Workforcematters Homepage

Main navigation

Customer focused leadership: Research and learning

There has been good progress in recent years in developing frameworks for leadership competencies. However, only a limited amount of work has been done on the curriculum required to develop some of the new qualities, skills and expertise required of leaders across public services to drive reform and improve service delivery. These requirements include a greater focus on the user or customer, and on cross-sector partnerships.

To address this gap, the Public Services Leadership Consortium has overseen the development of a learning framework and suite of learning resources for customer focused leadership, based on research undertaken by Professor Ivan Robertson and Elisabeth Henderson.

The learning framework

The learning framework has three stages:

1. Pre-requisites: organisational and individual readiness
2. Learning areas
3. Embedding and transferring learning.

For a summary overview, please see our Learning framework diagram [PDF, 14KB].

You may also find it useful to look at our learning resources.

A. Pre-requisites: organisational and individual readiness

Participants need to be ready for a development programme. This can be addressed by ensuring suitable nomination or selection procedures; relevant prior training and development; and relevance to personal career stages and plans.

Their organisations also need to be ready for participants to put their learning into action. Key issues will include the relevance of the learning to the strategic goals of the organisation; the existence of opportunities to implement and embed the new learning; existing organisational culture; and the existing position of the organisation on the spectrum of customer focus.

B. The seven distinct learning areas

1. Understanding the spectrum of customer focused services: dealing with tensions in definitions and terminology; positioning your organisation on this spectrum; and acknowledging and understanding the public service context.
2. How to assess and analyse who your customers are: what drives customer satisfaction and what customers value about the service.

This includes methods and approaches about how to capture the customer's perspective, and how to encourage staff to identify with the customer's experience. It includes how leaders make strategic, symbolic acts that will promote the value, brand and ethos of the organisation as one that takes customer focus seriously.

3. How to re-align whole organisation systems and processes to deliver better customer focus: which organisation systems and process are their key priorities; inter-organisation interventions; and methods for preparing and supporting employees through this re-alignment.

This includes how to work across complex partnerships and landscapes from a customer perspective.

4. How best to enhance the motivation and well-being of staff to deliver excellent customer service: the ‘satisfaction mirror’ and the underlying evidence in support of it.

This includes how to measure and diagnose employee satisfaction, motivation and performance and useful interventions to address problems – the aim being to align employee and customer satisfaction.

5. How to use the local and the wider ‘authorising’ environments to lever and effect change: methods for empowering employees without abdicating responsibility and maintaining leadership accountability; and how to shape the organisational culture and climate to sustain value-driven change.
6. How best to align strategic leadership and middle/junior management activities in order to ensure desired behaviours and achieve results: customer relations management; leadership for reform and customer focus; and how to communicate a leadership passion for customer focus across the organisation.
7. How to develop and use entrepreneurial skills: commercial awareness, innovation and flexibility to procure services across a complex service delivery landscape, optimising opportunities for better value to the customer.

C. Transfer and embedding

Organisational readiness, and ongoing support and contact outside the organisation – planned well ahead of time, and adequately resourced – are crucial to effective transfer and embedding of learning.

Approaches such as action-learning sets, coaching or mentoring can provide effective support. A means of building a critical mass of leadership or change agents within the organisation may be needed.