Cultivating resilient leadership

Peter Jackson (00:04): Have you ever had a 3:00 AM conversation? I’m talking about those moments where you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “What am I going to do about this? How am I going to solve this problem?” Well, I’m Peter Jackson and as the former CEO of international law firm, Hill Dickinson, I’ve had a fair few of those moments myself, and as a coach, I’ve guided many people through them. In this podcast, you’re going to hear from high achievers about their own 3:00 AM conversations so you can then apply their insights to your own life and career. Now in this episode, you’re going to hear from Joanne Roney, CBE. Now Joanne began her career as a young apprentice at Birmingham City Council and she’s now its managing director and she’s on a mission to rebuild and transform the city, but on that very first day in the job when she was only 16, she was working in the housing repairs department and had a dead rat thrown at her, but despite that, you might be surprised to hear that that’s not one of her 3:00 AM conversations.

Joanne Roney (01:10): You are coming from very successful Manchester to a council that’s in difficulty, actually started to think through what was my plan going to be, and that did keep me awake a few nights.

Peter Jackson (01:23): I can imagine it would do. Now, there’s much more coming up from Joanne later on, but first, let me introduce you to my co-host for this episode, Matt Smith. Matt is a legal director in the corporate team at Hill Dickinson based in our Birmingham office. Matt, hello.

Matt Smith (01:40): Hi, Peter.

Peter Jackson (01:41): Tell me about your job. What is it that you actually do for a living?

Matt Smith (01:45): Well, the best thing about our job is that every day is slightly different. Some days we’ll be office based working within our teams, progressing the transactions for some of our great clients. Other days we might be attending meetings, drafting agreements, visiting clients, and pitching for new work and hopefully closing some deals too.

Peter Jackson (02:01): Excellent. Well, that’s today, but how did you get into the law in the first place?

Matt Smith (02:06): Got a really vivid memory of being 15, 16 and looking at A-levels and options and what I was going to do with my life and what university I might go to and what my future really looked like, and law was a potential option and I was really fortunate because the teachers that led that subject were really passionate about the law and the law as a career. I was lucky enough to get some work experience back in my home town of Wolverhampton, and after that I haven’t looked back.

Peter Jackson (02:33): Excellent. Okay, now Joanne Roney has had many plaudits and she’s got a massive task ahead of her because of course Birmingham City Council declared itself bankrupt in 2023 before she started there as managing director, but as an adopted Brummie and a Black country lad, what is it that you are most looking forward to finding out about her when we do get to speak to her?

Matt Smith (02:58): Well, as you say, Peter Birmingham’s had some well-documented challenges. I’m interested to hear her perspectives on how she’s applying the lessons that she’s learned from her time in Manchester and all roles into a new role in Birmingham, and maybe we’ll get some answers for some of the colleagues in the Birmingham office or we’re wondering when their next bin collection might be.

Peter Jackson (03:16): Well, fair enough because when it comes down to brass tacks, it’s all about the bins, isn’t it? Anyway, enough of that and let’s hear from Joanne. Joanne Roney, CBE, managing director of Birmingham City Council, thanks for coming in.

Joanne Roney (03:36): Thank you for having me.

Peter Jackson (03:37): You’ve given us three great topics for your middle of the night conversations and I’m going to get to those as quickly as we can, but first of all, a little bit about you and some background. You’re back home to where you started life in Birmingham?

Joanne Roney (03:50): I am, yeah.

Peter Jackson (03:51): Left school at 16 brought up in Shard End. What made you decide at the ripe old age of 16 to go into Birmingham City Council and the local authority where you spent the rest of your life then?

Joanne Roney (04:06): Well, I’ve spent a large proportion of my career in public service in local government, have some time out of it. What brought me here, so nobody in my family had ever been to university. So we are a loving large family, but I wouldn’t have said we were wealthy in any shape or form. So I did sign on for my A-levels, but then I just thought I need some money. I was just tired of not having any money. I think I just saw a job advertising for apprenticeships and went and applied. Well, you didn’t apply really. You just sort of sent a letter in at 16 or went to the Job Centre, I can’t remember, but anyway, I got an interview and that’s the start of it. I turned up for an interview in the housing department in Birmingham Council and they offered me the job, and that was the start of it all and my first job was in Chelmsley Wood I think it was first, and then Shard End housing office and that was it.

(05:06): That was the start of the career and what Birmingham Council did at the time was they would invest heavily in apprenticeships. So you did day release, they did opportunities and working with the council gave me access to do professional qualification, institute of housing right up to doing a masters at Birmingham University. So that career pathway in Birmingham council at the time was so exciting. You would be moved around, you would get to college, you would be learning, and I guess the real answer to question about what’s driven me to stay maybe in this sector or return to this sector, when I left it, I returned to it was twofold really, isn’t it?

