Moments of lightness on the Future Leaders Scheme

Emerging at last, blinking in the light

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I haven’t known what to write about. There is a lengthy list of notes from my time here. But instead I’ve been caught up in endings. The tipping point between the closing of one chapter and the start of another. It is uncomfortable and unsettling, healthy and necessary.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of my concluding thoughts on a scheme that is shaping my life — for better or worse — in public service.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

I have been writing for the last two years about who I am in this strange world on the Future Leaders Scheme. I started writing with no idea of where it would go, or even whether anyone would want to read what I had to say. I just needed to unburden myself of the swirling thoughts in my head. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

For a long time, it has felt like staring into the abyss. My world was clouded with sadness, anger, and fear, and I needed somewhere to put myself. There are things in this place that I needed to find and face. I have not touched this degree of inner darkness in a long, long time. It is impossible for me now to see the world any other way, and I don’t want to.

I write to remember that I am not alone. Something scarily resonant and uncomfortably honest. I wish I could tell you I had some sort of revelation from my time here. But I have learned from wandering. I feel less afraid and more human by having done so. It is a reminder of versions of myself that I don’t want future versions to forget.

Doubting things and doing them anyway

I’m an intense person, a worrier and anticipator. Without being cognisant of this, I would spend all my time worrying about each thing, drifting entirely from the present. Now in decoupling myself from the scheme, I am unsteady in moving toward the next chapter.

Embarking on the scheme has meant swimming in a sea of self-doubt. I was encouraged to falsely equate confidence with competence. To be clever and likeable, and to cover up the cracks in myself. Inside, however, I have often felt confused, terrified, and despondent. In a place that made it hard, often terrifying to be my truest self…it’s no wonder I felt unsure of who I am. I was stuck in an echo chamber, seen by very few.

I experienced a lot of anguish over something that wasn’t right. No matter how I moulded myself into something, I felt off, misaligned. I contorted myself into a version of myself I didn’t love, that felt untrue. I acted out the decisions of the person I thought I should be, forcefully slotting myself into an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle because I thought the end picture might necessitate it. These deep-seated feelings made any rational solutions to my ‘irrational’ problem feel like trying to negotiate with a grizzly bear.

So I had to keep going and going. I told myself that I never quit anything, and I shouldn’t start now. I simply had to carry on through the two years. So I summoned my capacity for endurance. It propels me to keep trying, to keep making dents in situations that are beyond my control. But I now understand this journey in a way I didn’t previously: that walking away is its own form of strength. It taught me that not all discomfort must simply be endured, and not all struggles are things that can simply be fixed.

What we give up to “be good”

“Be careful who you pretend to be, because we become who we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut

There has been a story swirling within me about the scheme that I told myself I couldn’t spend the time or energy writing about because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Much of it went unexpressed because I was not ready. I did not have the language to recognise what it was.

The pressure to be a “good civil servant” has stuck with me. Words often spoken, ill defined. Here a person’s influence is based on both their likability and ability to remain acceptable to the system. It is about trying to control the way others perceive you, to seek their approval. Individual entitlement over public good. Which is a bad barometer of the kind of civil servants we need. But life is full of trade-offs. And I’ve come to understand that it means avoiding being all parts of who I am to progress.

I’ve gotten more comfortable with having the ability to think critically and independently. With being seen as a flawed and complicated human. I’m differently free in ways others are not. But I feel like the collective sum of this indicates to people that I’m not a “good civil servant.” Because I don’t fill in the details the way people expect. I’m being harsh with this interpretation, but I’m at a crossroads. Being made to choose. Between the kind of civil servant that we need, and the one we say we want.

I’m damned if I fall in line; I’m damned if I don’t.

The scheme teaches how to fit through complex mental acrobatic hoops such that you get lost yourself. It’s hard to understand this choice when wearing a mask is required here. You forget what it is like to exist without one. I got so used to performing that I hardly noticed I was doing it anymore. This undercurrent sweeps people away on the scheme, driving you away from yourself. Away from groundedness. It seems like a hostile environment to me, and that lack of ease has hung inside me…for years.

And here I am, in the undercurrent, lonely and lost. It feels to me that I was never not coming to this place. I am exhausted all the time here because being a somehow insufficient person is par for the course. I was designing myself in the image of what the scheme wanted: a “good civil servant.” It is painful to not like the version of myself I was meticulously shaping to try to be accepted. Perhaps noticing these patterns and shining a light where it’s needed…helps? What I do know is to keep practising being seen is the most intentional act I can do. Because it matters.

Every ending is a new beginning

To speak is still a bold act.

My feelings and opinions about the scheme are not fixed. But after years of being on it, one thing has not dissipated: I’ve lost my taste for Civil Service leadership development schemes. I’m less inclined to opportunities that require me to mute qualities I value within myself. And this was not a place where I was encouraged to become more aware of my lens on the world and shift my ways of working to be more responsive and relational.

I’m still figuring out what I want to do next — the scheme seeped into all areas of my life. The things I’ve learned over the past few years feel the most potent because they are relational in nature. I’m curious about what knowledge I’ve acquired here will lie dormant until I am able to meaningfully understand it, when enough time and experience has passed.

Until then, I’ll keep plotting and scheming and making change in government. I’m discovering that the path is remembering and returning to myself, over and over again, amidst everything. Sometimes, it’s as simple and complex as that.

The art of endings on the Future Leaders Scheme

When the thing that was meant to change your life doesn’t change your life

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I’ve also been thinking about this piece for a few weeks, wondering what to write. I’ve got all kinds of thoughts swirling around. I wanted to get them down here to you before I leave the scheme, before the lens of looking back sets in. I had a plan to write you something important about leadership and its tensions. But instead, I am penning this.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of errant thoughts that don’t neatly fit into the boxes of each module.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

“To public servants everywhere: Don’t give up.” — Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age

I think about my story often. These last few years on the scheme, I’ve been in a kind of fog. Sometimes I struggle with what to say about it. My energy has been directed towards survival such that there isn’t really bandwidth for anything else. The need for me to protect my inner world grew the longer I stayed. But as my time here ends, I’m getting to a point where I have some clarity. I am finally figuring out what stays constant.

You see, I’ve discovered I have a sense of self separate to my environment here, perhaps even the Civil Service. I haven’t always. But I’ve become more concrete over the years. I’m still fresh and dewy as the day I joined the Civil Service a decade ago. I still have an intense drive to serve. And I’m still dreaming and scheming, even after all this time.

I’m connecting and listening, despite all the chaos I’m submerged in. I’m loyal to a fault. I find it really hard to respond to my own needs. I am deeply interested in human motivation. I like the glimmer of poetry within other people. The beauty, burden, bliss of being in service. Importantly, I trust the in between space. After all, it’s where everything actually lives.

This story is my story. But if you see your story here, too, then my wish is it gives yours voice, nourishes your soul, makes you feel more connected, and above all, offers you hope.

Still the same me, again

I don’t know what, exactly, I thought the scheme would be like. I do know that I didn’t expect it to feel like this. I was set to believe the scheme would in some way positively change my life. I am working on letting go of what was supposed to be my identity. In untangling myself from that future, it is the last piece that I’m holding onto. I’ve realised that slowness is conflated with stuckness here. Because who am I without my ambition?

I have been ruminating on how this journey has changed me. And has it? Decisively, yes. It made my life much slower and smaller. When this place and all it entails becomes your identity, all sense of self comes crashing down at the slightest wobble. And now I’ve done this supposedly life-changing thing, it has had me reflecting about the choices I’ve made. Could I have learned about the scheme another way? I don’t think so. I also had to know that I actually could do it, that the goal was not out of reach forever.

I’ve found fatigue of the scheme has settled deep in my soul. Because this place has me running up against the edges of myself. I tried to fill the shape of the container I was given here. I edited and moulded the way I showed up. Because remaining invisible felt safer sometimes. Maybe everyone feels that way here. But I’m still the same old me. Wherever I went, there I was. Perhaps I’m learning to accept who I’ve always been, you know?

Making the unknown, known

I’m oscillating between a never-ending duality of wanting to be done with the scheme and just wanting to write some more about what happens here. To indulge in the desire to grasp those confounding moments. I guess this is my way of saying that it’s hard to move on with the memories.

When I’m writing, I develop the sense of clarity I need to navigate this world. It means I’m able to show up again and again. Though I’ve found the dance of knowing when to share and when to take a break, when to rest and when to push, not easy. And I’m constantly in the grip of my own internal narratives: internal judgement, fear, and self-criticism.

I found myself in the place of daring to make the unknown, known. I need to be able to tell a story of where I have come from and to where I will lead. So, I’m writing this to remind you that when you are in environments that start to shape you, be cognisant of how easy it is to loosen your grip on protecting your inner world.

As I persevered through the scheme, everything became more seductive. The exclusivity, the personal branding, the identity. It’s what set me apart from others. But there were constant, subtle reminders: whatever you do in being authentic, don’t you dare fail to conform to the norms.

No experience, no matter how enticing, should replace your sense of self. Because there is no supplement for looking inwards, for knowing who you are. No one can do this for you. It is an act of service, to yourself and those around you. After all, we’re better people when we are living intentionally.

Going boldly

"The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” — David Graeber

To speak is still a bold act.

I have no idea what I’m doing here, or for what purpose. Perhaps it will be my life’s work to help people feel brave enough to take action, to realise their agency. Because what we need, more than anything, in public service is to make plausible our boldest ideas.

The troubles of today in the Civil Service have been coming for a long time. There are areas where the incentives are failing, and certain behaviours are perpetuated. Amongst them are recruitment, promotion, and leadership development schemes. But finding these areas is easy. Changing them is hard. But I think we must try.

Chasing the light on the Future Leaders Scheme

Writing about what needs to be written most

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

Most of you know me as the person that writes these blog posts. But before I was the person that wrote these blog posts, I was many things. Maybe I’ll be those things again.

Writing helps me survive my time here. It allows me to cut through the noise, to sit with my fears and anxieties that show up all over the place. When I think about writing all I know is that it feels so real to me. Because I’ve been absorbing a lot of stuff on the Future Leaders Scheme. And that has really taken it out of me. The moments of spontaneous warmth were short-lived here. As my time here draws to a close, I’m learning how to find the light again.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of:

• module 3 on DELTA (Disability Empowers Leadership Talent) — a series of tailored workshops which aim to address individual development needs and potential barriers specific to disability.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

These are notes to myself, and possibly you.

I write things sometimes, and sometimes these things I write are good. I write out of a desire to see myself more clearly. I write about them with my head, my heart, and my hands. I wouldn’t say the things I write about are mundane, but aren’t always easy to reach for others, even when they resonate deeply.

I’ve been meditating on the tidal waves of grief, on writing, and on writing about all these things. Sometimes I show up a shell here, grieving for the parts of myself I’ve lost. It’s hard not to see what’s in the mirror reflecting back at me everywhere I look. All my most tender parts came out of hiding on the scheme, even when I tried my best to avoid them.

Because in hindsight, I see someone who was scared to be who they genuinely were and coped with that fear by retreating into themselves. I didn’t want to be who I truly was because I didn’t want to “just be a disruptor”, or “just be a changemaker.”. I wanted to be something else. All to keep my sense of self safe here.

It’s always a decision to stay, as much as it is to leave. In the quiet, tender moments with myself, I recognise the scars as symbols of experience and all I’ve faced. Feeling all the emotions that rise up deeply within me does not always feel inviting. To sit with grief in the face of loss, to let fear in when unsafe. Even these quiet words, typing to you now, feel hard to write.

It takes practice not to hold things alone, to reach out. Whenever I have chosen to share something, I remember why it is crucial to be seen up close, to let my struggles be witnessed by others. I think about the messages, emails, and comments I’ve received from friends and strangers sharing their resonance, gratitude, and generosity with me (and I’m grateful for all those of you who messaged to ask if I am ok). It has taken me places I couldn’t possibly predict or have ever imagined.

Surviving in dysfunctional systems

I have spent months and months trying to distil the scheme. I keep asking myself what the point of any of this is, questioning everything with nowhere to sink into. I’ve invested time and thought to engage with how it changes. I’ve discovered turning points, how people become who they are, how they adopt new thought patterns and selves.

But I still don’t understand this world or have any sense of how to positively impact it. It is depressing and dysfunctional, incomprehensible and unchangeable. I feel a profound sense of hopelessness and anger over what to do. Maybe I chose wrongly, over and over again.

There is no secret about how to be a human on the scheme. I didn’t miss the memo. Some of the deepest relief I’ve felt is letting go of this belief. I have been walking into the unknown and stumbling along the way — full of unimpressive moments, making mistakes, and forgoing my intuition in favour of what I think I’m supposed to do at times. Being a human in a place that wants you to have it all figured out isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

But I did the best I could with my tsunami of feelings, even if that “best” actually felt pretty bad. It frustrates me that something wields so much power over me. What gives me hope is that I might slowly find myself outside of it, even just a little bit. That I can look behind the curtain and realise that there’s no reason to let one chapter tell the story of my life.

The dark side of resilience

I have previously written about this thing called ‘belonging,’ which is a tricky idea for me to grasp. Equally frustrating is the concept of ‘resilience.’ I find it jarring that not enough attention is paid to changing conditions that require resilience in the first place. Band-aids don’t fix gaping flesh wounds. They don’t solve the fact that I feel lonely, burnt out, overwhelmed, or traumatised here. Or that my body is deeply exhausted from too much of it.

What’s wrong with resilience training (or conversations)? Well, it pushes too much emphasis to be well wholly to the individual, telling us to sharpen the tools in our tool belt to include things like setting boundaries and self-care. But the problem isn’t my lack of self-care. These things don’t work because they aren’t enough to combat such a harmful place. I wonder, has the scheme ever truly been a place of care and safety for all?

I don’t need to be more resilient, to learn to take anything this place throws my way. I need to be supported in being human instead. I’m curious, without the stress caused by my time here, that I might discover how I could actually take care of myself. If we really want people to be well, then let’s stop creating and maintaining an environment that makes them ill.

So no, I don’t want another round of resilience training, thank you very much.

The world is a scary place, but I have armbands

“It’s an act of rebellion to show up as your whole self — especially with the parts that are complex, unfinished, and vulnerable.” — Courtney Martin

I think about the versions of me that show up in different spaces. I think about my current self on the scheme who feels unable to access some of the things I normally reach for with ease. My strongest emotions are part of my personal power. But here, my light is dimmed. Not gone — but noticeably lessened. I question myself more — question what it’s all for.

Maybe I’m a square peg that is trying too hard to fit into a round hole. You see, I like difficult spaces. I like the tingly feeling my brain gets when it’s pushed to its edge. I like doing things that take considerable effort. I like momentum, the way I can shoulder it. I admire human willingness — it is a glimpse of something so profoundly real. I believe in boldness.

I have the courage to speak up — and I have experienced the pain of doing it in environments where there is no psychological safety (read here). I didn’t feel the system had space for someone like me, which was saying, “whatever you do, don’t ever dare to be different…” Maybe I should have known better. Sometimes it scares me that I have so much agency over my choices, all the time. I’m still figuring out how to relate to the hard stuff I struggle with, to do it with more curiosity, kindness, and compassion — if not always, then sometimes.

What I really want to say is that I carry all these things unseen. When I share parts of myself, it’s simply a sliver of the whole. There are nuances to being open about who you are, a spectrum for how much I open up. The scheme isn’t designed to enable self-expression, to live out the questions. It is training people to think in a particular way and behave in a way that supports that thinking. But to go outwards to find answers that can only be found in our inner worlds only complicates the process of becoming.

Weaving myself back into wholeness

To speak is still a bold act.

I’ve tried to write this ending too many times now. How much resolution does this story need? For now, I’ll end with this reminder to myself and perhaps to you: it is only through this experience that I know things I know now, that I could not know otherwise, that I am (mostly) grateful to know. Would I do it all over again to know? I don’t know.

And what do I mean by ‘know things?’ I don’t mean things like where I want to go in the Civil Service or that I’m supposedly a bonafide future leader now. I mean things like what I value or how I want to spend my time or who I want to surround myself with. A plethora of information about what I want, that surfaces because I experienced what I did not. That the things I did not want are gifts in their own way.

I hope, sometime soon, I can embrace it.

Lost and found on the Future Leaders Scheme

Just keep going

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I’ve spent my time on the scheme in one way or another struggling, confused, in-between, or barely managing. The truth of my reality here is so much uglier and grittier and nuanced and complicated than these blog posts makes it seem.

The nature of this blog is not to discover a truth. There is no single truth or way to go through the scheme, but a landscape of meaning and myriad of experiences. I’m not looking for a way to master the transitions, just a way to move from being stuck to unstuck.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of errant thoughts that don’t neatly fit into the boxes of each module.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

What is lost can return

“What you risk reveals what you value.” — Jeanette Winterson

When I sat down to write this blog post, I had no idea what I was going to write about at all. There’s a thing I’m trying to put my finger on, a thing I can’t quite place or find the words to describe adequately. Surely being afraid to write about it is a good sign?

The scheme is a peculiar place. One of its many peculiarities is its penchant for fads – fuelled by poor science and outdated thinking – and what can only be called social reproduction. I think that the overarching effect is it creates a monoculture that paves the way for (more) conformity and exclusionary leadership norms.

Our cadre of future senior leaders is formed by a system that exposes people to the same ideas and gives them the “in” language and habits. These serve as a badge of identity, a sense of specialness. And the homogenisation of training i.e. the one-size-fits-all approach means fierce, independent, important thought gets eroded. So far from being open to entertaining different thinking, the curiosity and open-minds of some of our brightest are dulled by the weight of social pressure.

