WHEN you are a key part of the justice system, controversy is part of the deal. The Legal Services Commission, which administers legal aid in England and Wales, unsurprisingly finds itself under regular fire.
Most recently, critics have complained that legal aid for criminal cases is swelling while poor people are denied funds to pursue civil cases. Newspapers also berate the LSC for serving too few ordinary people while its funds are swallowed up by long-running, and sometimes shambolic, criminal trials.
But not all the heat on the LSC — which has an annual budget of £2.1 billion and millions of people to serve — is applied from outside. The organisation has judged itself to be falling short of its own internal targets of making legal assistance available to all those who require it, providing quality advice and meeting government goals on value for money.
Its solution? A two-year programme designed to develop leadership skills in 160 middle managers — at a cost of £690,000.
Isn’t it difficult for a cash-strapped, public-sector organisation to justify such a sum, when it is already criticised for the way it spends public money? “Of course, it’s a delicate issue,” said George Lepine, the LSC’s director of human resources (HR). “There are those who will say that’s money that could be going into legal aid. My answer is that this programme — probably the most important HR initiative we have ever run — has improved the LSC’s performance. Two years ago we missed quite a few of our targets and priorities, but last year we hit more targets. It’s always hard to establish cause and effect, but I don’t think this is an accident.”
Lepine also points to a rise in legal-aid recipients and a marked improvement in the performance of most managers who took part in the course. In addition, employee confidence in managers and LSC leaders has increased. A staff survey two years ago revealed that confidence in management was low — many employees felt the executive team was out of touch and lacked vision. Employee satisfaction with and confidence in their bosses is now up by an average of 8%.
Although 8% is not huge, it is significant. Lepine believes that these early indicators vindicate the cash spent — 25% of the total HR budget — on the leadership-development scheme.
The scheme’s implementation highlights some of the difficulties in trying to transform the public sector. The first hurdle was the suspicion among staff that the programme — which was compulsory — masked an impending redundancy scheme.
With government-commissioned reviews recommending public-sector cuts, job security is an ever-present anxiety. At the LSC, the situation is exacerbated by the drive for fundamental changes to the organisation’s purpose and operations. Where it once merely processed legal-aid claims, the LSC is now focused on getting better value for money from its suppliers — the lawyers engaged to represent legal-aid recipients.
“Not everyone is comfortable with the change in direction,” said middle manager Vanessa Bailey, while Lepine conceded that “a great deal of negotiation and re-assurance was required” before managers agreed to the scheme.
Focusing on leadership as part of a transformation drive is fairly orthodox these days. The problem is that a lot of people use the leadership word, but the meanings they attach to it are often different. Whether leadership qualities are God-given or can be taught is a matter of debate as is what constitutes a good leader.
Gareth Jones, co-author of Why Should Anyone Be Led By You, says senior executives are not always effective leaders and leadership initiatives often focus on just the upper echelons of an organisation when, in fact, leaders emerge at all levels.
“People also often say they are investing in leadership when what they’re doing is management training,” said Jones, who argues that bureaucracy, in both the public and private sector, often kills leadership tendencies by encouraging “mind-numbing conformity”.
Lepine thinks there is room within the LSC, beneath senior executive level, for leadership to flourish. The organisation worked with Roffey Park, the management institute, to identify the qualities required to achieve change. These included emotional intelligence, strategic thinking and an ability to learn from experience.
All middle managers underwent a 360-degree appraisal involving their bosses, peers and customers. A personal development plan for every individual was devised and Roffey Park worked on individual strengths and weaknesses during a two-day course, followed by back-up LSC training courses and coaching.
Part of the deal on the compulsory scheme was that the personal-development process at Roffey Park should remain confidential.
Interestingly, while some managers would have refused to take part in the first scheme if it had been linked to promotion, a subsequent voluntary talent- management scheme, which was also run by Roffey Park, was most certainly a promotional instrument.
Ninety managers — many of them also participants in the compulsory leadership scheme — applied to take part. From that pool, 60 were selected for a two-day course, after which 11 people were identified as having particularly high potential for promotion.
Lepine said that the second scheme was designed to help the LSC grow and retain its own talent, and insisted that information from the first scheme was not used to shape the second. What was interesting was how talent emerged from unexpected quarters.
He said the LSC’s directors were surprised that they did not know some of the names of the people who emerged. “But I think that’s a good thing,” he said.
Sharon Brockway, Roffey Park consultant, said: “The advantage of a programme like this is it gives people a chance to shine who might otherwise not have been identified.”
Vanessa Bailey, one of the seven women and four men singled out for special nurturing, said half the chosen group were already involved in special projects at the commission, but the other half were not high profile.
For Bailey, 34, the whole leadership and talent-management process has been a shot in the arm. “It has certainly increased my commitment to the LSC,” she said.
And while nobody who took part in the two schemes has been sacked, the process has caused some managers to move on. “A number of people have left the organisation,” said Lepine. “The exercise did give people an opportunity to reflect on whether they were in the right place at the right time and whether they were equipped to do the things they were required to do.”
