They are the ‘turnaround’ kings. They can straddle two local authorities, they can manage two large schools at the same time, they can transform your hospital trust, they can restore the reputation of your children’s services and they can get your adult care services out of special measures. They are the ‘special ones’.
So when the magic doesn’t work and the turnaround fails to happen or the results don’t improve or the initial improvement is not maintained what then? How does the special one explain this?
‘I was too good’
Such explanations will often resemble the defence given by another ‘special one’, Jose Mourinho, when Chelsea had an inexplicably bad run of losses. It ran along the lines of: “I was too good, I raised people’s game, I made them better than they were but they couldn’t maintain this standard or meet my expectations”.
In other words it’s not their fault – the teachers/nurses/social workers were just not good enough.
These managers are ‘special’ because of their very impressive track record of success in improving performance, meeting and even surpassing the ambitions of the board.
However, in almost all cases they never stay long. A ‘special one’ is always in demand so after a couple of years they move on, their reputation enhanced, to bigger and better things.
They leave behind an organisation that has fought its way out of special measures and restored its reputation but often at the cost of a physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted staff group.
Short term dramatic improvement has been achieved but the transformation has not been embedded. All of the effort was directed at producing an immediate impact and building for the future was neglected.
As a result, when the charismatic leader departs the organisation soon reverts to past behaviour with predictable results.
Short term thinking encouraged
Real change, lasting change doesn’t happen overnight. That’s because changing the way people think, developing relationships, establishing a set of values is an evolutionary process and it needs a different type of leadership.
Yet the government helps this short term thinking with its emphasis on league tables and a narrow range of easily measurable targets and quick wins. This encourages the cult of the super leader, the ‘special one’. It paves the way for a system where we focus on passing exams rather than educating pupils, on speeding up throughput at the expense of patient care and safety, of completing assessments but not promoting independence or improving quality of life.
We don’t need ‘special ones’ we need a long term investment in staff without the short term exploitation.
Blair McPherson is a former director of social services and social worker and now author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk