Can you actually lead a complex system if you never leave the boardroom?

In this episode, Joe sits down with Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney, Director for Environment and Climate Change at Hackney Council.

Geeta is local government through and through. With more than 25 years in the public sector, she has an eclectic mix of experience, areas she has delivered within and been responsible. From directly working with children at risk and criminal justice services experienced children to cross corporate and partnership services. She knits together people and place-based services. In her current role she is responsible for environmental services, streetscene, public realm, safety and climate change.

In this conversation, Geeta speaks honestly about what leadership really looks like in complex systems. It’s not about having all the answers, or being the technical expert in the room. It’s about humility, asking the right questions, building trust, and staying close to the communities you serve. Her message is quietly powerful: lasting change happens through relationships. Through genuine participation. And through leaders who are willing to take the less trodden path - even when it feels slower or harder.

What you’ll take away from this episode:

• Why leadership is about breadth - the balcony as well as being close to the dancefloor
• The role sponsorship plays in supporting others in their journeys
• What local government taught us during COVID about speed, adaptability and courage
• What meaningful co-production with communities really requires
• Why creativity, play and humour can unlock better solutions
• Why relationships matter more than frameworks, tools or methods

Geeta also reflects on resilience, both personal and organisational, and why supporting people through emotionally demanding work is essential. Supporting staff enables everyone to be valued and able to bring their best selves to their roles, and build public services that are sustainable now and into the future. If you care about social justice, community and organisational resilience, and leadership grounded in humanity rather than hierarchy, this conversation is worth your time.

Stay connected:

• Follow Joe on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joseph-badman
• Read the latest chapters from our upcoming book: https://relationalservicedesign.com
• Master the methodology: https://basistraining.co.uk/
• Partner with us: https://basis.co.uk

We know each other really well. Full disclosure, but for people who don't. Who are you, what is it you're doing and how have you got to where you're at now?

Thanks, Joe. Nice to see you after so long. Not so long, but.

So I'm Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney, and I say my name at full because I'm proud to be a female of South Asian heritage. And I think that we don't say enough about our heritage and our culture in the work that we do.

And obviously we work with our diverse, diverse community. So it's really important for me that I am representing and I'm really proud of my culture. Who am I? Well, that's a really interesting question.

So I work in local government. I would probably describe myself as, you know, through and through, like a stick of rock of Brighton.

I am local government and I've worked in local government over 25 years, done some other things, both sides and in between. But I know that my heart is in local government.

I'm currently at Hackney Council and I'm doing environment, Climate and Public Realm, which is really everything that you see that happens in the streets, in the public realm and the services that pretty much everybody has access to. But I have done lots of things in local government. So I started my career in youth justice, which, you know, is really my passion.

Young people and really supporting young people to thrive and be the best that they can.

And then I've sort of done various roles across local government, including, I guess, social care and children's services and vulnerable adults and a whole range of weird and wonderful things. That is what local government is about.

Yeah.

And by you do Public Realm and Climate and environment, what we mean by that is you are the director of all of those services rather than just dabbling in it.

Yes, that's true.

Yes.

I am the director of all of those services and have a wonderful team and many, many people who, as you know, do some of the really difficult jobs that we have to do in local government.

Yeah, thanks for that. So Youth justice, done a lot of work in that. Prior to this role. You studied law in university. How did you end up in local government from that?

That's not the normal trajectory, is it? From course to career.

So I did do law. I had aspirations of being a criminal lawyer. Probably watching a bit too much Perry Mason when I was at uni.

That's a reference.

We used to watch it in our little house in Swansea, as it goes. But then after I did my degree, I was really interested in Criminology. So I did straight away do a master's in criminal justice and criminology.

And that's how my interest in working with people affected by criminal or, you know, who are in the criminal justice system sort of came from.

And I applied for jobs, applied for many jobs and my first job was in London, so I moved from Wales to London and it was working in the voluntary sector and it was working with children who were on the cusp of going to prison.

And that's where I guess my sort of journey into public sector and public services began, because that voluntary sector was very much connected as a commissioned service from the local authority at the time.

And then how did you move from that into local gov?

Yeah, I mean, I describe it as an. Often it was opportunity and luck and, you know, we can sort of debate all of those things in different times.

Or yachts were created and there was an opportunity to do a sort of lead on a pilot, which was about, in those days, intensive supervision for children who were at the cusp of going to prison, but also tagging and surveillance. So I was very, very lucky to get the job to do the first in the country. And.

And that's where I kind of stepped into local government and probably never have left.

Eight.

Yeah. So I was seconded in to do this role as the pilot of the ISSP scheme as it was. Once the.

The pilot had been landed and government was rolling it out across the country, I then took on sort of a consortia of four or five boroughs in East London.

So I went across to lead on that and then, as I said, opportunity arose and I came, you know, Youth Justice Service manager very quickly and then assistant director very quickly, all through kind of changes in the local authority and people moving on. So. And I would say that people sort of sponsored me, which is quite important for me to say.

I think we need to be sponsoring people that we know, you know, are showing those kind of abilities and attributes of leadership and, you know, really wanting to kind of progress and help on a wider kind of portfolio than what they're probably branded as. And I did have that and I was very lucky to have people who saw that, I guess, in me. And so these second opportunities kind of went very quickly.

