The role of CEO

This category aims at identifying what Councillors consider to be the significant aspects of the CEO role. Questions are structured to elicit Councillor conceptions of both the formal and informal requirements of the role of CEO. Four subcategories of description are identified:

• leadership and management;

• delivering the policy ambitions of Council;

• capacity to manage and massage relationships with Councillors; and

• diplomacy - ‘how to make no look like yes’.

Table 5.8: The Role of CEO

Subcategory What is the experience? How is it understood? Gender Leadership

and

Management

• Staff management skills

• Staff relationships and morale

• Leadership of the organisation

• Manage the administration

• Working to the best of ability

• Working co-operatively and effectively

• Deliver on Council objectives; Council Plan and budget • Identified as leader • Systems in place F & M Delivering the policy ambitions of Council • Financial acumen/ management • Systems in place

• Ethics and standards

• Effective relationship between Council and CEO

• Operations on target

• Clear response to Council priorities

• Delivery of Council agenda

Chapter 5 – The Results

Subcategory What is the experience? How is it understood? Gender Capacity to manage and massage relationships with Councillors

• Capacity to deal with Councillor expectations

• Capacity to manage the individual Councillors

• Effective, open communication

• Responsiveness to

individual Councillors and whole of Council

priorities

• Ensure that the Council agenda is given highest priority and is not railroaded by individual agendas • No surprises F & M Diplomacy ‘how to make no look like yes’

• Honest, carefully crafted dialogue

• Manage Councillors without them feeling managed

• Capacity to say ‘no’ diplomatically to Councillors

• Council maintains its policy leadership and agenda setting role

M

5.4.1.1 Leadership and management

Female - but for me the critical thing is having the staff management skills, and the critical part of that is excellent communication, a capacity to work with people, and really get people to be working to their full and to the best of their abilities, and to be doing all of the really tricky staff management stuff, and then there is the overall making sure that everything is running completely above board.

Male - there’s two aspects to being a CEO. One is being a competent administrator and the other aspect is being a leader and being somewhat - something of an inspiring leader and we were particularly looking for, when we hired X we were particularly looking for somebody who would drive improvements in customer focus.

Discussion

Both male and female Councillors clearly and consistently articulate a strong emphasis on leadership and management. Leadership is identified as the capacity to identify new opportunities and direction for Council and to motivate staff to pursue the Council vision and direction. Management is identified by a number of Councillors as the ability to manage the Council administration through the establishment of processes, procedures

Chapter 5 – The Results and standards, and the achievement of Council plan and budget. Councillors clearly identify the CEO as the bridge between the Council and the administration.

5.4.1.2 Delivering the policy ambitions of Council

Female - The CEO needs to understand that Councillors are elected to achieve outcomes and those outcomes need to be agreed upon amongst the Councillors, informally and formally, formally adopted in the Council Plan, but you need to go through a process of formulating that, getting further information on those issues, articulating those objectives and then incorporating them into a work plan which will then be reflected in the budget and the accounts plan.

Male - Well, the CEO is the person who is in charge of delivering the policy ambitions of the Councillors and in a way that is again in accord with the kind of culture that we would like to have instilled in the organisation and the public face of Council to the ratepayers, so the Act allows Council to hire and fire the CEO but no other member of staff and essentially not to interfere in the operating of the staff. So the CEO is the absolute lynch pin in terms of getting the outcomes that Councillors want. If you have the wrong CEO, if the CEO is not cooperative, disaster.

Discussion

Both male and female Councillors identify one of the key tasks of the CEO as implementing the policy decisions of Council. In this context the Councillors suggest that it is Council that determines policy, and the administration that must implement Council policy. There is a clear expectation by both male and female Councillors that the CEO will commit to Council direction and ensure that the work of the administration is reflective of this direction. A number of Councillors identify the importance of the relationship between Council and CEO in order to successfully implement policy direction.

5.4.1.3 Capacity to manage and massage relationships with Councillors

Female - You are dealing with anywhere from eight to 11 Councillors, volatile, potentially volatile personalities, all coming from different points, stages in their life,

Chapter 5 – The Results different backgrounds, different reasons for being on Council and within those ten or nine or whatever it is, there are different relationships too at any given time and it’s a really hard ask for a CEO to be making calls based on what they think is the appropriate advice to a Councillor or to Council as a collective, but they also have to keep in the mind the individual personalities and it is, it’s very difficult.

Male - It would be foolhardy and foolish of the CEO to ignore the dynamics with Councillors and simply say well that’s not my concern to deal with Councillors individually, I simply need to deal with Council as a whole. So the ability to manage the Council interactions, between Councillors, between him or herself and Councillors and between the administration and Councillors is just as important.

Discussion

Both male and female Councillors stress the importance of managing the relationship between CEO and Council, as well as with individual Councillors. The comments convey a sense that the responsibility for that management lies with the CEO. This dominates the conceptions of both male and female Councillors who articulate the careful balance the CEO must create between meeting each individual Councillor’s needs and those of the whole Council. The Councillors clearly recognise this balance and believe that responsibility for the relationship rests with the CEO. The comments illustrate an awareness of the sensitivity of the situation, and of the potential conflict and tension that arises when the CEO and the administration need to respond to individual and sometimes divergent requirements. No Councillor made reference to Councillor responsibility in managing the relationship between Council and its administration.

5.4.1.4 Diplomacy - ‘how to make no look like yes’

Male - Based on my experience of late the single most important skill perhaps that a CEO ought to have is the ability to manage Councillors, the ability to make sure that Councillors have their concerns addressed by the CEO no matter how silly, frivolous, irrational, lunatic they might be, is the only thing that will guarantee a CEO can be in a position then, to do what that CEO ought to be doing which is to be managing the administration.

Chapter 5 – The Results

Discussion

This subcategory highlights the belief of male Councillors that the CEO should be responsive to the needs and wants of the Councillors. For some there is a recognition that this needs to occur even if requests are frivolous or unrealistic. There is a conception that CEOs need to very carefully manage saying ‘no’ to Councillors and at all times need to be diplomatic in their response to them. Councillors also identify the need to provide frank advice, yet simultaneously suggest that this needs to be managed very carefully. There is little recognition of the pressure this requirement places on the CEO and his/her capacity to provide frank advice. No female Councillors made comments relating to this requirement.

5.4.1.5 Summary

The Councillors’ conceptions of the role of CEO include an expectation that the CEO leads and manages the organisation in response to Council’s policy direction. Both male and female Councillors consistently suggest that the CEO is charged with implementing the policy direction of Council. The Councillors also recognise that in order to achieve the organisational outcomes the CEO needs to carefully manage the relationships with Councillors. Some Councillors suggest that the role of CEO is to manage the Councillors, but also suggest that this is not how the Councillors would want to perceive this relationship. Most of the Councillors attribute comprehensive responsibility for the CEO/Councillor relationship to the CEO. The sensitivity of the relationship is drawn out further by a number of male Councillors who identify the expectation of the CEO to very carefully manage messages to Council. This is evidenced in section 5.4.1.4 where the male Councillors call out how sensitively the CEO needs to manage saying ‘no’ to a Councillor or even in humouring the Council. Councillors acknowledge that they do not like hearing staff challenging them or their direction. It is this that requires careful management by the CEO. This expectation and careful communication is the only area of variation between male and female Councillors.