(05:47): Clearly it’s the ethos of the public sector. You know in local government, you make a difference or you should be making a difference every single day you turn up. That connectivity with the place and the people who live here is writ large in everything you do, and I think the second reason that kept me here is it’s the most unpredictable business you can be in. There are never two days the same no matter what job you do, no matter where you are in Birmingham Council, I guarantee you it’s an exciting vibrant place where you don’t know what’s going to happen. There is always something and there’s always opportunity.

Peter Jackson (06:21): Excellent, now you said then that you never know what’s coming next and no two days are the same and of course on the first day I don’t think you probably expected to see a dead rat.

Joanne Roney (06:31): No, this was true. It was my first day as a 16-year-old and you got moved around different departments and I started on the housing repairs reception desk. I was utterly unprepared for it. The doors opened and just hundreds of people came running into report faults and problems. As quickly as I was writing down toilet not working or bath leaking or no hot water, somebody then threw a rat at me and so I’ve got rats. I think this sounds so cliched, but I actually just thought, “Oh my god, how appalling, I’ve got to help this person.” Of course now it’s a massive big issue in the city now I get how upset people are when they’re living in conditions that aren’t fantastic. So that was day one and here I am 400 years later and it’s still a major issue for a number of residents. That’s the public sector. Don’t have a job in local government if you don’t care about the people that you’re there to serve because that’s what you’re about.

Matt Smith (07:31): And then from dead rats to managing director the Birmingham City Council, that’s quite a change. You must have built some skills alongside that you think are absolutely instrumental to your success where it’s got you to where you are today. Do you take anything from those experiences to now?

Joanne Roney (07:47): Yeah, there’s lots. I guess the key thing I’d say is what you learn on your journey and I have always been conscious of the need to reflect and learn and develop. Firstly, you learn to be resilient, don’t you? Because you can’t fix everything for everybody all of the time. So you have to learn how to manage that which is in front of you. I think you have to learn your skills, you have to learn your technical ability. I’m not expert in everything, but I’m expert enough to know what should be happening. As I said before, I’ve took every opportunity to learn and develop and try and instil that in others too, but you also learn from the things you’ve done wrong, don’t you. You learn from your mistakes.

(08:28): Yeah, I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes along the way. I guess the one thing though, and I think this does still come from the 16-year-old me, is how I treat people because I was so lucky in my career to have people who supported me and encouraged me, who I could learn from. I’ve always always held onto the fact that how you treat people matters. Not just saying that I’m not meaning it, I mean genuine commitment to how you treat people and am I making a difference? I think that stood with me throughout really.

Matt Smith (09:02): In my role, I’m used to dealing with CEOs in the private sector and we talked about you being CEO of Birmingham City Council. That’s wrong, isn’t it? Actually it’s managing director’s the right title and I believe there’s a story there as to why you job title is managing director.

Joanne Roney (09:14): So I didn’t pick the title, but it was picked by I think it was commissioner and leader of the council, but I think it was to signal a change. I think Birmingham Council has had a succession of chief executives over recent times and I think this was a deliberate attempt to say, “Look, actually we are looking for somebody who is managing director.” I think the managing and directing, these are two words that are very deliberate and also I think that element of the private sector now because as I say, I have got masters, I also did spend some time in the private sector and I think it is that ability to keep the compassion and passion and ethos of public sector, but my word, Birmingham Council’s in trouble and I need to bring a rigour and a discipline to sorting stuff out. I think it was just signal maybe that change of leadership.

Peter Jackson (10:08): I’m going to come back to the contrast between public and private sector later if you don’t mind, but should we move on to the first of your 3:00 AM conversations and that was about changing jobs and what causes you worries in the night about that? So put that in context for me.

Joanne Roney (10:26): I was thinking about what to say in my 3:00 AM conversations because I’m genuinely not, I don’t kind of worry or stress really. I kind of work hard to manage myself and look after myself in this space of having an impossible job that’s never finished, which is what I describe the role of MD or any local authority chief executive asked. So once you realise that it’s an impossible job and it’s never finished, you can kind of help manage your stress a little better. I picked it because I have changed jobs a lot in my career. So from Birmingham, Director [inaudible 00:11:02] Kurt Lee’s, Deputy Chief Executive in Sheffield.

(11:05): I then went to Wakefield as Chief Executive, Chief Executive in Manchester and now I’ve come full circle to back to where I started as the MD, and each of those changes, they’re very different organisations, different in scale, different in size, difference in capacity, difference where they were in terms of their own journeys of places. So that was the 3:00 AM conversation because I was trying to get my head round. So you are coming from very successful Manchester where you’ve done a range of things there to a council that’s in difficulty, very challenging, very complicated. I actually started to think through what was my plan going to be?

