Giving up on making a big difference can generate the freedom we need to create change in complexity. Tony Nicholls blogs about this year’s Meaning Conference. I recently attended the annual Meaning conference in Brighton. People from all walks of life came together to listen to speakers and to meet like-minded people. They came hungry …

Mayvin Director Martin Saville responds to a Guardian article about the need for new approaches to leadership in the NHS I read a great article last Monday in The Guardian’s ‘Views from the NHS frontline’ series. The writer, an anonymous executive coach to senior NHS execs, was arguing that most senior leaders in the NHS …

It’s a daunting prospect chairing a meeting of the Mayvin Advisory Board. It’s not that I don’t know stuff, or even that I haven’t done OD for real and sometimes done some good work. Never mind that among the three Directors there are two Masters degrees and a doctorate – all in relevant subjects. Add …

Do Senior Leaders shy away from uncovering the truth about the breakdowns in their businesses? Is this why we sometimes experience organisations as incapable of integrating the learning we provoke? At Mayvin we often grapple with the challenge of making sure that the learning we facilitate in our clients’ businesses is fully integrated. We ourselves …

I committed to reflect on abundance as part of the mindset/skillset of C21L, and this has become a kind of log of it. I am choosing to offer some of it to you now, only partially edited, in the spirit of being bold and open. Hope it makes some sense. This isn’t the end of …

Complexity is hard to explain. Well it would be wouldn’t it? Making such a set of ideas applicable in a practical way to the everyday life of an organisation is a challenge. It isn’t that complexity is strange to us – after all it is something we are dealing with all the time. If you’ve …

I like travelling by train. I find it brilliant for writing, doing emails, reading, etc. However, for it to work for me, I have realised that I need to stick to one golden rule, which is not to count on being able to use the time productively. As soon as I count on using my …

How effective is leadership development? Some things to consider: Prior to the economic crash, many of the investment banks that indulged in dubious behaviours, were lauded for their leadership development programmes. Regularly we heard commentators in the media reference a lack of leadership, and with recent scandals in politics (such as the expenses scandal) or …

It seems we were on to something in our last posting. We read in the latest New Scientist that highly credible, peer-reviewed research backs our hunch that companies inadvertently undermine their talent. According to research findings, more stumbled upon than planned, by André Spicer, from Cass Business School, London, working with Mats Alvesson from Lund …

There is a scene from David Bowie’s iconic 1970s movie, the ‘Man Who Fell to Earth’. At the end of the story, the Martian (played by Bowie) is being interviewed on TV. We are shocked to see how dull this one-time supernatural being has become. He has been quite literally brought down to Earth. It …

Speculation abounds as to whether the remains found buried under a Leicester City Car Park are those of the supposedly notorious English King, Richard III. Richard’s death in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field broadly coincided with the end of the internecine War of the Roses and ushered in an era of relative stability …

The TJ Winter Conference – Using Social Media in Learning #TJ12 ran last month in London and for me it seemed the ideal place to introduce the idea of the Glass Wall to a larger audience. We kicked off the experiment in the afternoon, straight after lunch and had changed the room layout slightly to …

Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House.  The Ring is a series of four operas lasting in total around 16 hours, dealing with many of humanity’s universal themes; and at least for those of us who are opera-heads, it is one of the greatest pieces of art …

Honestly! Chelsea under Di Matteo win the FA cup and the Champions League and now he gets the sack, not half a year later! But WAIT! Don’t stop reading! This isn’t, despite what you may think, really about football. It is about my recurring theme here. How can we, in this crazy world, lead well …

What is leadership for? Most of the time, I suggest, it is about dealing with people’s anxiety. And because of the uncertainty, complexity and pace that the 21st Century brings us, it could be that in C21L terms, this anxiety is getting bigger. In 1933, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said ‘We have nothing to …

This is one of those posts that my PHD supervisor charmingly refers to as throat clearing – its the piece you have to write before you can write the piece you want to write. I have been doing a lot of internal mulling about the nature of collaboration and leadership in networked organisations. This is …

Social networking means that that our actions are going to more subject to scrutiny than ever before. Although we shouldn’t try to be a good person just because someone is watching, it makes the challenge and opportunity of goodness more acute and more present in the everyday moments of truth that we face. In the …

The Rabbi who gave the sermon was compelling. She was a bright, young woman  – an engaging speaker.There was a great balance of wisdom, self-deprecation, and charm in her talk. But then she started to use a word that landed with a kind of thud. Like a stone on the windscreen, it shattered my picture …

How do you train 21st Century (C21L) leaders to face the truth, or more poignantly the truths in their organisation, the un-sanitized, varied, complex perspectives that abound across the layers of authority? Those in power at senior levels tend to be insulated from what is going on at street level. Creating a kind of short-circuit, …

We have been reading, writing and talking for a little over a year now about different elements of 21st Century Leadership (C21L). Over the last few weeks, my experience has been of a number of elements suddenly dropping into place. It’s as if the story has suddenly become clear.  So here goes: 21st Century Leadership …

Over the last few years I have used my blog partly to hold myself to account.  In the same way as I might broadcast the fact that I am going for a run in the morning (I’m not by the way – just to be clear) I would use the blog to confirm and communicate …

What makes a person? Is a person a singular thing? Think of your day – the one you are having right now. What roles are you playing? What states have you been through? (For ‘states’, read: moods, feelings, ups and downs, responses, reactions etc.). On that basis, how much of ‘one thing’ are you? Or …

How much is leadership about facilitation? How far are the skills of the leader in an age of complexity (21st Century Leadership or C21L) equivalent to those of a facilitator? Isn’t ‘facilitation skills’ just ‘leadership skills’ in disguise? Recently I ran a Facilitation Masterclass for a client based in the Far East. This was a …

Change is a fact of life and if it happens too fast then its overwhelming.  The trick, perhaps, is to work out which changes you need to react to while you just absorb the others.  My research interest is around social change.  Specifically I am interested in social change with respect to new technologies and …

Abundance: It still seems to be working. And the opposite too. Last week I was at an educational conference, in my role as a school governor. It was all Heads and Chairs of Governing Bodies.  more One of the main topics of conversation was the new OFSTED inspection framework – what the government agency that …

Recently I dreamed I was possessed by some kind of ‘devil’ that lived in my throat. Very Arthur C Clark. This devil wasn’t thoroughly evil, and it certainly wasn’t that frightening, but I wanted it out. Within the dream-logic, the way to achieve this was simply to make the declaration, ‘I want you out.’ The …

When it comes to 21st Century Leadership (#C21L), it seems there are some convergent views about the challenge we face.  A glance across the blogosphere suggests a number of axioms: Leaders can emerge from anywhere in the business – leadership happens when people take responsibility for the wider purpose and meaning of what they and …

What does it take to be a leader in these times; one who is managing to get some kind of purchase on the opportunities and complexities of the web, and the wider challenges of the 21st Century context? In Spring 2012, Mayvin, in association with Training Journal, is launching an Action Research-based Leadership Programme that …