Five phases to unitary
Unitary transition, change, strategy and decisions under uncertainty.
Two and a half hours on the move to a unitary council: Avanti's five phases of transition, leading change with public legitimacy, what strategic thinking is, and decisions under uncertainty.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Officers, managers and councillors in English district and county councils moving towards unitary status
Overview
A new council is built twice, once on paper and once in people. Part of the half day Designing what comes next, this course starts with From District into Unitary, Avanti's own model: four drivers of reorganisation, five phases of transition, the reality of dual delivery and the Kerrier District Council case. It then turns to leading change in public services through Mark Moore's strategic triangle, the five ways of working in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act and Arnstein's ladder, with the Welsh default 20mph limit. The last section covers Rich Horwath's three disciplines, Kodak and Fujifilm, and Herbert Simon's bounded rationality.
Aims
What it sets out to do is help those shaping a new council see the phases ahead and the decisions each demands: leading change with public legitimacy designed in from the start, thinking strategically rather than only planning, and matching decision tools to the level of uncertainty they genuinely face.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Describe Avanti's five phases of transition, and plan practical actions that do not depend on waiting for certainty.
- Use Moore's strategic triangle and Arnstein's ladder to assess value, permission and capacity in a public service change.
- Plan a decision under genuine uncertainty by naming what you do not know, choosing for robustness and keeping it reviewable.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Describe Huish and Milliner's five phases of transition from district into unitary and the leadership demands of each.
- Explain what makes public service change different and why legitimacy must be designed into a change from the start.
- Distinguish strategic thinking from strategic planning, strategic management and strategic leadership, and apply the test of value and real choice to a strategy document.
- Distinguish certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and use four questions to place a live decision on that spectrum.
- Explain how the nature of work shifts for officers moving into a unitary, from local to strategic and from service to system.
- Use Moore's strategic triangle and the five ways of working to assess value, permission and capacity in a change.
- Describe Horwath's three disciplines and the three habits of strategic thinkers, and identify which failure each habit guards against in your own organisation.
- Apply bounded rationality, the six-step decision process and cost-benefit analysis appropriately, including naming what has not been valued.
Built from 4 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01From district to unitaryLocal government reorganisation in EnglandBitesize · Leading through Reorganisation, Mergers and Shared Services · module 31 module
- 02Where culture meets changeOrganisational culture and public sector changeBitesize · Leading through Change and Conflict · module 71 module
- 03Seeing the bigger pictureStrategic thinking and environmental scanningBitesize · Strategic Thinking · module 11 module
- 04Choices under uncertaintyStrategic choice models and decisions under riskBitesize · Strategic Thinking · module 61 module