Secret Musings of a Change Agent 6 - Vicky Rosin
What makes ordinary people great at making change happen? What characteristics do they share? What path have they followed? What’s their attitude to failure? And what advice would they give to others? I’m on a mission to understand more. Join me as I delve deeper in the fifth in my blog series to help us all understand how we build change capacity for the future.
I can’t tell you how much of a pleasure it is to feature Vicky Rosin in my blog this week. If I was answering the questions I ask of people in this series, Vicky would absolutely feature as one of the big influencers in my career. I met Vicky when she was Head of Early Years and I was a fresh-faced graduate trainee at Manchester City Council. I worked to support her to set up the first Early Years & Childcare Partnership. This was a time when most senior leaders that I knew of were male, white and suited. If I’m totally honest, I was a bit scared of most of them at the time!! Vicky taught me a lot - not least that you can be a senior leader and be female, authentic, caring and admit when shit’s happening and you’re struggling to know what to do about it. Wow. That had such an impact and made me realise that someone like me could progress and that I wouldn’t have to trade in my personality to do so!!
Vicky progressed to Director of Libraries in Manchester before becoming the Deputy Chief Executive and happily, she continued to be her authentic self throughout. Vicky has left the Council now working occasionally on a freelance basis and mainly does a shed load of voluntary work as she continues to give to the City she loves. Vicky happens to live not far from me so we sometimes bump into each other on the Met which has meant we’ve kept in touch over the years. So what can we all learn from Vicky that will help us understand how we build change capacity for the future?
Vicky started her career as a social worker, a job that fundamentally is all about changing behaviours. Vicky met and worked with the late Prof Martin Herbert, a child psychologist who believed that you influence behaviour by rewarding the positive ones. This fundamentally shaped Vicky’s approach both with regard to parenting her daughter, Caitlin, and professionally as she recognised that when people do things you want them to do, it’s important to encourage them, thank them, acknowledge and reward them. Vicky went on to become Women’s Officer at Manchester Council, a role where she learned what passive resistance looked like and which made Vicky appreciate that if she was going to progress in her career she needed to understand how to get people to do things differently.
Rewarding behaviour
You have to notice and reward positive behaviour if you want more of it.
Vicky describes her change superpower as delivery through a team. Being able to identify and facilitate the people around her who have energy and great ideas, creating a culture where people feel freedom to innovate, communicating in a way that enables people to get behind and influence ideas, and importantly, where their efforts are positively recognised and rewarded. This superpower is evident as we go on to talk about Vicky’s experiences of making change happen.
As Head of Early Years in the late 1990s, Vicky was responsible for Local Authority nurseries which had evolved from a social services model of providing childcare for parents who struggled to look after their children. The culture had become patronising and wasn’t recognising or valuing the potential and contribution of parents, nor was it meeting the needs of working parents. Vicky talks about the fabulous team she had around her. Women like Maria Greenwood, Shirley Barnes and Chris McLoughlin who had the vision, the sector understanding, the skills and the energy to translate the vision to reality. Equally, Vicky talks about the culture change she lead in Manchester Libraries Service in the noughties, taking the service from a 1* rated service which was all about quiet spaces and lending books to a nationally recognised service which benefited from £35m investment and saw libraries evolve into community hubs with musical instruments, places for noise and places for quiet, homework clubs, job clubs, access to computers and community meeting spaces to name a few. Again, Vicky talks of the transformational leaders she had in her team - Nicky Parker and the now Director Neil MacInnes.
It’s not hard to see the synergy across the two transformation programmes nor to see the learning Vicky took from her experiences along the way. In particular, she talks about how she watched the way Chris McLoughlin talked to parents and listened to parents. Chris was clear - we will design by listening to what people want. Vicky was clearly affected by seeing the huge respect for people that Chris has. It’s not surprising then to hear that Vicky’s vision for a new library service was developed in partnership with residents. She took the learning from Early Years days and translated it to Libraries. And it was because of this joint working with residents - what we’d now call codesign or co-production - that Vicky was successful in gaining the political support and investment needed to transform the library services.
Delivery through teamwork
Vicky’s superpower is her ability to lead teams, galvanising energy and innovation
There are two other notable influences that Vicky talks passionately about. One a person, and the other a huge event for Manchester. Vicky describes Ruth McNeil as one of the best managers she ever worked for. Ruth headed up the council’s large in-house catering organisation. Vicky describes her as a real enabler with strong business acumen and credits Ruth with helping her to build her confidence as a manager, teaching her the essential skill of dealing with challenging people. “I learned that you don’t have to be liked. What’s important is that people respect and listen to you”, says Vicky. Vicky has huge admiration for how Ruth got her teams to work effectively and there’s a connection here back to Prof Herbert: Ruth was great at rewarding positive behaviours. In fact it was Ruth that introduced a Staff Awards scheme, recognising and thanking staff for their endeavors - something that went on to be taken up corporately as a big annual event for all staff working for the council.
“I learned you don’t have to be liked. What’s important is that people respect and listen to you.”
The other big influencer Vicky talks about is her time working alongside the Manchester 2002 organisation responsible for delivering the Commonwealth Games. Large numbers of Council staff were seconded to work on the Games and Vicky talks of this as being an instrumental time for the culture of the Council. Manchester Council was determined its own staff should have the opportunity to learn new skills and bring them back to benefit the city. Staff benefited from working in cross-fertilising teams made up of public and private sector employees, they had experienced new levels of empowerment and had worked tirelessly and collaboratively to deliver to an immovable deadline. “People were going to come back changed and different”, said Vicky, “and we needed to welcome this if we were to retain the benefits of their new talents and new approaches to work to the benefit of Manchester residents”.
Vicky’s advice for aspiring change agents out there? Don’t get stuck in a single track. Try different things recognising that what works in one area won’t necessarily work in another. Be observant - watch what others are doing and see what works and last but not least, recognise and tap into peoples’ pride in doing a good job by rewarding positive behaviours and achievements.
It was really lovely catching up with Vicky and listening to her insights about making change happen. In spite of her very many achievements Vicky remains humble and grounded and I suspect that’s a big part of why she’s able to galvanise people behind ideas and make things happen. If you enjoyed this blog and would like to understand more about what makes a great change agent so we can learn together how to build capacity for the future, check out my blog series for more “Secret Musings of a Change Agent”.