Peter Jackson (11:51): How do you know it’s time to jobs?

Joanne Roney (11:54): Good question. So I think where you are in your stages of life or your career, it’s a different driver, isn’t it? So my early phase was about I wanted to be in charge. I was working my way up, I was in middle management. I’ve always said I’ve had good managers and bad managers and both of them have added something. If I’ve worked for a bad manager, I’m not the type of person who sits there whinging and being unhappy. I’m not going to be able to change them, am I? Am just going to change me and move somewhere else. So bad managers can be a catalyst for change, but I’ve been really lucky to work for good managers who have encouraged and supported and mentored me. So I think when you are starting out in your career or you’re getting to a point where it’s career progression, I was up for change then.

(12:39): It’s an interesting question about when you are at a stage in your career when you are arguably at the top of your career, a successful Chief Executive Wakefield. I’m a successful chief exec in Manchester. Why would you come from high-performing good places? So Wakefield was because after seven years, Manchester was just such an exciting bigger scale. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and I was delighted When I got the Manchester job. In Manchester again about eight years, I was thinking, “Well, this is all lovely. Where’d you go after Manchester? Do I just retire and do I move into a quasi-commissioner model? What do I do? Do I do something completely different with my life?”

(13:21): So I was kind of in that natural cycle I think of thinking, “What do I do? Do I do something different? Do we reset and regear and move up a level and have I got the energy for that?” Then there was this constant nagging about Birmingham. I decided firstly, I love this city. This city gave me the career that I had. So I feel an emotional attachment and interest in the place, and secondly, I thought what’s going to excite me again is coming back to fix something that lots of people don’t think is fixable. So I guess that just tells you I suppose the short answers to that question could have been a challenge.

Peter Jackson (14:04): Indeed. Do I assume then that you were proactive about coming back to Birmingham? Because You clearly were in the earlier stages of your career as you say, you were moving upwards and you were applying for jobs and you threw your hat in the ring from Manchester because it was the place to be at the time. Did you do the same with Birmingham or did you get a tap on the shoulder?

Joanne Roney (14:23): It was a tap on the shoulder. It was a bit of a phone call and a dialogue. Yeah, it was a 3:00 AM conversation with myself that said oh, this is madness at one level, but at another level it was yeah, I’m going to do it. I do say this because I mean, and I don’t mean to kind of make it just sound trite, but I do genuinely owe Birmingham city council everything. It took me as a 16-year-old from Shard End and invested in me as a person and created opportunity for me to have lived the life that I’ve lived in every aspect of my life. Tracy’s back to that interview with a 16-year-old me and so I felt like I owed it the opportunity to come back and see if I could be the one to fix it, if I could be the one that could bring all of that experience to bear to get it on its improvement journey because it was an amazing council in an amazing city.

Matt Smith (15:34): It sounds like it was almost fate then. It was the right place, right time.

Joanne Roney (15:37): It could well have been that couldn’t. It has that kind of circle of life feel to it. So it wasn’t a hard sell, it was a tug on the heartstrings, but the heartstrings kind of said yeah.

Peter Jackson (15:50): Good. Well, whoever made the phone call, good on them and it’s nice to know there’s a transfer market in the public sector as well.

Joanne Roney (15:56): Oh yeah, there’s a lot of that goes on. It’s not far off of football for that.

Peter Jackson (16:02): Shall we move on to your second 3:00 AM conversation and that was about establishing yourself in a new role and obviously you’ve had three or four opportunities to do that. Put that in some context for me in terms of why that came up.

Joanne Roney (16:18): So I was thinking long and hard about when I came back to Birmingham. You can’t just do what you did somewhere else. You can’t think, oh, I’ve changed my jobs loads of times and I’m just going to walk in here and I know how to do my job in Birmingham even though I’ve had similar jobs because you can’t just repeat what you’ve done in other places. For me, it’s very much about that first phase of knowing the place, the business, what it is that you’re going to change around here and then it’s the how are you’re going to do it. Yeah, that takes thought. That did keep me awake a few nights.

Peter Jackson (16:54): I can imagine it would do. There’s a piece about managing upwards isn’t there and establishing yourself with your bosses, and we were talking earlier and I was explaining how as a CEO in the private sector, you’re managing upwards line if you like is very obvious because you’ve got a chair and you’ve got a board that you answer to. So who’s your boss?

Joanne Roney (17:16): So yes, it’s a hard one for the private sector to understand. So I work for the full council, which is all the elected members. I’m non-political, I work across all parties represented on the council. The major contacts are with the executive team who are the kind of cabinet who are in charge, and clearly my closest relationship is with the leader of the council, a leader and deputy leader, but the whole cabinet. So who is my boss is a good question. The leader of the council will set my appraisal and will monitor my performance. The full council hire me and the full council fire me. There are similarities with your shareholders, aren’t there? There are similarities with your board, but it’s more nuanced than that because I guess the difference between the private sector and the public sector is what you are measured on is different, isn’t it?

