A New Approach to Leadership and Governance
In our last blog series, we set out The New Facts of Culture and Heritage within which we are all now operating. And whilst the specifics of how these issues are manifesting may look slightly different according to your organisational context, we highlighted that we are all now in a landscape in which the need for clarity of organisational purpose has never been more stark, to ensure coherence and unity in strategic direction and decision-making between staff and Board. We also explored how our Achates Triple Bottom Line© methodology is supporting organisations to articulate purpose in a clear and measurable way, used as a decision-making framework and then placed in dynamic harmony within an operating model which enables resilience with integrity.
This next series – our winter blog series – will consider what these New Facts mean for leadership across our organisations and will aim to set out a new approach to leadership and governance that we can develop by taking a purpose-led approach to leadership and governance.
The cultural sector today needs leadership at all levels – leadership that is firmly grounded in organisational purpose as opposed to self-realisation. This means leadership and decision-making which coalesce around a central agreed and measurable North Star, which brings together the work created or curated, and the impact or change being brought about with and for key priority audiences (or stakeholders). We need the new sector leaders of today and tomorrow to be equipped to act as a conduit through which this positive and lasting change can be brought about, as opposed to seeing our organisations as the beneficiaries. It is also vital that we move to a model whereby leaders aren’t held responsible as the sole deliverer of change but are empowered to be enablers of that change with and for our priority audience groups.
To do this within our current context requires a new approach to leadership where we are in service to an idea that is bigger than ourselves. An approach which is grounded in the principles of transparency, empathy, and communication – the central pillars of purposeful leadership. It involves a new contract to be generated between our Boards, our Executive, and wider organisational teams which is grounded in organisational purpose. We need to empower our leaders to consider organisational culture – itself a manifestation of your purpose – as a critical factor in ensuring resilience with integrity, and we must make space for our leaders and our future strategies to develop, with purpose firmly at their centre.
At Achates we have laid out our methodology for working in this way – the Achates Triple Bottom Line© – on our low-cost digital platform, Achates Community. Membership is just £50 a month (for a minimum 12-month subscription) for cultural sector charity employees or £500 when paid up front.
Membership includes access to our Purposeful Leader Programme – a leadership development programme designed to support those in the sector who lead (or wish to lead) to develop the skills to do just that. The programme is delivered as a series of monthly participatory live online workshops where participants have the opportunity to develop their own approach to purposeful leadership, taking key tools (such as organisational purpose and the Achates Triple Bottom Line©) to tackle key leadership issues facing the sector today. The programme offers a unique learning environment that brings participants from across the sector together to provoke thought, create a space for critical thinking and reflection, and collaboration, whilst developing the crucial skills to lead in a purpose-led way.
Join our community and start to develop your purpose-led approach to leadership to empower and equip yourself to tackle today’s New Facts, and develop resilience with integrity for yourself, your organisation and the sector.
