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Why? Is now the time for a… ‘rebel alliance’?
My curiosity can take me to unexpected places, but right now the concern that’s got my attention is how ‘efficiency’, technocracy, transactional services etc sideline the citizen who wants to thrive - whether in our communities, in healthcare and elsewhere.
Yet - thankfully - it seems a countervailing force - a ‘rebel alliance’* as Donna Hall dubs it - is emerging.
(*I optimistically say ‘alliance’ yet these disparate counter-movements etc are often perhaps still too new, too isolated from each other, to yet be aware that they could constitute a ‘rebel alliance’. Perhaps a worthy current goal is simply to gather this ‘rebel alliance’?)
From what I’ve spotted, this much-needed alliance may include positive developments such as:
New roles appearing such as Systems Conveners, Local Area Coordinators, Buurtzorg neighbourhood care teams etc that put human relationships back at the heart of communities and try to break free of the usual dysfunctional boundaries/silos. (Often inspired by the asset-based community development (ABCD) movement: ‘Discover what’s strong, not just what’s wrong’).
The Reimagining Work movement prompted by Frederic Laloux’s surprise hit book Reinventing Organisations (see Lisa Gill’s podcasts about these organisations).
The use of Liberating Structures group tools in meetings, events…. everywhere - to give teams back creative power and an equal voice. (This and kindred change approaches are sometimes described as part of the Dialogic OD movement).
The Liberated Method/Radical Place Leadership (webinar; see also PDF) and Human Learning Systems in local authorities and elsewhere - along with broadly kindred networks such as A Better Way, Relational Councils Network and The Alternative).
The Safety-II movement in patient safety (eg the Learning from Excellence movement to study what goes right in the NHS, rebalancing the current over-dominant focus on studying failure, with all the fear and rigidity that follows).
The national NHS timebank, Hexitime, a ‘transformative platform’ that enables the free exchange of skills.
Community Appointment Days - that connect people to the healthcare and community services they need, with a strengths-based approach (and cutting waiting lists into the bargain!)
And, of course, there’s a whole rich history - and contemporary legacy - of communitarian, cooperative, self-managed, socialist and anarchist initiatives, but that tradition often tended to get marginalised as the technocratic state, the credentialled classes, grew and - at least at first - seemed to be the solution.
These better ways of working together at least might make organisations more hospitable places to grow the wisdom we urgently need to face all today’s challenges.
Who knows, maybe newly enlivened organisations can one day find common cause with various positive inner-focused shifts that are afoot these days - from the labyrinth revival to the Mindfulness movement to the psychedelic renaissance?
I hope so.
Who is Matthew Kálmán Mezey?
I’m still investigating tbh… but for now will say this: I’m keen to learn how positive individual inner changes and outer collective change can be integrated, in our workplaces, and in wider society. This work brings together writing and research, as well as development and support of communities and networks.
I was one of the six UK founder members of pioneering US thinker Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute. I founded the London Integral Circle to promote these novel integrative approaches, in everything from education and health to business and politics. (It has featured speakers including Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter, David McCandless, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Dr Don Beck and Prof Rob Paton).
I co-founded the website ‘Enlivening Edge – news from Next Stage organisations’, to support the growing global movement of people who are energised by organisations such as Buurtzorg neighbourhood care. The site is recommended by Frederic Laloux.
A major 150-page report on leadership in the digital age for Germany’s largest non-profit foundation (Bertelsmann Stiftung) stated: “Matthew Mezey provides a very current and sophisticated review of both the potential and barriers to bringing open leadership to Enterprise 2.0”.
I am co-author of Anti-Hero - The Hidden Revolution in Leadership & Change (RSA/Clore), Beyond the Big Society – Psychological Foundations of Active Citizenship (RSA), and various books with the Institute for Social Inventions, including Social Innovations – A Compendium, and Re-Inventing Society. I invited Etienne and Bev Wenger-Trayner to write the 2021 book Systems Convening – a crucial form of leadership for the 21st century. (I had recognised this Systems Convening ethos as underlying the most impactful work I’ve done - eg convening the meeting that led to the creation of Hexitime, the first national NHS timebank.)
As a journalist, I have written front-page/cover stories for The Independent on Sunday, New Statesman and New Moon – as well as writing for Integral Leadership Review (columnist), The Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, The Psychotherapist (UKCP) and Green Perspectives.
I am trained in using a broad range of assessment and facilitation tools including Prof. Jane Loevinger’s Washington University Sentence Completion Test (which reveals and maps the hidden ‘master trait’ that drives every person’s behaviour - including the shift in leader mindsets from unilateral control to mutual learning), Liberating Structures, ICA Technology of Participation/Group Facilitation Methods, Overcoming Immunity to Change (EdX), Strategic Community Management (Feverbee), Participatory Strategic Planning, CTI coaching fundamentals and Spiral Dynamics-Integral Level I and II certification.
The late Anita Roddick once wrote to me: “Here’s a good quote that sums up your work: ‘Be courageous, it’s the only place left uncrowded”.
Twitter/X: @MatthewMezey
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