New year reflections from (some) of the Point People

Dec 31, 2018

There is a mini update about what we’ve been doing this year as an organisation at the end of the post, but first, some end of year reflections from different Point People.

Hannah Smith

What’s been significant?

Continuing to deepen my connection to Aotearoa New Zealand — beginning my te reo journey with a Beginners’ Māori language course and spending time on a rural marae in Te Urewera with the Tūhoe, the ‘Children of the Mist’.

What I’ve learned?

The idea of a pathway — from disconnection, to connection, to acquaintance, to deeper acquaintance and finally to intimacy. We are familiar with treading this path in our human-to-human relationships, but what if we were to tread it to in our relationships with the rest of the natural world? I’ve written a longer blog post here about these questions.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

A friend of mine — Rebecca Loncraine — was writing a book about learning to fly — but she died before it was finished. This year it was published. In the book she talks about ‘soaring with birds, the hope with feathers’, a line inspired by a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson. It has buoyed me up in some the darker times this year. However dark things get, I love the idea that hope will always be perching, singing and keeping us warm.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers — Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops — at all -

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet — never — in Extremity,

It asked a crumb — of me.

Cat Drew

What’s been significant?

This year I’ve spent more time reflecting on personal mission and purpose and a sense of who I am personally in the world. This is a very different type of ‘leadership’ (if you can call it that) from the courses I went on in the civil service. And I’ve experienced the power of doing that with a community who are also kindly interrogating themselves.

I also feel incredibly lucky with the networks and chances that I’ve had, professionally. And so this year I’ve more deliberately supported others to have access to those and grow.

What I’ve learned?

Showing patterns in intuition! Whether it is frontline staff knowing the best course of action, or personal decisions, I think more space is being called for trusting intuition rather than process. However, sometimes to make that case I’ve found it useful to go back through, lay out and question those decisions — as they reveal patterns. Intuition is based on a wealth of experience after all.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

This is the image on my iphone that I took from a collection at the 21st century competencies course, run by the International Futures Forum. I originally picked it to represent how I was trying to prioritise and focus at work, but it’s taken on a bigger meaning about maintaining a life purpose wherever role you find yourself in.

Sarah Douglas

What’s been significant?

Most significant for me workwise has been developing, delivering and now looking to scale-up a project called Night Club through The Liminal Space and with Wellcome Trust. The project seeks to tackle the adverse effects of long-term night work on the often invisible workforce that keep our 24 hr society running by bringing frontline workers from Co-op together with leading sleep researchers. I’ve learnt so much about the challenges (and benefits) of creating long-term change with multiple stakeholders with very different perspectives and experiences. And am continuously learning about the skills, approaches and mindsets that are required to hold these partnerships and enable them to flourish.

What I’ve learned?

I’ve learnt about and need to learn more about collaborations and partnerships…

I believe it’s only through truly interdisciplinary exchange and bringing many different voices to a challenge that we can start to address major social issues. And so linked to the above, I’m interested in examining what conditions, practices, structures and attitudes are needed to create ongoing working partnerships with multiple stakeholders that can really deliver longterm change.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

I’ve been reading in lots of different domains for my research on an upcoming project with the Barbican that aims to bring about a more nuanced public discussion on the challenges of an ageing society. And came across this lovely quote by Virginia Woolf:

“I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.”

It resonated with me well beyond the topic of ageing, in terms of cultivating one’s ability to turn one’s aspect to whatever is ‘our sun’ — essentially an inspiring, nurturing and motivating idea, person or force.

Sophia Parker

What’s been significant?

It’s very hard to write about this without sounding schmalzy, but the power of love continues to blow me away. I see this in my personal life raising three small kids, and also in my professional life, running a charity where love is one of our core values. The process of offering love, and of experiencing love that is offered unconditionally and respectfully, grounds us. It makes us feel whole and seen. And it gives us agency. From that place, anything is possible.

