Excellence in Place Leadership Blog

The third cohort of the ADEPT / Amey Excellence in Place Leadership (EiPL) programme, which brings together forward-thinking thought leaders from across ADEPT to examine the ‘wicked issues’ affecting the sector, finished in autumn 2022. Neil Gibson, the facilitator, together with Andy Denman, Highways Sector Director at Amey, reflect on the success of the programme over its three year period and talk about next steps.

Amey and ADEPT launched the EiPL programme with the aim of bringing together some of the active thought leaders in the sector, giving them time to think creatively, learn from others, and to challenge the way they currently do things.

For the third year running, demand was high for a place on the programme. Candidates needed to demonstrate that this was the right programme for them, prove their commitment and show that they would bring an intellectual contribution to the group.

The third cohort were different again from the previous years, with a mixture of high calibre leaders from the ADEPT family, with varied leadership roles in the place sector, and from county, unitary, and combined authorities. It reminded us of the wide breadth of talent we have in our sector. It was wonderful to see this talent, wanting to stretch their minds, their networks, their understanding, and contribute towards the broader thinking of the sector.

The themes: levelling up and disruptive thinking

The whole EiPL programme is bespoke – it was important for the group to shape the content themselves. They choose the theme and we organise around this scope. EiPL 3 chose ‘levelling up’ as their theme. This was a timely choice as the government white paper was imminent, and there was a high level of expectation around what the paper would say and how it would be funded.

At the same time, we developed a parallel theme of ‘disruptive thinking’ to run alongside the programme. We chose disruptive thinking to provide techniques and tools to enable the participants to think differently about challenges and issues, making sure they were applying a new, creative thought process and developing opportunities.

Programme format

We adopted a similar format to previous years. Broadly, a problem or issue was introduced and discussed, bringing in at least three external thought leaders to bring different perspectives on the issue and to challenge the norm. This allowed the cohort to build their knowledge, then respond to a problem statement by working together. The rest of each session was split into a series of intensive workshops, where the group responded to the brief and created a series of potential strategies to take forward.

During each session, we were trying to get under the skin of levelling up. We wanted the group to explore deeper issues, for example, what does ‘great’ look like in terms of data insight? What does great partnership look like? How do you translate partnership into aligned funding and into resource cohesion and into communities?

Session one was hosted by the Connected Places Catapult in Milton Keynes and designed to get the dialogue going. What does ‘levelling up’ really mean? What is disruptive thinking?

Session two was hosted by Microsoft in Reading and looked at how data and insight can be used to underpin authentic outcome-based strategies, and subsequent interventions, to level up localities. Are there ‘killer’ metrics that can be used to define the baseline and to measure progress in achieving levelling up outcomes?

This was a challenging session – levelling up is not just a means to access new funding to implement local interventions - the whole issue is so much more complex than that. An evidence-led approach needs to underpin strategy, target interventions, and provide the basis of a monitoring evaluation approach. The cohort also reflected that place leaders need to act more as ‘choice architects’ utilising behavioural science to create an environment that influences change and accelerated disruptive thinking. Approaches to partnership working too could be strengthened with place leaders becoming ‘trust engineers’ truly committed to collaboration by understanding the needs of partners and communities.

Session three was hosted by EY in Manchester and focused on partnership working and community engagement. The premise being that authentic collaborative partnerships are key to successful levelling up. But how do you establish these partnerships that provide the leadership that can communicate the levelling up mission, foster co-design across all interests, and align all available resources?  

There's no silver bullet, but if you want to succeed you grow the partnership needed to solve the problem. How you engage your partners and communities, mobilise community action, and empower communities to address some of the wicked issues: these are all critical to building a fairer, level society.

The fourth and final session was hosted by Aviva in Norwich. It used a masterclass approach to evaluate Norfolk’s strategic approach to sustainable growth and to assess how successfully their levelling up agenda was embedded within it. The previous day we were shown around on of Norfolk’s largest regeneration sites, the former Coleman’s Carrow Works site in Norwich.

The masterclass brought together the cohort’s deep understanding of what a leading approach to levelling up should look and feel like and enabled them to evaluate Norfolk’s recently agreed strategic approach to growth, the Norfolk Investment Framework. This case study really brought the whole programme to life, illustrating how the theory of disruptive thinking can be applied in real situations, allowing the cohort to really probe and interrogate concepts.

Tangible outputs

Another key principle of the programme remained the same, which was around developing tangible outputs. The sessions generated the Good Practice guide for levelling up, a lunch and learn session and a number of blog posts. This was a critical part of the programme, ensuring that the thinking continues outside of the sessions and that the learning continues when people were back doing the day job.

Like the previous cohorts before them, participants really welcomed the opportunity to have the time out to think. Issues were raised that were current and relevant and they were able to apply critical, disruptive thinking.

Reflections and next steps

The EiPL programme as a whole has been a real success. It has allowed 40 thought leaders to undertake critical thinking around some of the wicked issues facing the sector, providing time to pause and reflect, to consider what is important. Each participant showed determination and passion and we would like to thank them all for taking part.

EiPL also allowed the participants access to the same number of high calibre thought leaders and experts, providing invaluable perspectives to each of the sessions. They helped ‘set fire’ to the thinking and were a critical component of the programme, and we would like to thank them too for their time and contribution.

The ADEPT Excellence in Place Leadership programme is sponsored by Amey, who first pioneered this approach within the sector in 2018. ADEPT and Amey continue to collaborate and intend to launch their next joint venture later this year. It will examine the key issues and opportunities affecting the sector and create a space for senior place leaders to think strategically and drive change.

Further information

• The Excellence in Place Leadership Session summary documents are available from the documents section of the website.
• Further information on EiPL can be found here: www.adeptnet.org.uk/programmes/excellence-place-leadership-programme