Welcome to our new website
“This Ever Changing World In Which We Live In…”
Paul and Linda McCartney
I have been running my own business now for 25 years. About every 5 years I find I need to re-invent myself to stay fresh, energised and focused. It is my way to both survive and get an income. I must respond to the changing market and the demands of my potential customers. I change as I learn both about myself and about others.
Welcome to my new website which is a reflection of my changing world. I change to keep my identity while much changes around me. I change as I age. I would like to say that, like a good wine, I mellow. But I sometimes stop to reflect that as I grow older I realise how little I know, not how much, and how much I have to learn. That is what energises me and keeps me going.
Margaret Wheatley, an American management consultant, has argued that living systems will change in order to preserve themselves and deal with the ‘disturbance’ they find in their new environment.
“Growth appears from disequilibrium, not balance. In its current form, it cannot deal with the disturbance, so it dissolves. If a living system can maintain its identity, it can self-organise to a higher level of complexity, a new form of self that can better deal with the present.” [1]
So from time-to-time I look for a new form of self, but one that maintains who I am and what I stand for. Re-writing your website and re-branding your business is a good way to do this. There are thus two key questions to ask in the process of change. Firstly what needs to change, what do we need to let go of, and why? And secondly, but equally important, what are the ‘threads of continuity’ that hold our identity together? We often fail to ask this second question, which is why in my experience many change projects fail to achieve their objectives.
Most of my work until recent times has been with the public sector. I did voluntary work among the homeless in London in my early twenties, and then trained as a probation officer. When I began my change business people wanted my experience and knowledge of developing multi-agency partnerships. Later it was front line training in case management for Probation Trusts. Then it was strategies for housing homeless people with complex needs. Sometimes I worked with commissioners, other times my clients have been service providers. Recently it has been interim management and leadership in major public sector transformational projects.
Throughout all my working life I have rarely thought of myself as an expert, but more of a facilitator of change. Individuals possess their own motivation and mechanism for change; my job has been to nurture and encourage. That is why in many of my assignments I have insisted in starting with, and working closely with, the service users and consumers to generate solutions. In particular I am a strong advocate of personalisation in public service.
What I have always tried to do as probation officer, trainer, manager, leader or consultant is help create the space and time for people to change in response to the ‘disequilibrium’ and the ‘disturbance’ they experience but to still retain their identity in a new form to ‘better deal with the present’. This philosophy is clearly expressed in the new website, and is simply a new way of expressing what I have always done.
Yet this new description provides a bridge that allows me to cross more easily into the public, private, and voluntary sectors. And out of this new understanding has come a new product to offer clients: coaching. This for me is the ultimate way of giving someone his or her own dedicated space and time for change.
Nick Day, Exeter, 30 September 2016