Jazzing up the tune of leadership

By VICKI JAYNE

If passion is a key attribute for leaders, then Jo Brosnahan certainly qualifies - and the subject she is most passionate about is good leadership.

Far from being just another management fad, for her it is the special ingredient that breathes heart and soul into an efficient organisation.

She delved into the subject as a Harkness Fellow at a North Carolina university in 1995-96 - and now she is putting that knowledge into practice as chief executive of the Auckland Regional Council.

It is no short-term task. Processes have to be set up to have decision-making that is tuned to the values and goals of an organisation.

Like a jazz band, there has to be room for inspired improvisation around a common beat.

The getting-together-to-make-good-music analogy is one that fits with what Jo Brosnahan has been working towards in the four years since she took on her role.

"There has to be a good process structure in place - a good understanding of what's appropriate and what is not.

"So there is a discipline at the core and around that you build people's capability to be innovative, to come up with new ideas."

The first step was to break down the three groups that the Auckland Regional Council had been divided into - environment, parks and "corporate" - and regroup up to 420 staff into one unit, made up of "operational centres" that were more flexible, autonomous and responsive to community needs.

"What we are trying to build is a culture that is focused on the community.

"We have something like 1.2 million stakeholders out there so we need to be making decisions quickly, not having them travel up and down a bureaucratic structure.

"To do that, we have to push out the accountability, responsibility - and the resource that's needed to support that capability."

That meant information systems had to be cranked up. SAP software now provides the information nerve centre and an intranet gives staff access to it. Rangers have GIS (geographic information systems) technology so that they have relevant information at their fingertips.

Jo Brosnahan says there is hardly anything that has not been changed to make the new organisation goals possible.

Now she is developing leadership capabilities that will make the whole thing zing.

The model Jo Brosnahan favours is that of leader as servant, which has more to do with humility than superiority.

"I think it's one that is very much in keeping with our culture in New Zealand. It's not about direction and authority.

"It's about coaching, developing and mentoring your people - developing trust, providing vision and direction, and challenging them into pushing out their own boundaries."

Initiatives are designed to bring this about in the council.

They include the Kouzes and Posner Leadership Practices Inventory - a questionnaire that measures leadership.

Leaders get "emotional intelligence" training to help develop self-awareness and empathy needed to find the most effective approach.

A "shooting stars" programme identifies and develops leadership talent.

The mentoring already being given to senior managers will be expanded to leaders at all levels in the organisation.

Even the remuneration structure has been customised to reflect abilities most valuable to the council - communication, customer focus, innovation, leadership, accountability, technical complexity and political insight.

The council's "strategic remuneration system," which has just won a Human Resource Institute award, helps remove the anomaly of people being "promoted" to positions that do not necessarily suit either their abilities or their desires.

"For instance, someone who has a high level of technical complexity but isn't suited to a leadership role can still advance in salary terms. We couldn't find an off-the-shelf remuneration package that rewards for the competences we want as an organisation so we've designed our own."

Some of her initiatives have led to Jo Brosnahan attracting flak for being too "touchy-feely" or for following trendy business fads that more properly belong in the private sector.

But she considers the public-private split irrelevant and says all groups benefit from good leadership.

The reformed public sector largely adopted what she describes as an "impoverished" managerial model from business - one that may improve efficiency but does not meet service-centred goals.

"We've been too wedded to the management output model.

"We lost sight of people's health or the state of the environment because we were too busy measuring the numbers of consents given or plans approved.

"We weren't actually thinking whether the stuff we were measuring was leading to the outcomes we wanted to achieve."

Her own leadership model is the chief executive of a hospital authority in North Carolina, whose driving belief was that if you looked after people, the bottom line took care of itself.

That chief executive revitalised a tired and failing organisation financially and spiritually.

The fact that Jo Brosnahan can happily talk about the emotional and spiritual aspects of leadership is maybe what the cynics find a bit scary. Evangelical? Yes and unashamedly so.

"People here are only just starting to realise that we need more than a managerial model to make organisations and countries work properly. Whether private or public sector, you need more vision, more spirit.

"The most important role for managers or leaders is to develop and encourage the people around them.

"That's what this programme is all about and, yes, I am passionate about it."

* Vicki Jayne can be e-mailed at vjayne@iconz.co.nz