I mean, I did. I did progress very quickly from what was a sort of project lead to assistant director in a matter of years. Really.

Yeah. So I'm.

I know that because you were already an assistant director when I joined on the graduate scheme in Lewisham and you were the sort of the example that people would quietly give as, oh, look, if we work, you know, really hard, then, you know, we might be able to progress like. Like Geether has progressed. So you were definitely an example for us to.

That, you know, our careers needn't necessarily by limited, be limited by what people sort of thought was the norm. You know, it didn't have to. It didn't have to. Yeah, it could progress quite, quite quickly.

But who were the people that sponsored you then, when you were. When you were in those early roles?

Yeah, so obviously line managers and at the time there was a gentleman who was acting chief executive at one of the councils and, and saw those sort of, I guess, those skills and. And what I brought and didn't really see age.

And I think that's always been a challenge because people sort of see your age as you're very young, so therefore can you do.

Whereas I suppose I try to push forward that it's not about the age, it's about the kind of ability, but also being very humble that you don't know it all and there are lots of people that you have to have around because, you know, the team is everyone, not you.

But you need to be able to have those sort of leadership skills and to be able to bring the best around you, to be able to deliver the things that you do, but also to learn very quickly.

And I suppose, you know, the reason I jokingly, you know, everyone brands me as a sort of crime and community safety expert, but, you know, I've learned an awful lot in the last couple of years doing the environment and climate portfolio in areas that I probably knew very little about at the time.

So I think it's really important that you curate that and make sure that you're not going in as the, you know, it all kind of approach and being really, really thoughtful about making sure that people around you know that you're there to support, not to take over and lead in. In services that they may have a professional expertise in.

So how do you do that, then? What's the. Yeah, what's the. The sort of interpersonal aspect of doing that?

Because coming into a role where you've got enormous amount of expertise as a leader of government services, but not actually knowing the technical detail of it. How did you go about approaching that? Because it's a different kind of.

You had to lean on a different skill set there than you would have done if you were working in Youth justice, which was just your bread and butter.

Yeah. I mean, someone once said to me, it's about depth and breadth, Geetha, and I think it's totally correct.

But when you step out and start to look after other portfolios, you have to remember you can't know that level of breadth.

Yeah.

And that's okay because to know that level of depth of everything is not even possible. But it's about. You're not there to run those things.

You're there to ask the right questions, to have the right assurances, to have line of sight on the things that are important. And you have to, you know, triangulate many things. So what, what are the things that you've got to look for around risk?

So, you know, look at your complaints, look at, talk to the staff, talk to the service users, get all of that kind of information about where things may, may not be quite right and where the indicators that tell you that and where then can you add the value, to support, to improve? And that's the skill you've got to. I think when you're moving from frontline to management to senior leadership, you have to almost.

It's not giving up the control of the breadth, but you have to know where you add value. And of course, you learn the depth.

You know, like I said, you know, I took on what took on in Lewisham days, the drug service and supporting people and community safety. And you learn it very quickly because of course, why, you know, how else would you, you know, kind of involve yourself?

But it's about making sure you're not so involved that you then look like you're taking over from people who are experts or in those roles to manage and lead in different ways. So that's.

I, I mean, I always give that sort of advice to people who are moving from man, you know, frontline or management to leadership is you have to almost give up some of that knowing it all.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the right thing to do.

But it's a skill and you have to practice it and you have to kind of keep going with it because sometimes you do want to know the exact detail of the. You know, what is the size of that pothole that I need to know as to why an engineer does or doesn't fill it.

And sometimes that's helpful for you to know that, but not always essential.

Yeah, I suppose it's a skill that you're constantly calibrating, like what level of detail is useful for me to be involved in here. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, it takes some courage as well, though, I think, to say, actually, do you know what?

I don't know what the right answer is here, but I do have a service of people that together do.

And I have to be comfortable with that because I think it can be a very difficult job as a leader being in a position where people expect you to have answers to things that you can't possibly really have answers for, or feeling yourself, because I feel this as well. Sometimes I feel like I should have the answers to things.

And often in those situations, a more useful way to approach it is to just accept that I don't have the answers and to hand it back and to help other people to figure it out. Is that something that you think about a lot in practice or.

I mean, I always take the approach to bring the right people around the table. Yeah. You know, problem solving is the diverse nature of everyone's kind of expertise and thoughts and values.

And, you know, that's how you get solutions. Knowing the answer is not really what we should be trying to always do as leaders.

We should be encouraging and enabling conversations so that others are kind of working it through together.

And then of course, you know, decision making is something as a leader you do take, and you need to be confident in the information you've been provided. And the decision you take at the time is based on that. And of course, you may make the wrong decisions.

You may make decisions if you had more information, you might have changed.

But, you know, I always go back to the kind of value which is that, you know, you can't always know the things you don't know, but you have to try and get as much information around you before you take those big decisions or challenging decisions. But also, I do think that, you know, in local government we have many kind of hats.

So service leadership and running portfolios and having responsible for services is one sort of skill set.

But then when you're in an emergency situation, you know, you are there to make those harsh decisions in Quick time, and you have to have some of those answers.

And again, you're calibrating what you know and how you know it and why you know it and what decision you're making and recording all of those things because it's really important, because it's quite fast. Time and again, you need to have the right people around you to be able to make those decisions very quickly.

