John Jarvis
(…well maybe we do and without potholes would be nice, but you know what I mean…)
This month marks 40 years since Marty McFly first jumped into Doc Brown’s DeLorean. And in a twist worthy of the franchise, the government seems to be going back to the future too – returning to Total Place thinking from 2009 as one component of the biggest wave of devolution and local government reorganisation in decades.
I was there in 2009, working on the Total Place Pilots, and I’ve spent the years since at the Leadership Centre, supporting leaders navigating complexity and change. And now, watching the government dust off those ideas, I’m struck by a question: “is this just another trip around the same block, or could it actually take us somewhere new?”
Local government today looks remarkably similar to how it looked 100 years ago, and this should bother us more than it does. LGR, Devolution, Test Learn and Grow, Place-based budgets – they’re all an opportunity, if harnessed, to fundamentally redesign how we serve citizens and communities – but right now, we’re trying to navigate 21st century complexity with Victorian-era maps. To use this moment to reimagine how things get done, not just redraw boundaries, that is the leadership challenge.
In LGR in particular the process will surface all the tensions that people normally try to hide. Competing priorities. Organisational protectionism. Political pressures. The temptation will be to treat this as a technical challenge. Merge the councils. Sort out the governance. Hand some tricky bits to consultants and get it done.
But if that’s all LGR becomes, you’ll have reorganised without reimagining. Different structure, same underlying operating model, same outcomes for residents.
So as we stand at the threshold of this new wave of LGR and devolution, the question isn’t whether we can make it work. It’s whether we’re brave enough to actually go somewhere different this time.
Over 20 years of working with place-based leadership, through Total Place, Local Vision, Community Budgets, integrated care systems and more, we’ve learned a lot about what makes change stick.
What we’ve learned (and you already know too), is that transformation isn’t primarily about structures. It’s about Leadership. Leadership to… reconnect people with their purpose and create shared identity… to build relationships and mobilise coalitions across organisational, professional and team boundaries… to foster the conditions where experimentation can be explored and curious questions asked… to convene safe spaces so difficult conversations can actually happen… all in order that sense is made and progress forged.
And that’s exactly what the Leadership Centre does. We’re not coming in with a blueprint. We work alongside you using a practice, developed over years of working alongside leaders navigating exactly this kind of complexity. A practice of working with tension rather than avoiding it. Of enabling systems to organise around what matters to citizens, not silos. Of surfacing what’s really going on, not what’s seen on the surface. Of working how we want to be in the future, now.
Of helping shift leadership mindsets and ways of working…
Because those shifts, they are the difference between reorganisation and reimagining.
You Don’t Have to Do This Alone
We’ve built our LGR & Devo support around this learning. It’s practical, locality-based work that helps everyone who needs to be involved to convene around what actually matters – now and beyond vesting day.
Housing. Transport. Growth. Climate. Inequalities. These priorities don’t wait for structures to settle. We can and should be working on them together, building the leadership and change capabilities as we go, not waiting for the new structures to emerge.
And today we’re sharing a few resources which we think will help you to think differently about the journey ahead.
- First, a short leadership readiness quiz to help you understand where you’re strong and identify learning edges.
- Second, a pocket guide on the Five Leadership Responsibilities for navigating reorganisation.
- Third, a landing page detailing the different components of our support and how to get in touch.
Your future hasn’t been written yet. But how you approach LGR will shape your place for decades to come.
Doc Brown was right about one thing: you don’t need the old roads.
The question is: are you ready to build new ones?
John Jarvis, Chief Operating Officer, Leadership Centre