Solace and Collaborate CIC’s October report, ‘Leading for Place’, brings together accounts from nine chief executives who took part in Ignite. Eight lead councils and one leads a Mayoral Strategic Authority.
The report describes work that extends beyond running an organisation: translating between local and national priorities, working through disagreement, building relationships, and creating conditions for others to act. Its examples connect this work to housing, poverty, democracy, and public services.
The authors call for changes to recruitment, continuing development, councillor standards, Whitehall’s use of local expertise, and where decisions and budgets sit. Their final test concerns whether people who rely on services experience a difference.
For those designing leadership development, the accounts offer questions to investigate in their own places. What can participants change in the work? Which decisions require partners or elected members? What must change in funding, authority, and accountability for a different practice to last?
These are practitioners’ accounts and recommendations, rather than an evaluation establishing that a particular leadership programme caused better outcomes.