I work with visionary leaders like you who are serious about changing services to improve outcomes for people.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here’s a few FAQs that often come up. If there is a particular question that’s not answered here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
How can you help me to get staff and stakeholders to engage with this change?
I love to get alongside people like you to design engagement programmes that connect people with the changes you’re looking to make. By drawing out how the changes connect to what matters to staff and stakeholders and finding that sense of common purpose it helps create buy into the overall goal. Creating spaces where people feel able to safely express opinions, perspectives and ideas - even when they are different to what is proposed - ensures they feel valued, listened to and involved, and helps you to know where more work is needed.
How will you get the different public sector organisations in the region on side and working with you?
Let’s be honest, partnership working can feel hard and there’s always a risk of being pulled back to the pace of the slowest. My FourEs change model is a really effective way to navigate change in complex systems and enables a flexible approach that enables top down and bottom up change to come together. By providing spaces for those organisations who are more ready to make progress to experiment with testing new approaches this provides an effective evidence base for wider roll out while at the same time getting alongside those who are less ready to understand what’s getting in the way and how we can support them to get onside.
How can you help me to implement change given all the operational demands we are facing?
Having worked in public services for most of my working life, I understand how pressured working life can feel and how challenging it can be to give change the focus you want to. I’ll work alongside you, bringing capacity to the changes you want to deliver and keeping you close to what’s occurring that needs your personal attention as well as providing assurance of progress being made.
How quickly can you make change happen? How will you help me to deliver change efficiently?
We know, because there’s lots of evidence that tells us, that change is more likely to be successful and to sustain when we take the time to involve people who are affected by it giving them opportunities to shape the changes that happen. Pragmatically, there is always a balance to be had when delivering change between doing things quickly and doing things inclusively to involve people and bring them with you. I’ll work with you to understand your context and drivers and will suggest an approach that feels like it achieves the right balance for your circumstances. Ultimately it’s always a judgement call and I’ll give you solid advice to enable you to decide where the right balance lies for your situation.
What tools or resources can you give us? How will you equip my team to work with you on this?
I will share practical tools and techniques for delivering change with your team. I’ll support them to develop their confidence in delivering change. I’m happy to build a skills transfer/coaching/shadowing element to any programme I work on so that you can be confident that you are building future capacity within your organisation.
Tools of the trade
What will you bring that is different to what we’re already doing?
That depends on the changes you are looking to make. I don’t do off-the-shelf solutions because I believe every situation has its own nuances. I have a reputation for bringing creative, fresh solutions that people want to work with and that are grounded in what works. I’m proactive in keeping myself up to date with new thinking and ways of working and am connected into a great network of like-minded forward thinking people who help me to ensure I keep learning.
How could you help me to utilise some disruptive thinking approaches in a way that feels safe and not too out there?
Disruptive thinking approaches are a fabulous way to develop new ideas and design change. What’s really important in getting the most out of this way of doing things is that people feel safe enough to participate. By its very nature, disruptive thinking challenges us and creates a level of discomfort caused by shocks to our habitual thought patterns. Go too far too soon so that it feels scary and people will disengage. I’ll work with you to build the psychological safety needed for people to embrace disruptive thinking approaches and to find the right approach, the right language and the right pace that will land with the people that you are working with.
How credible will you be with CEXs/senior leaders in my organisation? How will you change the behaviour of some of the senior managers in the organisation?
I have experience of delivering change at all levels from senior strategic through to front line delivery. My varied professional experience of delivering change means that I can quickly understand the context that you are working with and design credible tailored solutions. I’m skilled at asking questions that bring compassionate challenge unlocking new insights which help people to focus on what really matters. I have worked at a senior level within the public sector and have delivered many change programmes on behalf of and working with executive level leaders.
How well do you understand social work/social care?
I have considerable experience of working in social care - both adults and children’s - giving me a deep understanding of the sector. I have worked to provide change management for large-scale transformation programmes in social care and have worked alongside services to implement a strengths-based approach. I’ve worked to deliver change at all levels from senior leadership teams through to front line practice and in both public and private sector organisations. I’ve also worked as an area manager for integrated children’s services with responsibility for social work, early years, family support and youth services as well as the successful development of partnership working with other local services. I successfully implemented workforce improvement activity after a failed Ofsted Inspection in Children’s Services and following concerns being raised in an Adults Services directorate.
You’ve worked in Manchester for a very long time, do you understand what other places want and how we work?
I’ve worked in Manchester for most of my career, am really proud of what I achieved in Manchester and have learned so much from it. At the same time, I have always worked hard to connect and collaborate with people from outside of the city. I’m active across the Greater Manchester network and am part of the national Be More Pirate social movement for change. I’ve worked alongside a wide range of public and private sector partners as well as with academics throughout my career to ensure I keep my knowledge, thinking and ways of working wide, diverse and up to date.
How can you help me to set or restate a clear purpose, vision and set of objectives that can give me a clear framework to work in?
I will work with you to understand who your key team members and stakeholders are, where you are currently at and what you are aspiring towards. I’d design an approach that recognises the strengths you are already working with, (re-)connects people with what matters to them and constructs space for creative thinking to define your why (purpose), what (vision) and how (objectives). I can be that neutral voice in the room that asks the questions that get to the heart of the issues, challenges and opportunities that you’re keen to explore, enabling you to fully participate with your colleagues in developing your new strategic framework.
Can you help us agree some things that we can just try doing differently and that I can get people behind?
Absolutely. I love working with experimentation and seeing the joy of people involved from having freedom to innovate and do the things they know will make a difference. Experimentation is especially powerful with front line teams who are closest to the impact that ways of working have. Empowering them to have space and support to try new ways of doing things can result in hugely impactful change that others can then be supported to adopt. Whether it’s facilitating one-off workshops or regular communities of practice to provide space to explore, design and learn from new approaches, coaching people as they progress through change, or helping you find ways to share the learning in a way that influences the wider system, I can help you.
I’m worried that if we empower staff to make changes, they’ll make mistakes. What happens then?
There is a way of empowering people that keeps things within your organisations’ tolerance levels. It’s important to agree a framework up front. What are we empowering people to do? What decisions are made by whom? What expectations are there to keep who updated on progress and impact? And where are the spaces that we create to learn from what is happening differently? Inevitably when we are working with creativity and innovation, there will be some failures. If there aren’t, then it could be argued that we’re playing things too safe. But, if we agree the framework up front and support people to take a positive risk taking approach, we’ll be able to ensure we have the information we need to maximise impact and learning without causing damage.
What’s the detailed plan, milestones, deliverables and timescales?
I will always work with you to agree a plan, the deliverables and some timescales. At the same time, as we know, change is messy and evolving so we might discover things we didn’t anticipate when we started out on our journey together. I have a reputation for delivery and making things happen so you can be assured that I will deliver what we agree. At the same time, I’ll keep an open and honest dialogue with you so that where the unexpected arises, we discuss it and agree any implications for timescales and deliverables.
Why Kath Smythe Collective?
Kath Smythe Collective is my consultancy. Working collectively is in my blood. It's only natural then that it underpins how I do business. It translates into how I'll work with you and your teams, how I draw on diverse knowledge and approaches and how I work with a fabulous collective of other freelance change consultants. This way you absolutely get me and the bespoke hands on support that I bring as well as, where we agree it's beneficial, the support of a wider team.