Archives for April 2020

An Excerpt from Leadership Dialogue Number 7

Mike Chitty · April 30, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Since Lockdown I have been convening regular dialogues on the need to develop our practice as leadership developers, and it has been a spiritually, emotionally and intellectual rewarding endeavour.

Here is a little flavour…

Dialoguer 1: In the work I did for thirty years or something I did a lot of work with leaderless groups where there was no appointed leader or designated leader. And then the leadership just begins to flow. It wells up out of the ground, right? Like looking at spring water. It’s there, its rich in our relationships as human beings, it’s hard to even suppress it. Because we are potentially able to exhibit leadership in any situation.
It’s hard to suppress it. You allow leadership to flow between people and the one who has it, at any instant, right, so one moment it’s the elder the next moment, it’s the problem solver or something, you know that it bubbles. It, effervesces in relationships, as people begin to engage with each other, allowing each other to, to respond.
Dialoguer 2: The language there reminds me of a poem that Rumi wrote in about 1500 and something called Two kinds of Intelligence. And I was wondering if we could reimagine it around two kinds of leadership. He talks about the first kind of intelligence as what you learn at school, it’s manufactured, it’s created. You learn it from books and from teachers and you collect it, you amass it, and he talks about how that’s a hard intelligence to maintain. But it does give you a certain power in the world. And he talks about strolling with your intelligence around the world. And then he talks about the second kind of intelligence as being already complete and in you. Like a spring that overflows, that bubbles up. And he and he, he talks about cultivating that second form of intelligence as being the key to transcendence really. But most of us get judged by our first form of intelligence. You know, how much knowledge we’ve got in our heads? And it just just strikes me there. You know, this thing of leadership as learned technique, versus leadership as an innate expression of love.
Leadership Dialogue 7

If you would like to join us in a future exploration into Leadership and Its Development you can do so here….https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/102888121140

Pandemic as Portal?

Mike Chitty · April 10, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Arundhati Roy

There were three influenza pandemics in the 20th Century, 1918, 1957 and 1968. If pandemics are portals then they played their part in getting us here. Now. And, perhaps this is a better world.

To some it feels more fragile, closer to collapse. To others it feel ‘better than ever’. For many it is hell on earth.

We know from history that civilisations rise and fall. Some think we are still ‘on the rise’ and that existing ways of living and organising have much more to offer. Others, like Arundhati Roy, think that what is happening is ‘like the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years’. That we are well into ‘the fall’.

How might this pandemic be different? How might we imagine a better world and understand what it means, personally, to contribute to realising it?

What roles can we play in achieving a better world?

Imagining a better world is done by looking for clues about what ‘better’ looks like in our present world. The ‘present world’ that permits prejudice, hatred, avarice, data banks, dead ideas, dead rivers and smoky skies; but it also permits love, generosity, happiness and more sustainable ways of being. Indeed for some the rivers and skies are already clearing.

We must see what a better world looks in what is already around us. We must encourage and nurture these glimpses. Spread them. They must become our practice – rather than things we turn to during the crisis.

Recognising what we believe is ‘better’ is not straightforward. For those that believe we are still on the rise, then getting back to normal, the recovery of the economy and the stock markets and the re-establishing of the old patterns of social order can’t come quickly enough. Those that believe the train has been careening out of control for too long are determined not to get back on it. That it should not run again. They want to see new patterns of social order emerge.

How can we find a way for both of these beliefs to play a full role in realising a better future without division. Perhaps tolerance and learning will take centre stage rather than judgement and condemnation?

Developing and improving what is ‘necessary’ and ‘becoming’

What aspects of the current world are both necessary and becoming? Health and care systems, schools, farms, communities, shops, creativity, play and green spaces? Clear air and clear skies?

At this time more than ever we can see what it is that we value and need most if we are to live well together. We must support the development of what we believe to be both necessary and becoming. But perhaps we must hold our beliefs lightly. While we work for them and we must also be prepared to change them as we learn more about how things are developing. Dogmatism will serve us poorly.

For too long improvement has been primarily about efficiency and productivity. Of course this matters. But so do does capability and capacity to handle change in a volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous world, where a single mutation in a a single virus can bring us close to collapse. Agility, adaptability, making the most of all of our human potential and ingenuity for self organisation has never felt more important. This brings with it implications for education, training and development. Perhaps less emphasis on compliance and more emphasis on values led experimentation. An awareness of ethics and a global perspective on environmental and social justice

Having more than we need may be inefficient in the short term, but prudent. Our improvement perspectives need to go beyond the quarterly statement and annual report to look at longer timeframes and greater challenges. We must stop externalising our costs and pushing them further into the future to be tackled by our children and their children. If w remembered our history, pandemics might not catch us unprepared.