When you're giving that example, what are you drawing on? What kind of examples are you thinking?

Oh, I mean, so many probably. Unfortunately, we deploy a lot of people on emergencies every week, so, you know, there are fires across London, there are floods, pothole sinkholes.

Covid.

Yeah, of course, you know, there are so many kind of crisis situations that happen for our residents that we as a council are there to support the blue light services with.

And some of those, you know, of course, if you've done several of those, you, you know a little bit about the decisions you're going to make because you've kind of done some of that before.

But every incident is different, every issue is different and you have to really be quite, quite on top of that before you, you know, press a decision button.

Yeah.

I mean, the COVID experience is probably one we know, we all reflect on now and of course, the COVID review and lessons learned.

And I think it was probably one of those experiences where you look back on it all and you think, gosh, I'm not sure kind of how or what we did, but as local government, we did an awful lot that was supporting communities and supporting all sorts of things that needed to be done at the time.

And, I mean, I was at Newham at the time and, you know, we, we stood up, we had, well, Newham had the Mass Vaccination Centre, we had the Nightingale, the city airport.

And it was all about coordinating our partners to make sure that, you know, as best as we could, we were all informing each other at very, at points, massive pace, but that we were all really aligned to make sure that whatever decisions were being taken in certain organizations that we understood and that we were trying to work closely together to make sure that our residents felt totally involved and getting the right information for them.

Yeah, I mean, Covid was obviously a very tragic period for families across the. Well, not even across the uk, across the world, in local government.

It gave me enormous amounts of hope because it demonstrated just how quickly we can all organize ourselves and how quickly it's possible to make really rapid change and improvements for the benefit of people that really need help.

Yeah.

And sometimes I think that of course, we never want to remain in that situation, but I fear that we maybe have lost a little bit of what we learned during that period. The ability to really respond to needs, to really get quick feedback, to really quickly test things and see if it works. Do you see that as well?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, everyone talks about that, about how, how did we manage to stand things up so quickly?

And I suppose part of the answer is that, you know, finances were challenging for lots of local authorities, but we were enabled to spend in a way that we could not do in normal times.

But also we, we reached out to the organization in a way that we don't normally do, which is just, you know, again, we had finance people who were on the phones supporting residents who are making calls in to ask for advice. And that, that to me is about the, the kind of multi skilled set of wonderful staff we have in local government.

Because whilst I have a job title, I have lots of other skill sets and everyone does and often we don't necessarily look to see how we pull that or work with some of those other skill sets that people have.

So in the, in the sort of civil contingency world, you know, having volunteers from some of those other sectors in the council to help, say, set up a rest center, work in the, you know, the emergency center if we need one or what have you, that to me is how we really amplify what we've got best. You know, our staff are brilliant and that's how we, we utilize the full skill set of our staff.

Yeah, but I also think, you see, because we were in emergency response, decisions could be made in, in a, in a kind of a quicker time frame.

And as I said, as long as we were making the right decisions with the information we had that we were doing and we were learning and we were testing and obviously things kept changing. In normal times, I think, you know, the council's function is, you know, we need to really hone back to what is the purpose of the local authority.

And you know, we are sort of civic stewards. We are the kind of bridge, we are the kind of linchpin around, you know, coordination and pulling together and working with communities.

And really that's what we need to make sure we always do. In Covid, we probably couldn't do an awful lot of that because we were in a sort of more of a just do mode.

Yeah.

So it is a bit of a balance, and I wouldn't say all or nothing, but we do need to be a lot more agile And I think, you know, the whole test and learn and try things is something, you know, I look back in my career and it's what we did in the early days in local government. But there was certainly much more resourcing then.

So I suppose there was a lot more willingness to think about how you do some of that innovative stuff and testing some things. And if it didn't work, you know, we learned something and we stopped it and we moved or we pivoted.

But I think the luxury of that is slightly harder now because of the resource constraints.

It's a tricky one, isn't it?

Because just because you put an enormous amount of thought into one program and put a lot of resource into doesn't guarantee that it's going to work or deliver the impact that you expect at the end or release the savings that you expect at the end.

I suppose my perspective on this when it comes to working in a more agile way is that the testing and learning is almost on a small scale, is necessary to work out what is actually going to be helpful here. What's the right answer here? And waiting until the end is. It's a sort of bit of a comfort blanket.

Sometimes you think, well, there's loads of plans, there's loads of rationale in the business case. Reality is the business case full of all kinds of assumptions.

Yeah, yeah.

And we don't know if it's going to pan out like that.

And when we get to the end of, can be quite awkward because then you're in a situation where, well, we spent all the money, we've spent all the time, the local elections are about to happen. Well, now we just have to say it worked or we have to.

And I'm not saying that people, you know, misrepresent the truth, but there is a, sometimes there's a, an incentive to maybe say that something's a bit more successful than it actually was.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you, you look at, look at all sorts of evaluation reports and impact reports and all sorts of things and, you know, you want to be on the optimism bias point of that. Of course you do.

Yeah.

But what's really important in all of the work we do is to say the things that haven't worked well or if, if it worked well in this space, why has it not worked well in this space? And to, to say, you know, it's not just the blueprint. I always use this analogy, didn't I?