Peter Jackson (18:08): Well, I was going to ask that because again, in the private sector KPIs, key performance indicators can be very obvious. So I had financial obligations, I have people obligations, there can be projects that I’m asked to deliver. What are your objectives? How do they judge your KPIs?

Joanne Roney (18:26): So I have the same, so they’re a KPIs set for people management. There are a KPIs set for finance in particular as you would imagine. Clearly in Birmingham, I’ve got a KPI around the improvement journey that’s got government scrutiny over it, but then there are a broader set of measures in the public sector, aren’t there because there is a view about how the public feel about the council. There is a view about how partners and how engaged you are with partners and whether you’re making progress, and my job, it’s multifaceted because I am running a big organisation over a billion pound turnover, 18,000 odd staff. It’s a big organisation to manage in a way or to lead actually, I don’t manage it. I lead it in a way that’s effective, but of course I’m equally responsible for the city and people often judge the council not just by council services, but they judge how the city, and of course my job is to create the partnerships, bring in the investment, create the opportunities for people to benefit from that growth. So it’s multifaceted. So who is my boss is probably another 3:00 AM question.

Peter Jackson (19:37): Yeah, good, right. Well I’ll leave that with you.

Joanne Roney (19:40): Because it can change depending upon where we’re at at a certain point of time.

Peter Jackson (19:46): There are great similarities with a partnership as you’ve said. I did see a lovely quote of yours, I can’t remember where I saw it, but you are reputed to have said, “I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas.” And that led me to think how much of your role has to be consensual and how often do you have to drag people with you?

Joanne Roney (20:07): So I didn’t say it, somebody bought me a mug

Peter Jackson (20:11): Oh, is that it?

Joanne Roney (20:11): I think somebody saw me drinking from this mug.

Peter Jackson (20:15): I’d have owned that one.

Matt Smith (20:17): I’m definitely stealing it.

Joanne Roney (20:19): I think it was during COVID when you were doing your meetings, when you were all having a cup coffee. Somebody clocked me with that, “I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas.” But I am prepared to say that’s accurate because to answer your question, my preferred leadership style would be absolutely about building the team and building the consensus, not through any altruism, but through good teams, have people with different ideas and you get your best decisions by having collective discussion, don’t you?

(20:46): So I’m not consensual because I think that’s a nice thing to do. I’m consensual because I don’t pretend to be the expert in the room on all matters and I think better thinking comes from the conversation, but sometimes there’s just A, not enough time for that or B, there isn’t a prevailing view or a consensus view or even people having an idea what to do, and sometimes actually I just do know actually that is the right answer. So yeah, I think there are just times when you have to say, “I am the person who is at the top of this organisation. I am ultimately responsible for it and I’ll take that responsibility, I take the money and I’ll take the responsibility.” And so there are times when I have to call it.

Matt Smith (21:31): Does that resonate with you?

Peter Jackson (21:32): Very much so? It is what you paid to do at the end of day what you paid to do, that is what you are there for. There’s a lot of created roles that you will play as the leader of the organisation, but the bottom line is you’re there to take the hard decisions and by the time they get to your screen or desk, they’re usually hard and somebody with the experience like yourself has to make them. So yeah, it definitely resonates.

Joanne Roney (21:54): Yeah, I think that’s about developing the talent around you, being clear on the accountabilities that everybody has. It’s creating the culture of the organisation, but ultimately buck stops here.

Matt Smith (22:08): It’s trust that you’ve built in your team to be able to help them to make the decisions and then trust that actually know you will step in and make the decision at the time.

Joanne Roney (22:15): I think it’s trust, but it’s also risk as well. So I have to create a culture of accountability and honesty. You are hearing the public sector, the phrase, “Our job is to speak truth to power.” So if we go back to who’s my boss, there are times when he sees on me to have to say, “Sorry members, we can’t do that or we’re not doing that.” You have to be able to create that environment where sometimes it’s advice and sometimes it can’t be done, but that goes to the staff too.

(22:50): If I’m going to hold people to account effectively for what I’ve asked them to deliver, that has to apply to me too, and it can be brutal as has been seen in Birmingham, but you have to create the conditions where people tell you what’s going on and you have to create the conditions where you have enough intelligence into the organisation to know what’s going on. I think you do have to have that experience and that nice to know where to look, how to challenge, when to challenge, when to check, when to trust. That comes from lots of experience I think, there’s no substitute for just being in the business long enough.

Peter Jackson (23:37): Before we move on to the third conversation, just a couple of questions about Manchester because of course the old Mike Tyson quote about the best plans and getting hit in the face and all that probably hit you with Manchester, didn’t it? Because not long in [inaudible 00:23:51] and there was the arena bomb and then three years later, you were in lockdown. So just tell us a little bit about how that played on your mind.

Joanne Roney (24:03): So yes, Manchester was just a roller coaster. So the start point is I’m going to Manchester as an unknown quantity because I wasn’t from the region in the area and I’m following in the footsteps of a very experienced chief executive. So Howard Bernstein widely credited for that massive strategic uplift of Manchester and all that he achieved. So you step into big shoes, don’t you? I spoke to Sir Richard Lees who was the leader of the council at the time, and Sir Richard was really clear to me. I think he said it publicly, “Joanne, walk in your own shoes.” And he supported me completely.

(24:41): So what he meant by that was don’t try and be Howard. You’re just not Howard. You are who you are, be who you are. That was a really helpful start point for me to walk in my own shoes. You start to build those networks, you start to kind of familiarise yourself with the team, the city. Look who I’ve got around me, what are the challenges here, what’s expected of me? And then of course the arena. I was five weeks in and it was the worst of times, the city, but my word did I see the best of the city? Did I see what it meant by that Manchester ethos and how Manchester came together? Well, it was all there over those two days, but in terms of a chief executive, clearly I’m responsible in those instances. I’m part of Gold command.

(25:30): Now, I don’t know anybody in Manchester. I don’t know anybody. I have my emergency plan, my phone’s ringing, I turn up. You just have to lead in that space. You just have to lead. There was no argument about it. I was going to gold command, I was going to deploy the team as I saw fit. I mean I was surrounded by brilliant people. I was just completely blown away. Everybody just turned up and knew what to do, but it’ll live with me forever. Everything that happened that night, everything that happened over the next few days, how we put the vigil together, bearing in mind it was a general election and I was still under legal rules around who could speak and who couldn’t speak and yet everybody wanted to speak and managing all of that, that was just the space I had to be in, and it was devastating. Obviously it was devastating for everybody affected, but it was devastating for the organisation as well, and we had one guiding principle.

(26:30): Can we say at the end of this we did everything we possibly could and that was it. We did all sorts of things. I remember the city, we wanted a place where people could come to on the night and Manchester City Football Club opened up the Etihad and how the whole city responded, the vigil was put on, we put music on right through to the money that was raised, and I became the chair of the charity and worked with the families to create the Glade of Light ultimately a few years later. So it was the worst of times, but it also I guess just bought home, “I am the chief executive of this amazing city and I will lead with all my integrity. I will lead with all my compassion, but I will lead.”

Peter Jackson (27:19): Do you think that experience helped during the pandemic in terms of you were established as the leader, you’d really got your head around being the leader, “Okay, we’ve got another crisis.”

Joanne Roney (27:33): Yes, so I think yes it did that the arena bomb incident clearly established me as the leader of the place. I had to respond that because we had to do all of the things we discussed. So yes, you just get over that. We’re all back to just start doing some of all that stuff, and then of course we had COVID, and yes, I think again it was exactly the same scenario, really. Okay, we are going to pull together and galvanise Manchester business community, voluntary sector. We are going to play to our strengths, which is our community engagement work. I will deploy the resources effectively. I’m just going to do it all online. So yes, I think that was yet another crisis situation where my leadership is going to be my leadership. I’m going to do it this way, I’m going to create these arrangements and people would acknowledge Joanne is leading in this space.

Peter Jackson (28:31): Yeah, and you led very well if I may be allowed to say so.

Joanne Roney (28:35): Thank you. As did many people everywhere and it was as always in these scenarios, it’s not me, it’s me galvanising and convening and as ever local government, that’s where we’re at our best when there’s things like that to be dealt with.

Peter Jackson (28:51): Indeed. Moving on to your final 3:00 AM conversation and this is an obvious nod towards Birmingham, so I’m going to let Matt lead on it, but it was simply put in your words taking on an organisation in trouble. Matt.

Matt Smith (29:06): I think it’s well documented, obviously what we’re talking about. You arrived 12 months after that section 114 notice is served, which places effective budgetary constraints on the council and the commissioners are brought in at that time. To what extent did you know about what you were walking into?

Joanne Roney (29:23): Well, as you say, it’s well documented. So I knew what to expect in the sense of commissioners are here. Here’s a list of things that have led to a 114 notice. So in many ways you know what’s broken, what people don’t understand about the commissioner model is there isn’t an exit plan. So the diagnostic’s spot on. What isn’t clear is how do you know you’re better? Then that’s where I have to come in. So I have to be in collaboration with the commissioners, I have to be the person who starts to rebuild the organisation, not just fix what’s gone wrong, but fix what led to it going wrong. It’s not just I’ll balance the budget. I will deliver a balanced budget and I will set another balanced budget and I will do a four-year medium-term financial plan, but that’s not the point, is it? The point is what were the underlying issues that led to us getting into this mess in the first place and have we fixed them?

(30:21): And some of that’s longer term. So it’s all about have I got the right talent in the right place? Am I spending the money on the right things? Have I got an organisation that’s operating as a single entity rather than some sort of disparate set of services that haven’t been modernised or transformed or changed or challenged in any way? So that rebuild of the organisation is part of it, but the other bit is the culture. Have we got a culture? And that’s hard when you are in trouble because how do people behave when they’re being criticised or blamed or fearful or anxious about what their future is? Their behaviours can sometimes go inwards.

(31:10): It’s like keep your head down and keep out of sight mentality. My job is to lift the organization’s heads up to create the vision for where we’ll get out of this mess and where we’re heading and how we’ll get there to create the conditions where people can speak up. The frontline staff who are not to blame for any of the issues, they’re the ones who know what’s wrong and how to fix it. So giving a voice to the frontline, building back up from what are the organization’s strengths and the people who work there into creating a more stable organisation that people are proud to work for, and that’s why the first thing I did actually was a staff survey and some staff engagement sessions.

Matt Smith (31:53): That was going to be my next question is what do you do on day one? Because some of the CEOs in our local businesses, great industrial businesses that we’ve got in the city, they’d be walking around the shop floor, they’d be going speaking to people.

Joanne Roney (32:03): Absolutely.

Matt Smith (32:03): Is that what you were doing?

Joanne Roney (32:05): Absolutely, only two things in the first phase. Honesty about what’s wrong around here from my senior team, go and check that out with the frontline. Listen, check out, go and ask your partners as well, they’ll tell you. Go and ask the residents, they’ll tell you. I didn’t need to do that. I haven’t got a family who live here. I didn’t know, I did talk to some residents, but check out your partners, check out your stuff, but absolutely frontline, listen, and then the other one of course is the money.

(32:34): I have to know where every penny is, what’s been spent, what isn’t been spent. So digging under the money, listening, and from that we build our recovery plan and we also build recovery plan that’s owned by the organisation. You can come in and do a top down, “Here’s Joanne’s plan and I’m going to fix it.” Will that fix it? I don’t think so. I think what fixes it is me injecting the same pride and passion for the organisation and that desire to do the best we can for the residency city in every single person who turns up every single day. That’s what’ll fix Birmingham.

Peter Jackson (33:10): We clearly got a job on your hands there and we must let you get back to it as quickly as possible, but I’ve got three final questions for you if I may. Two are a bit flippant, so bear with me, but the first one is one of the flippant ones and that is I did hear you interviewed on another podcast and you confessed that you were named after a Coronation Street character. You don’t have to tell me, but I’m inviting you to, what’s your middle name?

Joanne Roney (33:36): Oh, I knew at some point this would come back and haunt me. So I’m actually named after Coronation Street character because my family watch Coronation Street all the time, which is probably why I ended up working there. I was ingrained in me as an early age. It’s Lucille Hewitt who was the barmaid at the Rovers Return.

Peter Jackson (33:55): I didn’t have it down as that.

Joanne Roney (33:56): There you go.

Matt Smith (33:58): Did you lose your bet, Peter?

Peter Jackson (33:58): I’ve lost my bet with myself. I’ll pay myself later.

Joanne Roney (34:00): Did you think I was Bet?

Peter Jackson (34:01): No, I didn’t add you down as a Hilder, but never mind. Let’s move on quickly.

Joanne Roney (34:05): Hilder.

Peter Jackson (34:06): Thank you very much for confessing that. A more serious question, Commander of the British Empire, obviously stellar career with many successes, many awards as well. If I was to put you on the spot with one project, job moment, whatever it might be that you are most proud of, what would it be?

Joanne Roney (34:24): It’s always a tough one, isn’t it? When I look back on my career and so many things that have been so brilliant, I mean it’s fantastic to have built the Hepworth in Wakefield. It’s brilliant to have done factory in Manchester, but I think I will go with the Glade of Light, the memorial to the families and the bereaved and those who were injured in Manchester. That was an incredibly difficult process to get to something that I think we ended with something that people were happy with, and for me that is an area where that’s challenging to work through how you create something that’s so significant for so many people and how you work to get to a level of consensus and it’ll be there forever, and to have been a part of that journey to make sure that those lives that were lost will never be forgotten, that will stay with me all of my life. So I would say I am proud to have been part of that even though it was something I wish I’d never had to do.

Peter Jackson (35:38): Obviously, and you said earlier that the aim there was to come off the pitch saying that you’d given everything that you possibly could have done in that situation. Do you feel you did?

Joanne Roney (35:49): Yes, I absolutely think we couldn’t have done anything more and the worst of times, but the best of times for Manchester and I’d like to think I’m thinking exactly the same in this role. Am I doing everything I possibly can and are we as an organisation 100% focused on doing everything we possibly can to get Birmingham back to being the best it used to be?

Peter Jackson (36:19): Yeah, you have every right to be proud if I may say so, but my final question, when we do Mrs. Birmingham, the movie and Spielberg Lands and films it, who’s going to play you?

Joanne Roney (36:29): Oh god, I don’t know. So hopefully some 16-year-old actress from Shard End who’s a Brummie.

Peter Jackson (36:37): Right, we’re going to have to find a 16-year-old actress from Shard End who’s a Brummie then, aren’t we?

Joanne Roney (36:41): Yeah.

Peter Jackson (36:42): Joanne, thank you so much for coming in today. You’ve been very generous with your honesty. You’ve really got to the bottom of a number of issues. I wish you nothing but success in how you transform Birmingham city council and the city. I’m sure you’re going to succeed. You’ve got a track record of success.

Joanne Roney (36:57): I’ll try.

Peter Jackson (36:58): Thank you so much indeed.

Joanne Roney (36:59): Thank you for your time, thank you.

Peter Jackson (37:06): So Matt, we’ve just finished with Joanne Roney. What were your initial impressions of the conversation?

Matt Smith (37:12): What a lady. I couldn’t get over the passion that she shows for the role and for Birmingham. From someone who’s obviously been really successful in her public sector career, to take on a challenge like Birmingham and just show the drive. You could see the passion in her eyes that she was really up for this challenge and what it’s going to entail for her over the next few years, what were your thoughts, Peter?

Peter Jackson (37:32): I share your views on her passion. That came across in spades, didn’t it? But what I also thought came across was whilst she was very engaged and jokey and good fun to have a conversation with, the absolute steel and determination when it came to the crunch, again shone through and when she was talking about moments of crisis in Manchester and how she just accepted she was in charge, she was the leader and she was going to lead.

Matt Smith (38:02): She used the phrase ownership a lot, didn’t she? That’s the key. You can tell that’s one of her key mantras is that when she knows the chips are down, she’s going to step in and take control of the situation and she’s going to lead and she says, “I will lead.

Peter Jackson (38:13): Very much so and she was quite happy to own decisions because she talked about whilst obviously she would be as consensual and accommodating as possible and would allow her team to make decisions and to lead her to decisions, ultimately the book stopped with her and the hard decisions had to be taken as she was prepared to take them and that was the job.

Matt Smith (38:37): And she was prepared to get into conflict over those decisions, and in those situations, is that something that you found in your role when you were CEO? Have you ever found yourself in that kind of situation where your board and your contemporaries?

Peter Jackson (38:49): I wouldn’t describe it as conflict, but certainly there have been a number of examples where my executive and me have disagreed with our board and my chair, and that happens and that’s natural, and in a way it’s healthy because it shows you’ve got that challenge, that governance structure, and the transparency, and the comfort where a chair, a board can say actually, we think you’re wrong and the chief executive me doesn’t flounce out the room slamming doors and throwing things out the window. There’s then a debate that happens around, “Well, what should we do then?” One example we had during the pandemic, right at the early stage of the pandemic where my chair and I disagreed on something really fundamental and what it was was we knew we were going to have to use furlough and we knew that we were going to have to keep the business running and yet people were going to take a haircut on salaries and like many other businesses, the 80% idea that was around with furlough, we put into play in the business.

(39:57): My view was that if we were going to do that, then really all we could ask of our people was to give 80% of their time and that we effectively needed to give them a day off and my executive agreed with me, and I will never forget, there was a board meeting on Friday afternoon in March 2020 where I went along and said, “This is what I think we’re going to do.” And Jonathan, my chairman who he and I have known each other for years, we get along great, we’re friends as well, says, “I totally disagree.” And we had a debate about it and his point was we’ve got to keep the business running. We have no idea what this pandemic means in terms of the impact it’s going to have on our business. There were those who thought we wouldn’t have any work, that deals would stop. The need for lawyers would stop, the business would effectively stagnate until we could come out of the lockdown situation.

(40:49): Jonathan said, “But of course if that’s not the case and we’ve got work, we’ve got to do it and we’ve got to have people in the business who are available 24/7, 365 like we are as a commercial law firm anyway and we can’t afford to run the risk of having nobody around on a Friday because everybody’s taken that as their 20% day, and he was right. That was where we went as a business and I had to say to the staff, “Look, trust me, we think this is the best way forward.” And as it turned out, well, you recall there was a mad demand for legal services throughout the entirety of the pandemic and quite frankly, if my suggestion had gone ahead, it would’ve caused the business more difficulty than it needed to. So I was wrong and we had that debate chair to CEO, board to executive. The board in inverted, commas won if that’s the way you want to put it, but they were right and I was very happy to implement that decision on their behalf and it turned out to work out well for us.