The scheme also has its own moral code of behaviour, creating a hostile environment for dissenting participants. It inevitably makes it difficult for people to put their head above the parapet and speak out. For this reason, I make hard decisions about how to navigate this place and consider the very real trade-offs and consequences involved. It is depressing to think of where this intellectual sameness might take us. If I had the energy, I suppose I could fill hundreds of pages trying to illustrate it.

If the problem of self-perpetuation is structural, then the solutions might be, too. Perhaps one answer is to get rid of the scheme. Perhaps another is to redesign it and find ways to foster approaches that are heterogenous, outward looking, non-conformist and emotionally engaged. People who are very themselves and have the quiet conviction to show up as they are.

But first we must be willing to acknowledge the problem.

Reclaiming the parts of myself I love the least

“Let the more loving one be me” — W.H. Auden

Whenever I sit down on the scheme, I ruminate on what is going on within me and around me (rather than the activity I’m supposed to be doing). I worry this place could potentially reveal so much about me that I didn’t want to know. Whilst staring into space, I’ve discovered a few things.

I find it difficult to be open about my feelings. Sometimes I feel like I wear my heart on my sleeve, other times I feel like I barely know how to show it. I struggle to master my emotions. And I find myself not wanting anyone to know what I’m struggling with until I can turn it into something neatly packaged that others could consume.

After a setback, I go in on myself and search for the will to go on. I find myself not wanting to admit how hard it is sometimes to do things. I am harsh on myself, my own biggest critic. I struggle to accept a compliment. I often get socially awkward. Sometimes I don’t know what to do, so I look outside of myself instead of going inwards. There is a certain humility to knowing that I might not see all the pieces on my own.

I’m a person who feels like there is no way I could ever possibly repay others for their kindness. I have trouble asking for and accepting help from others. I carry around both a resistance to asking and the act of receiving. I also don’t want anyone to leave my presence feeling owed. Learning to receive gracefully is a skill I’m learning to practice.

I find it hard to trust others at a soul-deep connection. Creating and maintaining a community of people I belong to isn’t effortless for me. Often, it feels like it’s some kind of herculean task I’ll never get right. Finding a balance between openness and self protection is hard.

These are things I used to think of as flaws. As it turns out, trying to do everything alone, to keep my struggles secret, didn’t do what I thought it would. So I’m not sure I’ll ever be rid of them, and I’m not sure I want to be either. I’m more likely to think these days that some of them are actually superpowers.

I’ve been thinking about all this a lot lately. I’m trying to put the pieces of myself together – to know who I am, what I stand for, who I am becoming. Because I want to be a kind guide to myself. Tapping into these feelings helps me feel something here. It helps pause on what otherwise feels like a constant stream of rapidly passing experiences.

The pieces we leave behind

To speak is still a bold act.

With three months left on the scheme, the end is in sight. I already feel the return of some hope. The stress of day-to-day living on the scheme is fading fast. I freely admit I’m a different person away from it, in the sunlight and warmth of pretty much anywhere else.

It’s hard to explain something that only comes through the direct experience of this place. I’ve always felt a little lost here. For a long time, I thought I’d only be lost. But just like waves my inner landscape shifts. This place is part of what has brought me to where I am today. It’s given me insight into what I know and all I don’t know. And I will be carrying that with me as I continue traversing the path ahead, searching for whatever might be next, wherever it may lead me.

To be a person on the Future Leaders Scheme

Showing up whole

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

It’s hard to see what’s in front of me — the light hides behind a thick fog, shadows and reflections are few and far between. This is a mess of thoughts that seem to have no end or purpose.

You see, I didn’t think I had what it took to write about the Future Leaders Scheme. I didn’t think I had the skill, courage, bandwidth, or audacity. And I didn’t believe anyone would want to read what I had to share.

But writing has been my primary way to make meaning here, to traverse the distance between no longer and not yet. When I write, I tell my truth in the most meaningful, stirring way I can — even if it is only those things to me.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of:

• closing conference — which focuses on career next steps; and,

• module 1 on DELTA (Disability Empowers Leadership Talent) — a series of tailored workshops which aim to address individual development needs and potential barriers specific to disability.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

I am sitting at my desk, typing, and thinking about the version of myself that exists on the scheme. Sometimes I’m unable to find the words, even when others have been willing to listen. It’s painful to explain, too many infinite, difficult nuances to convey about this place.

It is paralysing to feel like there’s no room to let myself be fully human here. I’m an ocean trying to fit into a stream. There is only the role or identity of what’s expected to keep me contained. The unending pressure to blend in, to stay in artificially created boxes. I think about how it isn’t safe for me to not try to be that, to step out of it and let myself be seen as who I truly am.

I’ve stayed here long enough to collect stories. I’ve been swimming in the deep end for too long that I can’t remember what it feels like to do anything else. I longed to trust my voice as a whole human. But I was afraid of becoming who I was. So I made myself smaller, never living up to the passion I felt.

I’m desperate for another place, another space, another location to exist in. The truth is that I will carry certain parts of my pain from this place for a lifetime. I will hold different parts and pieces of my experiences that may never fully heal. Not when I carry an invisible sack full of wounds, grief, and longings that are quite literally woven into who I am.

I spy ghosts all over this place. All of them are me.

Driving for a better thing, rather than the same thing but better

“When leaders act as if change is for other people — when they think they don’t need to modify their behaviour — they exhibit Leader Entitlement, believing their titles literally grant them special privileges to ignore the change.” — NOBL, This Change Doesn’t Apply to Me

The scheme looks normal externally, but it doesn’t feel that way internally. The surface layer doesn’t match what is underneath. People are on the scheme because they are thought of as special. This self-congratulatory leadership is reinforced. It results in an ‘elite’ group that live in a parallel universe where the rules do not apply to them in the same way.

This is because we’re absolved from self-examination here. It’s easier to project an explanation outwards than the much harder work of looking within. We’re long on hubris and short on humility. There’s no role or problem that we don’t believe we can do better ourselves. This was demonstrated in the scheme’s conference when a local government official was treated appallingly by future senior leaders (read about it here).

It is horrifying to think about how the culture can go so badly wrong.

There comes a time when we cannot deny the truth any longer: walking down the known path isn’t working. But this culture is all we know. We’ve stopped seeing it as aberrant. It is an unwelcome truth otherwise hidden from view. We have designed systems that do this to people, which means we can fix them. Until we own the size and truth of our problem, we can’t change anything.

Staying silent about the scheme got us into this mess. And saying the scheme “is just the way it is” bypasses the impact it has: the ways it weaves into our self-concept over time, the ways it influences how we let ourselves be seen, the ways it causes us to orchestrate ourselves. That’s why radical options are the only ones left. The ones that disrupt the collective mindset, organisational model, and culture. Because to transform our outside world, a critical mass of us must also transform our internal worlds.

Lifting the lid on the scheme brings to the front a list of big questions. I keep thinking, what drives the scheme? Why bother aspiring to the top? How might we be able to organise it differently? The hardest is, What should we build instead, if anything? It’s one of those forever questions that I’m seeking answers to. The blank page holds endless possibilities. A dreamscape of possibility and explore all the wonders it can contain.

The conversations with others have got me thinking about how we move forward. This can feel daunting, even terrifying. I have the privilege of a platform to write and share from. I want something different — but don’t want to get pigeonholed into this niche. I also don’t necessarily want to constantly write about the future leaders scheme or how to redesign it, because it’s hard enough to live it once, much less to rehash it.

But changing things would be the most unending promise to our future leaders. It is the greatest gift we can offer: to trust ourselves with the unknown path.

Do not be afraid of your own heart beating

“It’s the flaws in the system projected onto me that makes me feel like an imposter.” — Nafisa Bakkar

I started writing this section last week and deleted it all, so here I am with a blank page again. What I was writing about just doesn’t fit what I’m feeling today, so I started over.

I’ve been writing openly about the scheme for 21 months. I do my best to write from a real place. From a place where I’m just being myself, sharing things that are vulnerable and allowing others to see me for who I truly am. The fear, the doubt, the self-questioning, the hesitation, the wondering. All the unfinished pieces of me I thought I needed to hide to fit in.

There’s so much possibility in not knowing. I have come to the realisation it is all part of the process of being a person. But this place is a complex and stark reminder of who I’m supposed to become. I can’t hide from that for long. It encourages people to be “good on their feet,” and say things loudly with innate confidence. Because we often support or defer to the ‘first’ thought shared, rather than the good one.

I’ve noticed I’m terrible in large groups. I never come up with good thoughts on the hoof. My first thoughts are never my best ones. I need to go away, be quiet, and think things through to have an actual good reflection. Most of all, I want a soul-deep connection and real conversation with someone who can think, too.

I have felt as if I’m never really part of the scheme, always on the outside peering in, just hoping to find somewhere to fit in. It’s hard to be myself in a place that doesn’t make it safe or possible to do so out loud, particularly when I’m surrounded by masks and surface-level interaction. I don’t get to see who people really are because of this performance we’re all doing all the time. Whilst I’ve slowly dropped the pressure to fit myself into the tiny boxes that this place provides for me, it is not without constant struggle.

It isn’t lost on me that we miss out on so much by grinding wonderful people down until they become a smoothly functioning piece of a much bigger machine. We edit and mould and morph them into the ideal version of a senior civil servant. We set them up to perform for authenticity or belonging, to never feel seen for who they actually are. This doesn’t happen to everyone, of course. Some people manage to remain themselves in the midst of it all. But realistically, how many people is that? And how long can they hold up?

The future does not fit in the containers of the past

To speak is still a bold act.

I think of the future as a place of better understanding. I want to be a part of making a better world. That’s so much harder than it might sound.

I’ve discovered the real story takes place within me. The things you now know about me that inform everything I do. I’ve tried to find a way to show the fluidity, multi-layered, ever-changing kaleidoscope of my experiences here. I also relate to myself differently now. That is what has shifted everything, even when not everything has changed. Even when so much still lingers. Even when the ache remains.

There is possibility and beauty in learning to show up amidst it all. I look at my capacity to weave together words that light up something familiar in others…and I remember that’s enough.

Mining the ruins on the Future Leaders Scheme

Don’t be afraid of your own depth

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I’m not sure what this blog post is about; I’m kind of figuring it out as I write.

I have spent much time and space trying to distil and properly articulate the thoughts in my head. At the same time, I’ve wanted to keep a lot of the things I was working out within myself separate. It’s also an ongoing practice for me to even let myself be seen in an intimate, up-close way.

Many of you have found my ramblings helpful in your own journeys. I’ve been delighted by the thoughtfulness and generosity of what people have shared with me in conversations. But there is much more than the things I write about: as my writing has gained its own momentum, other people’s sensemaking has enriched it and furthered my own.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post consists of:

• closing conference — which focuses on career next steps; and,

• module 1 on DELTA (Disability Empowers Leadership Talent) — a series of tailored workshops which aim to address individual development needs and potential barriers specific to disability.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

This experience continues to weave itself into the way I relate to myself and the world. Even when I pretend it doesn’t. I’ve discovered that this is a blog post series on being lost and in transition.

My writings are a narrative around the journey of recovery, of what it means to be alive on the scheme, in all its messiness and complexity, difficulty and beauty. Something to remind me that I’m not just surviving, but that I am seeking. And I will find myself again.

Feeling lost is part of the journey

Time has been blurring lately. This evocative place is staying with me — and I keep returning to it. All the things of consequence I want to talk about have a collection of debris behind them. I have so much to say but have told so few people about the enormity of my feelings.

I lost things here. And I felt so lost when I lost things.

I feel as if I have made a grave mistake in coming because I don’t know who I am or how to be anymore. I now live an ambiguous existence in this liminal space. And I keep trying to create a new fixed identity just to escape the horror that is living in between.

No one tells you this stuff before you arrive on the scheme.

Why? I wonder. Aren’t I done yet? It has felt like one large failure or one big punishment, or both these things and more. As with all loss and trauma, I’m impatient to be through it before I’ve really begun. I did not seek stuckness as an inevitable part of the experience. But if my time here has taught me anything, it’s that there isn’t a clear demarcation between ‘before’ and ‘after’ or ‘broken’ and ‘fixed’ or ‘lost’ and then ‘found.’

Change starts with me

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.” — Paul Virilio

This is a part of the blog post I have started many times, in many forms. It wants to be written — and I need to get it off my chest. But there are people who could be hurt by it being told publicly. I’m grappling with the dilemma of how to write about others, and by extension, myself.

It all started with a talk. Innocuous enough, right? Well, no.

At the scheme’s conference, a director from local government was invited to close the event with their candid reflections about working with the UK Civil Service. I was excited about this (constitutional affairs and public administration fascinates me!). I was expecting curiosity, generosity, and openness from others.

The director’s critique was thought provoking and insightful, albeit slightly uncomfortable to listen to. What was opened up was a space to reflect on our entrenched perceptions of one another and how we might work better together. You could see the audience’s exposedness when the director hit the nail on the head by describing precisely what we’ve been doing for quite some time.

All their observations about Civil Service cultures, and the machinery of government, have been written about by commentators for decades and decades. I’ve also previously written about the Civil Service’s superiority complex here. Nothing shared should come as a surprise. Still, the statements made were met by a wall of denial from the Civil Service population in the room — and they shouldn’t have been.

The Civil Service has a narrow view of leadership. Whilst we are not a homogeneous ‘blob,’ we are often remote from the realities of public-facing services (or ‘frontline’). Local government can get impatient with slow national responses, preferring to act. They have a holistic view of their communities by being place focused. In the face of complexity, their leaders are catalysts, stewards, and conveners of bold systems shifts.

There did not appear to be any genuine recognition of the knowledge, expertise and experience that local government brings to policy making. Their role as policymakers remained unacknowledged. Hardest of all was hearing this official urging civil servants to ‘stay close to the ground’ and in touch with the realities of what people are responding to in their locality. Being in places where you can be impactful is a good principle to live by.

What unites all the issues identified is not poor planning or bad luck: it is systemic. But the reflections triggered a visceral reaction, a torrent of criticism and harsh questions followed from the audience during the Q&A portion. It was the angriest voices that dominated in a self-reinforcing way. The backlash was used to get the director to kowtow to the group and walk back their comments by apologising. The effrontery was breathtaking.

But a mirror has to be looked at to be seen.

I’m going to pause here and say that there are several things the organising team could have done differently. This ranges from effective context setting to placement during the day to facilitating a reflection activity to doing this sort of thing little and often. The anonymous comments on Slido could have been called out and addressed head on. And it is vital to protect the person that is critiquing, if they’ve been asked to play that role.

But none of that addresses the fundamental problem that statements made during the scheme indicated one thing, and behaviour that afternoon indicated something else entirely. We appeared to avoid unwelcome and inconvenient feedback and were very resistant to challenge or questioning. We didn’t recognise that the mirror was being held up. Instead of sitting with the overwhelm and discomfort, and having compassion for how stuck we all are, we entered into a vicious cycle of hurt and blame.

https://twitter.com/mtthwhgn/status/1628424291334119424?s=20

I’m also trying to understand ‘me’ in all this. Why didn’t I intervene, say something? I should know and do better. I’ve done so much “inner work.” I’ve practised and shifted so much. But I feel so alone here — and in feeling alone, I do not feel brave enough. It has felt safer to stay on the edges than to be seen at the centre. I feel flawed and, sometimes, I don’t recognise myself here. I cannot passably pretend that I am a good leader anymore, which has led to a cycle of guilt, shame, and anxiety.

Becoming a good leader that generates “good leadership” across systems is difficult. How do I survive and thrive and keep my principles intact? What kind of internal (or external) work do I need to be doing? That afternoon, I acquired so much awareness of the strength and empowerment needed to call this type of behaviour out next time.

This is the work of a lifetime. And it lasts a lifetime. There is no arrival or shortcut or quick fix. Just a reminder of lifelong practices that need to be honoured. And I think there’s something potent about letting what I’m struggling with be witnessed as much as overcoming that struggle. I won’t pretend I’m supposed to keep all my challenges quiet. Or that I should wait until there’s a more ideal version of myself before I share or show up.

But ultimately, we must have some sense of how to account for our time in the Civil Service, for the problems our successors will inherit. This experience was a depressing indication of the future leadership of the Civil Service. If we can’t even listen to criticism, there is no possible hope of learning from it. And if we don’t learn from it, there is no possible hope of improving public service.

The problems were never ‘over there,’ they were ‘in here’ all along.

Still here, still here, still here

“If every week I climb up the hill and light the beacon, then wait a while and watch for fires lighting in response, then eventually I’ll find a community. A network of people who link up not because they’re identical, but because they’re dominoes.” — Jo Hanlon-Moores

As I continue to emerge out of the cocoon of this past year, and despite all my trepidation about continuing, I made it to the first module of DELTA. This element has only been going for three years — both surprising and unsurprising — and has quite different objectives (below).

Here, in contrast, I’m experiencing a social connection that I’ve only glimpsed before. I appreciated the distinct absence of leadership models — the individual was centred instead. There were dogs and cats and humans in attendance (there was a dog called ‘pudding,’ which I found inspired). It’s a small cohort mostly from digital, HR, and transformation. As far as I could tell, I’m one of the few from a large-scale infrastructure programme.

I’ve been enjoying thoughtful and reflective conversations with the other participants — all extraordinary civil servants and even more so extraordinary humans. I feel immense gratitude at what they shared; I know how fortunate I am to be surrounded by people who have overcome so much. And there’s similarity and commonality in the stories shared: people shielding part of themselves away as a form of protection.

