question – what does UK need to do to become as important as Google? For example – the UK’s ‘net zero’ carbon commitment is a huge leadership position

Try to identify the things in your area where things are changing but being less talked about – this may be where you will be able to add value.

Our teams need us not to be stressed – they need us to think “up and out” – what is the context? What is coming? What are our partners and competitors doing?

“Future – Engage – Deliver” is a simple model of what a leader should do:

Future – It’s important to find reasons for your team to be optimistic – but it must be pragmatic and hard-headed
Engage – Bring that vision to each team member, what can they contribute?
Deliver – Decide what real impact you as a team will make.

Context, ambiguity and leadership – group exercise

Different people see ambiguity at different levels – the team may not care about the strategic ambiguity you are worried about!
Leading through ambiguity is a key common challenge
What are my key context challenges right now? Uncertainty over op model and resourcing, which is having real impact on the team.
Prioritisation: Everyone thinks the level above them is the level that should be doing prioritisation and isn’t. The problem is every level thinks this! So you need to do it yourself.

Four thoughts on leadership:

You need to make the job your own. Be yourself in the role, don’t try to be someone else. My reflection – I have been guilty of trying to act too much as I imagine my predecessor would have done.
Only do what only you could do. Deliberately push things down so that you – and your team – can do more “up and out”. Don’t fall back down the ladder from Leader > Manager > Operator. Stay a Leader, don’t retreat into being manager when under pressure.
People always think they are incredibly busy, however busy things actually are. Could you and your team go up a gear? If not then this is a sign of lack of resilience. Things can always get worse! So build resilience.
Personal development is not just about becoming adequate at the things you aren’t very good at. Develop your strengths – turn your powers into superpowers! Don’t think of ‘development needs’ as a euphemism for areas where people are not very good.

You can get energy for work from your work! Identify which parts of your work give you energy. Minimise those elements which sap your energy – power through them quickly. Think which parts of the day / week / month you will need to have maximum energy and when you can coast or build energy.

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Research and remember the “Future / engage / deliver” framework
Think about my wider interests and where I can add value – presumably the use and exploitation of information?
Remember to set context for the team and help them explore and prepare for potential futures
Find ways to bring external context into the team, and external thinking.
Make the job your own – don’t always think “what would my predecessor have done?”
Do more “up and out” for the team and for yourself.
Don’t fall back down the ladder from Leader > Manager > Operator. Stay a Leader!

Leading with self: Positive Thinking and Motivation

Leading with Self: Emotional Intelligence

Solving Kurosu

Future Leaders Scheme – End-of-Scheme reflection and discussion

Deputy Director Leadership Programme – additional reflections

Leading with Self: The personal leadership statement

Leading with self: Strengths and Shadows

Introducing the Strategic Framework: Leading with System – Tracey Waltho, Cabinet Office

Leading through complexity and change

Setting the Context – Leading with the Civil Service – Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, DFID

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