Keir Lynch

In Essex we have a vision: to make our county a place that provides the best possible quality of life for all who live and work here. To achieve this, a four-year programme, known as EssexWorks, was launched in spring this year. It is based around three delivery priorities: enhancing residents’ quality of life; providing better value for the county’s taxpayers; and promoting sustainability. This is underpinned by the council’s people strategy, which emphasises the importance of talent management, enhancing leadership skills and developing management capability.

Both our chief executive and our council leader recognised how important excellent leadership would need to be for EssexWorks to succeed and, as a result, a bespoke senior management development programme, the Leadership Academy, was launched in May. I joined the organisation at around the same time and one of the major factors in making my decision to come on board was the investment the organisation was making in improving its leadership capability. Such an innovative approach to leadership development said to me that this was an organisation determined to make a significant difference to the people of Essex.