It's like, you know, the blueprint is helpful, but it's, it's not the thing that you need to kind of use in a different borough. So, you know, in Lewisham, this recipe worked, but in. In Hackney, you know, we might need more eggs and less flour.

And that's the thing that I think we. We also need to be much more kind of brave about. So looking outwards about what's working elsewhere is so important.

But don't just pick the blueprint up and bring it back. You know, really interrogate the things that. Why in that context that sort of happened.

And actually, if it didn't happen there, it might work in our context because we have got slightly different needs or more eggs and less flour type moments. So I think that's what we need to get better at.

Yeah, but there is, as I said, the nervousness and the risks about the getting things wrong, I think, are amplified in a context of where there's limited resourcing.

Yeah, I mean, you're far closer to those conversations than I am. Can you sort of put words like what that nervousness is? What is it that people are worried about?

And I know it's almost a naive question, but I'm just keen to understand a bit better, I suppose.

I mean, fundamentally, if council doesn't meet its budget requirements, we are in special measures and that is a difficult place for any council to be. And we see councils are in that position now, so that's your kind of first priority.

And so the nervousness comes where perhaps we're saying, if we do these things, we're going to achieve a reduction in spend of this much, and then if we don't, that means that there's further pressure on the system, the financial system, and therefore to the council.

And there's also, I think, the nervousness of, like, going into the unknown a little bit, because we don't know if any of these things we're saying would work. And if they don't work, we've expanded resources and now we're back to square one.

And I think it's a combination of those things that I think does sort of stymie innovation somewhat. But, you know, if we don't innovate, we don't create, we're not kind of thinking about that forward look, we're actually going backwards.

And I think, you know, we. We do need to kind of really push forward with trying to think about how do we do things in a.

In a different way, what might be some of the solutions to some of the issues at perennial in. In councils, but doing it with our communities. And I can't emphasize that enough?

I think, you know, we all use the words co production, co development or co this, that and the other. But to do it genuinely and to do it well actually does enable us to focus some of those resources and how things could be done.

And we're doing it with communities because that's about the community at the heart of everything we do.

But also they have a lot of the solutions and answers because they're living the world, they're navigating the borough, they're feeling the place, they are the people. And if we don't look at the place and the people through the lens of them, then we're just creating services that we think might work.

What does that look like when it's done really well, that genuine involvement and participation works? I know you've had enormous amounts of experience of that.

Yeah. I mean, it's hard and it's not quick and it is challenging because, of course you will hear things that perhaps you feel uncomfortable hearing.

But if you can do all of those things and really create the environment, that means that communities come back, they talk to us, they invest their time with us and then we start to think about, well, actually, these are some of the solutions that we may not have thought about.

So in the space of, you know, youth safety, for example, you know, a lot of the work we did was about really thinking about what do young people look. Feel like when they're navigating the borough.

Yeah.

Because young people's experiences are different to an older person navigating the borough. And then also thinking about, what are the important levers for them? How are they going to know where X, Y and Z services? How is.

How are they going to access these things? Putting it on a website that nobody looks at. That's not it, is not it?

But it may have felt like, oh, we do lots of things, we invest lots of money and the councils do, but if nobody knows about it, you have to bridge those gaps. So then working with children and young people and families about, well, how does this access work best for you?

And you will know, you know, we created that wonderful Journey of the Child, which was an interactive kind of way in which children and families could understand, you know, at different ages. What do I need? What do I need for my, you know, for the Red book? I've got an under 4 year old. What do I need for health services?

Also, where can I go If I'm a 14 year old and I'm looking to do X, Y and Z? And it wasn't perfect, but it was designed with young people and families.

So it's, I think it was a huge step forward in doing what is social justice, which is, you know, making sure we have genuine participation and that we're improving access so that the children and families rights are kind of forefront in the way in which we then, as councils, are thinking about equity and equality and how our services can meet those needs.

You mentioned that it's not easy and it's a lot of work.

I think the reality is that, that just when you work in a properly participative way with communities, it just reflects how much time and effort it actually takes to do the work properly. And, you know, if it's easy, then something's not. Something's not right, you know, we shouldn't be optimizing for the easiest route.

Well, there's a great book, I think it's called thank youk For Being Late actually. And I use this when I'm talking to a number of people, because I'm not saying come late to every meeting or anything like that.

I'm just saying it's, it describes a whole ethos that says if you, you know, if the journey from A to B is the swiftest and you might think the most efficient, okay, that's ticked something.

But if you take the journey that's less trodden, you actually take the time to smell the roses and see what's around and you, you absorb, absorb so much more and so your experience is enhanced.

But actually you're engaging with a whole range of people, places, whatever they may look like, that you wouldn't have got in that very efficient journey.

And it also goes on to talk about we're almost always going at a thousand miles an hour and if you carry on at a thousand miles an hour every day for however many years, there's only one outcome and that's not a good one.

So you have to almost think about, you know, step back, don't always take the most, what looks like the most efficient pathway and really think about the pace in which you're doing some stuff.

It's not always easy to say, yeah, I'm not saying slow down and put your feet up, but, you know, sometimes you do need to spend the time to think things through and go on a different path because you may come up with a better solution.

Yeah, there's a. That reminds me of, of an analogy and I'm not going to be able to quote this. This person will.

There's this comparison of, you know, you can, you can make a bird fly in A perfectly straight line. But to do that you have to strap a rock to it and throw it.

