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Mike Chitty

Helping realise development since 1986

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Paradigm Shift

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

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.

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Managing and Leading in a Time of Corona

Mike Chitty · March 19, 2020 · Leave a Comment

For over 15 years now I have run management development programmes. I am looking now to re-shape and re-package this into a programme of support that will help managers and leaders at all levels to think through and develop their management and leadership at a time when:

  • Face to face is replaced by virtual
  • Anxiety and fear is heightened
  • The way forward is likely to emerge from the ‘bottom’ rather than the ‘top’
  • Pressure is through the roof
  • Hope is at a premium
  • Our best hope is the miraculous powers of creativity and self organisation of our species
  • We need to push on to a new more sustainable future – not go back to the old unsustainable business as usual

My management training has always been fiercely practical. This will be no different. We will cover – to start with – the key issues of human psychology and performance and how this demands us to change the way we manage and lead. Can we offer the hope that our colleagues deserve?

  • setting the foundations – developing the structures and routines to support, manage and lead our colleagues – in this emerging world
  • developing and maintaining great working relationships – really listening and responding
  • providing a ‘secure base’ for colleagues
  • giving and getting great feedback – and using it to learn and change
  • being a brilliant coach – setting the routines to support people learning new ways of working
  • maximum effective delegation – making sure that everyone is both challenged and supported to be at their creative, self-organising best
  • time and priority management – making sure that we focus on the urgent and the important

What else would you like to see covered?

My plan is to produce some fairly detailed ‘maps’ of the territory and then to start to develop and publish content that explains the territory and offers advice and support on how to navigate it.

If you think that this would help you and your organisation to succeed in these times then please sign up so we can explore how we can use limited resources to create the ‘greatest good’. Excuse the GDPR compliant clunkiness… we will email you to just learn more about how we might help!

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Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Realise Development:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

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What does it cost?

I am committed to make this a Pay As You Can programme – with FREE being fine! I am hoping to find some organisations and individuals who will commission the development of the content and be prepared to share it with the wider world, a well as using it for their own purposes. And of course we will produce branded/tailored versions for in-house use should that be required.

Paradigm Shift – March 2020

Mike Chitty · March 12, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Today in Leeds, after some 12 months, perhaps 57 years of preparation, I am starting a new, additional phase of work. One that seeks to encourage fresh ways of organising, drawing on wisdom both ancient and new, scientific and intuitive. It might sound a bit bombastic. A bit naive. But perhaps necessary.

On Monday I was with a group of leadership developers who were convened around a similar purpose, and our convenor, John Varney, shared some words that I have drawn heavily upon to find my own…

Global issues and their local reflections

I think we can agree that the world could be a better place – it seems the human world, and large parts of the ecosystem we co-exist with, is under threat from our own excesses, from humanity, and is breaking down.

Global warming, climate collapse, gross inequalities in health and wealth and justice, depletion of resources, plastic in the oceans and our bodies – are surely indicators of a general dis-ease. The system seems to be falling apart.

But of course it is not.

There is only one system – and it doesn’t much care for humanity – whether it survives or thrives.

The way humanity organises, in the face of this beautiful, but uncaring field of space and time; mass and energy; love and hate is not sustainable. It is a historic pattern, a paradigm, that has reached the end of its utility.

This is a threat – and it is also a wonderful opportunity to bring about a more wholesome global society.

Current modern patterns are struggling to maintain their dominance but there is unlikely to be anything other than more dysfunction. Yesterday’s budget did more for landowners and civil engineers than it did for our children, our youth and our elderly.

Currently, there seems to be a swing towards right-wing autocratic action with a general weakness in left-wing cohesion.

Some of the actions around Corvid19 maybe clinically justified, but they also help to normalise some of the actions of autocrats. To break this dominant paradigm seems to require some as-yet-unknown, perhaps socially self-organising response which suggests a different kind of leadership from pre-existing models of either left or right.

We know from the work we do that people can be organised differently. Indeed, they can self-organise and co-create with a little help and encouragement. Might we be on the cusp of such enlightenment (and what would be the consequences if we are not?).Without change, the pattern will repeat.

Are we part of the solution – is the solution calling for us to step forward?

Of course, not just us. But surely we could have a role to play in establishing a new movement that would tap the creative potential of the many, rather than the hierarchical model that depends on the few.

This is political! But it is not about the politics of electoral democracy. It is perhaps a participative democracy routed in peoples’ choices about what they do. How they serve. What they serve.

How we serve. What we serve.

As one of Leeds great elders, the late Zygmunt Baumann said

A consumerist attitude may lubricate the wheels of the economy; it sprinkles sand into the bearings of morality.

This is about an alternative way of organising. A leadership contributed to by every human being, united in a flow sustaining the greater good. It seems to me that people who seek to understand this inclusive way are needed to show the way – and that means us and our allies.

Can you hear the call?

We are going to use some ideas to explore the nature of this dominant paradigm and of a very different paradigm that must some day surpass it.

We are going to look at the kind of work that we might be able to do, together and apart, to allow these new ways of being, of thriving together, to emerge.

We may explore what is required to, ethically and with love, dismantle the old paradigm, to help it die with dignity and we might explore how we can support each other, find new allies and stay safe, joyful and fulfilled in our work together.

Can YOU hear the call? Let us start…

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Mike Chitty

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