Reducing our reliance on what is ‘unnecessary’ and ‘unbecoming’

We must learn to live without goods and services that are neither necessary nor becoming. We must find ways to discourage profit taking that depends on destroying health and happiness. We must resist those that manufacture desire for products and services that we too easily want but don’t need.

We must change lifestyles that produce unnecessary waste instead of reusing, repairing and recycling.

Organisations and systems that concentrate capital in the hands of the few must be encouraged to distribute that value much more widely, so that no-one is left behind. Fairer taxation and wage structures, and true recognition of externalised costs might be places to start.

We might want to rely on our governments to make the changes. To wait for them to create this downward pressure on the unnecessary and the unbecoming But we make political decisions every time we open our wallets, share our thoughts, listen and learn.

Recognising and valuing a variety of contributions

Those that lead, manage and work in our most valuable, if far from perfect institutions, cant stop polluting overnight. They can’t overcome a civilisations history of discrimination and oppression overnight. The pragmatists who keep things running and do their best to change need support.

Those that demand that we stop polluting, stop destroying, stop hating, stop discriminating, stop killing. The idealists who hold us to account for how far short we fall of how our best selves could be. Even when they disrupt our lives, and our consciences, with their protestations and pleas, we must learn to recognise the possibilities inherent in the truth they stand for. They to need our support.

Those that try. Those that experiment with new ways of doing things, new ways of organising, living, making and being in the hope that they can make something a little better than what has gone before. The innovators, risk-takers, the ones that try, fail and try again. The innovators too need our support.

So perhaps now is not the time to look to ‘authority’ to make us a better world. Perhaps now is the time for us to turn in, to reflect and to see what part we can play in supporting the growth of what is necessary and becoming?

Chance to explore this on Wednesday April 15th…https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shifting-paradigms-tickets-99994618596

Parent and Child…or Power and Love

Mike Chitty · April 6, 2020 · Leave a Comment

I saw two very different broad type of responses to c19.

The first is was that of widespread paralysis. Like rabbits caught in headlights. Sat waiting for the ‘top’ or the ‘centre’, or ‘HQ’ to figure things out and give us clear guidance and instructions. If in doubt – do nothing and await further instructions. Or, keep doing what we have always done – but do it with greater commitment, greater risk, and greater efforts to mitigate the risk too. It is a reflection of a particular culture where organisations and individuals have formed a dependency on an ‘authority’, that will eventually ‘know the way’ and ‘show the way’. And a reliance on habits and routines that have been proven to work in the past and will surely, hopefully, prevail again. It was a culture of ‘closed innovation’ where some were paid to think and lead while others followed.

The second broad response was that of open innovation and creativity. Self organising and mutually supporting groups and networks have springing up within days and all sort of innovations being tested. Restaurants becoming take-aways. Makers clubs running online. Choirs and bands performing from the sofas using collaboration platforms and music being released at an amazing rate. GPs suddenly doing nearly all of their consultations online. New hospitals are spring up within weeks. This world is moving quickly, collaboratively and positively.

What influences which of these two reactions we get in a crisis? Well, certainly personality, history and culture play a huge part.

Some people are more prone to ‘flight’ or ‘fight’ when they face a threat – they act. They experiment. They test their assumptions by trying things out. While others are more prone to freeze. Let others take the risks. As the way forward becomes clear, guidelines will appear and we can the move with safety.

In our evolutionary history both can work.

I also think organisational culture and structure play a part.

Families with strong leaders look to the leader for assurance and guidance. Organisations with strong hierarchies look to the senior management and the board for guidance and instructions, while families with more distributed leadership start talking to each other about what next. Organisations with more empowered structures start to blossom with experiments as individuals and groups start to test the new waters in terms of what works, and share what they know.

But which is best? How should we develop our systems to better respond in the future. Well, I don’t think it is either/or.

It is both/and.

The best responses have both a strong top down influence and this blossoming of innovation. They work together – exchanging information. Listening, challenging, supporting, testing. A clear sense of direction and purpose re-stated from the top. A strong culture of connection and innovation learning and sharing how to work for this purpose in the new world.

Dependency is replaced by a healthier, more human relationship. A genuine association around a shared purpose that knows how to work with both power and love.

Take a good look at your systems. What reactions are you seeing to the crisis?

What does it teach you about the need for things to be different in the future?