Focusing efforts on strengthening the human capacity of the criminal justice system is now a very important investment in the secure future of Ukraine. To this end, JustGroup has initiated the creation of the Management Development Program for the Criminal Justice System.
Background of the program
For several years now, our community has been discussing the role of managers and their role in the system. We thought about gathering representatives of different institutions in one space to think together: who is a manager; what is the scope of his/her influence in a complex context; how does the effectiveness of the system as a whole depend on the interaction of different elements? And we came up with a unique Program for the Development of Managers in the Criminal Justice System.
We worked with organizations that have the best national expertise in this area – the Center for Leadership of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and Mohyla Strategic Agency – to design the Program and adapt it to the context of public administration and the justice system. We are grateful to the International Renaissance Foundation for supporting the design and implementation of this Program.
“Organizational culture often hinders the germination and stabilization of changes in the system. We came to this conclusion through dialogues and research in our environment, through long-term work with leaders, managers and teams in institutions. Managers, as part of professional communities, grow and strengthen intuitively. The internal dialog between the elements of the system takes place through formats that are often not conducive to finding new ideas or solutions. We want to create conditions for the development and support of leaders of the environment and institutions; to support the dialogue within the environment. That is why “transformation of management culture” is one of the key focuses of our work,” says Vasylina Yavorska, leader of JustGroup.
Participants of the program
The main goal of this program is to form a community of managers from different institutions who, through personal development, will be able to work with changes in the management culture both at the level of institutions and at the level of the entire criminal justice system. Our goal was to create a unique space where they could think together about important issues of the role of the manager, leadership, and system development with the help of the best management schools. And in this space, we managed to bring together almost 30 representatives from various institutions, namely: The Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Supreme Court, the High Anti-Corruption Court, and the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. We are grateful to the participants for their courage to embark on this journey and see it through to the end.
“The role of a manager in the criminal justice system is currently extremely underestimated. The situation is even more complicated with understanding the concept of leadership. There is a widespread perception that management is an obvious thing, and every professional performer is fully capable of organizing the work of subordinates. And then it turns out that “we lost a good performer and got a bad leader” – we have to look for a new one, and so on in a circle. I am grateful to our long-standing partners JustGroup for providing managers in the system with a unique opportunity to rethink their role, to understand that people work in criminal justice, and therefore the entire modern arsenal of a manager and leader is quite suitable for working with investigators, prosecutors and judges,” says Program participant Yuriy Belousov, Head of the War Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
How it happened
The first session of the Program took place in late October 2023. The participants, together with Andriy Rozhdestvenskyy, Executive Director of the UCU Center for Leadership, reflected on the understanding of leadership through the model of leader’s virtues, as well as its role in implementing change. They analyzed cases of change in national government institutions and the non-governmental sector, analyzing the strategies chosen, potential weaknesses, and possible alternative steps.
“Since the beginning of the Russian aggression and especially the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the criminal justice system has faced not only significant challenges but also opportunities. The key one is to restore public confidence in the state’s ability to ensure justice and overcome the terrible consequences of the war. And the role of the CCJ system here is more than just conducting effective investigations. I hope that the Program will help motivated managers with practical tools, as well as with thinking and understanding of their role and influence on the processes of restoring justice in war. Society needs responsible and value-based managers and teams in the criminal justice system more than ever,” said Daria Svyrydova, a lawyer and member of the Program design team.
During the second session, held at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School in November, the participants jointly sought answers to the following questions: What strategic idea does the system work to realize? What value does the system create? Who is its client? KMBS Dean Oleksandr Savruk and his deputy Eduard Maltsev guided them to reflect on and rethink their experience, and jointly reflected on developing the capacity of leaders to work with change management and teams in which these changes can germinate and be sustainable.
“The component of management skills in criminal justice is something that has long been an unconscious demand of society. We want the criminal justice system to become more efficient, but we are constantly trying to improve the procedural legislation. In my opinion, the solution lies in the managerial culture, not just in the quality of procedural and substantive law. The manager must find a new way to organize a full, comprehensive and objective investigation of criminal proceedings in conditions of limited human and material resources. Leadership, rationalization and prioritization of work, economic approach to decision-making, implementation of changes, digital transformation, uniting the efforts of all CJ actors around common ideas – this is what will make the profession better,” said Denys Gulmahomedov, Deputy Director of the NABU, a participant of the Program.
During the third session of the Criminal Justice Management Development Program, participants reflected on what they could do to develop themselves as managers, as well as to develop their teams, institutions and the system as a whole. These days were full of really hard work, thinking, and discussions, which were prompted by Iryna Glushchenkova, JustGroup consultant, trainer, facilitator, Natalia Kadia, expert on organizational transformation and leadership, neuroleadership consultant, and Tymur Demchuk, Head of Corporate Training at Kyiv Business School and lecturer at Maybutnyi and KMBS.
“What percentage of change agents is needed to change the culture of an environment? If we look at research figures, they vary from 25 to 10%. These studies are foreign. I hope that soon we will have material for our own conclusions on how best to launch impulses for the transformation of the management culture in the criminal justice system. For this, the program has important prerequisites: unique institutional representation of participants, holistic design of a long-term comprehensive program, and a space of community and reflection created through various formats,” Iryna Glushchenkova said.
This session was the final one within the main program, but JustGroup, together with experts and partners, will continue to provide post-support for brave participants who decide to make changes in their teams or institutions. We also plan to work with a tool for assessing leadership virtues together with the UCU Center for Leadership, present the Standards of Governance in the Criminal Justice System, and support and develop the community of managers in the system.
