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Mike Chitty

Helping realise development since 1986

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Love’s Leadership; Lost or Found?

Mike Chitty · August 21, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Leadership is a toxic word for many.

While for others it seems like the holy grail. The missing ingredient in failure. The magic that leads to success. A thing worth obsessing about and building a multi billion pound industry, and healthy livelihoods in.

What is Leadership?

Leadership has no widely agreed definition. It is a word that is used to describe and explain a wide range of phenomena in:

  • politics, culture, work and leisure from the global to local,
  • organisations of all sorts,
  • networks, communities, associations and ‘social movements’

Leadership is found in just about every aspect of human endeavour. But only because we look for it. Or its magical explanatory powers.

It comes in a bewildering choice of varieties:

  • Transactional
  • Transformational
  • Digital
  • Directive
  • Affiliative
  • Participative
  • Clinical
  • Patient
  • Citizen
  • Distributed
  • Distributive
  • Collective
  • Charismatic
  • Dictatorial
  • Evil
  • Benevolent
  • Adaptive…
  • I could go on, probably for ever

But perhaps, like Phlogiston, it doesn’t really exist?

Doers Leadership even Exist?

After all it is a word that allows us to label something that we can’t actually describe. A bit like love. And for me, leadership is an expression of togetherness and love. And no matter how hard we try our expression is imperfect. But we can reflect. Learn, change and get better.

Leadership, like love, is a gift that has to be given and received. Neither are straightforward. Plenty can go wrong. It probably will. But this is part of the process. It allows it to deepen and mature.

For me, leadership is a collective process that creates a future that is different to the present. Good leadership creates more sustainability and fairness. Not so good leadership leads to an insecure future and grave inequalities. It is heart-breaking that in our current narrative Leadership is too often judged in much narrower terms, and in fact inequality and environmental harm are things that can be created as long as the price is right.

Leadership and Leaders

We have a generation of gifted leaders working hard, being heroic, making great progress. Providing us with GOLD command. But it would seem we also have a generation of evil and malevolent leaders spreading division and oppression, shirking and profiteering.

See what I did there?

I shifted from LEADERSHIP – that social process that we are all engaged in to some extent, to LEADERS. The anointed few, with special powers of high office, high skill, high imagination or high finance who we can choose to love or loathe. This lets us escape from thinking about our role in this. It supplies us with heroes and villains and allows us to play the victim. The age old drama triangle plays out and nothing changes.

We must resist the temptation to act as if Leadership is a special set of behaviours that Leaders, those other people, do.

Leadership is not power. It is not authority. It is not what ‘the bosses’ do. It is the ultimate inclusive process. We are ALL more or less complicit in it. It is a social process that we all contribute to. Sometimes through our silence and compliance.

Human civilisation is fragile, brutal, powerful and hate filled. It is also beautiful and loving. In my home city of Leeds, in spite of a strong economy, inequalities have worsened. Life expectancies have stalled or are going backwards. Even before Covid hit. And if look at the global level thinks look even worse.

Has it all gone wrong?

Leadership has not been getting most of us to a better future. Even those that have made a lot of money from it aren’t any happier. And aren’t living any longer. And even if they were living longer and more happily, while the rest get left way behind, how long could that be sustained? Socially? Environmentally?

So perhaps we still have a lot to learn about the thing that we label ‘leadership’.

Where do I start?

We can start with a more committed, generous, imaginative and thorough attempt to describe what we think we are putting the label on, and what we think that thing is for. And a reaffirmation that we intend this thing called ‘leadership’ to take all of us to a more secure and fairer future.

And a recognition that we all have a part to play. Gifts to contribute and gifts to receive.

Are you ready to start your leadership journey?

An Open Letter: To those who would engage us…

Mike Chitty · June 30, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We are already engaged…

To, Those who would ‘engage’ us,

We are already engaged.

We may not be engaged with you, or in what you think we should be engaged with but we ARE engaged. The things that we are engaged with offer us what we are looking for, perhaps consciously, perhaps not. Our chosen ‘engagements’ give us some combination of love, power and money.

There is a fourth thing that some of us get from our preferred engagement, and that is freedom from pain. Freedom from the pain of hope denied. Freedom from the pain of optimism dashed. Freedom from the humiliation of yet another ‘failure’. This pursuit of freedom from pain is what you label ‘apathy’.

We may choose to engage with you, and your agendas, if you offer us what we want. Unless we see possibilities for this our engagement with you is likely to be short lived and will change nothing. It might be enough for you to tick the box called ‘community engagement’, but little more.  Love and fun might attract us for a while, but it is making us powerful that keeps us engaged.

Many of us who you find ‘hard to reach’ or ‘difficult to engage’ have ‘been engaged’ with people like you before. We have been sold false hope and have suffered the pain of having that hope dashed when you let us down, or when you run out of funding. Your reputations go before you. Sometimes even your promise of cash can’t persuade us to engage…we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

You might pay us to move our muscles, or answer your questions, but you cannot buy our hearts and minds.

If you want to encourage us to change what we engage with, then you need to understand us, understand what we are looking for, and understand where our engagement is likely to take us. It is this ‘where it leads’ that is often the hardest part of the story for us to explore. Some of us have learned to live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. But, if you can really offer us something that provides us with a genuine shot at a better future…

Often your approach appears to us to stand on the premise that you have the right to engage us in what you believe to be good for us. You impose your sensibilities and priorities. Or you impose the policy objectives of those who pay your wages. You force us into a parent child relationship.

