This topic-led and tasty first mentor dinner, kindly sponsored by Hatch, was a celebration of Future of GM’s insightful mentors, and a chance for these generous volunteers to connect with each other in a convivial and confidential space.
Our full house of senior-level guests had a great time and are already asking about the next one – Watch for the second dinner in Q1 2025 and join our mailing list to avoid missing out.
Speaker Katie Day, Transport for the North Strategy Director and Deputy Chief Executive (LinkedIn), kicked things off with insights on ‘evidence, engagement and investment’.
Much of the content for these dinners is confidential or not for quotation, but here are Katie’s basic talking points:
Trust, truth (aka data) and teamwork (aka engaging widely) are the essential ingredients in making the case for investment, especially in the North of England. We need them all in order to drive transformational change across big societal challenges – and despite big budget challenges.
Our new government has five huge missions – Get Britain building again; Great British Energy; the NHS; taking back our streets; and breaking down barriers to opportunity. My experience has taught me we cannot succeed in any of those by “doing to” – we have to “do with” society. That might sound obvious, but if so, why haven’t we yet got it right?
“Doing with” requires trust, truth and teamwork: how good are we as leaders in creating the environments for effective engagement? How do we use good, robust and trusted evidence to drive our work, and how do we communicate the truth?
As much as anything, have we really assessed the impacts of what happens when we don’t engage, we don’t use evidence and data and/or the truth gets distorted?
Being more sustainable in our travel choices, turning down our thermostats by 1 or 2 degrees, or eating healthily to reduce the pressure on our NHS – all of that requires individual, household, group or company behaviour change, but people need to be convinced first. How?
- Leaders, in my experience, need to be humble, receptive to feedback and authentic if we are to build or restore trust.
- We need evidence and data to shine a light on the realities of a situation or programme, and on the opportunities and challenges involved. That is what we have done with the North’s Strategic Transport Plan – our strategy, “Together, we can transform the North”, is based squarely on evidence.
- Listen and engage with purpose (and that evidence!) and a willingness to accept other perspectives and data points. All opinions matter! “Engage with more than who you know”: embrace diversity of background and thought, and avoid echo chambers or group think.
- Be an effective communicator, which I’ve learnt can’t always be taken for granted. Understand and use the channels your diverse audiences do, and be intentional about how to get information to and from them.
- It takes teamwork – when I talk about engagement, I mean internal and external. In addition to the public and stakeholders, remember your staff! Foster a respectful, collaborative and inclusive working environment, since your people will help solve the challenges too, and give you perspective.
If we don’t create data-driven strategies and engage far and wide to get that diversity of perspective, others will fill the information gap – the media, influencers, opponents of change or even the legitimately fearful (but uninformed!).
The challenges we face need bold action and change – that can only happen with truth, trust and teamwork.
Thanks, Katie – lovely to have you as part of our kick-off!
