Let’s lead courageously

ALLIANCE Chief Officer, Sara Redmond, shares her thoughts on leading courageously in creating long term societal change.

I can always tell the summer holidays are looming when the kids come home with artwork and completed jotters from their year. It’s a moment of reflection in which they are proud to show off their work capturing notable events from the school year and capturing a year’s learning and growth. 

It’s similarly apparent that summer recess is looming by the flurry of publications the Scottish Government committed to before Parliament rises. And this year was no exception. June saw publication of three significant strategies setting out a renewed approach over the next 10 years to reforming public services and improving health.  

Each strongly signal the need for reform but what stands out is that they’re beginning to approach sticky points to change: those more contentious areas which aren’t addressed and often explain why our current systems prevail.  

Yes, these strategies acknowledge savings and efficiencies need to be found and even set some targets against them. But they also address the systemic and structural change which may be required to achieve these. For example, one document helpfully sets on record a commitment to redesign the role which hospitals will play in our health care to instead invest more heavily in primary and community health.  

They even begin to tackle the ‘how’ of Scotland’s long committed shift towards prevention by trialling new approaches to how money is spent and budgeting tools that prioritise prevention and upstream investment.     

The third sector features in these plans and we welcome acknowledgement to support the sector’s resilience and sustainability with some committed actions which reflect repeated calls we and others have been making for fairer funding. There are also commitments to involving and strengthening engagement with the third sector, but yet again they fall short of a full seat at the decision-making table.   

But if we are going to have a seat at that table, are we as leaders in the third sector prepared to accept the systemic and structural changes this might require from us? Leading change often means needing to make tough decisions and a willingness to work across organisational, and even sector, boundaries.   

The ALLIANCE recently hosted an event on courageous leadership. This came at a useful time for me personally. As someone still relatively new to leading an organisation there are frequent new encounters where I find myself in unknown territory. 

It has left me wondering if we are planning for these much-needed long term societal changes? And if we are willing to consider how our work might need to change to better support people’s health and wellbeing? I was reminded courageous leadership starts from the why – and is about saying yes to the opportunities to get involved and lead the change.  

I am not suggesting we stop pushing for a seat at the table or for systemic change.  But perhaps in the end of term spirit, we need to consider how we collaborate effectively and lead courageously, even if that means making tough organisational decisions, or tackling contentious issues. Because behind these policy documents are real people for whom change is a must.  

This column first appeared in TFN Magazine https://tfn.scot/magazine

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