Matt Smith (41:52): It’s that never-ending balance of getting the right for colleagues but also getting it right for clients, isn’t it? But you have to have that debate at that time. That’s what makes a good board, isn’t it? That’s what makes a good leadership team.

Peter Jackson (42:02): It is and then Joanne touched on that, didn’t she? When she said the idea of consensus is not about getting everybody together and feeling happy clappy about it. It’s about getting the right people in the room to have the conversation that produces better results, better decisions. It’s diversity in action, really. It doesn’t matter whether it’s gender, whether it’s sex, whatever it may be. Having that diverse thought process, that diversity of opinion on a subject will inevitably lead to a better result.

Matt Smith (42:33): And she reflected on that, didn’t she? When we asked her about her very first day and getting around everyone, she talked about going around and even speaking to her own family.

Peter Jackson (42:40): And it was very interesting she said that because the last guest we had on Daniel Gidney, the CEO of a private sector organisation, Lancashire County Cricket Club who took over in similar situation because when he took over and he was very open about his life, he was going bust, and his first question to himself was, “How do I make payroll? How do I pay my people?” That first reaction, immediate reaction was never mind the commercial implications, never mind the strategy or whatever it might be. How do I look after the people? And it was very similar with Joanne. I think as you say, she went round and she actually talked to the people on the front line.

Matt Smith (43:18): She needed everyone to buy into the philosophy to make sure she can turn this great city around again to get into more prosperous footing and she talks about right at the end.

Peter Jackson (43:28): And listening to her, you’d have some confidence that she’s going to get it done.

Matt Smith (43:31): Yeah, I wouldn’t get in her way, put it that way and the other thing she talked about was managing upwards. How have you found that in your professional career?

Peter Jackson (43:41): It’s been a challenge because you’re managing upwards and boards change and chairs change and what have you. There are a lot of similarities there, listening to Joanne between the private and the public sectors and it’s about persuasion, it’s about building relationships. It’s about knowing the individuals and what makes them tick, because as a CEO managing director, your duty, your obligation is to make decisions in the best interest of the business. Some of them as Joanne referred to, you just have to make and you have the authority to make them and you make them, and if you get them wrong, you’ll get sacked, but that’s the job. Others, there may be constitutional contractual obligations on you to consult and indeed, the decision is for a board to take, a council to take and there you’ve got to be the persuader. Now, if you’ve decided the right forward is to do X, then your duty is not to go to a board and say, “Well, there you go, I think it’s X. What do you think?

(44:41): It’s to go to the board members and say, “I think we should do X because.” And persuade them. And you can use tricks, you can go behind formalities and if you know certain people react in certain ways as to how information is fed to them, use that to your best advantage. So I’ve had three chairs while I was the CEO of Phil Dickinson, and they were all very different and they all had very different characteristics and very different decision-making processes. So my current chair is an analytical, as we all know, he should have been an accountant in his real job and it’s all about the data. He has a human side, don’t get me wrong. He’s not a spreadsheet manager by any stretch of the imagination and he’s very big on the people aspects,

(45:30): But he wants to know what the financial implications are before anything else and if I go into him with a fluffy, happy, clappy argument, I’m going nowhere. I have to give him the data. I have to give him the finances. He then make a decision that is actually nothing to do with the data, nothing to do with the finances, but that’s what he wants to know the implication of. His predecessor was in amiable. So I knew when I went in to see David with a suggestion, I had to start with asking him how Everton had gone on at the weekend and whether he’d gone and how were the kids and was Janet, his wife all right? And we’d have 10 minutes of chatting about life, and then I’d say, “By the way, I want to merge with so-and-so. Is that okay?” Because I had to get him into a conversation.

(46:10): I had to get our relationship right before I asked the question. So it’s about persuasion, it’s about building relationships, about knowing your audience, and ultimately you’ve got to get your own way or be prepared to accept you wrong, and if you can do that, that’s okay. At the end of the day, you’ve got to be pragmatic. For all that I’ve said, you’ve just got to use whatever ammunition you’ve got to get your own way in the best interest of the business. Anyway, thanks for listening to this episode of 3:00 AM Conversations, and you’ll hear from us again in a month’s time. Please rate, review, and follow this podcast and that way you’ll be able to spread the word, and if you’d like to find out more about how Hill Dickinson can help you, then head to hilldickinson.com. Thanks for listening.