Right.

Unfortunately, what happens then is it loses all the beautiful qualities of being a bird. Yeah, a bird will go from A to B, but it's going to take all kinds of different routes.

And there's, there's beauty and meaning and purpose in all of those things. And in the context of.

That's right.

Of designing services or improving services, that that's necessary. Not if, you know, maybe not if you're rolling out new laptops to people in the council. Well, you know, just throw it in a straight line.

But that's different to how do we help children, young people that have not had the best start in life thrive in this place? Well, there isn't an A to B answer for that, is there? We need to, we need to figure that out together.

And it's going to be, it's going to be messy along the way. We're talking about social justice and equity.

When local government is at its best, what is it doing to make progress against those very important agendas? What do you see it doing at its best?

I think it does a lot of it now.

Yeah.

You know, we understand our neighborhoods, our places and our people. We have information, data and insight of that which in itself helps us to know, well, where and what does that look like.

We understand where the health inequalities lie from evidence. We understand where all the other inequalities lie throughout the life journey of anybody.

And I think, you know, public health have, you know, when they, I remember when they all came back into the council, you know, I think the, the value of looking at things in that kind of whole systems approach is what local government does. I think, you know, we obviously always have on our priorities those vulnerable groups and we understand what we need to deliver.

And I think, you know, in part, we probably do do a lot of that kind of participation and working with our communities, but we have to do it consistently and we have to do more of it.

And of course, we have to try and tackle some of these really perennial issues that challenge our communities and, you know, talk about disproportionality and inequalities. There is still all of those things exist in our system.

Yeah, you know, you can look at the point of birth, you know, maternity services are challenging and are disproportionately affecting some of our black women. And then, you know, you think about access to early years services and school readiness and you can think about, you know, exclusion and absenteeism.

At school and you, like, move up the chain and you think about children going missing and then you think about criminal justice and then employability and employment. There are all of these indicators in the life journey of anybody where there are disproportionate outcomes.

And the system, probably, and I know it's not probably, the system, you know, is set up in some ways to continue with that disproportionate and discriminatory approach. So as local government, our role is to look at the whole system.

And we don't control the system, we are part of the system, but we have a role in that partnership to really, I guess, to hold each other to account, other partners to hold us to account and to really like, look at those things that have not shifted for years, decades about the impact of what we are as a collective public sector services doing and what should we be changing. And none of that is overnight, and none of that is simple. But we know that those issues are there and we should be all tackling them together.

And I think, you know, the whole, what is local government about?

And I think I said it before, it's really about just delivering brilliant services to our residents, but it is about making sure that we are challenging and working together with others to really improve the equity and raising standards for everyone.

So my first job was in the job center. I'm going somewhere with this.

And I realized very, very quickly I was an advisor and I realized that my job, which was to get people registered for what was then Jobseeker Job Seekers Allowance, figure out what their needs were, their skills, barriers to work, come up with a plan for them, set them on their way. I realized that for lots of people that I was talking with, that just wasn't what they needed.

And I realized for some people that it was actively making their situation worse because you'd come across people, you had one guy that was living in a bush in a park very close to us and the system, it didn't tell me to, but it sort of implied, well, maybe I should be telling him about this job at a warehouse and he needed a forklift license for. And maybe I should pay for that anyway.

So I realized when I was in that job that if I was going to be useful, I was going to have to, I was going to have to do things despite the system that had nothing to do with that job.

So for instance, if somebody came in and they didn't have their housing benefit sorted out, well, I'd spend my lunch break on the phone with the council trying to sort their housing benefit out so that that immediate issue could be resolved and they could at least start thinking about work. Or I might beg, borrow and steal money so that we could get somebody new shoes for an interview or something like that.

But the thing about doing things despite the system and not because the system is helping you to do it, is that you need your own personal resilience to do it.

And when you're not feeling resilient and when you're tired and when you're fed up and frustrated, it's very difficult to be useful in those situations.

And the reason I'm saying all of this is because, I mean, the work you're talking about there, holding the system to account, really tackling some of these ingrained systemic challenges over days, weeks, months, years, decades in some cases, takes an incredible amount of resilience to just like keep chipping away at it, keep bashing away. And you've been through so much change in local government in your career.

What, I mean, what are you doing to keep yourself motivated, to remain resilient in the face of, you know, setbacks and what are you doing to keep yourself having a go at these challenges?

You know, I think working in public services is we are there to be intentional and to help those who, you know, aren't necessarily always able to challenge the system or articulate the challenges that they have. And the motivation is because I know we will make the change and I see change.

You know, we've, we've made so many changes over the decades and you, you see individual lives change, you see, you know, communities transformed and, and you, you, you speak to lots of people who, you know, really grateful for the work the local, local authorities and our staff do. So that's the motivation, I think. Yeah, it's hard.

And you know, I, I sit and, yeah, you know, in some, some meetings I will be the one that says, you know, this data hasn't changed for 25, 30 years. What is it we are actually doing?

But that's not a blame thing, that's a kind of, we really all need to sit up and think really hard and we need to refocus and we need to be quite laser focused about the things that are going to make the difference. And doing the visionary and doing the kind of high level stuff is important. But you know, there are some really clear things that we know.

So let's go and talk about and sort it.

So I think it's trying to, I always do this sort of balance about, you know, you do the local and then you have to do the kind of challenge to the system, and you have to be in the right places for that.

And, you know, I've been very, very grateful to have been at tables where you can do that and you can have those conversations with people, but you also, you know, people around you see you do that.

And I remember a member of staff said to me, are you probably the only person I've ever known who's outwardly articulated the discrimination our young people were getting in the criminal justice system at the time? And I said, but if I'm not doing that, then who? How are we going to talk about these things?

And I think it gave confidence to others to do it, and I think that's what's really important. It's like I'm not on my own kind of, you know, doing this. It's everybody.

But knowing that they can say those things and also be part of the way in which we're going to change things means there's more of us all working on it. So that, that to me is really important.

I mean, resilience is a hard question because, you know, I probably have done this over my career and it happens to everyone. And there have been some really, really sort of, you know, dark times, I guess it's probably fair to say. But, you know, you have to.

You have to be kind of. And I do.

I think you have to be really strong about your moral compass and, you know, these things have happened, but you have to dust yourself off and get on because if you sort of slip off the ladder, I sort of feel like, you know, I haven't done what it is I'm supposed to be doing. And for me, it is about re kind of calibrating and shaping and helping to really improve lives for everybody.

So my resilience comes from my family and, you know, people around you, your work colleagues, like, you know, people that, you know, your networks, so important.

And I say this to everybody who's coming up, you know, in local government, you know, it sounds a bit of a, you know, go for a coffee, but your networks are probably the most important thing when the chips are down, but also when you just want to have that conversation to kind of just help you through something, and together you come up with some really great things and you have some great conversations, you're going to, you know, fix the world. But then you, you know, you sort of think, well, how come all of that? Where do I go with that? And you do you change things together.

So the networks you have. And I've got great Networks and people who, you know, I know, genuinely care about me. And it's, that's what, that's what it's about.

That's what resilience, I suppose, you know, ultimately comes down to.

Yeah, I think that's very, very well put to, to do some of the, the important and transformative stuff that we're talking about here. You can't do it, you can't do it by yourself. You do need, you need groups of, well, in many cases leaders.

I mean, you need people on the front line who are able and capable and also passionate about, you know, moving, moving the needle. But you also need leaders to be able to create the conditions for them to be able to do that work.

I'm interested what you think are some of the conditions that need to be in place for groups, leaders that are trying to tackle some of these really messy problems, not come up with the answers necessarily, but try and create the conditions to make progress on them. Like what, what needs to be in place for them to be able to be effective together as, as a, as a group.

You took you, for instance, talking about being able to say some of the things that people are not willing to say, like that that needs to be possible. Right. What are some of the other things that you, that you think?

Well, I mean, I think that safe space is, is absolutely critical because if you don't create that and people feel they can't ask or share their thoughts, then you don't end up with the value that everyone brings, which is their thoughts and their inputs. But you also have to have that mindset which is that, you know, let's be creative.

And I think, you know, you probably know this already, but, you know, I wanted to work for Walt Disney when I was a child. You know, clearly I didn't do that, but.

Very similar, very similar.

Yeah, that's right. But the creativity is important because it enthused people.

It gives that, that kind of space to do some of that mad thinking, if we want to call it that. The, the kind of off the wall conversations and. Well, let's just have a think about this thing over here. That might never be possible, but why not?

And it is the art of the possible. It is about stretching the boundaries.

But you have to almost create those sorts of conditions because not everyone is creative and not everybody likes that sort of thinking methodology.

But if we can get to that space where people are using the other part of their brain that we don't normally use, I think you come up with some really exciting things. So you Know, we did the whole reimagining childhood work.

And a lot of people will be sitting there, you know, thinking, okay, well, in local government we do these things. But I, you know, I sort of said to them, don't think about that. Do your messy problem thing. You know, where are the problems that we think we've got?

What are the things we know that data tells us? What are the things children and families are telling us?

And how do we put all this together into something that says, okay, and we know all this evidence about the five things or four things, whatever the things are that we know will really make a difference. That's our reimagining childhood and that's therefore how we are going to present our children's plan, for example. And you have to almost bring.

And you know, it sounds really silly, but I draw a lot and I picture, you know. You know, I love a picture a lot. Yeah. And I do love illustrations. And a picture tells so much more than a graph. And you know, I've done an off.

I try really hard to get people to think about that whole visualization of stuff because, you know, you give a graph to someone, some people, you know, it's just turn off. It doesn't always tell you what you want. It tells you half a story. It doesn't give you the full complexity of information.

And what that means is that you're shutting down the doors before you've even started to think about the problem. And so I think that's the sort of stuff that makes a difference.

It also, I think, gives people permission to do some of those kind of creative thinking things that we don't always have time to do. And I think you get the best solutions out of those sorts of scenarios.

I agree. I think if people were to see inside of basis when we're not with our clients, they probably think we are deeply unprofessional.

But there's, there's a method to the madness, I think, play and humor, not taking yourself too seriously.

All those things that are, that are not, I would say they're not socially acceptable, but they're definitely not the norm in the context of local government, central government.

And I think that it's absolutely necessary for people to be able to discover new solutions for them to be able to build relationships with one another. Like the kind of relationship that you and I have makes it possible to talk about things that would otherwise not be possible to talk about.

And I think there's not enough focus on that because you're talking about networks and another Way you could refer to that is relationships.

