The top job
Becoming a Chief Executive: leading the organisation and the place.
A half day on the whole of the top job: the statutory role, your leader and top team, culture and grip, the place, and your first hundred days.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 6 hours
- Where
- Becoming a Chief Executive
- Price
- £129
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
Directors stepping up and chief executives seeking a clear view of the role
Overview
This half-day programme covers the chief executive's role as it really is, in four stages. It opens with the four faces of the job, Keith Grint's tame, wicked and critical problems, and the statutory duties at the top under the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 in England and the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021. Relationships come next: James Svara on the leader and chief executive, and Jon Katzenbach and the Top Team Development Approach on the top team. The third stage turns to culture, grip and assurance after Croydon, and to Sir Michael Lyons's place-shaping and how chief executives are held to account. It closes with Ronald Heifetz on sustaining yourself and a capstone built on Michael Watkins's The First 90 Days.
Aims
This programme aims to develop chief executives who read the role clearly before they take it, protect honest advice at the top, build systems that let bad news travel, lead with partners across the place and start with diagnosis rather than early announcements.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain the four faces of the chief executive's job and the statutory duties at the top, and assess your own readiness to step into the role.
- Lead a working partnership with your leader or chair and a top team that pulls the whole organisation in one direction, with assurance you can rely on.
- Plan your first hundred days as chief executive, including how you will lead the place, be held to account and sustain yourself over time.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain the guarantees a chief executive should give the monitoring officer and section 151 officer so that their advice stays independent.
- Plan a relationship charter with your leader or chair covering priorities, boundaries, contact, no surprises, disagreement and review.
- Plan a fair sequence for inheriting a top team and an operating rhythm that separates running today from shaping tomorrow.
- Distinguish grip from control, and use several channels to triangulate what is true in your organisation.
- Apply the verbs of partnership leadership and the six steps for convening a place, and audit your diary for place time.
- Plan your first 100 days on a page, covering relationships, statutory assurance, the top team and how you will stay well.
Built from 4 parts.
6 hours of learning.
- 01Head of paid serviceThe move to chief executive, the statutory role and the leaderBitesize3 modules
- 02Team, culture and gripBuilding the top team, culture and assuranceBitesize2 modules
- 03Place and accountabilityThe chief executive and the place, appointment and appraisalBitesize2 modules
- 04Lasting the courseSustaining yourself, and your first 100 daysBitesize2 modules
You have reached the top of this topic
- You are hereExplore, 6 hours, £129
It is also part of these programmes: