Community

Leadership and its Development…part of the problem?

Mike Chitty · March 25, 2020 · 3 Comments

Cast your mind back to a time before this tiny virus had us in its grip.

How were we doing?

If there was an end of term report card what might it say?

Well, of course, we have worked hard. We have been industrious. Much has been achieved.

The world has been shrunk. Men on the moon. Women in to space
Massive improvements for many in medicine, health and wealth
A greater choice of consumer goods than ever and more sophisticated financial products and services to help us own them

But it is not all puppy dog tails and sweet, sweet roses.

Globally we have millions of people without enough food and shelter fleeing wars and discrimination – running from their fellow humans
Habitat being destroyed and species extinction running at alarming rates
Climate collapsing, with real fears that sea level rises will make the floods caused by increasingly warm winds carrying higher than level moisture levels look like April showers
Plastics, visible and invisible inside our bodies and in every place on earth
Widespread deplorable practices of animal husbandry required to provide us with affordable volumes of flesh, milk and eggs
An accumulation of capital, wealth, by a few massive corporates, celebrities and billionaires. While millions live and die in poverty with little or no chance of escape
Societies patterned by unfair discrimination
Air that is not safe to breathe. Water that is not safe to drink. And a civilisation that can be bought to its knees by such a simple thing
Our children suffering levels of anxiety and poor mental health that we have not been able to respond to with timely care and compassion
Hundreds of millionaires, billionaires, politicians and celebrities taking private jets to Davos to wring their hands over the state of the world

For some the message is loud and clear. Leadership is failing us. As leadership developers we have to accept, explore and develop our role in this.

Perhaps.

There is another story…

I’m sure some will not buy this narrative. It certainly isn’t the ‘whole truth’. Some may say that our scientific and technological prowess, capitalism and our ingenuity has raised the standard of living world wide. The greater the challenge thrown at humankind the greater our creative response. We will prevail. Humankind really will overcome all of its troubles.

Personally, I am not buying it. History suggests we shouldn’t buy it.

Every civilisation so far has had a rise, and a fall, often through over-confidence and hubris. Humility and uncertainty have been crushed by power, arrogance and self-belief. Until the whole pack of cards comes down.

For those that say now is not a time for reflection but a time to roll up our sleeves and help, I say thank you. Godspeed.

But perhaps some of us can help best by exploring whether leadership and leadership development is failing us and the planet? And if it is, then as leadership developers, educators, citizens, what is our role in this?

And how might we learn and develop ourselves and our practice?

Do you hear this call? Are you curious?

A Fresh Dialogue?

Over the coming weeks and months we will hold a series of online meetings with an aim to develop a generative dialogue to explore this issues surrounding Leadership and Leadership Development with a view to learning together and looking for possibilities of a new way forward. To generate a community of people who carefully and gently construct and develop a ‘pool of shared meaning’ from which new possibilities might form.

Pool of shared meaning — The Pool of Shared Meaning

Are you interested? Curious? Would you like to join us?

John Varney of the Centre for Creativity in Management and I will be hosting some online meetings in the coming weeks, provisionally titled ‘Learning to do together what we can’t do alone’ and we would invite you to join us.

Tuesday 26th May
Tuesday 23rd June

Book all dates here…

All sessions are free to join. Come to one or more. We would love for you to join us for the whole journey wherever that may take us – but dipping in and out is fine.

There is also an option to pay to cover costs and make donations that will support us to develop the work further.

Questions and comments welcome! Please do invite others who you think might heed the call to join us. Share this post. But also issue personal invitations.

We need to learn to do together…what we can’t do alone.

Reflections from the Safe Space #1

Mike Chitty · March 21, 2020 · 1 Comment

Last night I had my first ‘safe space’ conversation with a small group of managers and leaders to reflect on their responses to the current crisis, to share lessons learned and to think about the possibility of change. In a series of short posts I’d like to share a few of the insights we explored in the hope that you might find them helpful.

If you would like to join us in a future ‘safe space’ you can book your place here.

Insight 1: Learn from your heroes

Heroes are out in force.

It seems nearly everyone is making heroic efforts and enormous sacrifices, to ‘support patients’, ‘support the frontline’ and ‘keep the business going’. But heroism is a difficult thing to sustain. We can’t keep on sacrificing, without a burden of debt building up to what has been sacrificed.

Inside every hero is a human being, fragile, beautiful, sensitive, exhausted.

So when you notice individuals and teams being ‘heroes’, before you jump on twitter to offer them your thanks, take a good look at what they are actually doing, the behaviours that earn the label ‘heroic’ and ask:

Why do they have to do these super-human things?
What are the demands on them?
- Working long hours?
- Exposing themselves to risks because of a lack of PPE?
- Quickly re-wiring the operation in the fly?
- Deploying and learning new tech for working remotely
- Making enormous efforts to get to work
- Sacrificing time with their own loved ones to keep things going

Once you are clear on what the demands are that create these heroes, do everything you can mitigate them. Just like the rest of us, heroes tend to break sooner or later. And this is a marathon – not a sprint.

Reflect on what it is about your planning that creates the space that can only be filled by heroism. It will almost certainly point to a weakness and some important learning. Unless of course you always planned on sustained heroism and sacrifice to see you through. In which case you might want to check your ethics.

Also reflect on whether you have taken lean and efficiency too far. We used to run our hospitals at something like 85% occupancy, and valued the notion of ‘redundant staff’ (staff who were on shift but not directly on the front line – who could be drawn upon if there was a surge in demand or some other shock to the system. These days occupancy is up at 98% and often higher. The conversation is about enough staffing to be safe with business as usual rather than enough staff to cope with a surge. Organisations that run on skeleton staffing struggle to run marathons.

So recognise your heroes. Study them. Learn from them.

And improve your planning and resourcing so that we can move towards ‘no more heroes’ – just human beings sustaining the kind of compassionate and creative work that humans do best – especially when the next crisis hits.

If you would like to join one of these safe spaces for reflection and learning please do get in touch. I run them regularly online using virtual conferencing and they offer you the chance to step back, draw breathe and learn.

What does it cost?

I am committed to a Pay If You Can – Free is Fine model hoping that we can find a way to support those that can’t pay as well as those that can. So don’t let money stop you getting the reflective space you need. Just sign up now and I will be in touch.

We have a couple of slots set aside each week for the foreseaable future.

You can book your place here.

Towards a Complete Reset? Purpose and what we measure…

Mike Chitty · March 5, 2020 · Leave a Comment

For a couple of decades I have been thinking about what we measure and why we measure it in various development programmes. The choices we make about what we measure shape how the system develops over time and if we make the wrong choices the original purpose of the system can get lost.

In economic development, measures are based on productivity, a measure usually derived from Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product. Anything likely to increase the productivity of the economy is deemed to be a ‘good’ thing and pursued wholeheartedly.

This has led to a long term and persistent bias towards the pursuit of productivity gains – rather than to investing in establishing a context, a society, from which productivity will emerge. We have become obsessed with the golden egg (which is actually pretty rotten in terms of climate and inequality) and not cared for the goose.

Consider this from Bobby Kennedy from over 50 years ago:

‘Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.’

Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

Seems pretty close to the mark even 50 years later.

Why did this voice of reason not prevail?
Could it prevail now?
Should it?

Future Proofing Health and Care

Mike Chitty · February 28, 2020 · Leave a Comment

A really interesting and new update from the Chief Medical Officer on what the next 20 years of healthcare might look like.

Interesting to reflect on the certainty about the future imbued in the language and the power of planners to help negotiate it.

One of my concerns working in the field in primary and secondary care is the limited time and capacity that local practitioners have to reflect on the future of health and care in their communities and plan an appropriate response, because they are just too consumed in dealing with the challenges that are currently presenting and chasing down todays targets and KPIs.

Leeds – Time for A Complete Reset?

Mike Chitty · February 27, 2020 · 1 Comment

I was encouraged this morning to see a tweet from Tom Riordan, CEO of Leeds City Council that suggests that when we look at Sir Bob Kerslake’s report for the 2070 Commission into city and regional inequalities, ten years of the Marmot review into health inequalities and the climate emergency that we need a ‘complete reset’.

A complete reset.

I remember Richard Florida, an academic and practitioner of urban regeneration for many decades, wrote a book about a decade ago arguing for what he called a great reset in urban regeneration . And for him the reset was to be built around a fresh understanding of how regeneration happens. The book was sub-titled – How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

Talking specifically about the regeneration of Pittsburgh, he said…

The most successful examples…result not from top-down policies imposed by local governments but from organic, bottom-up, community based efforts. While…government and business leaders pressed for big government solutions – new stadiums and convention centres – the city’s real turnaround was driven by community groups and citizen-led initiatives. Community groups, local foundations and non-profits – not city hall or business led economic development groups – drove…transformation, playing a key role in stabilising and strengthening neighbourhoods…Many of…(the) best neighbourhoods…are ones that were somehow spared from the wrath of urban renewal…
Richard Florida – The Great Reset

It is not about getting citizen led groups to do the work of the state, but about engaging the state in the work of the citizens. Making a transition as far as possible from ‘authority’ towards ‘enabler’. This really is a massive shift. A paradigm shift in practice, skills, behaviours, values, identity – even purpose. Everything shifts.

This requires community development workers to not be ‘bought’ by the state to foist policy on neighbourhoods. But to recognise that their role is to facilitate enterprising communities and not to be an extension of the state with a smiling face.

To put communities in the lead.

I’m not sure what Tom has in mind when he talks about a complete reset but I hope some of this very different thinking gets some space in our thinking about health, culture, economic development, education, housing and sustainability.

I’m sure that there are many who won’t agree that a complete reset is needed. Especially those who benefit from the current system. But perhaps it is time that those of of us that do want to see things change found our voice?

If you work in the voluntary, community or social enterprise sector and would like to talk with peers in Leeds about how we might shift the paradigm we have room for a few more at this event on March 12th. Shifting Paradigms…