ABSTRACT
The modern observer would have no difficulty in ‘back-mapping’, as it were, on Alec Clegg’s practice the essential characteristics and subtleties of successful modern leadership and management of large organisations. Michael Fullan has written most extensively on the subject and is a reliable and perceptive witness on what works in terms of system leadership. In his Leading in a Culture of Change, he sets out a schema on some general qualities of leadership, not context bound. Fullan also refers to ‘understanding change’ as crucial to successful leadership. Clegg lived in the period of post-war reconstruction and the development of the welfare state. It represented a change in the role of the state, which hitherto had been regarded as the provider of last resort and therefore required a cultural change which Clegg helped lead and establish.