For some, it was the first time they had spoken openly about their struggles. Allowing the conversation to run its course and having a space held lightly and gently were things I’ve missed! This is a place where people pull each other along with them while they are growing. Because the way you build is just as important as where you end up.

https://twitter.com/CrispianWFCDO/status/1618667544109551616?s=20

Finding the right people for me on the scheme has been so hard. I’ve struggled for a long time in such big groups of people. I felt seen by very few. Putting myself out there in new ways and really letting people in when there is the potential of judgement and criticism is deeply difficult in a place that hurts. For a short while, it was safe to tell others some of my own struggles. I was not treated like I’m broken, singled out, or othered. I was allowed the grace of being human, of being exactly who I am: someone whose core self spills over with emotions and sensations and ideas.

The challenges about being a senior leader when you have a long-term health condition or disability are stark. I cannot seem to find a middle ground between forgetting I have a disability and constantly being asked how I am and to do things I cannot do. I was not born with my disability. I remember a time when I wasn’t disabled. Sometimes, I find it really hard to accept my disability as a part of who I am, even after 14 years. And I don’t feel the need to make other people more comfortable and or educate them about my condition.

Something I’ve learned slowly, over time, is that I continue to learn in new ways. And here is an open space to talk about these things and more, waiting to be filled with more of the connection I long for. There was some vital energy driving me to dive in and be more vulnerable. Now that I’ve found it, I don’t want to lose that magic.

Is this my sacred space? Probably not. But I am hearing its call to rejuvenate my spirit. Perhaps I have finally found a place on the scheme where I feel more ready to create relationships, ask for help, and be seen. That’s what I always end up coming back to — that I can make something useful, even beautiful, out of this circumstance.

Be bold. Be brilliant. Be kind.

To speak is still a bold act.

I’ve come to the bittersweet realisation that I can mine my disappointments here for strength and inspiration. I keep reminding myself that these moments — filled with sadness, vulnerability, disappointment, and longing — are precious resources in the wider story of my life.

Being a human is often an embarrassing, humbling, and confusing mess. I’m trying to understand what I’m enduring, to make more room for who I am. I still believe the most courageous act is letting myself be seen, every day, on the outside. And I know sharing in this way creates abundance and generosity in ways I can’t even see.

A manual to leaving well?

by Louise Armstrong and Nour Sidawi

If you’ve ever struggled with having a thoughtful ending — of transitioning from one thing to another — this blog post is for you.

This blog post isn’t written to give advice so much as it is to comfort and console and to lift our gaze up to the concept of organisational separation through a process of ‘leaving well.’

It is a long post that might need more than one sitting to get through but the topic is worthy of the time invested. One doesn’t approach such a topic, so central to our experience of being human in this world, lightly or casually.

Tracing the path of loss

Leaving organisations can be messy and complex. It shapes us. And the realisation often doesn’t come from some climatic third act. Instead, it is the acknowledgement of a simple truth: that sometimes, it’s ok to walk away. There is a difference, albeit subtle, between what’s hard and what’s Sisyphean and continually unfolding.

We aren’t less than for changing course and finding new paths. Yet we can find ourselves confused and misaligned in the separation process. Yes, it’s hard to let things, people, places, and habits go — but it’s also illuminating to see what needs to be released for us to do that.

So what happens when we cannot push any longer? What happens when we reach the end of our journey such that we have no choice but to let go and try to grow?

At life’s busy pace, there is often no time for examining this loss. In planning our departures from organisations, we rarely think about how to “leave well.” We might have a general idea of how we want to leave, but the actual path to leaving is unclear. We may hit a few dead ends and have to trace back a few steps. But every departure is a loss, because every one of us leaves a distinctive mark on what an organisation is, has done, and continues to do every day of its existence.

Often the picture is more clear after we have left. But the thing about unresolved shadows is that, the more you suppress it, the more it comes out sideways. Hence the need for leaving well, most importantly for the individual themselves.

Because the reasons for leaving aren’t always clear-cut. They can’t be encapsulated in a single word. It requires a story, to sit down with a coffee held tight in our hands and tell the stories of how we chose something different. We try to communicate a feeling that has to be experienced to be understood, and we try to make sense of something that sometimes doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Whilst the experience of leaving is never easy, the explanation is even less so. That tension makes it hard to find nuanced conversations about how to leave organisations well. Often, it feels easier not to try. And so we’re left with the paradox of ‘leaving well’: we have to talk about it, but we can’t.

What does it mean to “leave well”?

We (Louise and Nour) have been wrestling with these questions for the past year. What we noticed again and again is that there is grief and confusion around that very question. How do we release what no longer feels right?

It started where many good things do: with a tweet, followed by a comment on a blog post. A connection between two people — unknown to each other — with a shared interest and willingness to experiment.

We have both had radically different experiences of leaving organisations in recent years. We openly turned to writing and crafting our stories as part of that process, having a conversation with ourselves on paper. Everything spilling out in a bizarre stream of consciousness.

We have had to come to terms with having to walk away from things, relationships, and identities that no longer fit. We have learned to accept and find gratitude in learning to put things down — especially things not meant for us. That deconstruction was a necessary part of the opening to what comes next. It’s messy and sometimes dishearteningly slow. Sometimes only years later do you realise what you did or what it meant. But it’s also the condition-creating for a new way.

We know that others have found our goodbye blog posts interesting because they know that, someday, they will be faced with the calculus of whether or not to leave. When is it the right time? How do you figure out what’s next?

Whilst there is no end of HR process and procedures that comes with leaving roles — resignation letters, exit interviews — there is rarely space for the more human and emotional processing that is needed when making these significant life transitions. When not tended to, or held well, these moments can too quickly turn into traumatic experiences for people.

So how can we help others on their own journeys? Well, this is our attempt to do that.

How did we do this?

We decided to go with the energy, learn by doing, and test out some of our hunches. We were delighted at the ease and flow that followed through that process.

Inspired by the Manual of Me and seemingly everyone talking about ‘user manuals’, we played around with the ideas of the Manual for Leaving.

A simple and lightly-structured process which creates a space for people to come together and share their thoughts and feelings around leaving. Something that can be done individually through writing or in a group discussion.

• Round 1: Where are you in your journey of leaving? What’s your experience been?

• Round 2: What would have better enabled your journey/process of leaving? What did / might enable the process for you?

• Round 3 What did it take of you? What did it give you?

We decided we needed to test our process out with people. So, we hosted a “leaving well” listening circle. It was inspired by the disarmingly simple “Spaces For Listening” format that Brigid Russell and Charlie Jones have developed (you can read more about it here). We invited seven people who were in the process of leaving a role, having recently left one, and were also considering making a move. They each knew one of us, but not each other.

In the three rounds of questions, we asked ourselves what deconstruction was needed. We asked what new possibilities were unveiled in us. And we asked what we might find if we dug into places long hidden and opened them up. We wondered what we would like to lay down, what we would like to pick up.

The long arc of leaving — choices and costs

So, what did we learn?

We were *pleasantly* surprised at the depth of honesty and reflection we got from a group that didn’t know each other. We felt moved by the tiny taste of all the leaving stories we heard, for what people shared of themselves. Hosting the space showed us there is a need and interest in this, with people offering so much more of themselves than we anticipated.

From the conversation, a set of insights and shared messages were revealed:

Leaving is a bereavement…and a liberation

“The old structures that held and constrained [me] are now gone — I now come up with my own divisions about what I choose to do or not do.”

Sometimes it can be good to get things off your chest. To have the space to share, to be listened to, and to hear others. For topics that we don’t often make space for, it can create a surprising sense of relief to give voice to the lesser spoken things.

In the group, people spoke about needing the confidence and courage to leave, and the preparation that took longer than it should have. And how liberating it was to realise that you can create your own stories — and that made the act of leaving a transformative experience.

Some felt they could reflect in real time or near the moment of leaving, others only when years had passed and there was space and distance to be able make sense of it. Some realised that they were in a place of leaving when they joined the organisation.

It was highlighted how frightening it is to let go of identity, status, salary — everything that is wrapped up within roles and organisations. It was strange to feel that loss and bewilderment so keenly and wonder, “Who am I now?” Looking back, it was only with time, space, reflection, and support that the ending really be processed. To enable us to decide what was ourselves to keep and what was the organisation’s.

How much of ourselves we give to our roles distracts from the choices we have

“The experiences continued to take their toll on me in unexpected ways, long after I left…[the organisation and its wider community] took a bit of my heart, soul, and spirit.”

There was also reflection that we can find ourselves being consumed by a role, filling all our focus, taking all our energy. If we even recognise it, we tell ourselves that it will only be a temporary situation — but it rarely is. And we find ourselves consumed by the organisations we are part of, which want us to feel indispensable but to actually be disposable, and thus to distract attention from the choice we have in staying or leaving.

Our roles can become so intertwined with our lives, identities — our pasts, present and future — and it’s no wonder more support is needed to make sense of this. When you’ve been somewhere for a long time, the organisation’s boundaries are your boundaries.

All had thought deeply about their place in the system, how much emotional commitment it required to stay…and also to leave. To even question it was ground shifting. There was a sense of feeling adrift in the transition. Of not realising your mind was on fire until the smoke gets in your eyes.

Beginnings are hard — but regretting never starting is even harder

“Who am I without the work…?”

Leaving had, over that time, come to loom so large in the minds of each person that it could not be ignored. It caused them to examine choices that previously they did not know they had. To stay or to go, there was always a choice.

Why does it take us so long to realise? Well, the act of self-discovery felt difficult to prepare for. It was terrifying to take that first step. The realisation that each person was not going where they thought they were — and things look like barriers weren’t really when pushed at them. Nothing was coming back from that point on.

The conscious uncoupling of organisation and self meant exercising the ability to be more conscious about where to put time and energy. That where someone stood to do the work was a choice. But it also often resulted in losing a whole community along the way.

What each person learned of themselves in the process of leaving was revealing. But progress often felt slow in the moment, coming and going in waves. It was only when looking back from the shoreline, every now and again, did we see how far we had come.

To start where we are

“I’m really hoping that leaving will give me a new sense of who I am and what I can do in the world — but we’ll see”

Many of us spoke about how we might have left a physical place, role and organisation — but the relationships and the things we wanted to keep remained. Leaving the place, not the people, though that slow process of disentangling was tricky to navigate. But for some, in a sense, that left us still in relationship with the organisation, unclear on what they should be.

There is no one-size-fits-all leaving journey. Along with loss and grieving, we explored the sense of still being relevant and useful, of belonging to something, somewhere that mattered. And how to find ways to keep that wholeness grounded whilst also feeling completely ourselves.

Ultimately these reflections are stories about the long-term arcs of life. Deeply pondering what leads to what and how our choices made at one point in time shape our happiness for years to come. Leaving has given us all the space, energy, confidence, and time to do so many of the things we’d designed out of our lives. And our stories were a celebration of the things we’ve done, the people we are, and those we were in service of.

We’re still collectively working out what we want to do when we grow up though!

Where to from here?

Leaving well reminded us to release what needs to be released. It allows the room and opportunity to discover what nourishes and what drains, what heals us and what harms us. We can be grateful for a season — and also be glad that it’s over.

We have learned that we do not have to struggle through things just because of the time invested. We can forge bonds out of emotions and the unknown. We can wonder what the world is like outside the lines drawn for us. We can part ways and trust the re-route instead.

With this in mind, we’ve created a number of resources (links below) to support those wanting to host a listening circle or reflect on their own ending journey to do so more easily. We’d love to hear of the tweaks and adaptations you make, and how they work out for you.

Resources and inspiration

Manual for Leaving Well

We’ve created a short guide and set of questions, which is good for:

• Individuals — wanting to reflect on your transition / leaving

• For people who want to host a leaving well listening circle and explore this topic with others

This is our adapted version of the Spaces for Listening format is a prototype — and we’re still learning about how to use this so we’re keen to hear what you think and how you’ve used it.

Stories of Leaving Well

Looking for inspiration? Want to hear how others have navigated leaving well? We’ve started a Medium publication — if you have a story that you’d like to be part of the publication, get in touch with us (we will add it on for you) or use the prompts in the Manual for Leaving Well to help craft a story for yourself.

• Louise Armstrong’s organisational ending story

• Nour Sidawi’s organisational ending story

Inspiration

While this is something many of us do, it;s suprising how little it’s spoke about. We’re sharing some of the people and things we’ve been inspired by through this process that might be of interest for those wanting to explore this topic more:

• NHS Compassion Circles

• Spaces for Listening — Keeping it simple

• Sarah Weiler’s Quitting Quadrant — Knowing When to Quit

• Stewarding Loss: Sensing an ending toolkit — written for organisations, but with relevance for individuals too

• Naomi Hattaway’s Leaving Well work and Legacy Design talk

Why the Future Leaders Scheme fails — and what to do about it

Is there any alternative?

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

Note: This blog post was made better by the thoughtful and considered reflections of Sam Villis and Stefan Czerniawski; without them it wouldn’t have been as good. Thank you, both.

——

Hello dear reader,

I spent most of last week and this week thinking about how the issues with the Future Leaders Scheme are systemic. But I’ve had a hard time writing it.

Why have I had a hard time writing it? Well.

Some of it has been the problem of the enormity of the issue. I have spent a lot more time pulling on a lot more threads. But I also realised that this isn’t the only reason I’ve had a hard time writing. Mostly, it’s because I can’t stop thinking about the grief, ghosts, and persistent sense of hiraeth. Constant tension leaves its mark. And these experiences just…have invaded my heart and mind, leaving invisible imprints in their wake.

Along with that…there’s grappling with what more I can do to keep this from happening again. And I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I bear part of that collective responsibility for where we’ve ended up. There is something here that I have to solve, maybe, or see.

I’m hurting, and several people have expressed that they want me to represent that hurt with care and generosity. I want to make sure I do it right. Or as I right as I can.

So, here goes.

Treading the fine line between conformity and rebellion

“Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future” — Peter Senge

In my blog post series, I wrote that the system is our collective responsibility. I wrote about the sorts of people we would need to make the system healthy, weave things, and build anew. Often, examining the reasons why we don’t end up there and things are the way they are is best attempted when one is no longer entangled in that very system.

That being said, I shared my reflections openly about the scheme openly, whilst still inside the UK Civil Service. The things that were eating away at me. I felt as though something huge was moving beneath a deep ocean and I could only see the ripples on the surface. In doing so, I had to be bracingly honest about myself, to go to a vulnerable place. There was, it turned out, no answers to be found.

Instead, I understood how complicated it felt, and how hard it was to make the choice to be open. I was not even sure I was making the right choice at the time. I could only hope that my personal story was helpful to others who were struggling with similar issues.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way about the scheme, but others are yet to feel comfortable to speak up. There are many reasons why the whole experience of even talking about this is so difficult. It is tied up with power and resources, the ability to acquire and use social and cultural capital.

But I also have been reflecting about how to talk about this — or rather, about what it is that I am really talking about. And is there another level to talk about it on? That’s what I am clumsily pursuing here.

Forever is composed of nows

I’m considering where this story has been heard before. The one around the structural and systemic issues in the UK Civil Service. A place that has become so complex that we can no longer steer it in our chosen direction. But also a place potentially transformable through the magic and wisdom of the people who make it up.

The schemes can be viewed in this light. They set out the expectations of senior leaders, playing a crucial role in the leadership we end up with. In some ways, it reflects what has gone before. And in others, an uprooting of everything.

The rushing power that runs beneath the scheme — where is it taking us? We have no hope of understanding this (or where we might want to go in future) without understanding where we started from.

The civil servants of today’s leadership schemes will become the permanent secretaries of tomorrow’s organisations — and some will go on to be chief executives of other parts of public service. We do not just affect our own system, we affect others, too.

Ultimately, decisions we make in public service are only as good as the senior leaders we have at the top of our organisations. Sometimes the steps we need to take to get there are the hardest to see.

The work is not done, and we are not done with the work

The scheme is systemically rooted in the current educational, cultural, and corporate structures of the UK Civil Service. It is the result of a fractured process that presumes baton passing rather than a team sport.

By attempting to mould people into a single pre-defined model of leadership, rather than linked to the overarching problems that need to be solved, the scheme is built on the wrong things. It focuses on competencies, models, and techniques, which in some ways is like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

This one-size-fits-all training causes more problems than it solves: developing people that still feel inexperienced, overwhelmed, under-equipped, and under prepared for the future. It also creates a homogeneity of thinking, self-referential nature, and a culture of conformity and emotional detachment (i.e., “studied neutrality”). The harm and damage done, on an individual and systemic level, is barely even seen. There is a catalogue of things — socio-economic background, disability, ethnicity, neurodiversity, educational attainment, lived experience, and so on — which require us to even be able to do this.

It is hard to think about the mechanisms that are generating and reproducing these biases — or what to do about them. The scheme is an important way in which the UK Civil Service could change for the better. I don’t think we focus on this enough.

If we want to overcome the systemic issues behind the scheme, then we need to change the thinking that led to them to begin with (starting with what constitutes good leadership). The diversity of the people who make up the UK Civil Service matters a lot.

The antidote is always turning deeper towards each other

The systems’ ability to nurture change agents is as important as change agents’ ability to nurture systems.

Leadership matters. It is a service to the people that do the work.

Many before me have made the case for creating an empathetic, kind, bold, and open

UK Civil Service. Their reflections are a reminder of what we are building and why, even if we have no idea whether our choices will point us in new directions. And for a moment, they make impossible horizons feel real.

I would humbly add one more thing. We also need to develop something more profound, and rare: people with the ability to think and react critically and independently. We must not only tolerate alternative views, but also encourage them.

It is an opportunity to reimagine the way things are done: a scheme with these things as a central tenet, which leads us to a place where all forms of individuality and difference are included and celebrated. And that makes redesign of the scheme absolutely necessary.

