In this video (submitted to a OneTeamGov call for submissions for microcourses on collaborative leadership and published here) I talk about what I think I have learned about how to approach collaboration. Id love to hear what you think:) Effective collaboration doesn’t happen by accident — and often the conditions…

Thinking about how we think about COVID. How do we look beyond the immediate problems in front of us as the COVID response develops? How can we develop a genuine shared national (and international) campaign to prevent, deal with and mitigate the effects of COVID, and move away from what feels like a series of local responses to events? This article is a sort of sister article to one I wrote in February on the COVID ‘deep battle’ — I’ve been reflecting in that earlier post and trying to work out how I could share some similar ideas, but framed in a different way.

How can we campaign, and not just respond? The military has frameworks to help thinking about strategy, operations and execution. Lots of frameworks. Having been schooled in these frameworks in my first career in the UK military, I find myself applying these frameworks all the time, whether consciously or not. Sometimes that are helpful, and sometimes they aren’t…

Our collective challenge is not simply delivering outputs more efficiently — its mobilising the capabilities we have to benefit the places we all share. The challenge of leadership in places, and why its failing now We are really good at identifying or describing challenges. We also have plenty of plans and strategies. We also have very common narratives in sectors like…

When people use the word ‘collaboration’ they often mean very different things and they are also very likely be approaching the collaboration in very different ways. This is something that I have very rarely heard discussed in practice but it fundamentally shapes the way that people and organisations work together…

There is a powerful feeling among those now trying to work at what might be called system, place, neighbourhood or city level that ‘traditional’ approaches to leadership just don’t work. …