Another day, another exciting and inspirational heads-together-round-a-table meeting of minds.
Today I was invited to join the “Emerging Leaders Forum” (pedants - don’t worry, I think ‘Leaders’ is plural and no possession of ‘Forum’ is implied), an event where a group of twenty or so people roughly defined as ‘young-ish people who make things happen in the city’ get together and bash out some ideas with some more senior ‘leaders’ that have been active for years.
Sound familiar?
Well I did get a little deja-vu when I saw that Alex Bishop and Sarah Gee were both there at the elegantly kitted-out Price Waterhouse Coopers offices on Cornwall Street in Birmingham.
First off, I have to be honest, I wouldn’t really class myself as a ‘leader’. I see someone with that title having a small army of people behind them working at X organisation (corporation, local authority, charity, etc) and their day-to-day work involving providing a vision and direction for those people to follow. I guess I feel more like a catalyst - someone who points out the obvious with conviction. So that felt a little strange. Anyway. I wasn’t going to turn it down - I certainly have an opinion on where the city is going.
The event was run by Karl George and his associates, who is a fellow Ex-Birmingham Young Professional of the Year, and it’s an annual (and possibly more regular) event aimed at getting the next wave of city ‘leaders’ (I’ll keep those apostrophes going until I feel more comfortable with the term) talking to eachother and putting them in an environment where they can share knowledge, expertise, etc.
The list of attendees is impressive:
Bishop Dr Joe Aldred - Council of Black Led Churches
Dr Mashuq Ally - Birmingham City Council
Clive Bawden - Catalyst Corporate Finance
Ian Binks - BT
Alex Bishop - Shoosmiths
Jerry Blackett - Chief Executive of the Chamber of Commerce
Sarah Gee - Indigo
Karl George - KgISS
Kevin Johnson - Urban Communications
Stef Lewandowski - that’ll be me then
John Ling - Birmingham & Solihull Connexions
Upkar Pardesi - Head of BCU Business School
Peter Rees-Steer - Head of Young Directors’ Forum at the IoD
Aaron Reid - Birmingham Professional Divercity
Jill Robinson - Birmingham City Council
Tony Sealy - AWM
David Waller - PWC (hosting)
John White - CGI Squared
Salma Yaqoob - Respect Party and the only elected member present
The latter half of the event was under Chatham House Rule (I just found out it’s singular, not plural) so I’m not going to attribute any quotes.
As usual at these kinds of things I keep my head down early on and try to work out a) whether it’s a talking shop, and b) if I’m going to start irritating people by talking too bluntly, but by the end I was pitching in my thoughts on what it’s actually like being one of the youngest of the group to publicly talk about things you disagree with only to get disproportionate legal mutterings in response. More of that in a separate post I think.
Everyone had some good points to make, and what it comes down to in my eyes is that the public and industry bodies in Birmingham are seen by many people of my generation as being very much “male, pale and stale”.
This perception (true or not) points towards a feeling that there is a disconnect between Birmingham’s increasingly young, diverse population (”Youngest city in Europe”, “Ethnic Majority by 2010″ etc) and the people who are in representative positions, elected or otherwise.
There was also a general feeling that we want younger, energetic and preferably non-white-british, successful people to lend their time to sitting on boards and taking part in the building of the city - whether that’s joining a board of a school, an arts organisation, a charity or of decision making bodies, there was a perception that people aren’t doing this enough at the moment.
And that’s a concern - because you end up with the same establishment figures and usual suspects filling the space.
For a city that is looking to grow and expand, embrace digital technology, sustainability, the coming fuel crisis if and when it appears, a housing shortage, a complete change of demographic and so on, for there to be such a lack of engagement should be of serious concern.
So what can be done? We talked around the issues, and from my point of view it comes down to someone within the city having the foresight to put together what I’d call “A Succession Plan for Birmingham”.
Businesses have these - they have to if they want to survive the situation where the founders move on to other things or retire.
Shouldn’t a city too?
So, off the top of my head, here’s what I think a succession plan for Birmingham would look like:
- Scouting - finding the talent and convincing them to get involved in developing the city. This is already happening in a number of places. I guess you could say I’ve been scouted by even being invited to this event.
- Buddying/Mentoring - but not in the traditional sense. I hate these kinds of terms, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever _really_ had a mentor. There are a bunch of people I turn to for advice, but no one person who you could give that title to. That’s a problem that many people my age face - we need people to engage with who can help with our career development.
- Media training and backup - “Sticking your head over the parapet and getting it shot off” isn’t a nice thing to happen, but some media training and maybe a team who can support you when you don’t work in a big corporation would be useful.
- Funding to go on personal development courses - How about someone picks up the tab for one or two creative/cultural types to go on the Clore scheme? No but seriously, how about it?
- Visits to other cities - Taking people out of their context and seeing how other cities are run, but within the context of the other people they are working with would be good. I went to Milan a couple of years ago and that really made me think.
- Working with education - if you’re talking long term succession planning you need to get the engagement of schools and universities. Does the young people’s parliament still exist?
- Work shadowing - get a feel for someone else’s job to see if it’s for you.
- Lectures / talks / seminars - getting the real story from the people doing it right now.
I’m sure I could go on…
There are plenty of things going on like this at the moment that Birmingham Forward/Future, Matrix, Chamber, IoD, etc. run - I guess I just hadn’t thought about the bigger picture here until today.
But I guess I’ve just been too busy to do too much about it - and that’s the problem.
People are busy. The talented people I’ve been working with at Creative Republic are fantastic to work with because they are so talented, but that’s the problem - they’re busy doing their thing and have little time to spare on other activities.
The city needs to give them a very good reason to get involved in this kind of thing. I’ve been putting all of my energy into lots of different projects and not giving myself time to do any training or get myself a mentor - ah well, you live and learn!
So, without a fixed frame of reference I felt that there was a real mood for change coming out of the event. We’re at a formative time for the city - I can see plenty of opportunities and threats, lots of people working along similar lines, some not helping at all (again - the ‘grey hand’) but the important thing is that a handful of people want to make a change.
This, tied up with the meeting that happened yesterday has my head in a bit of a spin. As one attendee put it, and I paraphrase, what we’re looking for is collective influence - a group of people to come together and make change happen in the city. But surely the only real and legitimate people around to make the change are our elected Council representatives?!
Does it follow that perhaps one of these ‘leaders’ should be putting themselves forward as a candidate? Surely that is the right and legitimate way for the business community (and it was mainly professional people there) to engage with what is surely a democratic process?
And why is it that there is a sense of ‘us’ an ‘them’? Is this real or perceived? Are the young (sorry - emerging) always doomed to be power and influence hungry and seek to challenge the old (senior, submerging?) people who hold that influence before they are ready?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. And that’s what came out of the event. Before we can ask new people to come forward and take over the reins where others leave off there need to be some terms of reference - a statement of intent to say “We the city of Birmingham need new, emerging talent to lead us and this is how we are going to go about finding, supporting and developing that talent.”
Without this statement of intent being painfully obvious to the talent that is here the city will lose them.
So how about it? A succession plan for the city?
2 Comments
Whew, that made my head spin a bit so god knows what yours is doing!
Initial thought is that politicians do this nurturing thing well, in that a senior politician will take a younger one under their wing within their area of responsibility. Junior ministers and all that. Similarly within parties you’ll see defacto families emerging (I notice this with the Lib Dems in SE Brum) where the old dogs pass down their tricks to the young pups.
The problem is local politics is terribly disengaged from the rest of the city and voter turnout for local elections is pathetic. The causes for this are up for debate but the fact remains there’s a detachment that world and the more practical, “doing” world you’re coming from.
So what fuels this succession system in politics? Party power, I guess. It’s good for the party to ensure the next generation is up to the task, ensuring the other lot don’t get an advantage. Similarly in big business. But neither of them are putting the city first. A close second maybe, but not first.
My reading of the issue would be how do you get people who are not overtly political and who care about the city in a constructive way to get the skills to become leaders? Which is pretty much what you said reading back.
I’m rambling, but for me people lead by example and people follow when they’re given something to follow with. Going back to my “openness” schtick maybe we just need to give these people the tools to easily communicate with the rest of the city in a way that doesn’t interfere with busy schedules and isn’t mediated by the established ways of thinking. Then let others who have the time and/or power take their ideas and implement them. Sort of an all-ages village elders type model.
I read through the above a few times since this is not something I’ve spent much time thinking about before. I’ll add the disclaimer I’m missing coffee and lunch.
Is this forum a ‘pull’ or ‘push’ thing, i.e. is it driven by the existing bodies looking to recruit fresh blood or by young turks looking to take over the reins and makes things happen? If this is not a simplistic question then the answer is important.
Catalysts are specific. They act in a certain domain where they have proven success. Above some level they change their whole field, organising and what-not. And so it grows. Interactions with other fields spawn fruitful networks of relationships. This is the bottom-up ‘push’.
The top-down ‘pull’ tends to be political in nature and its agents often pop into existence at the behest of a ‘leader’ or committee. Where needed and appropriately devised, they can get the job done, more or less. When less lucky, they can lack focus, talking lots but not really catalyzing anything. At worst, they can be obstructive and possessive.
Sorry if this is rant-ish. My limited experience has included both forces so I’m always interested to know which is being applied in any situation. I’ll get my coffee now.