Being a Town Deal Board Chair
Every town is unique, as are the Chairs of Town Deal Boards, however there are transferable learnings which can be shared across the programme.
In the Place Leadership Programme we bring together Chairs and Programme Leads to discuss the common leadership issues Towns are facing, hear from colleagues, exchange ideas and share tips. This blog draws on a discussion we held with new Chairs, but the content may be useful for many.
Invest time in understanding your delivery authorities processes. Depending on the stage you are at in a project this might range from decision making to assurance processes, but getting clarity on the process that your Local Authority will need to work through will be essential to your understanding how best to work together. Do this as an activity between your delivery authority and your whole board, so that everyone is sighted on, for example, how the funding secured will flow into the project, and where and when the board will feed in/review/sign off elements in the process.
Get your board focused. How big is your board? How engaged are your members? How much responsibility are you as a chair carrying? Refreshing and refocusing your board may feel like a daunting task, but an appropriately sized board, with engaged members carrying specific responsibilities is essential to a high functioning board. Some Towns have stumbled with project champions where others have had success. However all board members must be clear that they are part of something with a shared mission and common goals; they are not there to represent vested interests.
Prioritise your communications strategy. Not all boards have a comms strategy; they should. The most important aspect of the strategy is not how the communications will be delivered, it's what the messages are. Why are you communicating with residents, what is it that you need them to know? A comms strategy is not just what you say, it's also how you behave. A specific and easily actionable suggestion is to think about where board meetings are being hosted. Rather than a traditional town hall, could you hold the meeting elsewhere in the community, where engagement activities could take place before the meeting. Boards should reach out to the community they are acting on behalf of.
Draw on the Towns Fund Delivery Partners for support. Boards bring together a wealth of expertise, but they wont have access to all the knowledge that they might find useful. In the context of significant capital projects, the Towns Fund Delivery Partners do. Through your town coordinator, that expertise is entirely available to you. For example it may be that you want someone to come and present to your board about risk management and delivery in big capital projects. We are available to do that.
There is more support available through the Place Leadership Programme. See the website for details of our upcoming workshops on issues such as 'Town Leadership in the delivery Phase' and 'Navigating a shifting economic context'. You can also sign up for mentoring, for bespoke one to one leadership support, or to join our Executive Discussion Group for facilitated confidential peer discussion.