Better Public Services article: Design Thinking Approach with Leadership at the Central Bank of Ireland

Building engaged and motivated Public Service leadership teams empowered to shape strategic execution can be a key enabler to all three pillars of the Better Public Services Transformation Strategy - requiring Public Service colleagues to work collaboratively, inclusively and innovatively to tackle the major issues facing society. Here the Central Bank Transformation Team outline how they are taking a design-thinking led approach to developing the role of leaders in strategic execution:

Why is the Central Bank focusing on leadership and strategic execution?

There are many aspects to consider when seeking to enhance any organisation’s capability to achieve strategic change. We focus on the critical role of an engaged and motivated broader leadership team (i.e., the network of business unit leaders below Executive level) because this group uniquely:

• Translates the high-level strategic vision for change into practical local plans and initiatives
• Colleagues look primarily to their local line management for key signals that this change is warranted
• Strategic change involves many disparate business units moving in unison, requiring cooperation across traditional silos

Our expectation is that multi-year strategic ambitions are more reliably achieved when the broader leadership group is involved in co-creating the implementation of strategic change.

How is the Central Bank taking a design-thinking approach to leadership and strategic execution?

Our first step is to organise our leadership team into subgroups referred to as ‘Pods’. A ‘Pod’ is a self-directing group of people (10-15 leaders) with diverse competencies and skillsets who work collaboratively and iteratively on the delivery of a defined strategic outcome. The Pod is scheduled to work over a fixed period (typically 4-6 weeks). Success for each Pod is to take a strategic focus topic as outlined in our strategy. They then co-create a practical set of solutions on how to implement at scale that strategic ambition taking account of the day-to-day realities of our organisation.

Our leadership Pods use a range of design-thinking techniques because we need to:

• Focus on outcome, less on process
• Imagine success and work back to make it happen
• Break with historical experience of what has worked and not worked
• Account for the human context in terms of mindsets and motivations around change
• Encourage both evolutionary and revolutionary ideas

The Executive team is supportive of the Pod initiative recognising the critical role of the broader leadership team in scaling successful strategic implementation.

What positive outcomes have been achieved so far?

There are positive benefits to report in terms of progressing the implementation of desired key strategic changes, as well as indirect benefits for our leadership team.

Each Pod produces different and bespoke outputs to accelerate execution of a key strategic challenge. The Pod shares these solutions with the entire leadership team. This accelerates implementation of strategic change because leaders are adopting plans & solutions designed by their peers through the Pods.

The Pod participants themselves report positive outcomes. New and deeper relationships have been forged among our leadership group. In addition, personal feedback from participants refers to feeling more included in the strategic process. They feel energised from problem-solving in a more engaging way, stretching to come up with novel ideas, learning more about challenges faced by peers, learning about design thinking, and witnessing first-hand the power of a diverse group to innovate solutions to complex and multi-faceted problems.

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