Networked responsibility
One of my highlights from the past 3 years of work has been taking part in digital leadership programmes. During this time, TPXimpact has been delivering training for the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales – most recently launching the Leading Modern Public Services programme with CDPS.
As part of regular visits, I was in Edinburgh again in mid-February to support the Scottish Digital Academy launch the latest cohort of the Leading in a Digital World programme. This is the sixth cohort of this programme that I’ve contributed to since March 2022. Last year, as an extension of TPXimpact’s work, we also supported alumni events bringing together many people from previous cohorts and building on the importance of what the Scottish Digital Academy has established as a network of leaders.
My involvement in these programmes tends to focus on running sessions that include ‘An Introduction to Digital Transformation’, and then a focus on understanding Digital Maturity. A lot of this framing and the materials I’ve used have been developed from the Multiplied book over the past 3 years. More recently, I’ve expanded on my definition of digital as part of these materials – my Digital in an AI-era post shares the most recent version of this thinking.
As part of these sessions, I talk about what good digital transformation looks like and open up discussions around the opportunities and challenges of technology, including AI and how we think about data. But it’s the follow-up discussions and Q&A time which is where the magic happens – this is where people share their examples and talk about the work their teams and organisations are doing.
This is the best part of bringing digital leaders in person and exploring digital transformation together. It’s the opportunity of learning about all the work and investments in digital transformation that are already happening.
While these types of training programmes also take people into practical applications of ways of working, as well as hands-on learning, it’s the connections made that are the most important factor. People quickly start to realise new opportunities to collaborate, share work, and find ways to join up their work.
Having been part of DWP as the original government Digital Academy was set up back in 2014 – which went on to become the GDS Digital Academy – I’ve seen this pattern before. Digital scales and grows effectively through networks of people, with teams and organisations learning from each other.
This is the importance of networked responsibility.
Networked responsibility is how leaders can support meaningful system change. I’ve spoken before about how digital transformation needs us to be systems leaders… Sharing what we know, connecting, convening, and building on the work of others.
The real strength of digital leadership is in the networks and connections it builds. Most importantly, we all need to take responsibility for what happens as a result of these spaces and convening points.
It’s then the responsibility of leaders to hold the space for new types of work and ways of working in our organisations… As part of how we set up and enable teams and programmes of work.
Most of all, networked responsibility is about the commitment to working in the open.
There was a lovely moment in Llandudno earlier in February on the CDPS leadership programme. I shared a service example to demonstrate digital maturity. Someone from the team that worked on that exact service was sitting in the room… I only knew about the work (a licencing service for commercial cockle fishers run by Natural Resources Wales) because the team had written a blog post about the work. There are so many great teams leading the way with this – the Luton Council digital team is a notable recent example that I’ve been following.
Alongside publishing blog posts, there are several other things teams can put in place as a commitment to networked responsibility – from sharing research libraries to holding and recording open show-and-tell sessions. Design histories, pattern libraries, service pattern work, and open code repositories for reuse are also all part of networked responsibility.
Digital transformation has to be a people movement. And it has to be ‘of the internet’ in the way that it’s networked, open, and has the potential to self-sustain how ideas and solutions work in joined-up ways across systems and layers of government – networked responsibility is the role we all have as individual leaders in making this happen.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.