Because nothing can change until we change the things inhibiting change.

So, what might a revised approach to leadership development which is heterogeneous, outward looking, non-conformist, and emotionally engaged look like? (h/t Stefan Czerniawski)

I don’t know. But I’m willing to find out with others.

Hope in the dark on the Future Leaders Scheme

Distance from the scheme is a salve

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

This is my first deep breath. I’m standing here thinking about the scheme, about the scars it’s left on me. How it has left me breathless.

If the scheme was a year of transition, of transformation (of sorts), then now is the sweet, quiet relief of endings. I sometimes have to remind myself that the year really did happen and was not some kind of bad dream.

I am holding things together because I have to, not really because I’m ok. I have been kept afloat by sporadic moments of connection, sparks of joy and love and wisdom. There must be better things ahead for me. From the experience: am I better than I was? And will I be better than I am?

Maybe I’m about to find out.

So, here goes.

——

This blog post is in anticipation of the Future Leaders Scheme closing conference (that I refer to as the “Survivors’ Graduation,” in my head), which focuses on career next steps. I wrote about the launch event here.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

My heart is broken, but I also feel like my mind is, too. This year was not the one I expected. It was one of ebbs and flows, where I circled the edge of a whirlpool without a life jacket. How I longed for a safe harbour. But the scheme was like a shadow following me everywhere. Some weeks were worse than others.

I’m a soul without a home here. A fraction of myself. I was supplanting myself with others’ voices and opinions, letting them rattle on through my soul. In my neglect, my own voice became harder to coax out. I had to fight for my ability to think clearly and know who I am.

I did not understand what I was up against. I was in over my head — and too stubborn to leave. Whilst I haven’t survived the scheme that well, I was determined to see it through. And now, I feel the need to make the things I endured mean something. But there are no trails to follow that will lead me to the next moment.

Healing is never linear

Encouraging people to “bring their whole selves to work” without nuance is dangerous, in my opinion. It takes finesse and cache to show up as mostly yourself in places you don’t own. As @MindaHarts says, you belong in every room but not every room deserves you — and many cannot afford to stick around to find out. Because if you break the (unwritten) rules, you’ll experience real discomfort.

The pressure to assimilate surrounds me. It trickles down and manifests in the smallest ways, with people downplaying their differences to fit in. I’m constantly fighting a place that demands conformity. I self-edited myself to become more “accepted,” covering up the meaningful aspects of who I am. All the magical ways in which I am different.

All the while, I was being turned into someone I didn’t recognise. Now I’m left to somehow figure out who I wanted to be in the first place. And I will leave this place traumatised because of how overexposed the parts of me that needed protecting were.

I may not know who I am here, but I know who I don’t want to be. Perhaps that’s just as important.

You must lose your voice

“The act of speaking out makes you alone.” — Ravish Kumar

Every time I think about the scheme, I am struck by the silence that surrounds it. I’m in an immensely empty space that isn’t really empty but filled with everything. Why does no one speak out?

Several times over the last year, I had the sense that, having been blind, I could now see. The veil has been lifted: I’m seeing a charred landscape. While this has brought with it a certain bracing clarity, it has not come as a relief. You see, I entered to fully understand this world. But I didn’t know the scheme could be like this. Now I know, in painful detail.

And I broke the silence about it.

I caught all the chaotic thoughts swirling around in my head about my experiences and put them down. If only to help me to express and release the emotions built up inside me. Some of it emerged from my own struggle of feeling helpless. I felt as if I were shouting into the wind. What started as a tentative attempt to express myself has gradually turned into me pouring out my heartache, loneliness, and insecurities into blog post after blog post.

I’m learning to feel my emotions without becoming them, to feel my pain without becoming its narrative. I decided that the silence of others could not force my silence. Someday, maybe, this will no longer be the case. But for now, I have found my voice, and I refuse to be silent again.

We get the senior leaders we deserve

We live in a rapidly changing world — with the situation worsening in every way. This moment is one of multiple, overlapping crises: global pandemics, war, climate emergency, economic and health inequalities, crime, sickness, and many other forms of struggle. We are entering into a fragile reality, the space between stories.

What worked before, won’t work anymore. And leaving the system unchanged and hoping something will magically change, or that someone else will make the system healthy again, won’t work either. We are the system: it is our responsibility. There is no guarantee that better things will follow — but we must try.

The work to weave things, to build anew, is the most arduous work to undertake. It requires thinkers, makers, and doers that can rise to the scale of the challenges, examine the status quo, become more comfortable in uncertainty, and build bold visions for the future.

I’ve been ruminating on how the scheme gets rid of diversity and drives conformity. The expectations of a “good” (or “accepted”) civil servant are so thoroughly embedded as to feel unquestionable. I have not been encouraged to reflect on my mental models, to critically think about the scheme’s container. I have been steered towards quick, shallow thoughts, short-term ‘fixer’ skills, and emotional detachment. To be in the right place, at the right time. I felt rewarded for displaying overconfidence, for meticulously crafting my public persona.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Advancement for its own sake. It doesn’t have to be underlined, again and again, that the problem is the individuals, and not the way we have organised the scheme.

We need to ask ourselves: what kind of senior leaders do we want?

The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible

“To get to more radical outcomes, we need more radical ways of working together. It is both as simple and as hard as that” — Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda, and John Kania

We need space for radical imagination, to dream the spaces we want to see in the world and experiment with new ways and means of doing things. But spaces that are carefully curated and lightly held for radical creativity, imagination, and boldness are few and far between. These things don’t suddenly occur — they take cultivation, practice, reflection, and time.

For that, we need radicals inside the system, now more than ever. But these people are often the first to go. Because the spaces that radicals inside the system stand to do the work are unloving ones: unsafe and require too much of a person to stay.

Whilst the problems are about more than just the ‘talent’ pipeline — they’re also about the incentives once people are in the system — it is a good place to start. These schemes are crucial to defining and incentivising leadership in particular ways. They signal behaviour that is endorsed, enabled, and resourced. The eventual answer may be radical change — because nothing changes without incentives changing, only then will the balance of power and resources shift — but that needs to be based on understanding why the UK Civil Service is the way it is.

We very much need radicals in senior roles in the UK Civil Service to give succour and encouragement to radicals battling elsewhere.They’re needed to shine a flame of rebellious hope, clarity, and possibility:that we have agency in creating better, more beautiful futures.

Make no mistake: our organisations, public service, communities of place, and people within systems all depend on it. Before it’s too late.

Let it be written, let it be done

To speak is still a bold act.

I close with a thought of a path not taken. When things get difficult, is it better to remain inside the tent? I often reflect on the costs of doing this. For me, the alternative — that the shadows and contours of the scheme would remain hidden from view — was worse. So, I bore the costs of a space I found chronically damaging. Because if I cared about the future of public service, what other choice did I have?

It would be nice to think that my experience was all an aberration and could never happen again, but I suspect otherwise. This is not a good place. We must begin to understand just how dire it is if we wish, at last, to change it.

I’m homesick for a world that no longer exists. I have been trying to twist this debilitating mix of toxicity, trauma, and grief into something good and wonderful. I want to be still, to feel rhythm and waves. I want to become whole again. To live as gently as I can.

Over the decades of my career, I want to leave something behind. I want to leave behind a sense of boldness, grace, humour, moral courage, creativity, wonder and, yes, brilliance. I want to invent the future with others. In the words of Christopher Scipio: “I want to know I was a Good Ancestor, that I made things a little bit easier and a little bit better for those who will come after me.”

32 Books

There’s always more (and more) to read…

“An encouragement, perhaps, for other keen readers to add to their own ‘to read’ pile; and a gentle encouragement to add your recommendations to the #57Books ‘must read’ list; ripples flowing out from a ‘pebble in the pond’.“ — Feasts and Fables

Thinking Outside the Books

Last year, I read 31 books read in the year of my 31st birthday. The encouragement from Mr Fables to read more led to an unexpected adventure! You can read my book reviews here.

This year I’m going to keep going. I love books. I’m very hungry for the good stuff, the “quake books.” The ones that shake you. That knock everything over and turn it upside down. The books to base your life on.

So, over the course of 2023, I will be reading 32 books in the calendar year to mark my 32nd birthday. It’s not quite one a week and a few extras for luck, but close enough. I’ll be sharing the journey on social media under the hastag #57Books to add to Mr Fables’s list of reading suggestions.

——

The List

1 — Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown

2 — VIRAL JUSTICE: How We Grow the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin

3 — Nasty Women by Laura Jones (Editor)

4 — Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care by Madeleine Bunting

5 — Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 by David C. Krakauer and others

6 — Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

7 — Babylon’s Ashes (The Expanse #6) by James S.A. Corey

8 — Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) by James S.A. Corey

9 — Tiatmat’s Wrath (The Expanse #8) by James S.A. Corey

10 — Levianthan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S.A. Corey

11 — White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War by John Gans

12 — Voices of the Windrush Generation: The real story told by the people themselves by David Matthews

13 — Men Who Hate Women — From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates

14 — Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

15 — Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers by John Kay and Mervyn King

16 — Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis by Guy M. Snodgrass

17 — Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

18 — Know Your Place by Nathan Connolly (editor)

19 — Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries by Alan Rickman

20 — English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks

21 — Flying on the Inside: A Memoir of Trauma and Recovery by Rachel Gotto

22 — The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef

23— Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott

24 — The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

25 — Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown

26 — We Do This ’til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba

27— Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats by Maya Goodfellow

28 — The Secret Life of Special Advisers by Peter Cardwell

29 — The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester

30 — Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression by Alastair Campbell

31 — Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

32 — In a Time of Monsters: Travels Through a Middle East in Revolt by Emma Sky

Beyond ‘The List’

33 — The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

34— How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

35 — How to Run a Government: So That Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy by Michael Barber

36 — Criminal: How Our Prisons Are Failing Us All by Angela Kirwin

37 — Ghost Signs by Stu Hennigan

38 — All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black

——

57 Books: The List — feastsandfables

Mr Fables read and reviewed a list of 57 books in 2022. It’s an eclectic mix, fiction and non-fiction, new and old, some re-reads. All wonderful reading suggestions! #57Books

https://www.feastsandfables.co.uk/the-encouragement-manifesto/fifty-seven-books-the-list

Adrift in the snow on the Future Leaders Scheme

Everything is an echo of what has come before

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

This was not the plan.

The plan was to write a blog post on the future of the Future Leaders Scheme, about how we could change the scheme to be more joyful. I would draw from my experiences and interweave those stories with thoughts about the broadest, holistic view of the context of learning. But it turns out, I do not have the wherewithal for that piece. At least not right now — my mind feels resistant to anything requiring real clarity or concision.

So I’ve ended up writing from an emotional place instead.

The narration of this story represents my journey through the scheme’s landscape and the scars it has left upon me. These scars are reminders of what I’ve seen, done, and learned. They are forever a part of my body’s memory. It is not something I should ever attempt to forget. And it is here that I explore the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘system,’ and the tensions between the two. After all, it is the system in which the self resides.

So, here goes.

——

The fourth module consisted of:

• day 1 and day 2 — bringing together what we have learnt together during the Future Leaders Scheme and considering its application through the lens of our personal effectiveness and becoming the leader that we aspire to be.

I have not learned to savour the heartbreaks that have befallen me here. The tumult rolls around in my soul, that’s been painstakingly sutured together time and time again. I have side-lined parts of myself, walled off the fractured sections of my identity, to make this experience easier.

It does feel like something is shifting within me. I feel an urge to understand and crystallise these feelings, hungry to give them shape, because to articulate it is to begin to understand it. Maybe then I’ll finally arrive at what I’m looking for.

Here and now, in a draughty December, I come up for air. I come up to think. I come up to dream. I come up to reactivate that certain spark of myself which only seems to ignite outside the scheme’s boundaries. I come to plant seeds at a time when I feel like the scheme is burying me most.

I came here to feel connected. I leave here feeling more broken and alone.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

I’ve spent much time recently trying to catch my breath. All of this is hard. It’s hard to keep going out into the scheme, a place adept at chasing us away from our feelings. I am angry, hopeless, and bursting — all at the same time — in this place of broken spirits, hollow rituals, and lost futures. It’s exhausting, frankly. The scheme says nothing of joy, legacy, or compassion.

It’s difficult to understand the twists and turns of my sadness right now. But the thing I keep close is that it didn’t have to be this way. It just didn’t, and we should be collectively and righteously furious about that.

Navigating the valley of despair

I have spent a fair portion of the scheme in a constant, low-to-high grade state of stress. There is little understanding or acknowledgment of the physical and psychological effects of the scheme, that it has a lasting impact in intentional and unintentional ways. Trauma seems to seep through every core of my being. Even if the scars aren’t visible, they still hurt, don’t they?

I feel an alarming and unexpected need for solitude, to pull back from just about everything and re-evaluate. I feel discombobulated and bewildered, working through layers of bittersweetness, anxiousness, and anger. I feel dehumanised by my time here. This brokenness has created new grief for me, but it’s also exacerbated old ones. There is no space for fragility, no accounting for rest and recuperation.

I compartmentalised the stress and ongoing trauma, flattening it into something survivable. I minimised the stress and anxiety and trauma despite knowing I feel these things deeply. I stayed. I swam in that survival stress for months on end. I slept in it. I swallowed it in gulps. I lived through it. And I told myself stories of resilience — because what other choice did I have.

I recite all of this to remind myself that I lived through it. I will spend years dwelling on what I went through here. And years trying to get over it. Eventually, I will work through it, slowly getting reacquainted with myself. I will make my own feelings, so often submerged, into something palpable. I will start thinking about these experiences, and what sort of work is necessary for repair, before it starts erupting all over my future work relationships and life without warning.

But it’s okay that I’m not there, not quite yet.

We will make you ours

It is not inclusion if you invite people into a space you are unwilling to change. — Dr Muna Abdi

I can no longer bring myself to participate fully, to try hard to be a ‘success’. I feel shamed into making at least half an effort to fight my own rebelliousness. But my rebelliousness is too strong. I refuse to be categorised and to not notice categorisation happening. And I feel relieved that I am not completely broken yet, that I still have some persistence and intrinsic motivation in me. But what are the consequences of resisting, of my refusal to participate?

There are penalties for complexity, ambiguity, variation, intuition, and mystery — for anything the scheme may not recognise. This is a place with all the messiness of humanity scooped out, where predictable moves are the ones we’re taught or conditioned to believe are the correct ones. We pay too much attention to the most confident voices here — and too little attention to the most thoughtful, complex thinkers.

Quite a few people have messaged me to tell me how brave I am for openly writing about my experiences, that there is beauty and courage in my writing. I want to say that I am not brave, nor bold for that matter. I confess that I seek others out because I am lonely and unsure in my rebellion. I am advocating for who’s being left behind, whose voices aren’t there, and for whom this space may not be safe for. I am able to speak up and work for change. Because I know that whilst we are in the same space, we simply don’t have the same access.

I know that speaking openly is going to cost me something. Perhaps my work or social standing, or maybe even my sense of safety. What is not often mentioned is that you must be willing to make a sacrifice to change things. And sometimes that’s hard — for real advocacy and comfort rarely go hand in hand.

The struggle to be human

Taking part in this leadership scheme is an offer that is difficult to turn down. The invitation signals career opportunities for the invited. Many join for the networking and the temporary or permanent ‘ticket’ to Senior Civil Service. It is a badge that requires some effort to acquire and usually costs those subject to it more than they are aware of or willing to pay.

The scheme is deliberately, if only semi-consciously, operating in a highly intensive fashion at the participatory level — the deepest (and least acknowledged) level of UK Civil Service knowledge (thank youCarla Groom!). This is what we call the ‘self.’ It is designed to change people, to take away your ‘self’ and replace it with something new.

You see, the scheme makes its demands — it wants you to convert, heart and soul. You are shown all the ways in which the system is inequitable and given the valuable knowledge of how to navigate an unlevel playing field. You will be implicitly and explicitly promoted. In return, there is a reward for compliance: you need to demonstrate how committed you are, to conform to the norms and maintain harmony. And being good would mean a prestigious, secure place in the Senior Civil Service.

So how do I become a senior leader with my ‘self’ still intact?

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding

We need leaders who seek to make themselves less important in service of a collective. — Jimmy Paul

We really need to talk about the UK Civil Service’s superiority complex. The notion that, somehow, we are better, cleverer, more important than the parts of public service. We’re not.

We really have no idea what we’re missing. Our arrogance and disdain for the public sector shows real ignorance. The life changing, reimagining, outcomes-shifting work happens at locality level. If only we realised how much more sophisticated their thinking is than our own. That they have bucket loads of wisdom, imagination, and determination — and those things are important currencies, as vital as the credibility and trust that is so valued in the UK Civil Service. We have so much to learn from the ways and means they have navigated ambiguity and complexity through extended, overlapping and (semi)permanent crises.

But how would we know this? We’ve become insular in how we operate. The scheme really emphasises the importance of showing ‘grip,’ seeking quick simple answers to complex problems. This promotes sharp elbows and individualism within narrow, departmental silos over the collaboration sorely needed to tackle cross-cutting problems. I found the lack of conversation around the mismatch of structure, incentives, and culture to be jarring.

Brilliant people with real expertise in their domain are fewer and more diffuse than we need right now. So, we need to ask ourselves: what are the kinds of civil servants we want? If we want diverse, adaptive, and effective senior leaders, then we won’t get that here. We must not just value evidence, expertise, and longer-term thinking, but also character and values, too. We need boldness, curiosity, openness, humility, and the bravery to make uncomfortable decisions, fast. We need a better relationship with place.

Our future is not fixed. But what are we prepared to do to guide it?

