Leaders Forum

This evening we had the Citizens MK Leaders Forum - which is the event where representatives from the twenty member institutions come together and agree a long list of campaigns for the coming year. The idea is that we end up with five or six "problems" that are then developed by "research teams". The research teams will then produce achievable goals that will be put to the "delegates assembly" in February.

I've chaired this meeting for the last three years. It's a tough one because there's a lot to squeeze in - particularly the rounds of institutions where they present their two suggested problems.

This year I took a back seat, operating more like an organiser than a leader. I wrote the script and supported the chairs. This was a great learning experience for me, and it was good to see the evening run smoothly.

My main reflection is on the importance of leaders. At one point it looked like people were keen to pursue ten different campaigns. This would have been far too many. When we asked people to pick campaigns that they were willing to be part of,  the list dropped to six and we finished with five viable teams.

One of the things I have observed again and again is that it's easy to come up with a lot of good ideas, but if you haven't got the leaders, nothing will happen.

This, I think, is a key antedote to "initiative fatigue". We need to pursue only those initiatives that have enthusiastic leaders - otherwise we set ourselves up for failure.

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