Totally is relationships.

Relationships.

Relationships are more important than almost everything else, especially in the work that we do where people get obsessed with methods and tools and approaches.

And all this kind of stuff accounts for nothing if you haven't got relationships with people, because all the work that we do goes wrong all the time. It's really, really messy. And the thing that gets you through it is relationships with people.

Be that with the community, be that with other senior managers, between frontline and senior leaders. And I don't think we talk enough about that or pay enough attention to doing it.

Yeah. And you mentioned the word play, and I think, totally. There's so much evidence about play. Not for children.

Children need to play, but adults need to play, too, in a space. That means that you are bringing about a whole range of things, skill sets that people don't use in work generally.

And, you know, I probably, you know, I used to do sessions back in the Lewisham days where, you know, we used to have play doh and we used to create all sorts of things. And it broke down barriers so quickly because, you know, at the end of the day, we're all people.

And it doesn't really matter what job title you have or where you are in the organization. We're all humans working together to try and do the best for our communities. And I think that whole emphasis on play and creativity is.

Is the way to do that.

Yeah, No, I agree. I couldn't agree more. Let's talk about work that you're proud of. So what's. What's something.

When you think about a success that you've been a part of or maybe you've led, what's something that you. Yeah, you think about. You think. Actually, do you know what I did? This was really good. This was important, meaningful work. What comes to mind?

I think there's lots. And, you know, what I guess I'm most proudest of is not necessarily a particular project or thing.

It's really about the staff that I've worked with and the people that I've interacted with and had the benefit of their kind of insights and learned a lot from. And what I'm proudest of is seeing people really sort of flourish and thrive in the workplace.

And they've grown and they've obviously gone off and done other things. And it's just so nice to see people as to where they are and what they've achieved and what they've created.

And I think that's, to me, what I think is probably the most important thing.

Can I ask you some quick fire questions?

Go on then.

You have no idea what I'm going to ask you.

Hang on, I'm really dreading this.

Well, no, I've tried a few of these and it turns out I'm really bad at formulating these quickfires questions because it's basically impossible to answer them quickly. So do your best, eh?

Might not be that quick.

Okay. What's one area of local government where we do an unbelievable job, but people don't necessarily know that that's the case?

Everything.

All right, everything it is.

So everything we do is about place shaping and it's about the people and it's universal, it's targeted, it's everything. And we make people happy. That's our function, to try and bring happiness into communities by all of the things that we do in the public realm.

And yeah, I hope we're building really strong futures for our children. That's kind of ultimately what I guess we're trying to do.

Yeah. I told you it was impossible to answer.

You can't do a quick fire answer and if you cut it to everything, that would just not be very good.

No, I think because I did, as you know, I did a long time ago graduate scheme in Lohugov and I wanted to work in the job centre because my mum worked in the job centre for her whole career and I thought it was the most brilliant place to work. I just landed there at a very difficult time during the financial crisis and that wasn't particularly an enjoyable place to work.

But when I applied for the local gov grad scheme and I was reading about local government, I didn't know anything about local government at the time. I thought, really, this breadth of services, this is wild.

And, you know, the opportunity to work in communities like I was from the Valleys, South Wales Valleys, so that couldn't be a more different place to Catford in Lewisham.

So what an unbelievable opportunity to, yeah, meet new people, learn about different cultures, understand a whole range of problems and make some progress on those problems. I think, honestly, I think. I mean, I know I'm running a consultancy now, but I think. So you gotta take what I say with a pinch of salt.

But local government, I think for a young person is one of the best careers that you could possibly explore.

I 100% agree. I went, I was at a careers evening thing at my daughter's school a couple of years ago and I set up the stall around local government. Did you really?

I really did. And I googled up something like 287 different functions that we have in local government.

And I, you know, cut them all out and stuck them all out and, and you know, everything from, you know, we, we almost curate a place.

We have architects, we have engineers, we have accountants and lawyers and we have, you know, people who are doing the most important jobs of keeping our streets clean and safe and, you know, social workers looking after the vulnerable. Everything there is like really nothing that wasn't on my, that 287 sticky notes thing that I did.

And people walked up and I think they were just shocked. And I said, this is all the opportunities that we in local government have.

And what you will find is any one of these opportunities is making an immediate difference to people in that area. And you tell me any other job that does that. And yeah, I mean, I was competing with, you know, but I was like, come here.

And I was showing them all the flood, flood zones and you know, on the iPad, because of course, you know, with extreme weather, flooding and resilience, community resilience and you know, I saying these are things that we are day to day got officers working on and we are making huge changes around, you know, the climate agenda. And I was just, Yeah, I just don't think people fully understand the role of local government.

No, they really don't.

And the strange thing is if you, you know, if you're curious and you get involved in lots of things, it's actually pretty good training if you want to run your own thing later in life. Because think about, you know, an initiative in a community. Well, you've got to figure out what the need is.

Businesses need to figure that out as well. You know, you've got to figure out how to communicate with the people that are ultimately going to be accessing your service.

Turns out businesses need to do that. You need to figure out, can we pay for this?

Absolutely.

What's the budget, what's the resourcing, all of this stuff. And, and, and most careers are pretty, and we talk a lot about silos in local government, but we talk about in a different way.

Most careers are pretty siloed. Like I do this thing, I do this function, you know.