Imagine that a powerful outsider came and tried to persuade you to live your life differently. To give up some of the things that you enjoy. To ‘persuade’ you to work on a project of their design.  How would you respond? With enthusiastic compliance?

Perhaps instead of seeking to engage ‘us’ in your decision-making processes, or in co-creating your services, or in spending your budgets, you should instead seek to engage yourselves in our agendas, our decisions, our opportunities. You should put us as individuals and communities at the heart of your endeavours.

Before you seek to engage us in your agendas, perhaps you ought to spend a bit of time trying to engage yourselves in ours? Not by pushing your way in with your authority and your money.

But by winning an invitation. By being ‘helpful’.

So, the next time you sit down to write your engagement strategy, just think about what you might need to be like for us to invite you in.

What would it take for Leeds to delight you?

Mike Chitty · June 2, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Delightful Leeds?

This is the question set by Emma Bearman as the topic to be explored in a partnership between two cities, Liverpool and Leeds, over a two-part series of one hour online conversations.

Each city will host one conversation. The provisional plan is that Liverpool will start us off on June 20th, and Leeds will host on June 27th. Sessions will start at 7pm and be done by 8pm. Further details, including how to book to take part in the events will be published soon.

There will be a a panel drawn from Liverpool and Leeds who will comment on what they have heard and explore it further. The online audience will be able to submit questions through a ‘chat’ service.

The whole thing will be done in an hour.

Would You Like to Be Heard?

Whether or not you are interested in being in the online conversations we would love to hear your thoughts on what it would take for Leeds to delight you. Please do get in touch – we don’t just want to hear from those looking to be on the ‘big stage’… You can also use the form below to tell us what it would take for Leeds to delight you…

Who Would You Like to Hear From?

We want to hear some voices that are not usually heard from, with perspectives and experiences that are not those of the usual ‘Leeds’ voices. Three people will get to speak uninterrupted for 5-8 minutes about what it would take for Leeds to delight them.

Want to know more?

Then join us in a Zoom conversation on Wednesday June 10th at 10am. Fill in the form below and we will send you out joining details…

Making a Nomination

If you would like to nominate someone that you think would provide an interesting and seldom heard perspective, or nominate yourself, here is what to do:

  • Talk to them about why you think it would be good to hear from them and see if they agree to find out more before committing
  • If they agree to consider it ask them to get in touch with me using the contact form below

We will then be in touch. Many thanks!

    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

    C19 – better than leadership?

    Mike Chitty · March 31, 2020 · Leave a Comment

    C19 is horrific. Perhaps the most frightening thing I have ever lived through. But then I am too young for WW2 and was a new born at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis when we stood at the brink of a nuclear holocaust. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Tsunamis, famines. C19 is right up there. But like most crises, it gets things done that our leaders couldn’t.

    C19 has enabled thing to happen in a few months that leadership have been trying to make happen for years. We are reducing our use of cars and planes. We are increasing the use of technology. And innovation and creativity is springing up everywhere. Some previously moribund organisations are actually making stuff happen. That understaffed NHS? 750 00 volunteers and 20 000 returning clinicians. I wonder why they ever left? Leadership?

    C19 is doing what our leaders couldn’t. And I am seeing it work in two very different ways.

    The first is that of paralysis. Like rabbits caught in headlights. Sat waiting for the ‘top’ the ‘centre’, or ‘HQ’ to figure things out and give 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. Find the inner hero. Or have it thrust upon us. Strike the medals.

    This perhaps is a reflection of a particular culture where organisations and individuals have formed a dependency on ‘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.

    The second is that of open innovation and creativity.  Self organising and mutually supporting groups and networks have sprung up within days and all sort of innovations are being tested.  Restaurants are becoming take-aways. Makers clubs are running online.  Choirs and bands are performing from the sofas using collaboration platforms and new music is being released at an amazing rate.  GPs are doing nearly all of their consultations online with kit that had been gathering dust in their surgeries for years.  New hospitals spring up within weeks. This world is moving quickly, collaboratively and positively.

    What influences which of these two reactions we get to the 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 acting. While others are more prone to freeze.  Let others take the risks. As the way forward becomes clear, guidelines will appear and we can then move with more safety. 

    Both can work.  But what is best now, in this context?

    I also think culture and structure play a part.  

    Families with strong leaders look to them for assurance and guidance.  Organisations with strong hierarchies look to the senior management and the board for guidance and instructions.  Subjects look to Ministers and state sanctioned experts for assurances, advice and the wielding of new powers to keep us safe.

    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. Civilians start to care for themselves, their neighbours and what they hold most dear.

    But which response 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. Top down and bottom up – learning from each other in rapid cycles of experimentation and learning.

    Dependency is replaced by a healthier more human relationship.  A genuine association around a shared purpose where hierarchy and rank are less important than experience, wisdom, intuition, and when they are available, facts.

    Take a good look at the systems you are part of professionally and personally.  What reactions are you seeing to the crisis? In yourself? In those around you? 

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

    What does it mean for you and your development?

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    Mike Chitty

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