We are the ones we have been waiting for

To speak is still a bold act. These blog posts should never have been needed. And yet, here we are. Maybe that’s just how things are now. The status quo is so intense — I wonder what it will take for us to actually act.

Nothing about the Future Leader Scheme became her like the leaving of it. I am still pretty raw from this soul-demonishing experience. There were too few waypoints to rest and recuperate. The world as I know it is not coming back.

We get the senior leaders we deserve. In the words of Stefan Czerniawski, the chances of ending up with good leadership — which is supposed to be the point of all this — would be enhanced if there were recognition of what these schemes are actually doing. This makes clarity of intent simultaneously essential and seemingly somewhat impossible.

Maybe the first step is seeing that there is a system at all.

Looking for balance on the Future Leaders Scheme

Remembering what it felt like when it felt the worst

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I’m ready to talk now. I wasn’t before. But I’m ready now.

I can’t help but feel the pull of something different, something more village minded and deserving of my time. I have an interest in finding out what makes others tick, what gifts they have to share, and what hopes they have for the future.

Instead, I’m constantly trying to put together the many pieces of this story that are unfolding. The road has been challenging and the bumps often navigated alone. Perhaps there are things that are only understood retrospectively when many years have passed, and the story has ended.

For now, while the story continues, the only thing I can do is tell it as it develops, bifurcates, and knots around itself. And it must be told many times, in many different words, and from many different angles, before anything can be understood.

So, here goes.

——

The third module consisted of:

• day 1 and day 2 — the skills to operate in complex environments, using influence and political awareness to achieve results for yourself and your teams.

The problem with trying to tell this story is that it has no beginning, middle, or end. Why did you apply to the scheme? Perhaps no one knows the real answer. Why did you come? Sometimes I ask myself the same question. I don’t have an answer yet.

How do I explain that it is not inspiration that drives me to tell this story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do I say: No, I do not find inspiration here, in a place that is broken, that somehow I am now a part of, so I am also broken with it. How do I say: I feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and I’m trying to figure out how to do something healthy with that. How do I say: I’m so tired of the toll that this psychological storm is taking on me, of grappling with the terrifying prospect of lasting wounds and scars.

How do I say that?

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

Writing before about the “double bind” of disruptors or changemakers, and now we’re going to add a new wrinkle to this whole ordeal: the “Hawthorne effect.” What’s that, you ask? Good question.

The Hawthorne effect is “when individuals modify or improve their behaviour in response to being observed i.e., by superiors.” The scheme continues to set up lessons on observation changing behaviour and engaging in herd behaviour (known as the “bandwagon effect”).

Whilst the Hawthorne effect (and the true meaning of it) is contested, it unexpectedly shows up on the scheme. It also demonstrates that a lot of people can follow down the garden path without ever looking too closely at how they got there (which is what happened with the “Hawthorne effect” study).

We think leaders in the UK Civil Service should critically think for themselves. They should be creative, effective, and independent. Leaders should offer solutions, weigh in on everything, and plough ahead with doing all the things. The tendency to gather around the group is overwhelmingly strong:“If everyone is doing it, then I should too.”

But if someone seeking a leadership role uses their head when carrying out their duties — questioning, debating, setting their own path, never blindly following others — then we react negatively. We perceive them as being “troublemakers,” “disruptors,” and “unreasonable rule breakers” because they aren’t following the “culture script.” They may have some wins but will also more than likely get in trouble, leaving them exposed and vulnerable. We really want our leaders to follow orders without questioning, for bandwagons to take over.

The last paragraph of the brief (below) illustrates to those on a scheme that you should only attempt to do good things if you can be confident the Permanent Secretary is watching. Act differently if you know you are being observed: doing good things is being mentally traded against career progression.

“Your Permanent Secretary is watching events closely, and relying upon you to deliver this. SCS positions negotiating globally are available, and success in this venture would certainly be recognised for the individuals involved.” Credit: Coventry University.

The pressure to conform and the power of social influence is especially prevalent here. It is a place that values collegiality and amiability. You see, civil servants look to their peers to obtain guidance about the proper behaviour should be. It’s easy to assume that others have a better grasp of what to do in a given situation. And the feeling of belonging to a reinforcing collective is a seductive one. Not only does this enhance certain voices, but it can also minimise the variety of perspectives that are brought to the table.

There are dilemmas, traps, and repercussions for going against the norm in the UK Civil Service. It is much simpler to go along with what everyone else is doing, to play the game really well by following a misplaced faith in the “wisdom of the crowd.” But the UK Civil Service “crowd” isn’t always wise, and it isn’t always right. It’s difficult to tide over the noise and have some independence of thinking, to stand out amongst the crowd.‘Be true to yourself’: well, that can be downright perilous.

So, yes, worry about the bandwagons. Maybe it’s time to get off.

Navigating the labyrinth

The scheme is a ceaseless process of transition — a long, invisible, non-linear process. I’ve stayed here long enough to observe that once you’re here, you’re ready to give (almost) everything to stay and play a part in this great theatre of belonging. Play the game and the Senior Civil Service beckons: no matter the cost, you will give everything for this. Perhaps you will never want to be your former self again for there are too many things that ground you to this new life.

The scheme provides a means to subtly use an existing network and resources to navigate the system, thriving on word of mouth. Here, information circulates and is widely shared: from accessing the Senior Civil Service network, to positioning yourself for opportunities, to advocating for certain individuals to get into their next job. And it matters a lot where the message is overwhelmingly, “I want to develop the people that remind me of me.”

There are few signs and fewer people you can ask for assistance or directions, so it is easy to get lost. What awaits is a bewildering and often daunting reality, with little in the way of guidance to help you adapt. The scheme’s labyrinth architecture is, in a way, a replica of the UK Civil Service’s system. And, as in any labyrinth, some find their way out (or up) and some don’t. We’re not all in the same boat here, just the same storm.

If people are made a certain way in the UK Civil Service…then it’s probably on its leadership schemes. These spaces are where social pressures are most intense,subtle put downs at every turn, and the narrative is often shaped by the loudest or most confident voices in the room. We are often asked to question who makes the rules…but not to break the rules themselves: rock the boat (or make your superiors uncomfortable), you’ll leave or be asked to leave. I’ll admit that the ability to sit comfortably with the cognitive discord is one that evades me. The implication is clear though, this distress is your problem, not ours.

Goodbye to the 9 Box Grid, the fad that won’t die

We categorise people in the UK Civil Service. We put them into convenient boxes — those marked out with ‘talent’ and those without. The 9 Box Grid reminds us of the obvious truth that all people are not alike, but then claims that every person can fit neatly into one of 9 boxes. Of course, some brilliant people end up in the top right boxes and, by extension through the talent reviews, on the scheme. But we’ll never know who else could have been there, too.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been congratulated on attaining a rare place on a high potential scheme. It is the sprinkling of gold dust on the select few. And the ‘rest’? They’re typically excluded from these opportunities. This artificial and limiting classification reduces the attention paid to the qualities and potential of each individual. Preconceived notions of what people can do, and how they can grow and develop will keep things from happening, not make them happen. It is quite possibly one of the main reasons why we can end up with individualistic approaches which pit people against each other and a scarcity mindset that only ‘one’ person can be at the top.

I find it impossible to fit myself neatly into the boxes provided for me on the scheme. I feel reduced to just one or a few characteristics of who I am, with the rest of my spirit ignored. I’m too niche and disruptive. I don’t feel the need to have to be the type of person I’m artificially designated to be, to have a very specific version of ambition. And I don’t appreciate being put in a (badly labelled) box. Most of all, I find it isolating to sit amongst leadership where my own views run so counter cultural to the rest of the UK Civil Service.

When we label people, we end up limiting our curiosity about a person. It’s putting people into boxes that reduce them to labels, which limits our abilities to see them as much more than a label. What if we stopped putting people in contained boxes and acknowledged the variety of attributes that make them human?

But, perhaps, it’s not the boxes that are the problem. They’re simply a product of the culture, seen as a neutral and objective process. Fundamentally, there is little appetite for change: those that are products of a long-established leadership culture have been successful within the current system. It would go a long way to explain why so many are unwilling to change to a new game.

I’ve found that those who speak most about the power of curiosity, bravery, and boldness are the ones most resistant to the forces of change. The schemes teach talented people to play and persistently win the game, such that their own fate is tied to surviving within it. How many are really prepared to challenge that and bring about change?

Ambiguous grief is uncertain and hard to define

In the midst of the scheme, I have a longing for a place to which there is no return, an echo of something that can never be found, no longer exists, and can never be gone back to. Past Me was hopeful that some of the brittleness of the scheme’s spaces would soften. But Present Me is trying to reconcile herself to the idea that this is just the way things are now.

I have a bit of anxiety in naming this grief, and in grieving the various day to day losses on the scheme, that I might expose myself as not grateful enough and not fitting within the normative boundaries that have been so cleanly scripted for me. But I don’t have a script for this loss. I don’t know why these changes and ruptures feel so painful, but they do. How do I grieve a loss that I cannot even pinpoint?

How we start matters

To speak is still a bold act. The most important realities are often completely invisible to us (and will remain that way if we let them). In the words of Stefan Czerniawski, boldness has a price, sometimes a high one. But not boldness has a price too, which is in a different currency, but may convert to a still higher price.

I cannot escape the state of despondency or sense of doom in this place. The pain, the trauma, the grief — it’s all still there. I have the compulsion to talk about it, all of it, everything that was said and unsaid, all of the things I have to swallow or forcefully forget, the detailed tedium, the unspeakable exhaustion, the feeling that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing and yet have to show up and do it again.

I ask myself: What will I remember from this time, and how will I remember it? When the strange experience of enduring the Future Leaders Scheme coagulates into history, how will I tell that story? What will I focus on? And will I wash out all the raw, human stuff — the kind of stuff you’ll find in these blog posts — and leave only a clean record of key dates and facts?

Or will I carry with me the memory of something more? And will I use that memory to do good, and do better?

Deep fault lines on the Future Leaders Scheme

Experiencing emotions on uneven ground

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

I’m not ready to write about the third module of the Future Leaders Scheme yet. I watched it unfold in ways that I’m still processing. It was a fraught adventure involving camels, lemons, and an escape room. But more on that next time.

I’m going to write about letting chinks of daylight into this “inner sanctum” instead.

So, here goes.

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

I’m feeling somewhat out of sorts. The scheme was supposed to be the opportunity of a career: learning, the space and resources of an expert organisation, and a close-knit community all in one perfect package. That has always been the promise behind glossy brochures — the opportunity to find and craft our best selves.

Somewhere along the way, I realised that I was slipping. Parts of my experience on the scheme that I thought I had figured out felt like they were slipping. Like a lot of feelings, it manifested as a blob of amorphous unease. Everything was fine, but less so.

I find myself questioning why I’ve played the game of the Future Leaders Scheme so diligently. I think I lived with the realities of it because it made the rest of my experience feel manageable. But my time on it did not have to be that way.

I have struggled to connect, to find my place, to navigate this world I find myself in. The never-ending isolation of being brought into a space without anyone considering how I would fit. Now it’s just me swimming against the familiar tide of conformity, not realising how far the status quo had pulled me from the shores of disruption.

As my time on the scheme draws to close, I’m forced to sit with my own story of how things are going. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself for weeks, for months. It is so much to process — part of it is ambiguous grief, part of it is slow-motion trauma, and part of it is enduring exhaustion.

Writing and the scheme have become intertwined for me. Maybe it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself here, so I write instead. I document most things that happen — partly because I’m afraid of forgetting things. At the same time, there’s so much from my time here that I wish I could forget, but never will.

I have tried to articulate the corners of my unease through my blog posts. It has been a way for me to take all my tangled feelings and jumbled thoughts and make some sense of them. I wanted to share publicly because this is such a lonely experience, and because feelings are lonely, asking if others are familiar with the same sort of slipperiness.

It feels rebellious to share. I’m at my bravest and boldest when I press ‘publish.’ If I really thought about how many people were reading my words (and some of the real and perceived consequences), I think I’d struggle with more imposter syndrome baggage (than I already carry) and major writer’s block.

Even though many thousands of people have experienced the scheme, it is rarely openly spoken about. As I began to share my experiences, I have heard more and more from people who said they felt less alone in their struggles — either applying for the scheme, attending it, being in the aftermath of it, or in their daily work lives. Hearing other people’s stories, having people trust me with their innermost thoughts…now that’s a real privilege.

Reading lovely messages over the past year has made this experience bearable. I’m glad I put something on here, I wasn’t sure if I should. Knowing that my writing will reduce even a little bit of the obscurity out there around the Future Leaders Scheme makes it all worth it.

If not us, who? And if not now, when?

These are only parts of my experience. To speak is still a bold act and I’m reminded just how important working in the open is. I wonder when someone will warn me that writing about the scheme in this way will interfere with my professional career. What will happen if I have to choose between the two?

I think the best way to feel comfortable doing the scheme is to remember (or discover) your community. They’re a constant reminder of how to use the muscle of care — replenishing stores of energy, patience, and grace. It can be a very real antidote, I think, when oscillating between demoralisation at the intractability of public service and delight at its possibilities.

Marching to the beat of someone else’s drum on the Future Leaders Scheme

We don’t learn from experiences; we learn from reflecting on experiences

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader,

Here I am again, ready to pour my existential angst into another blog post. The Future Leaders Scheme evokes emotions in me that are difficult to convey. Navigating that and finding the words to describe what I am feeling but cannot name is hard.

When I started writing these blog posts, I wanted it to be a place where I could meander through my thoughts and ideas, bringing them together. I wanted to write about things that mattered and will continue to matter.

I don’t exactly recall how I began to write, only that it started off emotionally, the words pouring onto the page as I scribbled without aim or purpose. I just wanted to feel connected to something on the scheme. Writing has become central to both my thinking process and my mental health. It is a refuge for me as I feel constantly ill at ease with my surroundings.

So, here goes.

——

I am throwing all the “meaning in life” balls up in the air on the second module of the Future Leaders Scheme and it is taking a long time for them to land in any pattern that makes sense. The second module consisted of:

• day 1 — providing tools and techniques that can be used to help teams and people develop; and,

• day 2 — helping to understand change, the impacts upon yourself and those around you, and how to create an environment that is inclusive.

I am quickly learning to understand the rules of the world I’m inhabiting on the scheme, mastering the art of learned behaviour and conditioned responses. This has become a sort of personalised social ethnography experiment. In writing these blog posts I hope to break down some of the barriers for others, to avoid passing on the burden of understanding a world deliberately obscure.

I do know that the question that routinely comes up for me, ‘How did the scheme get like this?,’ still has plenty of mileage. Is there some ostensible purpose to all this? Because it has often felt like a combination of outdated thinking, conformist social pressures, and self-perpetuation for doing more of the same. The system is what the system does: if we’ve always done what we’ve done, then we’ll always get what we’ve got.

I am on a collision course with a model of development that is centrally embedded and deeply held across the UK Civil Service. Is it heresy to speak against it? Where are the places more energetic, promising, compassionate, and bold than anything we’ve seen before? And why is it not here?

——

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone. Before we start, I will say a few things.

‘Be true to yourself’ continues to come up frequently. The scheme couldn’t have set up lessons on the “double bind” of disruptors or changemakers any better if they had tried.

The “double bind” refers to impossible standards for, in this case, disruptors or changemakers. We think leaders should be open, authentic, and true to themselves. They should have growth and take risks. They should be, in essence, human.

But if someone seeking a leadership role demonstrates too much honesty, vulnerability, and autonomy, then we react negatively. We regard them as ‘disruptive,’ ‘self-governing,’ and ‘bold.’ The dichotomy of “trust and autonomy” training whilst the organisations to which people belong are still structured around “control and compliance.” Autonomy is turned into a commandment: “Be autonomous (and obey)!”

This paradoxical injunction places a double bind on people, exacerbating emotionally distressing tensions, especially if constantly implied (as is generally the case on the scheme). Such a dilemma confronts people to the fact that a successful response to one request will result in a failed response to the other, and vice versa. There will be no way to be perceived right, no matter how one reacts, making it difficult to respond to and resist. You are continually judged against a yardstick you cannot see.

It is tricky to solve the underlying dilemma. You see, there are costs to non-conformity: civil servants assiduously police the boundaries of acceptable thought and behaviour. It’s exceedingly difficult to be non-conformist on your own in places where it’s not welcome, requiring strength of character of epic proportions. It’s harder still, amidst the crossfire hurricane of influence, to think and act for yourself. In essence, to be you.

Whilst there certainly are people there (and across the UK Civil Service) that think and act differently, there are few incentives and many penalties for rocking the boat.Because of this, and much more, many on the scheme appear to be cut from the same cognitive cloth — which makes being a challenging voice a lonely experience.

So, disruptors or changemakers must walk an impossible line between showing authenticity and staying acceptable to the system (by monitoring their behaviour) if they pursue a leadership position.

The “double bind” appears deeply ingrained in our psyches and cultures in the UK Civil Service. I don’t think we’ll stop perceiving disruptors or changemakers in this way anytime soon. But perhaps we can make progress if we expand our standards for leadership. After all, organisations with too much imitation are liable to decay and degenerate, because they stop creating, thinking, and innovating.

From safety into the storm

For me, the scheme was about learning — in a genuinely psychologically safe and therapeutic space — how to be my true, genuine, authentic self. How to be truly known to other people. How to truly be with other people. I wanted to make the experience different through the way in which it was done in relationship, in community, together as a group.

I craved that invisible weight to keep me grounded, an informal parallel system of support in which people share resources, time, and of themselves to help each other out. It is an opportunity to examine connections — how things are bundled together — to challenge convention and conviction.

I wanted gratitude and appreciation of beautiful moments, coupled with the bittersweet realisation that they are only temporary. I wanted to be hopeful, even if I wasn’t sure what to hope for. I wanted to reaffirm my identity before deconstructing it.

Instead, it has been a bumpy road to find my sense of self in an eerie, precarious, and unstable place. I have felt fragile, anxious, uncertain, and restless. I am not in the right relationship with myself here. I wonder, is this the place that will scar me, but also plant the seeds of who I am tomorrow?

As I travel this pathway, I am continually defining myself to others, even though I am not sure who I am here. If I don’t know who I am, what hope do others have of knowing me?

I have a sense the scheme is entirely unsuited to responding to the world we live in; it cannot rise to the challenge and smothers any action. Something in me has shifted. I am living what feels like the final stage of grief: things cannot get better here.

Navigating the road ahead together

My sense of urgency that we need to do something differently has increased. Systemic problems seem to present themselves with increasing urgency, converging in multiple, all-encompassing crises. We cannot avoid the consequences of this reality. We won’t meet the challenges of our tomorrows with the same approaches of today.

Surely the aim of this all is to invent, and reinvent, meaning and purpose? To enable people to think and say things they never had before. It’s hard work — much of the time it’s painful and, sometimes, it’s also joyful. We must focus on nurturing the relationships we have with one another and bridge building. But this work is especially challenging in a place that doesn’t support the task of meaning-making and offers few opportunities for cultivation of purpose with others.

The stories we tell ourselves about the scheme can easily hook us in, leaving us hung up on unexamined ideas. Existing models and frameworks are taught exactly as they are, with the expectation it will yield a different ‘future leadership.’ I’ve been wondering if there are models and frameworks for future ways of leading, or whether they are being developed right now:

• If the models are being developed right now, then they cannot be taught; or,

• Where the models exist, then perhaps it’s the combinations for the future that don’t.

So, perhaps the conversations should centre around how the models and frameworks are relevant to the content and the group? If this is the case, then the questions may be:

• How can we, as a group, embody today the future we’re hoping to create?

• How can we foster humans thriving together?

• What kind of a person do I need to become, to occupy the future I’m dreaming of?

We need something new but are all hoping someone else will develop something different. What is to be done now? What real or perceived barriers are preventing us doing it? It was strange to see how deeply uncomfortable breaking the rules made some people, how little agency they thought they had.

To build better futures, we need to learn to think, learn, and build in new ways. The opportunity for this lies in edgelands, in transitional and liminal spaces; it rarely lies in the known. Communities are a place to practice the future, at least for me. They are a way to model the future we hope to create right here, right now, in small, tangible ways.

The sense of connection

People are so extraordinary, particularly if you find space to listen to them. Conversations full of curiosity delight me. I struggle with conversations about the mundane aspects of life (mundane as defined by me of course). I am realising that I bring my own motivations, hopes, values, but also fears, anxieties, traumas, biases, and blind spots into the scheme. I have started to see and slowly accept the different contradictory parts of the complexity of being me and to be much more accepting of those contradictory parts in others.

I’ve been reflecting on how my shadow side shows up in different contexts, its impact on others, and the conditions that I’m creating in the UK Civil Service. Values I had held close to me now seemed to have a shadow side: generosity could be seen by others as a covert power move by me; honesty and integrity could be ill timed in their expression and received as stab wounds by others;and the desire to help others seemed to be a way for me to avoid shadow sides of myself. I am coming to have empathy with the less desirable parts of myself and my history while also having more empathy for others and theirs.

I can’t tell you how much more complex, grounded, relaxed, joyful, alive I am outside the scheme’s boundaries than inside it. This realisation comes with genuinely anxious realities: to be that person in the scheme, I have to risk things, I have to take chances. I have to open up to people. I would have to let myself be seen by other people, whether I am ready or not.

The real, true, vibrant, colourful, richly emotive version of myself is in there somewhere. It just needs slowly coaxing out. I’m writing this because I also don’t want anyone else to live their life on the scheme under the impression that the structured, paper-thin version of themselves that they have had to create to be present there is the real one. It’s not.

If not now, when?

These are only parts of my experience. To speak is still a bold act and I’m reminded just how important working in the open is.

I no longer have solid plans for the scheme other than continuing to allow my curiosity to guide me. I want to continue to challenge myself and others to figure out ways to be better stewards of the community — even when it’s hard, uncomfortable, or tedious. I’m reminded to be more provocative, less diplomatic (thank you Sam Villis!). I now know that being vulnerable can be a strength and being strong can leave me vulnerable.

I have been living in a different world for a while, but the bigger, bleaker one on the scheme keeps breaking back in. I feel both sad and, suddenly, homesick. It’s more than a longing — I’ve lost something. I’m sure I’ve got this all wrong and there’s a silver lining to my existential misgivings that has the rare potential to lift me up to the heights of beatific excellence. But, somehow, I doubt it.

What if we developed organisational ecologists in the Civil Service?

Looking at organisations through a different lens

This is the first post in a two part series where I’m trying to understand how ecology might be used as an approach for change work in government. This first post is about my reflections of seeking to cultivate change in the UK Civil Service and the narratives that surround it.

——

Hello, dear reader,

These blog posts have taken a long time to write. Finding the words for them has been difficult. What I am trying to say feels as if it is at the edge of what our language can do, where it is for things we have been able to intuit but not name.

So, I’m going to share where I’ve been thinking about and see where we get to, together.

Connecting between present actions and future outcomes

Since co-authoring a blog post series on change work in government with DavidBuck and Clare Moran, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of public service, reimagining what it will look like and how people will experience it. About what it takes to make difficult and meaningful things happen. Why it’s hard, exhausting, and incredibly rewarding to make progress. What kinds of values, behaviours, qualities, skills, and practices can help catalyse evolutionary change in the UK Civil Service (or anywhere else). With a real lack of clarity of what is to come, the future is both unknown and full of possibility.

The UK Civil Service is a highly relational environment — it is where new friendships happen, where existing relationships deepen, where professional opportunities occur, and where we learn new things about ourselves. But, despite people’s best efforts, we still seem far away from a relational model of public service, where we place the initiative with people and those delivering the services, and sensible, adaptive public policy. Where this exists in public service, for example on farming reforms, it is a tiny proportion of what happens in government. Progress here is being made despite the system, not because of the system.

It seems like it’s rare for deep knowledge or expertise in a particular area to be encouraged and valued in the UK Civil Service. Often this is met with complete bemusement, indifference, or actively discouraged. I don’t know why that is, given how much power, possibility, and magic making there is in relational work in public service, those practising more systemic ways of doing and being. They show us glimpses of what happens when we change what we do, rather than just the shape of our organisations.

The UK Civil Service values intellect, ingenuity in solving tricky problems, the pragmatism and deftness “to turn on a dime,” and the ability to manage people competently. These are all necessary qualities, and it would undermine our ability to enable governments to deliver on their aspirations if you don’t see these qualities in clear abundance. But I don’t think that’s sufficient if you want to respond to 21st century challenges. By sticking to all these qualities all the time, it is the surest and safest thing to keep the plates spinning, but it is the furthest possible thing away from doing the real, messy, challenging change work in government.

Navigating complex change is both very hard and very important. And I don’t think you can transform organisations without a healthy amount of doing things differently. We also need boldness, openness, humility, and the bravery to make uncomfortable decisions, fast.

For that, we must also value the qualities from other disciplines such as ecology, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, systems thinking, linguistics, and human geography — these are the curators, systems convenors, network weavers, and much more. We need many more of these people in public service, who often sit across a few disciples and build shared languages and spot patterns that others don’t. It still amazes me how undervalued they are.

History casts a long shadow

Often the UK Civil Service can feel distant, confusing, and obtuse to those that interact with it (in any capacity). Because the UK Civil Service is not really a singular ‘thing.’ It is a collection of diverse organisations with differing cultures, priorities, and processes that have developed over time and govern each one. It has structural complexity, coupled with complexity of problems and people, which makes the design of organisational structures for people to work within challenging, let alone any changes to how we work within them.

From the inside, the history of how things have developed over time is of importance to understanding the behaviours of the system (for example, see the sanctity of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms). The new is unavoidably in relationship with the old, and the actions and decisions of the past inform and constrain our present and future. If we are to get to where we might want to go, we must understand where we are starting from. So, how can we generate a nuanced conversation about how we organise ourselves to achieve big things, like social justice, without dismissing everything that has come before?

You see, the trajectory of a complex system depends on the path it has followed to that moment. The shape of this path, however, is never predetermined. It’s influenced by:

• history and narratives — the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours;

• path dependence — the notion that present actions taken at an earlier point in time can set in motion developments that can affect future outcomes, i.e. what has occurred in the past persists, even if not visible on the surface; and,

• initial conditions — which are specific contextual conditions (i.e. organisational structure) at the time of founding imprint upon organisational processes at later stages and, eventually, amount to a replicated pattern.

The shape of this path may illustrate how differently people have thought about and related to the world around them, opening up spaces of critical and imaginative possibility for our own times. ‘The single-tier pension: a simple foundation for saving’ is a recent example of history-conscious, transformative policy of state pension reform.

There is no simple, easy, revolutionary route here. We are living in times when we need radical solutions to big problems. We face a multitude of complex challenges — climate change, systemic inequalities, pandemics — that require us to embrace the complexity and ambiguity in our work in government. Whilst the nature of some of the challenges we face is known, it is how we respond to them differently to before that is unknown.

We need a different approach to change — and it is New Local’s ‘A Community-Powered NHS’ report, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s ‘New Frontiers in Funding, Philanthropy and Investment’, and others that are paving a way forward. It is within this context that we must attend to the health of our organisations and the relationships between communities and partners. First we shape our organisations, then our organisations shape us.

Framing our thinking in terms of narratives

Language is the process by which things and concepts acquire meaning. It helps us to weave stories about relationships, organisations, and communities, building bridges across differences. This shapes how we understand, interact with, and perpetuate complex systems around us.

But our use of language has limitations, both in form and expression. What we see in front of us is shaped by the language we use. As we cannot know or comprehend complex systems in its totality, because they are dynamic, messy, and ambiguous, we attempt to make use of the language we already have. We use metaphors and abstractions to muddle through. The difficulty here is that things and concepts acquire meaning differently, in real time, depending on who (or what) is interacting with or relating to them.

“The stories we tell ourselves about the world are always a mashup of different ways of making sense of it: scientific, intuitive, linear, mystic, spiritual, embodies. This is never pretty.” Sam Rye and Luke Craven’s recent blogs on language, metaphors, and meaning are particularly relevant, see here and here.

I like to imagine the complex social networks in the UK Civil Service — where individuals and groups are connected to others — are filled with different people who thrive in different niches. Some thrive in networks, others focus on deep relationships with a few others, and some support the relational world around them. And rather than viewing these linearly — in line with conventional management discourse about organisations — we may instead view them ecologically. One of the things this gives us is interdependence, a key concept for understanding complex systems, especially living ones.

Presently, it is the prevalence of the languages of science and engineering that shapes what we see. In attempting to define how things work in a system, these languages tend to lose the essence of interdependence, the ecological aspect that all things are connected. Though the disciplines of science and engineering themselves have much to offer, using metaphors from these fields are not always conducive to supporting the mindsets needed to embrace complexity and systems practice because of the way they direct and constrain our thinking.

This is where we can turn to new languages i.e. ecoliteracy, or return to ancient or indigenous languages, knowledge, and wisdom, as more interactive forms of expression to help us make some sense of the complex systems (and our experiences of them). What these wisdom traditions all point to is our deep interrelatedness with each other and with all of life.

It is not a rejection of the languages of science and engineering in favour of ancient or Indigenous languages, or vice versa, but a more thoughtful and considered blending of the two. This may help us explore some of the fundamental lessons we can learn from ecologies and how they might inform some guiding questions for change work. For example, the Centre for Ecoliteracy in California has developed a school ecoliteracy curriculum, where students learn maths, ecology, and systems thinking while growing healthy food. They have defined ecological principles that can help us frame questions we might want to ask in the design for systems change.

The language we use and the way we speak with each other provides clues as to the prevalent organisational metaphors and the cultural norms at play. The language of change, both in form and expression, is imprecise. However, we still tend to seek established frameworks, models, and processes as a way to help us work differently in public service. It is easier to point to a model and apply it in a different context than growing desired practices and help others grow theirs. But there is no magic bullet, no solutions to complex challenges — there are simply better or worse responses. It’s about finding the commonality in our narratives whilst acknowledging the differences in our perspectives.

Building capacity for embracing uncertainty, ambiguity, and emergence

The conventional form of organisation is a hierarchy, for example, command-and-control or top-down. This is where decision-making is sequestered in the upper tier of tightly managed management ranks and bureaucratic systems of control are the norm. At the other end of organisational forms is the heterarchy, for example, command of teams or team of teams. The difference between the two is whether you consider organisations as:

• a set of linear processes to be optimised for speed and efficiency; or,

• an ecology (a circular network of interdependent competing and cooperating organisms) from which the capacity for resilience may emerge when the conditions are right.

In a heterarchy, no one individual is ‘in charge’ of the organisation. It is not optimised to some defined end state, but instead, based on many weak ties linking the participants (as opposed to a fewer number of strong ties). People make their own decisions, create alliances and coalitions across differences, and develop the ability to cope with uncertainty. The initiative is back with them.

What happens in complex systems is that interactions happen in multiple, simultaneous, and nonlinear ways. UK Civil Service organisations are no exception to this. They are a network of circles with non-linear feedback systems, and not the map of linear processes we think they are (or attempt to impose on them). Both organisation and environment change as they influence each other through learning and adaptive behaviours. In this sense, organisations have collective means of adapting to environmental situations. So rather than attempting to reform these organisations to a new desired form, perhaps we can create the conditions where self-willed organisations are developed, based on ecological and social insights.

We are only just beginning to learn how to ask better questions as we become aware of the structures, patterns of activity, normative order, and relationships we have so far failed to pay attention to. Adopting ecological (and other) approaches may reveal the interactions and patterns that ordinarily escape our notice, making it more conducive to supporting our ability to think and act in complexity-friendly ways. We can use these to bring a fresh perspective to the most difficult, complex, and stubborn problems. It may help us hold multiple, often competing, ways of making sense of things and, in turn, organising ourselves.

Making choices in a radically uncertain world

We need to take the time to understand why things are the way they are and how the system actually works. The actual ‘work’ is soul deep, in how we live the questions. Our organisations are only going to be different if we’re willing to grow. There is much to learn from nature’s wisdom about how to organise ourselves. We can use nature’s own design principles to reimagine the basis of our organisations. This is both a new (e.g. living systems theories) and ancient idea (e.g. Indigenous thinking).

These are my wanderings of discovery — one where I’ve tried to simplify complex and conceptual material in a way to be able to say something. I’ve started somewhere, in the hope that, from this, more sophisticated framing, questions, and insights will follow.

Delight and dissonance on the Future Leaders Scheme

It is hard to learn to love this unfolding story of mine.

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

Hello dear reader, I’m so happy you’ve arrived.

This piece is more raw, less crafted, from the heart. It turned out to be tricky to write since it required a delicate balancing act of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I feel like I’m wandering around with a blindfold on. It was as if I was waiting for a single ray of light (like a warm hello) to dispel the despondency. The best thing I can do right now is, when the moments of joy come (mostly coffee and cake-related), to allow myself to feel them deeply.

A path to surviving the scheme comes in and out of focus in front of my eyes. And I’m conscious that if I have been defined by my role in this struggle, and that struggle ends, then who am I? Yes, I think I will write about that, too.

So, here goes.

——

I have been working overtime to process the experience of the first module for the Future Leaders Scheme, the tension building up and up. The first module consisted of:

• day 1 — we thought about how leadership is defined and considered what it means to be a leader in the 21st century; and,

• day 2 — we participated in action learning sets and talked through our issue for resolution in small groups.

I felt fragile during the two days. Concerns ran rampant in my mind: How hard will it be for me to be there? Can I sustain my energy long enough to make it through the end of the day and keep up with the group? What can I do that will induce reflection? Will we be able to engage in deep dialogue and learn as a collective? The overwhelm was real. I kept saying to myself, “I’m fine. I’m good(-ish).” I was in the routine and the flow of the sessions. But there were large chunks of time where I was not exactly fine. Things weren’t going well, they weren’t even really going good.

I could find very little of me here. As an intrepid explorer, I found it to be akin to standing at the top of a hill with a storm blowing in my face. So, I found myself retreating inward, isolating as a form of protection, but also a deepening of a retreat into my own cocoon of comfort. The more I didn’t have to relate to the scheme, the more peaceful I began to feel. When the first module finished, I felt a sense of relief that I no longer had to be there exhausting myself with thin ties, loose connections, and paradoxes. Truth is, I have found myself in a bit of a dark spot when I spend time ruminating on this. I am sensitive to the scheme and the tower of illusion that surrounds it. I find myself flooding internally with emotion that seems to have nowhere to go. I feel I have less power to change the scheme surrounding me than the scheme has to shape me.

I have felt the shifting tides between my dissonance and need for connection, both a struggler and a survivor of the scheme. Maybe it’s assumed that I should endure, that I’m obligated to go the distance with it. I remind myself that I can leave (since I have that privilege), accept it, adapt to survive it, stew on it, or get creative and work to shift it. I feel grief for what I have lost, and for what I never had but know in my bones must exist. Will the Future Leaders Scheme continue to be the place that fleetingly delights and lingeringly devastates me in (un)equal measure?

It’s hard for me to engage with the scheme in a way that is constructive. And, as expressed through my blog posts, another larger part of me sees immense potential in the scheme — in relationships, the interconnectedness of all things, and meaning-making. It could be an energetic holding space, both safe and brave, where conversations of possibility, dissent, and commitment allow people to see themselves more clearly and grow as a result of how they are being held.

The despondency I felt at the first module reminded me to reflect and that I value demystifying these kinds of activities. I’m going to continue to write about what happens on the Future Leaders Scheme, if only to help me work through my existential angst.

——

Taking the time to reflect and take stock recently has enabled me to see some patterns and themes which have shown up in many different ways for me during the first module. Some themes I am following, and others emerge to me without really noticing, until I stop and pay attention to the pattern. I can only speak from my experience. The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone. Before we start, I will say a few things.

I’ve been contemplating the complex contradictions of the scheme. There is so much of being part of it that feels difficult to let these contradictions co-exist. I’m being told to be myself…whilst being given advice about how to be. How do I be myself in a place trying to change me into someone else?

The narrative often collapsed down to two things: What can I tell you to do? And where can I tell you to go? There was much talk about building a career through Cabinet Office / No 10 / HM Treasury and finding ‘champions’ to endorse you for roles. I think it’s consequential that most senior leaders in the UK Civil Service spend time in the ‘centre’ of government on the way up — and that they would advise this to others.But there is no ‘centre.’ It is only the centre in the eyes of the person viewing it. Perhaps, in these ‘between times,’ people are making sense of change by recreating familiar aspects of the old world within the new one. But I have a desire to carve my own way rather than be defined by the path set out for me— and I feel like I’m being pulled down by the riptide.

I sensed being together with others whilst also being completely alone. I found myself drifting, stuck somewhere between multiple groups and interconnected circles, trying to figure where and to whom to devote my time and how to apportion my cognitive and emotional energy. I have an innate desire to collaborate, and I’m being taken down a quite different path. There was an emphasis away from the collective, of approaching things together with wonder, inquiry, and delight, towards the individual. It comes with a focus on brand building, the veneer of personality, being ‘confidently uncertain,’ and the network aspects of all this. I wonder how I’m being ‘normalised.’ How are disruptors or changemakers welcome here?

I’m conscious that I’m an inescapably active part of creating the system — I’ve absorbed the assumptions and values within it. If I don’t plan for the relationships or frameworks I want, I’ll just reproduce and perpetuate the systems I’m seeking to shift. I wonder if I’m being developed to think of myself as an equal part of the wider system. Or has the scheme recruited people that see the UK Civil Service as the pinnacle of it?

These contradictions are hidden in plain view and rest beneath the surface, there are written and unwritten rules here. Imagine if we could talk as easily about this ‘invisible in-between’ as we do about the ‘things.’ I have spent time thinking about the tasks, facilitation, and enabling conditions. I know I am searching for a way for my brain to process and organise my experience on the scheme. But here’s the catch — it can’t help me survive in a hostile place like the Future Leaders Scheme.

Try as I might, I’m something of an outsider. I am not supposed to be here.

Breaking through constraints

“We don’t learn from experiences; we learn from reflecting on experiences” - John Dewey

Learning allows us to write and rewrite ourselves, to restructure our understanding of the world. There is a temptation to view it in a mechanical sense: of consistency and conformity. It’s easy to simplify people, and the way they learn, into a one-dimensional repeatable cut out. But in today’s context, we also need curious, challenging, supportive spaces, which we collectively care for. The challenge is to design learning that enables us to construct our own journeys again and again, allowing us to remain at least partially uncomfortable, not only with the unknown, but also with our own certainty.

I’ve been called ‘intellectually restless,’ in a state of constant curiosity and challenge. In return, I want to be constantly tested and pushed, so that I morph and twist and change. What we share of ourselves — the most personal and intimate stories and experiences — is equally as important as any material covered in the curriculum. There should be space created for this as part of the scaffolding and structure of the scheme.

So, what was I searching for? I wanted to spend time in a place so silent — working at a pace so slow — that I would be able to hear myself think. Where I could leave behind the familiarity, certainty, and convenience of old ideas in favour of exploring new ones, with all the friction and fear that brings. A place that opens doors to tenderness and possibilities to cherish and that I would be able to feel the rhythm and flow of discussion and reflection. Where the group navigates the paths between where they are when they arrive and where they want to be at the end. I wanted to stumble with others in finding new vocabulary with which to shape and share new thinking, to envision different futures. I wanted deep and poignant reminders of this — and so much more.

Instead, I found myself deeply struggling with being facilitated to agenda. There was often not enough time to step back and reflect, to find anchor points for effective meaning-making. It meant we missed chances to keep the work moving forward depending on how it is shifting in real time. Over time, I have learned to pay attention to natural rhythms in the room, to the energy of the group (and not the clock). So, for me, it is important that those facilitating can do the same, that they bring depth and sensitivity to the process. I felt unable to challenge the way things were — I am still reflecting on what prevented me.

Across the module, we were not encouraged to question the walls that surround us. What do we do when we do not know what to do next, but are under pressure to do something? What happens when we need to be bold and brave? Too often something becomes anything, and anything is something that we have done before. What would happen if we discovered our own power to act? Questions are more transforming than the answers. But I think that it is harder to leave a space to be filled where people add value through reflection and conversation than to provide a completed canvas.

It gets down to this: How are we going to be when we gather together? What would we need to be present to enable contribution? We’re strangers in a strange place on the scheme: how we choose to be together matters.

Belonging casts a deep shadow

I’ve been contemplating this thing called ‘belonging’ — it is a tricky idea, difficult for me to grasp. We tend to believe that it is important to ‘belong’ somewhere. But what is it exactly that we belong to? And by belonging do we gain something, and yet lose something else?

The scheme exists in different concentric cycles, with each cohort and intake having its own distinct micro-culture. This is an environment where social relationships emerge and are cultivated — knowledge is created and disseminated here. The boundaries of it exist equally in their fixity and fluidity; they are persistent, but porous. There is a tension of keeping things in while ensuring a secured, steady cycle of those who enter and those who exit.

To belong to the scheme, will it require me to conform, or behave, in certain ways? You see, I like being weird. I don’t feel the need to pretend I’m someone else just to fit the mould. I’ve found my community through One Team Gov and other related things, realising that there are an unusual set of people who make the world interesting, creative, and worth exploring. But I wonder how many people on the scheme are acting out the mould because they look around and see everybody else acting out the mould, because they have in turn looked around. How do we break the cycle and let people feel comfortable being themselves?

All these feelings are a reminder to me: just because you feel that you belong, does not mean that I do, and from the outside, you may never know.

Words can build bridges…and they can build walls

Language is powerful. The words we use to describe people and behaviours, and the way we use that language to frame, reveals so much about our attitudes and our values. It isn’t just about finding alternative words, but also about changing our practice.

We talk about personal branding a lot on the scheme, and I keep thinking about what “authenticity” really even is. And I’m reminded of “resilience.” Both words are used often without interrogating the challenges, problems, and structural issues people are routinely forced to confront. It idealises and normalises an individual’s capacity while also providing cover for not addressing the conditions that require resilience and authenticity.

There was also much talk about being true to yourself. However, we are not the same versions of ourselves in every space. There are private and public versions, each held in a different context. So, when we’re asked to be true to ourselves, what version of ourselves would that be and what narrative would we tell? Some parts of ourselves are hidden because we treasure them…others, because it’s unsafe to share. In that sense, authenticity is a risk, it comes at personal cost.

I’m a bit tired of being told to constantly posture and position myself as someone of interest. Whilst heroes make for compelling stories, it’s time for such narratives to shift. We exist in relationship with each other. It is together that we step into the unknown and grow our capability to take collective action amidst the complexities of leading in the 21st century. There are questions we cannot answer alone. So, in the words of the poet William Stafford, ‘it is time for all the heroes to go home.’

Radical interpretations

What is the means through which those of us who care about the whole community can create a future for ourselves that is not just an improvement, but one of a different nature from what we now have? - Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (2008)

Having been part of One Team Gov and other related things, I’ve seen the magic of weaving weird and wonderful relationships. Bringing people together in creative, generative ways energises and excites me. I’ve spent time thinking about how people’s energy to create things, their intrinsic motivation and excitement, is such a precious resource in community life, it drives everything. It is through people’s individual energy that things happen in groups…and there is infinite potential for the groups on the scheme. I want to find this with others there — fresh energy, new perspectives, and questing forward to be in service.

Why do I think any of this matters? Because there was an intense stirring in the depths of my soul: to wander, to break free, to create something different. There are horizons bigger than we see or feel in the moment — and these experiences can bridge to new destinations. The places to grapple with and reimagine what a UK Civil Service should look like start on its development schemes. It’s easy to forget that we once created the scheme; we can, therefore, also reimagine it. I’m wondering if others on the scheme also see imagination as a critical first step to new destinations.

By curating a space for dialogue and learning together, we can shine light on what’s possible and what’s needed to create the conditions for possibility. We could create more human, creative, and effective organisations. We could build the world we want to be in if this is truly the ‘Future’ Leaders Scheme. And then some interesting things might also happen.

Where to from here?

These are only parts of my experience. To speak is still a bold act and I’m reminded just how important working in the open is.

Today’s blog post has the messy parts — it poses more questions and fewer answers. All the while, I have been searching to do my deepest thinking with co-conspirators, whom I have not found (yet).

I am testing the boundaries of the scheme — either I change, or the environment is changed around me. I’m constantly negotiating with the need to resist and at the same time align with the templates that exist. In the process, I worry I will lose touch with myself. Perhaps it is inevitable that I might feel overwhelming loneliness and sadness through this time.

It is hard to learn to love this unfolding story of mine.

If values are the answer, then what was the question?

Module 1 of the Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) — Understanding Your Leadership Role

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

This blog post is being written as part of my coursework for the Module 1 of the Future Leaders Scheme that I will be studying for the next couple of years. I thought it was worth sharing — I found it interesting to write and good to think about what values are and for.

Module 1

The aim of module one is to begin an ongoing process of consciously and critically reviewing leadership practice and its impact. The first module focuses on you as a leader by:

identifying our leadership as it is now and the leader that we aspire to be in the future;

• critically evaluating our own practice;

• the context in which our leadership takes place;

• the factors that influence our choices as a leader and the impact that those choices have on ourselves and others i.e. our leadership shadow; and,

• the changes that we want to make and ways that we might put those into action.

The purpose of the pre-work is to begin the critical evaluation of ourselves, our organisations, and our organisational context. This is intended to help us deepen our understanding of our approach to leadership.

What are your core values and beliefs? What are most important to you, that help you find your way in dark times, and that provide you with a sense of purpose?

“Effective and authentic leadership requires a clear understanding of your own core values and beliefs and a strong sense of the behaviours that are in alignment with those values and beliefs. Values are principles or standards — they are not context dependent; they are based on what’s important to us and what we need to feel a sense of wellbeing. Beliefs are assumptions that we hold about the world and that we believe to be true — they are contextual and largely stem from our experience.” — Future Leaders Scheme, 2022

Pick your values. Stick to them. Everything else will follow. Once you know who you are, you can stop trying to be who you’re not. It doesn’t matter what your values are, you just need to them and be the best version of yourself that you can be. If you don’t make an effort to define your values, no one else will do it for you.

Sound familiar?

I’ve reflecting on the notion of ‘values,’ and the strength of feeling around them. I’ve been asked to state my values — and I’ve been given a long list to help me. Pick the one out that jumps at me? I’m struggling with that, and to describe exactly what my values are in ways more specific than general and subjective words like, ‘kindness.’ Well, they are all good words. But what do they mean, and who are they for?

Most people believe they hold ‘values’ and that their values are good. It is akin to choosing our own story and weaving everything that happens to you into one, coherent, infinitely extending thread — to make sense of, form, and tell a story bigger than ourselves. They’re a tapestry on which we can pin our many transformations. Values define our inner world, in some way or another, providing us with a sense of continuity. It is possible to identify others that do not share the ‘values’ we hold ourselves.

For me, values are internal, subjective, malleable— and crucially, they may change over time (as needs or demands change). They are shared through hope and language. This makes them elastic and fluid, based on perception (of words and behaviour), similar to beliefs and ideas. They expand and contract, are virtuous and imperfect, and important in expressing our individual beliefs and opinions. So, is it possible to use them meaningfully?

I’ve found myself mulling over how we might hold values in thought and action, and examine or live them honestly. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these questions (inspired by @julianstodd):

• Where do we find our values? Are they universal and eternal, or are they inherited and instilled?

• Are values something we need to be conscious of, to curate, and to clean out?

• What if values are not ‘real’? What if they are conjured up in the narrative of a moment?

• Where does they sit — head, heart, soul, or collectively within socially bonded structures?

• How do we hold them? Are they a basket, filter, foundation, or mirror?

• How do they directly or indirectly inform our action, if at all? What specific actions do we take to reach them, or the way in which we fail?

• How useful are they? How much impact do they have beyond the aspirational?

• What are the risks involved with living without values?

I think ‘values’ are important, that they are the driver of intent and action, held in stories and connected to moments. Maybe we should ask ourselves, “what is our personal relationship with ‘values?’ and how, and why, do we deviate our actions from them?” Otherwise, values appear to be a term often used that is little understood.

And if values are the answer, then what was the question?

What if we thought of leadership as…?

Module 1 of the Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) — Understanding Your Leadership Role

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants.

——

This blog post is being written as part of my coursework for the Module 1 of the Future Leaders Scheme that I will be studying for the next couple of years. I thought it was worth sharing — I found it interesting to write and good to think about what leadership is and for. It was useful to ask myself: Where does a thing come from (what is its history)? What role did it play previously? And what will it become after it is no longer useful to us?

Module 1

The aim of module one is to begin an ongoing process of consciously and critically reviewing leadership practice and its impact. The first module focuses on you as a leader by:

• identifying our leadership as it is now and the leader that we aspire to be in the future;

• critically evaluating our own practice;

• the context in which our leadership takes place;

• the factors that influence our choices as a leader and the impact that those choices have on ourselves and others i.e. our leadership shadow; and,

• the changes that we want to make and ways that we might put those into action.

The purpose of the pre-work is to begin the critical evaluation of ourselves, our organisations, and our organisational context. This is intended to help us deepen our understanding of our approach to leadership.

What image represents leadership for you?

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” - A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

What if we thought of leadership as a piece of paper?

When we set out on a journey, we start with a metaphorical blank piece of paper — you leave your imprint on it, and it will never be the same as it was before. It provides the starting point, with the unknown in front. And “the art of straying” means that to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of leaving the door open for the unknown.

If you look closely, you can also see all the places where other people have walked: they are going through the same field or ocean, but they are traveling on their own journeys, separate to yours. Just as our leadership journey is our own to direct and will leave its own mark on whatever we encounter, we can use the paper to shape other journeys, too.

The blank piece of paper is an invitation to start from the beginning and work out why, what, and how, together. This calls for an openness to the wisdom and perceptions of others about what is needed and how it will come into being. There are endless possibilities for what this piece of paper will become:

• Some will make a paper plane and watch it soar.

• Some will sketch a human body, thinking about how different parts of our anatomy are metaphors for leadership, empathy, curiosity, and advocacy.

• Some will craft a complicated 3D diagram to illustrate the interactions between empowerment and direction.

• Some will paint molecular clusters to show connectedness and teamwork.

• Some will create paper mache (papier-mâché) bricks to lay together to construct a foundation, showing collective strength and that it takes a village to collaborate.

• And others, they will make do with whatever is to hand to stitch together a patchwork that represents identity, community, openness, and belonging. For they recognise we are all building and changing simultaneously.

But, a blank piece of paper to hand may be a viable option if we were starting from scratch. That approach is no longer viable. History has both a weight and a presence — we’re not afforded a blank sheet of paper. We’re merely building upon what has passed, on the advances of those that came before us.

So there may now be scuff marks on the “blank piece of paper,” or it may be re-constructed into something else using fragments or left-overs of previous formations. Perhaps then we need to take the bricoleur’s line and start from where we are, improvising to remake old things to serve new purposes or constructing from whatever we have available. Whatever we construct of leadership is neither permanent nor final, but way-stations for people around us, who have other histories and potentials. One person’s configuration of it does not eliminate others. And all stand open to reinterpretation.

Ultimately, it is not the piece of paper that is important. It is that big questions that don’t necessarily require answers because the journey to answer them is sometimes more valuable than the destination.

——

Will proposing a blank, scuffed, worn piece of paper miss the entire point? Perhaps. But, everyone’s interpretations of this task will be diverse — and each person will see the value in their own expression of leadership and that of others. But, the real magic will be if, later on, we’re asked to redo the activity. If we’re given the time to draw our representations of leadership and share these changes with the group. What will the outcome be then? Will we create a shared language of leadership that is accessible to all?

Who knows. But I’m keen to find out.

There’s a fine line between endings and new beginnings

Reflections on the community I just can’t quit

“You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.” — Alexander den Heijer

Hello dear reader,

I’m sharing some reflections on the process of closing a significant chapter of my life. It is a change that often gets overlooked. It is also part of the closure journey for me.

This is my journey, and everyone else’s endings will look different to this. I am telling a story of closure and sharing it in the spirit of learning and sensemaking in the open. I’m talking about it in the hope that others feel they can do the same.

So, here goes.

Honouring the past to understand its influence on the present

I had intended to write this blog post in the two-week break after stepping down from my position in the Ministry of Defence. But that date came, and I still felt broken and exhausted. So, I left it. Two more weeks passed. Still, the blank page remained.

I’ve been stuck for words.

I have reflected on why it has taken me so long to put the ending process under a microscope, why the things I ignored the most were the ones that needed the closest attention. I’m still getting to grips with and understanding my time there. Endings and loss are a necessary part of organisational change making and transformation. But it’s the part I overlooked in my own journey.