When I was training as a coach in 2017 I did a lot of work on my own life purpose. At the time I confess I was a little mystified at what came up for me: to ‘transform through love’ but I feel like 2018 has really helped me to begin to see what that means and why it’s significant. We need to talk more about love!

What I’ve learned?

2018 was a year of poor mental health for me. Not pleasant in many ways, but it’s highlighted the degree to which our leadership models are dominated by a very warped ‘hero’ narrative. In these stories, we over-attribute change and impact to single individuals. We don’t allow leaders to admit vulnerabilities, and self-care is seen as a sign of weakness.

I’ve battled with this myself, and hope that 2019 is the year that I put self-care up there with all the other things I’m working on. But I don’t think this is something unique to me: I see it everywhere. In particular I have been shocked at how little self-care we expect from our frontline staff who are dealing with trauma and distress on a daily basis. Institutionally we fail these staff and collectively we are poorly equipped to support them to process the difficult issues and upsetting situations they are dealing with on a daily basis.

It’s refreshing to see a growing number of voices challenging these conventions around being a hero, but I feel we still have a way to go before it’s ok to put your own mental and physical needs before whatever else is on the to-do list. One of my mantras for my team in 2019 will be “Don’t be a hero” — by which I mean — do the best you can with what you’ve got, and look after yourself.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

People’s agency and sense of efficacy is an abiding theme of my career and so it’s perhaps not surprising that my hopes for 2019 continue to focus on it. I think we are beginning to realise that power is in the eye of the beholder, and that where there is power there can also be resistance. Two quotes in particular that I love on this:

Michel Foucault: “Power is exercised rather than possessed”

Margaret Atwood: “This above all: to refuse to be a victim”

For me these translate into a series of questions like: what power do you have and how are you exercising it? What action can you take, right now, on an issue you care about? Who else do you see who can help you achieve the change you want to see? What can you do to ensure you aren’t making others victims? Where are you behaving as a victim and how can you change this?

Abby Rose

What’s been significant?

I have practised not always trying to please people. Since I was at school I have been trying to make sure people like me and that I’m nice. Through coaching last year I started to recognise that I didn’t have to be like this anymore, sometimes it’s helpful to be very straight with people and potentially upset them in the short-term to engender respect and a better relationship in the longer term, this enables supported growth. I realised that this is true integrity.

What I’ve learned?

Feel like I have to learn this again and again in many different contexts but this year I learnt once again the power of finding and staying true to my voice. When going out and sharing about our product with customers I got all worried about not knowing ‘how to sell’ etc. but what I learnt was that actually I needed to reconnect with my voice, speak my truth. People really appreciate when you speak your truth. Of course sharing your true voice isn’t always that simple. In this case I had to be very honest with myself about insecurities that were affecting my true voice. I had some hang ups about money particularly about having money, asking people for money and what my offering was worth. It is in facing these insecurities that I am finding my true voice in sharing how our software builds ecology, profitability and beauty on farms around the world.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

Huge international multi-racial, multi-cultural people powered movements that unite millions committed to food sovereignty, from every corner of the planet. In particular, going to the Slow Food Terra Madre gathering in September and being with people of all colours and cultures, including many indigenous peoples, gives me hope that we the people will come together and nurture ourselves and the planet — and that food and farming is at the core of that. Another great examples of this is La Via Campesina!

The power of collective sisterhood and tuning into the moons cycles also gives me hope for 2019.

Jennie Winhall

What’s been significant?

This year I both set up a new company to host ALT/Now work and took on a permanent part time role at the Rockwool Foundation. I really appreciate the different and complementary opportunities these two roles give me to invest in a mission, an interdisciplinary team and collaborations with a broad range of people I believe in. I am more convinced than ever that the social challenges we face now require creative responses, not technical solutions.

What I’ve learned?

Invention, not compromise. Jerry McGrath introduced me to the work of Mary Parker Follet, who said that the true resolution of conflict is not compromise but inventionThis is important for anyone doing the hard work of sytems innovation — when it comes to making the transition between current and new system approaches it’s easy to fall into compromise.. Anna Fjelsted and I are exploring how to train teams who are implementing new approaches to uphold radical principles when they meet ‘reality’ and find a third way through.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

Radical Help went into a 3rd edition just before December. This is Hilary’s book about our experiments at Participle over the last ten years — and it’s a pattern book for a different model of public services, based on relational welfare. It gives me hope personally that so many people are picking up these ideas now — because I deeply believe that services based on these patterns make a significant difference to people’s ability to flourish.

Two groups of people give me hope. The Indigenous leaders I have met forging reconciliation in Canada — Karen Joseph, Marilyn Poitras, Dianne Roussin, Denise Williams. Here’s artist Michelle Nahanee’s decolonizing board game. And the original ALT/Now cohort who all remain committed to closing the gap between rich and poor in their various endeavours — such as Denise Hearn’s new book on the concentration of corporate wealth which I look forward to reading in the new year.

Anna Mouser

What’s been significant?

For the first time in my life I turned down a job, one that I actively applied for. It feels like an important watershed moment for me, I’ve tended to seize every opportunity that came my way in my career. But after a period of real reflection on not just the jobs I’ve done, but all the learning experiences I’ve had as an individual I could see that I had often done things because I felt I ought to, because I could do a good job or in some cases out of a fear that nothing else might come up and I’d miss the rent payment. Don’t get me wrong, pretty much everything I’ve done I’ve been all in with heart and hard work. But going forward I’m making a commitment to try and invest my time where I really want to be and where I really want to make impact.

Another part of next steps for me is having the right balance so that I can continue to invest a good chunk of my time in the other significant thing I’ve spent my year on, raising my small folk. As individuals in society we are involved in caring in a myriad ways, there are many different approaches and philosophies and these can be as difficult to talk about as Brexit as we all fear judgement for our choices. But I do want to reflect that when I’m asked about significance and meaning in the world this still feels like this area one shouldn’t talk about. I think this feeling is deeply rooted in our system and culture, it’s about where we place value and status. I remain interested in how we achieve a long term shift on how we think, feel and act when it comes to this side of life.

What I’ve learned?

I’m a political geek at the best of times but this year has been one of those where you can’t quite tear yourself away from reading about it even though it is like watching some horrible event unfold. I see a couple of patterns: first that people will vote for what appears to be an alternative with a good emotive story to tell, second that we are coming to the point where many of us are only looking for emotive story and no longer want to see the detail or nuance, even in each other. This is perhaps not a new commentary to read but within it lies the way out, if we are to stop the dangerous alternatives from rising up, we need to give space to true alternative thinking to emerge, not go into system lockdown. The more difficult thing is how to pull the debate back into balance where there is room for myth and story, but as a servant of facts and evidence, not the other way round. For positive change to occur in politics we somehow need to lose the tight grip on things as they are, a return to the status quo.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

Its funny that in looking for hope for 2019 I feel I need to look back at 2018. So actually I’m going to opt for something that feels timeless to me. The concept of impermanence, that everything shifts, moves, changes, however you like to put it. Whether you feel this intuitively, rationally or practically it holds the same truth. And as everything changes there is always cause for hope and potential for change, always. Maybe I might also mention reading ‘Why the Caged Bird Sings’ by Maya Angelou. I have put off reading this for years as somehow I worried I’d find it too bleak knowing a little of what Angelou had lived through. But I was overwhelmed by the beauty and resilience with which Angelou conjures up her world even at its most challenging. It was in fact hugely heartening.

Cathy Runciman

What’s been significant?

Significant for me this year was that — with my partner in all things Atlas, Lisa Goldapple — we met our goals for our ‘still-very-much-a-start-up’ Atlas of the Future. The first was: to survive! (We live to fight another year, so bring on 2019!) The second was to develop new partnerships: and we were lucky to work with fantastic partners (thank you Goldsmiths, British Council, Divest Invest, Textiles Exchange, Comic Relief, City of Barcelona) to explore some questions that matter (Will creativity save us? How can textiles producers be better stewards of the earth’s resources? Why is divesting from fossil fuels is a moral and financial imperative? What can digital social innovation in a city achieve? What is ‘new power’ and where is the shift happening?). We also tested ourselves ‘in real life’ at our first major event — Fixing the Future — and heard a lot about the inspiration and ideas people are looking for to be part of shaping more diverse and equitable futures.

What I’ve learned?

This year has taught me how urgently we need to (re)learn how to listen: I’ve been challenged about the difference between listening in order to answer and truly listening. Hearing without listening seems to have got us into many fine messes but maybe we are ready to slow down, listen better, and ask more questions. I feel like I am, and I hope others will help by holding me to that.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

I sense that 2019 will be a year of collective action and, taking inspiration from Lynne Segal at our recent Point People/Atlas of the Future Collective City event, that gives me joy.

Ella Saltmarshe

What’s been significant?

Developing the Long Time project has been significant for me on many levels. The project focuses on fostering our capacity to care about the long-term future of our planet/ species. It is the culmination of years of thinking and working on climate change communications. As part of my work on story, I’ve become interested in how to shift foundational narratives that could raise the tide for all environmental organisations. The Long Time project is based on a question about whether stretching people’s sense of time and their emotional relationship to the future, can get them to take more responsibility for it. It has been incredible to develop this work in an emergent way with fellow point person Beatrice Pembroke, and to see the real enthusiasm with which it’s being taken up all over the place by broadcasters, cultural organisations, funders & financial institutions. We’re cooking up lots on this in 2019. The work is incredibly personally meaningful for me- it’s changed how I view my place in the epic, unfolding history of this planet and it’s got me to me to ask myself, what does it mean to be a good ancestor?

What I’ve learned?

To focus on sharing questions rather than imposing answers. Build community around your questions instead of thinking you have to wait until you have all the answers to act.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

To be honest at the end of the complexity and craziness of 2018, I have no idea how hopeful I feel, but luckily over the years I’ve realised that I don’t have to feel hopeful to act. The idea about hope that I always come back to belongs to Gramsci. He wrote of the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. This resonates, as regardless of how hopeful I feel, I find myself repeatedly doing hopeful things. As Vaclav Havel said:

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Eleanor Ford

What’s been significant?

Perspective in hindsight. This year I have taken a three year programme (The Good Lab) through to the final part of its lifecycle. We have launched new businesses out of the programme, but, perhaps more importantly, we have set out to capture and share the learnings of the practical journey of ‘transformation’ with those that have taken part. It’s been a complicated, messy, prescient, purposeful path and I have begun the sense-making process of assessing the impact and value, and reflecting on the course that we decided to charter. It’s reminding me that any initiative of change is difficult, and about more that just what is materially evidenced — and certainly takes time and distance to understand. Both the activity and the reflections on the ‘how’ feel significant.

Also a massive personally significant year in caring for one of my dearest friends as she battled a rare aggressive cancer, with tiny babies, and seems to have made it out of the woods. Again makes me reflect on time and its preciousness.

What I’ve learned?

Recently we came across the concept of “Eco leadership” at Simon Western’s course. It is a bit of a clumsy term but one that really resonates with me and allowed me to articulate better the way I have always chosen to lead. I have always seen my ‘style’ in relief to ‘command and control’ leadership that I felt I ‘should’ demonstrate — it felt male, authoritative and hard to reach. Instead having a way to point to distributed, instinctive, collaborative, hopefully generous, and open ways to operate as leaders has been important to me. It’s been said before but suddenly felt robust.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

Ella mentioned the Gramsci quote I live by! Love it. But despite everything going on at the crazy time, lots of things give me hope — there are certainly books, there are definitely people (many pointy ones), and many new initiatives and projects. But as I am writing this I am listening to Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ on spotify, and it’s reminding me that it is all about the long game..

“If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same;”

It’s reminding me to not give too much importance to the now.

Cassie Robinson

What’s been significant?

I’ve made significant changes in my life. I find it really hard to let go but I have let go of a lot this year — of people and places that didn’t value me and who needed me to make myself smaller. I’ve ended relationships, jobs and friendships. Endings are hard and relationships that feel difficult are often a mirror to something in yourself that you aren’t being honest about.

What I’ve learned?

I love this from @wildfemine on Instagram.

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Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

The people behind organisations like KinGirl DreamerFearless Futures and Cradle Community, and the networks, community groups and voices that organisations like NEON are supporting. Alongside this, people like Sascha Romanovitch, departing CEO of Grant Thornton, who represented something far too rare in the corporate world — someone who cared about social and public values and recognised the need for bold change — yet the shareholders couldn’t face the truth. The Financial Times described her leaving as “a challenger of the old guard cuts loose”. And let’s face it, we need many more people to take that kind of stand.

Kelsey is the Founder of Cradle Community — I met her on NEON’s movement building course and she’s so inspiring in her ongoing activism.

Charly Cox

What’s been significant?

Finding a tribe to keep me honest in my ambitions around climate change… I’ve spent nearly three years journeying into environmentalism, mostly alone, while watching my old tribe recede from view. At times it felt like thrashing through brambles in a bikini: it was damned hard and I was ill equipped to do it. Along the road, I had so many conversations with helpful sages, but this year the turning point came in meeting and then building powerful friendships with other travellers, who are joyously at a similar stage to me. I knew that I needed them, but I hadn’t realised how hard it would be to find these people until I started. Looking back I can see why it is hard to find a tribe, and why we need to prioritise this when we start to make change. It was hard because I needed to find people who were a) at the same stage in thinking and readiness (and the vulnerability of reticence) to act as me, b) who didn’t have all the answers either, and c) who did have a deep conviction. I met many people for whom some of those things were true, but they were either just arriving on the path and looking to me for guidance, or already a long way down the road, giving me assistance. The solidarity of fellow travellers was like a tonic when it arrived, and created it’s own vulnerability — I had to resist the urge to cling to them once I’d found them.

The three people that have formed my core tribe this year have more than anything kept me honest when my fear told me to go back to business as usual. They helped me push my new website over the line and say ‘I’m a Climate Change Coach’ out loud until it stopped feeling alien. They have given me a feeling of a normal, when the old world that I was leaving made me feel anything but.

I’ve put the tribe as the most significant thing of 2018 because of what it in turn unlocked. By meeting fellow travellers, I have also come to realise that I like being a bridge between the old and the new world, and that I don’t want to become one of the sages on the roadside, at least not about environmentalism itself. Instead I’ve learned that I want to know everything there is to know about behaviour change, because that feels like the heart of the problem, to me at least. That realisation about behaviour change was possibly the biggest, and was the eureka moment I’ve been hacking through those brambles to find. As a coach, realising that we can solve climate change by getting better at human change and resilience, was as much a lightbulb as a relief that I did have a role to play after all. Again, it was through conversations with these comrades in arms that the light was switched on. Without them, I’d still be in the dark. And as a result I then launched The Climate Change Coaches at the very tail end of 2018, proving the concept that you can coach everyday people about climate change just as you can about anything else that concerns them. I was overwhelmed by the positive response from colleagues who gave their time for free on a weekend right before Christmas on an untested idea. In a lot of ways, it proved a bigger point: people want to help when you give them a way to do so. I was going to make the Climate Change Coaches my big significant act of 2018, but to do so would be to miss the foundation stone on which this and so many other things are becoming possible. Relationships are at the heart of everything, and it’s from relationships that we create possibility and action. I’m immensely grateful to have stumbled onto such a can-do, crazy smart and fired up group of fellow travellers this year, and for the first time in a long time I’m excited again. It feels as always like there’s work to be done, but unusually like that work will give us energy, not sap it.

