Delivering as a director
Money, assurance, place and your first 100 days.
Two and a half hours on delivering as a director: owning the numbers, inviting challenge, telling the story of place and planning your first hundred days.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Becoming a Director
- 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
New and aspiring directors responsible for budgets, partners and delivery in councils
Overview
Four modules look at what directors deliver beyond their own service. It opens with money: the legal duty to set a balanced budget, the medium-term financial strategy, exceptional financial support, savings that stick and savings that slip, and the Northamptonshire County Council case with Max Caller's inspection. It then explores external challenge and assurance, including the LGA's corporate peer challenge, the Welsh self-assessment duty and learning rather than defensive responses. Next comes place, through Sir Michael Lyons' place-shaping, Huish and Milliner's verbs of partnership leadership and a six-step narrative of place. It closes with a capstone built on Michael Watkins' transition framework and two illustrative cases, Cyngor Sir Glanmor and Northvale District Council.
Aims
The aim is to develop directors who forecast honestly and deliver the savings they commit to, treat external challenge as a chance to learn, work well with partners they do not manage, and begin the role with a practical plan.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Assess whether your directorate's savings are deliverable, and recognise the early warning signs of financial difficulty in time to raise them honestly.
- Use a learning response to external challenge, comparing how council performance is assessed in England and Wales and inviting challenge before it arrives uninvited.
- Plan a narrative of place for your partners and a first hundred days as director, drawing on Watkins' transition framework and the eight sector themes.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Distinguish savings that stick from savings that slip, and judge whether your own directorate's savings are deliverable.
- Recognise the early warning signs of financial difficulty, drawing on the Northamptonshire case, and set out how you would raise them early.
- Use a learning response to external findings and plan practical routes, including benchmarking, for inviting challenge early.
- Apply the verbs of partnership leadership and the convenor, ambassador and political link roles when working with partners you do not manage.
- Plan a narrative of place using the six-step sequence and the one page tool, framed in language each partner recognises.
- Plan your own first 100 days using the timeline, the eight-theme self-assessment and the six-heading plan on a page.
Built from 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Money and challengeThe medium-term financial strategy and external assuranceBitesize2 modules
- 02Your first 100 daysPlace, partners and the director’s narrative, with case studiesBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Becoming a Director topic, also sold whole as The corporate turn.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 2 hours 30 minutes, £69
- The whole topicExplore, The corporate turn, 6 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
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. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Leading the whole, Toward the chief executive role