3 v 45: The three most important things I’ve learned about culture change
Over a 25 year career, Isabelle Trowler has worked within children and family services across local government, the civil service, the voluntary sector, and for her own organisation. The roles have taught her a great deal about resilience, remaining upbeat, and facing hard challenges.
Isabelle became the chief social worker for Children and Families in 2013. The title of her talk at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference—“3 versus 45”— refers to her general tendency to speak about 45 things. For this talk, Isabelle sought to condense the lessons she’s learned into three main points she thinks everyone should take on board.
Read the transcript and watch Isabelle’s full talk below.
Why you should give responsibility to frontline practitioners
Isabelle Trowler has been working within children and family services for 25 years, and it hasn’t always been easy. She’s had to consistently rail against the imposed procedures and rules that inhibit children’s social care workers.
In this four minute clip from the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Isabelle explains what happened when she started to delegate the decision-making as close to the frontline as possible.
Build a business, create a great culture, win awards and make a profit
Dominic Monkhouse knows life is short and he doesn’t want to waste it. Dom developed the UK divisions of the web-hosting businesses, Rackspace and Peer 1, and tried to make them exciting places to work by giving employees freedom within clear guidelines and heeding the “recruit for attitude, train for skill” precept.
Dom’s acutely aware of how little time we have to make a difference. In his talk at the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO conference, Dom poses the question, “What are you going to make a difference in? Who with?”
Read the transcript and watch Dom’s full talk below.