Yeah.

Whereas in local government we touch pretty much everything, don't we? It's kind of impressive.

And you know, there are opportunities, you know, like, you know, I described, I started somewhere and I'm doing all sorts of things.

And that's just, that's amazing as an opportunity in an organization, obviously in different boroughs, but you wouldn't necessarily get that anywhere else. I don't think.

No, definitely not. Well, we definitely answered that one quickly.

I wanted to just pick up on one other point you made about the job center thing you were just talking about. And I think one thing that I think we underestimate is the vicarious trauma that staff experience in the work they do.

And some obviously more frontline than others. But that trauma is something that we, as an organization, we took very seriously and really did support the staff.

Because if you don't do that for the staff who are working so close to individuals who are, you know, having lots of challenges, you will burn those staff out.

Yeah.

And then, you know, we look at sickness records and we go, but actually, we need to really make sure that we invest in our staff in the right sort of support. And then, you know, all of us bring our best selves to work.

And therefore, we are then able to support residents or who, you know, our service users or whatever in the best way that we can.

And so I just wanted to say that I think that, you know, those are things over the, you know, the decades of local government, I think we, you know, we have really improved the way in which we support staff who are doing some of those very, very challenging roles.

So a couple more and then I'll really quick. Then I'll release you the leader you learned the most from.

Oh, I can't name someone.

Well, you can name a couple. I'll give you a couple.

I have worked with some of the most amazing leaders in public sector, not just in local government, across partnerships. And what they all bring is, I think, that real, kind of purposeful social justice.

And, you know, we are going to be the best we can be for the residents that we have. And they gave me the.

I guess they gave me the rope to go and do the things that I have been really lucky and privileged to be able to do that, you know, you may not have been able to do if we were. If I'd worked for people who were very in the box and this is how we do things.

So being able to be that innovative and creative was the people who have, you know, I would probably put in my top leadership box.

What about you talked a little bit about some research and some literature that has influenced the way that you think about services. Have you got anything else?

Is there, like something that you've learned that you maybe from research or a book or something like that that you constantly find yourself referencing or applying to your work?

So I was asked this at work recently, and so I've written a thing on my favourite song and this and that and the other. But anyway, Ed Cadmore, who was the.

He was one of the co directors of Pixar and he wrote a book called Creativity Inc. And I think that's probably one of the kind of stable foundational books that I would point to because it talks about the creativity, the way you bring the teams together, the how you do this kind of innovation thinking and problem solving together. And yes, it's Pixar, so, you know, that I'm kind of drawn to that anyway. But yes, that would be my. But there are thousands of books, Joe. Oh, my gosh.

You know, my bookshelf is full of them, so I couldn't really pick anything like that. But I would. I would also maybe point back to the days of, you know, when, when we were at Lucian. Like Freakonomics became a book.

Yeah.

Of all books, didn't it? And I guess that that was one of the books I bought all my team, all my.

My managers at the time for Christmas because it makes you think really deep about how we often think about cause and effect, but we don't really think about it in depth enough to think more broadly about why something has happened here that may have been because of something else over here. So I'll probably point to those things as well.

I think that's a great recommendation. And. And I think a really big problem in local government generally.

I can't speak for large organizations outside the public sector because I've never worked in them, but there is often a tendency to rely too much on individual interpretation of data instead of, is this actually like, is this significant? What's the underlying cause of this? Not just, I'm going to put a spin on this. And it's not even that. It's not people trying to put a spin on it.

It's just being too quick to decide what the data means.

Yes, yes.

And that is. That is problematic.

We have to be much more kind of an analytical and challenging.

Critical.

Critical, that's right.

Yeah.

And the only other book I'd say, because I, you know, I do love an illustration and I did buy this for all my managers as well, so they'll have a bookcase similar to mine at some point, which is Information is Beautiful and all of those kinds of. The series of fantastic.

I mean, you know, if we were to visualize data in any of those ways and more, we would really be able to open up conversations with a whole range of people that graphs just don't do it for.

And I'm wondering Whether in the next, maybe even the next year or so, whether AI can start to help with some of that stuff.

Yeah, I mean, AI is an interesting topic. We're opening up a bit of a door here, I think.

Local government is obviously testing and trying it, and I think it's really important that we're curious about what are the opportunities around use of.

And we're using some of it, but automation and, you know, trying to make sure that we are being ethical in the use of it and also making sure we're not opening, you know, the generative AI, I think, is a very different conversation to automation and AI, but I think we have to balance that with being really kind of cautious about risk. So it is important that we're in that on that journey and I think a lot of us are, and I am very interested in it.

But I also know that AI has got climate impacts, so we need to be very, very careful about the overuse of AI for other unintended consequences that we are also committed to tackling.

Yeah, indeed. Got any quotes that you live your life by?

Well, not really live my life by. I always used to use the Alice in Wonderland quote, which is, think of three impossible things before breakfast because they may well be possible.

And I do do that because I think, you know, nothing is really impossible at the end of the day.

I think that's a lovely place to leave it. Thanks so much for doing this. It was great.

It's been great. Thanks, Joe. Wasn't that painful?

I told you it wouldn't.

I hope I didn't say anything that was totally out of the. Out of the planet, but anyway, we'll see.

That's great. Thanks, mate.

Thank you.