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An introduction to public leadership
An introduction to public leadership

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2.5 Week 2 round-up

At the beginning of this week’s activities, you read that one of the key challenges for leaders is to identify opportunities for improvement in the work of service teams and organisations they lead, and to initiate the changes that will effect those improvements. For public leaders, these opportunities need to be rooted in an understanding of public value.

Two approaches to change have been examined: the incremental approach associated with ongoing continuous improvement; and the planned approach associated with more fundamental, transformational change or innovation. Either way, change is not always straightforward and requires key skills in leaders to be able to imagine a different future and influence ot0hers to create and monitor the changes.

The adoption of a systems approach to change encourages leaders to clarify the context of any improvements or changes they implement as a ‘microsystem’ – an assemblage of staff, technology, data, methods and participative commitment. This week you have learned something of the operational planning and implementation of change and improvement.

Next week, you will examine in more detail the leadership of people and teams, focusing on how effective leaders can mobilise the commitment of their team, and how leadership extends beyond the boundaries of the immediate team (or microsystem) to influence the work of other teams.

You can now go to Week 3 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .