Written by Lubna Haq, Director at New Street Consulting Group
For many years the housing sector has invested significant time and energy in improving diversity and inclusion. Organisations have worked hard to increase representation, create more inclusive cultures and ensure colleagues feel able to contribute. These are important achievements and, in many organisations, genuine progress has been made.
Representation is easy to count. Influence is much harder to measure, and arguably much more important. That distinction has made me reflect on whether we’ve become preoccupied with measuring the wrong thing.
Much of our attention has focused on who is in the room. Representation undoubtedly matters, but it is only the beginning. The more important question is what happens once people are there. Whose views influence decisions? Whose judgement carries weight when difficult choices have to be made? And whose perspectives shape the decisions that affect residents, colleagues and communities?
In my view, that is where inclusion is truly tested.
Housing organisations are operating in an environment of unprecedented complexity. Regulatory scrutiny, financial pressures, workforce shortages, building safety requirements and rising customer expectations have all increased the demands placed on leaders. As pressure grows, decision-making naturally becomes concentrated. More responsibility sits with fewer people, and organisations increasingly rely on familiar relationships, trusted advisers and established ways of thinking.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Experienced leaders are expected to provide certainty during uncertain times. But there is an unintended consequence. The danger is not exclusion by design; it is exclusion by habit.
Every leadership crisis is also an inclusion test. When pressure rises, organisations discover whether influence is genuinely distributed or whether it has always rested with the same trusted few.
Some of the most valuable insight within any organisation rarely sits around the executive table. It comes from colleagues working closest to residents, from emerging leaders who see problems differently, and from people whose lived experiences challenge assumptions others no longer notice. The people closest to the problem are not always the people closest to organisational power.
If inclusion is to move beyond aspiration, these voices cannot simply be heard. They have to influence decisions. This is why I believe we’ve misunderstood succession planning.
Too often it is treated as a process of identifying who might replace today’s senior leaders. Instead, it should be about creating leadership opportunities across the whole
organisation. Are we enabling people at every level to develop judgement, lead change and influence decisions long before a vacancy appears? Or are we unintentionally reinforcing the idea that leadership belongs to a select few?
Viewed this way, succession planning becomes one of the most powerful inclusion strategies an organisation can have. It broadens opportunity, develops confidence and builds leadership capability long before people reach senior positions. More importantly, it creates organisations where leadership is distributed rather than concentrated.
That matters because the challenges facing housing cannot be solved by a handful of experienced leaders alone. They require diversity of thought, constructive challenge and the confidence to see problems from different perspectives. The organisations that will thrive are not necessarily those with the strongest executive teams, but those that create environments where good ideas can come from anywhere and where people feel able to challenge accepted thinking.
Perhaps housing doesn’t have a succession planning problem. Perhaps it has a leadership concentration problem.
If leadership continues to be concentrated, so too will opportunity, influence and organisational resilience. But if leadership is developed more widely, organisations become stronger, more adaptable and better equipped to navigate the complexity that increasingly defines our sector.
Representation is easy to count. Influence is much harder to measure. If you’d like to explore how influence, leadership capability and succession planning are connected in your organisation, we’d be delighted to continue the conversation.
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