Our Journey
Reflections, ideas, and thoughts
How has ‘learning about learning’ changed me?
I am still trying to make sense of what I've been part of for the last two days. It feels profound in ways I don't yet understand...
The Facilitating Bravery Initiative (FBI): seeking disrupter partners
Do you think that ‘the way we’ve always done it’ is good enough? Do you, your colleagues and applicants love your...
Leadership, inclusion, and consent - or why we need leadership to change radically
For genuine transformation to happen, someone has to be the first to take that precarious and vulnerable leap into the unknown.
Unlearning hierarchy
At CIA, we are asking the question, ‘what happens when you remove organisational hierarchy?’ How do things work and how does it look?
The Case for Anti-Leadership
When I became a charity CEO back in January 2010 there was no training manual. I had picked up some of the technical stuff over the...
Healthy Systems: Strong Relationships, Strong Foundations
When I look at the world, I generally see it in two ways (usually at the same time). On the one hand, whilst I don't like to admit my...
Deprogramming Dexter
Or 'from weirdo to professional and back again' In school I was seen as ‘Stu the weirdo’. Long hair, earrings, flamboyant clothes...
Why I'm excited to join the CIA
I’m coming to work with the Collective Impact Agency (CIA) next month, and I can’t wait, but it’s an unusual excitement. Usually, when...
The Trouble With Having Values
Hands up, who works for, or has worked for, an organisation that has organisational values? Like mission statements and vision...
Sanctuary for the Troublemakers
I joined the Collective Impact Agency (CIA) back in April of this year. As I look back over my first quarter here I’d love to share some...
How Organisations Can Learn To Learn
Recently, I delivered a talk called ‘The roles of learning and emotions in systems change’...
How "Lived Experience" fails lived experience
I find myself feeling quite uncomfortable about the way many of the discussions about ‘lived experience’ are playing out these days…
People @ The Heart
You can either structure support systems around people or around professional concerns. Any system not structured around the people it is intended to serve is inevitably going to clash with and exacerbate people’s needs. Our current system is structured around professional concerns…
What Connects Us Makes Us Stronger
Last year, like many people, when lockdown hit I found myself switching from an office of 60-ish people to an office of one.
The thing that anchored me in my working hours was my manager. Every Monday we would use our catch-up time to just be human beings, she gave me space to just be…
Why SMART is actually stupid
I once worked for an organization that had a pretty stringent objective setting process. It was understood that objectives may change as the year progressed. allowed, your manager could recommend you for a bonus. Sounds sensible, right?
The trouble I always found was that life simply didn’t work that way…
We’re all getting recruitment wrong, but what can we do about it?
We all know what it feels like to be applying for jobs. Writing a job application can take hours, a 3 or 4 stage application process can take up a full day’s worth of hours and can last for weeks. Applying for work is exhausting - it’s demotivating, relentless and thankless right up until the point at which you eventually (hopefully) succeed…
Is it a flaw to feel?
Are some personalities better than others? Two summers ago, my colleagues and I were comparing the results and implications of our Lumina Spark personality tests. We were trying to understand how we could work more productively as a team in light of our differences….
Do we need to think differently about leadership?
85% of employees worldwide are either watching the clock, sleepwalking through their day or they are actively spreading negativity to others. I believe commonplace leadership practices are partly at fault. I believe we need a new and fundamentally different approach to leadership.
Reject the professional, embrace the human
We need to be human beings first and professionals second, and avoid the accusation that we are involved in ‘disabling professions.’
Do we need to stop talking about leadership?
Why are there so many bad leaders? Why are so many of the people who lead organisations neglectful, distracted, disorganised, unfocused, distant, negligent, uncaring, incompetent, or even just plain mean? I’ve worked for a number of different organisations and I’ve been interested in leadership for a long time. With so much known about what makes a good leader, it can be baffling to witness how few examples of good leadership there actually are.