Until I stopped work in December 2019, I don’t think I realised how profoundly exhausted I was. I’d been in the department for five years. It was a pretty punishing few years personally and professionally. I juggled work with care responsibilities (and wrote about it here). I felt a huge weight of responsibility for looking after the team, navigating terrible situations, and doing what we could, while also coming to terms with the fact that our best would never be enough.

I took two weeks off before I started my new job in the Ministry of Justice.

Then the pandemic hit.

And I kept going.

This is place where I felt driven out

“The future won’t be a new big, tower of power — but well-trodden paths from house to house” — Raimon Panikkar

Several years down the line I am no closer to articulating my own story and narrative about leaving. There are multiple narratives at play — one that was full of frustration and another that was full of intention. I have shied away from both. In an intensely normative, conformist, and conservative organisation, I am not the first change maker to leave — and I will not be the last. I fell out of the right relationship with my work at the Ministry of Defence and leaving was my way of purposefully looking after myself.

So, what changed? Well, I went to a session recently about culture inquiries in the national security community, which I was being trained to support and undertake. A culture inquiry is a process that arises when ‘the way things are done’ is brought into question. It is the immersive practice of getting close to and talking to people, as they participate in both formal and informal aspects of organisational life. There’s a remarkable complexity to this work — the actual messy, lived experience of being part of a group of imperfect human beings venturing on a journey into the unknown.

The culture inquiry, in a physical space away from my own work, disrupted my usual day-to-day patterns and allowed me to see things more clearly. By participating in one, I noticed what was going on. It allowed me to confront things that were within me, that I had long since deeply buried. I’ve reflected on the things I shared and left unspoken during the session. It’s not easy to face up to how things have been and open up to the vulnerability of how things could be. You see, I participated in the culture inquiry to change it — but it also changed me back. Without it, I would not have written this.

This is the place where I was needed, but not wanted

“Too much disruption and agitation is not good. Our cultures and behaviours don’t tolerate that. You become ‘that’ voice. People feel insecure about it. Being a change agent is exhausting and most leave. So maybe it’s culture and behaviour that need to move with the times.” by @thepagey

For starters, the job was not easy, it was probably the most challenging and infuriating of my career so far. I was afraid of being the disruptor. But I did it anyway. If government delivery is slow, then making change in the Ministry of Defence was akin to trying to get super tanker to change direction. The effort of trying to get that change to happen made some of those early years very frustrating. That’s how it was, surrounded by people who didn’t think things needed to change, or hoped they would magically change (even though change is a constant reality).

And this work was a jumbled, busy mess — it was not creating healthy or sustainable patterns for me. Throwing myself actively into this required energy and bravery, which was harder to summon with every passing day. I lost my belief that things could change for the better — and with it my perspective, joy, and confidence. This made me doubtful I could ever pull off the radical stuff. I couldn’t change the system, so instead I had to adapt, and adapt, and adapt, against my better judgement. It created a storm in my soul.

During those years, I had been looked over, demeaned, talked over, dismissed, reported for not ‘staying in my lane,’ labelled as a ‘troublemaker,’ discouraged from reporting problems, undermined, battled the misogyny throughout the organisation, and much more. It’s not just the ‘big’ incidents, it’s the wearing away that the everyday ones caused, too. It was never just ‘banter,’ not when I felt humiliated, targeted, or broken. That’s bullying. I was not built for this, and it’s not just me. I didn’t feel the system had space for someone like me, which was saying, “whatever you do, don’t ever dare to be different…”

I’ve also been publicly silent. I have often wondered why. The Ministry of Defence was a second family to me. It gave me more than a career — it became a reference point for my entire working life, a place to call home. Maybe I did not want the negative emotions I held to cloud, impact, or distract from the deep passion I have for the community I was choosing to step away from.

This is the place I chose to leave

I stayed in toxic environments for longer than I should have. Like others, I ran for fumes for months and months. I kept banking on the community because it was the only one I knew, even when I felt more at odds with it than part of it. I stayed in the job long enough for it to leave scars. But this felt unsustainable: unsustainable for my mental and physical health, but also for my longer-term aspiration to be of service. Ultimately, it needed someone to help pave the way for others — and it was heart wrenching to realise that person would not be me.

The right time to leave never really came. I didn’t know when to consider or recognise when the ‘end’ was in sight. I loved my job. I loved what I did. I loved my colleagues. But I could not stay. I often wish someone had said, “You aren’t failing, you’re being failed, Nour. It’s time to leave.” I often wish I had found the courage to reply, “I’ve got nothing left to give.”

After ten months of agonising, I resigned. For everything I valued and wanted to be, both presently and in the future, I made the decision to leave. The relief was absent, the sadness lingering, and the change daunting. My confidence was the lowest it had been in years. I felt drained, defeated even. I was leaving without feeling that I had said all I needed to, offered all I could do, or owned my own narrative about the choice to leave. Maybe there will always be a lingering feeling, that there remain things unfinished in my own story.

In the end, I left as quietly as I had arrived five years earlier. Torrential rain followed as I sat in the middle of an empty train carriage on a dark, stormy night mid-winter, on my final journey home, and cried.

The beginning of the next chapter

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamp of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach…. The world you deserve can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.” — Ayn Rand

Two years, three months, and fifteen days have passed since my departure. It has taken years to mend my shattered confidence. The experiences continued to take their toll on me in unexpected ways, long after I left. Defence, and the national security environment, took a bit of my heart, soul, and spirit.

A lot of time and therapy passed before I understood that my exhaustion was not a failure of my capacity, but a structural failure to support my capacity. There is an emotional cost to change making, to do the work and to keep choosing it. It takes a toll and it’s easy to lose yourself along the way. I now know I was doing the best I could with the knowledge and resources I had at the time. And I am now more conscious about where I want to put my time and energy and that where I stand to do the work is a choice.

Leaving has been a bereavement. It has also been a liberation. It has taken a while to understand why I had to make the change, and longer still to make peace with it. I will always feel some guilt or regret in leaving, a sinking feeling that I am letting the community down by not continuing to fight for a better outcome generations from now. Perhaps it is why I walked towards the culture inquiry, and other ongoing work, to help bring the national security community to a healthier state.

There is a fine line between endings and new beginnings. Sometimes, they are indistinguishable, part of a continuum. I am thriving at the Ministry of Justice. It has been a place to heal (despite the world being permanently on fire). Although it is not a place I call home, I have recalled my sense of self there, taking steps to heal and recover. I feel grounded, content, and more connected. I’ve learned to find joy in the small things everyday. I’ve devoured books, often having two or three on the go at once (you can read more here). I’ve been doing lots of photography, mostly to/from frequent trips to the bakery. Now, when I take time off, I don’t feel the need to fill it with doing things constantly.

And I’m struck by how different the world looks from here.

——

I’m always interested to hear people’s reflections. What resonates most with you? What’s different to your own experience of ending roles?

31 Books

There is always more to read…

“An encouragement, perhaps, for other keen readers to add to their own ‘to read’ pile; and a gentle encouragement to add your recommendations to the #57Books ‘must read’ list; ripples flowing out from a ‘pebble in the pond’.“ — Feasts and Fables

Time to read more books

Following in the footsteps of Mr Fables, over the course of 2022, I will be reading 31 books in the calendar year to mark my 31st birthday. I’m following the birthday trend; unlike Mr Fables, it’s not quite one a week and a few extras for luck, but close enough.

I’ll be sharing the journey on social media under the same hastag as Mr Fables to add to curated list of reading suggestions… #57Books

https://www.feastsandfables.co.uk/the-encouragement-manifesto/fifty-seven-books

Books are wayfinding for the soul. If we belong anywhere, it is in the unknown. And where better to be than lost in the world of books. To coin a phrase by Walter Benjamin, the “the art of straying” comes to mind here.

In books, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of leaving the door open for the unknown. Sometimes what you need to find, which is totally unknown to you, is a matter of getting lost.

So, fellow wanderers, go beyond what you know. Here’s my list for 2022 to be guided by, or to lose yourself in. Some are very popular. And some you may have never heard of before. But even if you just feel, discover, or immerse yourself in a few, that will be enough.

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” — A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

——

The List

1 — Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by Adrienne Maree Brown

Holding Change arrives at the intersection of activism and whole-wellness, at a time when we need it most. This book arrives at a time when we need it most. It’s a guide to being humans in right relationship as we shape ourselves and each other. It is magnificent, mysterious, and ever-evolving — something to understand, be in conversation with, and love.

2 — In the Thick of It: The Explosive Private Political Diaries of a Former Tory Minister by Alan Duncan

These diaries offer an important, if very personal, behind-the-scenes account of recent history. Irreverent and riotously candid, this book provides an insight into the workings of government that makes it an absorbing read.

3 — Nemesis Games (The Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey

It’s not hard for a long running series to run out of steam: familiar characters, recycled stories, formulaic plot lines. The opposite has happened here: the gloves have come off and the balance of power in the solar system is turned upside down. A devastating installment.

4 — Artemis by Andy Weir

Whenever the author gets to go into the nitty-gritty of a science fiction engineering problem — for example, how to ignite a blowtorch in a vacuum — the book lights up and briefly becomes deeply, profoundly compelling.

5 — Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence by Ken Auletta

What made Harvey Weinstein a monster? Does it matter? In this cradle-to-jail account of his downfall is a sad tale of sex, lies, and power in Hollywood. Yet its main topic is not the survivors, reporters, or prosecutors who ended his reign of terror. It is, still, the man himself.

6 — The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America by Nikesh Shukla (Editor), Chimene Suleyman (Editor)

An exposé on race relations in the UK that delves into the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigrants while trying to identify what lies in the space in between. It is a book that should be read with the greatest urgency and shared everywhere.

7 — Skint Estate: A Memoir of Poverty, Motherhood and Survival by Cash Carraway

It’s as important to read this as it is to watch I, Daniel Blake. A powerful story of a single mother doing everything she can to stay afloat in hard times, told with gritty truth and a splash of dry humour. It is exposing, raw, angry call for change.

8 — It’s Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan (Editor), Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Contributor)

“We should be the ones speaking about us.”

Out-spoken, honest, and sometimes angry, Mariam Khan has curated an anthology of diverse, bold, and authentic essays from the voices we desperately need to hear from rather than those we only ever hear about. Let’s read and listen well to what they really have to say.

9 — A Woman’s Work by Harriet Harman

Harriet Harman shows the importance of lived experiences to political life and parliament. The fight is far from over, there’s much left to do to close the gender gap. It’s a good reminder that we‘ve come far, but not far enough.

10 — Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke

Me too. Two small yet powerful words. It is the brainchild of a Black American activist named Tarana Burke, who has guided the lives of the women and girls before and after #MeToo became a phrase that bound together thousands of survivors across the world.

This memoir is written with a vulnerability is rare — it is for the unloved and those still suffering in silence who need to know that there is something on the other side of hurt.

11 — Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

A masterfully telling of the story of what it took to expose Weinstein’s myriad abuse against women and the machinations at work to keep things hidden. It’s equal parts memoir, spy story and portrait of perseverance under terrible circumstances — and will make you ask yourself: What else is there still to find out?

12 — UnPresidented: Politics, Pandemics and the Race that Trumped all Others by Jon Sopel

This is a period of history, which almost lacks the power to shock after over four years, culminates in an election race like no other — and along the journey, Jon Sopel is excellent company.

13 — This Time for Me by Alexandra Billings, Joey Soloway (Introduction), Joanne Gordon (Contributor)

Billings candidly recounts the turbulent road that led to her trailblazing career, shining light both on a remarkable personal journey and a painful time in transgender history. She shows what it means to be misunderstood, and how we can do better to welcome humans of every stripe.

14 — Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

“The problem with trying to tell their story, is that it has no beginning, no middle and no end.”

It is difficult for questions regarding the lives of others to be answered — the coherence and incoherence of lives whose traumas do not fit neatly within a court-mandated interviews. This essay is more than a memoir; it’s a report on an emergency. A powerful call to action and empathy.

15 — Spike: The Virus vs. The People — the Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

For many, it may be too soon to pick up a no-frills book about the pandemic. This is a very rare, frank account by a scientist about the realities and uneasy relationship between science and politics. It’s a soul crushing read when you remember it all actually happened, and continues to go on and on. There will be a litany of “inside stories” and first-hand accounts of how the pandemic was managed and decisions were taken — this is just the first.

16 — In Black and White by Alexandra Wilson

Alexandra Wilson’s honest account of life as a junior barrister is an incisive uncovering about race and class within the legal profession and justice system. By boldly putting her head above the parapet, the hope can only be that she has enabled us all to accelerate change.

As the Secret Barrister has said, “this is a book that urgently needs to be read by everyone inside, and outside, the justice system.”

17 — Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tuci

Food is life and life is food. This fusion of love and food is what makes the book full of heart and culinary delight. It’s a gastronomic treat, an ode to food and people we love — just be prepared to get ravenous while reading it.

18 — Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Miller provides a moving and humanising depiction of being sexually assaulted. It is hard to read it and breathe at the same time. In giving us the gift of knowing her, it is a poignant testament of the human cost of sexual violence, and a powerful reminder of why we fight. In spite of everything, it inspires hope.

19 — In Your Defence: Stories of Life and Law by Sarah Langford

This is no typical legal memoir. Here, the human stories of heartache, humour, and quiet pain are without tidy endings. This memoir breathes life into the justice system — and for anyone stewarding it, this must be on their reading list.

20 — When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, Adrian Nathan West (Translator)

Have we ceased to understand the world? And if we cannot understand the world, can we understand ourselves?

Some scientific discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear, but Benjamin Labatut’s haunting book contemplates both. It spirals around the connections between science, madness, beauty, and war. Can it be that contemplating such questions is as dangerous as not contemplating them?

21 — Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James

In this scintillating debut, Kendra James intertwines her own coming-of-age story with a searing indictment of elite academia, resulting in an eye-opening examination of race, class, and privilege. She provides all important company for Black students in predominantly white spaces.

22 — Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket

A book about bewilderment — or philosophy. There’s something eternally comforting about reading something with a narrator just as openly messy as your own thoughts. It is a lesson that big questions that don’t necessarily require answers because the journey to answer them is sometimes more valuable than the destination.

23— Fix the System, Not the Women by Laura Bates (EverydaySexism)

A haunting and compelling examination of injustice, this isn’t a book full of answers. Instead, it holds up a mirror to ask difficult questions about systems, society, and ourselves.

24 — Nothing But The Truth: Stories of Crime, Guilt and the Loss of Innocence by @BarristerSecret

No-holds-barred book telling an unvarnished story of the criminal justice system and those that hold it together. Heartbreaking and hopeful in its own way.

25 — The Martian by Andy Weir

A love letter to science. Both a celebration of scientific ingenuity and a man’s unfailing spirit to survive, its message of resilience and optimism through the hardest of times pays homage to the best in humanity. What’s not to love about that?!

26 — The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder with Jessica Anya Blau

A riveting story about being the only female in a largely male-orientated world and the efforts to succeed and advance. It offers an eye-opening glimpse into the attitudes of American governmental agencies that is personal, humorous, and at times, harrowing.

27— Cibola Burn (The Expanse #4) by James S.A. Corey

The biggest, most sprawling leap of an already sprawling tale. And now there is simply more. More of everything, combined with a spark of humor and hope suggesting that despite ourselves, we might find a way to prevail.

28 — The New Machiavelli — How to Wield Power in the Modern World by Jonathan Powell

This book claims to be neither a memoir of the Blair years nor an academic treatise on Machiavelli. Instead it is a treasure trove of maxims, anecdotes, and asides, which give intriguing glimpses into ministerial chicanery and sheds a valuable light on the operation and use of power. A manual for modern government.

29 — The Changing of the Guard: the British Army since 9/11 by Simon Akam

This book is about much more than the Army since 9/11 — it is a parable about the failure of a revered institution to come to terms with a changed and changing world. It asks new and complex questions for soldiers and military strategy alike in the 21st century.

30 — Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe

The overwhelming impression from these essays about complicated rogues is that justice in our violent, turbulent, unsettling world is fragile and elusive.

31 — Collateral Damage: Britain, America, and Europe in the Age of Trump by Kim Darroch

Darroch’s memoir — his account of finding himself at the heart of a media firestorm as the British ambassador in Donald Trump’s Washington — is a study in diplomatic tradecraft. The book relives the drama and nightmare, and how the twin forces of Trump and Johnson shaped politics — and his life.

Beyond ‘The List’

32 — When the Dust Settles: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster by Lucy Easthope

Written with rare humanity, this riveting memoir is candid, unsettling, and darkly humorous on the crucial but largely hidden work of planning for emergencies, for facing up to the worst head on.

33 — Just Sayin’: My Life In Words by Malorie Blackman

Blackman is a grafter; no question about that. Her memoir reveals just how much she overcame. It contains intimate, often painful and funny insights into her life. This book is about survival and success from the woman that changed the face of UK children’s publishing.

34— Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family and Home by Nikesh Shukla

Brown Baby is not just another book about being brown in Britain, but a rich memoir about parenting, grief, belonging, and justice. These reflections consider the world into which Shukla’s daughter is growing up in. It’s wonderful piece of writing, a wonderful gift to his daughters.

35 — The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money by Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier

The Panama Papers is a tale of fearless and careful reporting. A fascinating read in the unknown world of clever financial dealings and how to follow the money.

——

57 Books: The List — feastsandfables

Mr Fables is reading and reviewing a list of 57 books that are growing into a list of reading suggestions #57Books

https://www.feastsandfables.co.uk/the-encouragement-manifesto/fifty-seven-books-the-list