What I’ve learned?

Focus is hard! I thought for a long time that my poor ability to focus must be a result of spending the last two years multi-tasking around a toddler, but single friends tell me they have no such excuse! I’ve had to learn the hard way this year that juggling less makes you better at the few things that you are juggling. I know, I’m a genius. Too often I find myself saying “I’ll save that article for later/when I have time/another day”, because it will involve more than 10 minutes of my time. Nevermind that I can easily spend thirty minutes on a single email… emails are categorised in my head as ‘a quick job’ and reading quietly (something I surely must have done during my degree and my masters) required ‘a whole clear day’ in my diary. Reader: those long clear days never come. Instead we need to cultivate the inner calm that slows us down enough to run at a gear low enough for reading that report or watching that lecture. My engine feels like it is constantly running a little bit too fast, so that whenever I sit down, I can feel a revving inside my chest. My body is out of sync. If I were a car, I’d be sent for a retune. I guess the equivalent for a person is a meditation retreat, but who has time for that ;)

It can seem very chicken and egg to try to work out why you struggle to focus. Is it that you’re trying to do too much, or that you’ve worked yourself into a frenzy and couldn’t even do one thing well, if that was the only thing there was to do? This year someone introduced a new to-do list idea to me, which is new to me but old to the world, and involved splitting your to-dos between rocks (important, big work) and sand (the small stuff that can easily fill a day on its own but means you never get any rocks done). I had a lot of sand that was taking up a lot more time that it should have done. But I also had a LOT of rocks. At the same time I didn’t have a lot of clear diary. Each week there was a morning teaching at a university and two whole days coaching. I worked out I could comfortably manage 6 hours of ‘rocks’ in two-hour chunks. That felt like 3 rocks. I had 6 each week at least. I tried to defy my own system, determined to prove that I could do it all. That was exhausting. But I also learnt that when I know what I’ve got to do, I can be uber-focussed. I could walk out of my seminar room, sit down with a sandwich and ninja that two hours of work. It began to feel like focus wasn’t my problem, lack of time in which to focus was. I have had to make some tough choices, as a result of all of this. I have quit undergraduate teaching in favour of the much more flexible and occasional MBA. That hurt because I love teaching students, but looking ahead into 2019, I already see more space and more concentration ahead. I’m longing for days in the library working quietly. As an extrovert, I know I’m overdoing it when I long for silence! I still feel like my motor is running on too fast, but I trust a little that if I make (and hold) space in my diary and concentrate on a small handful of things well, I can retune the engine. Watch this space… slowly.

Something that gives me hope for 2019 and going forward

Watching Greta Thunberg tear the COP 24 audience a new one was a moment of real ‘pull your finger out Charly’ hope for me. I found her so deeply inspiring, as much for what she said as for the ‘I don’t care if you like me’ attitude with which she said it. I feel like a generation and more of women has been socialised, myself included, to rock the boat as little as possible, and ‘make nice’ for everyone around them. Overcoming that is a real struggle when you want to do something incendiary or even just plain different. Greta is the latest in a long way of people who have started to make significant noise about climate change and this gives me real hope that we can put and keep this on the political and corporate agenda in 2019. I was just sent the below quote, which seems to sum up the realisation that we’re starting to come to now as a civilisation. My big hope for 2019 is that we can start to move people from “I want to do something but I don’t know how” to the here’s how.

‘You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that’

Samuel Beckett

Sadly, Sneh JaniJen LexmondNish DewanVictoria Stoyanova and Beatrice Pembroke weren’t able to contribute to this, but you can catch up with what their doing via the links on their names.

Last year’s review pretty much sums up the work we have continued doing this year — Systems Changers with Lankelly Chase, supporting their place-based Associates (and now the Children’s Society too), navigating complexity with the International Futures Forum, and we finished the work with Agenda, on place-based systems change through a gendered lens (what a mouthful!).

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