Beyond Authority

As many, many people will tell you, you do not forget the fist time that you meet Julia Middleton.  She has more enthusiasm, energy and focus than anyone else I know.  A whirlwind arrives in the room.  But it is a benign experience.  And, unlike many people who tackle life at speed, she is blessed with enormous reserves of understanding.  I first met her many years ago.  At that time I edited UK’s Accountancy Age magazine and we co-sponsored the annual awards for reporting financial results in an understandable way to employees. Our fellow sponsor in this hugely successful venture was the Industrial Society, these days the Work Foundation.  And the person in charge for them was Julia.  Much of what is now done in the name of narrative reporting was pioneered in those days through the network of people working at the simplified reporting end of the corporate reporting spectrum.

 Julia went on to found the charity Common Purpose, which now operates not just in the UK but around the world.  It is based on a simple idea.  Cities are communities.  But the people running their disparate parts do not necessarily connect up with each other.  Common Purpose connects them when they are making their way in their communities.  It provides community based leadership development programmes.  It has been a phenomenal success since she started it in 1989.  And now, needless to say, she has written a book to share leadership thoughts and insights.

Working together is where you start.  Being in authority, sorting out the objectives, motivating and delivering.  That is fine.  But, as she points out, most leadership isn’t like that anymore.  ‘Directors have to work with partners outside their business’, for example.  ‘Boundaries are blurring’, she says.  ‘Authority is becoming less clear-cut  .’  New leadership skills and tools are required.  She calls this ‘leading without authority’.  It is about choosing not to have authority.  ‘It is about earning legitimacy with ideas that resonate.’  It is not about pushing the legitimacy upwards to someone else.  ‘The great “They”’, as she terms it.  She quotes Jude Kelly of the South Bank Centre in London: ‘We cannot wait to be given legitimacy.  We need to legitimise ourselves.’  And people tend to look outwards, beyond their circle of authority.  Trends outside need to be spotted and  understood.  People need to think like entrepreneurs, who want to know what is happening elsewhere, rather than like CEOs who tend to work their way upwards rather than outwards.

She recalls being in a meeting discussing homelessness in Northern Ireland.  One man there kept asking: ‘What is our legitimacy?’  Eventually an infuriated Julia pointed out this had nothing to do with politicians or processes.  These people in this meeting, she said, ‘are simply thinking what they can do next – themselves.  That is their legitimacy.  It is a highly democratic legitimacy and it’s a glorious one.’  Do it.

She suggests that partnerships are good places to learn.  ‘I wonder if people are better at leading outside the core circle if they’ve had less authority than most within it.,’ she says.  Likewise she suggests that businesspeople make poor politicians because they have never learned to suffer fools gladly and shat can be done.

So what should you do? ‘The danger.’ She observes, ‘is that our networks, far from serving us, begin to limit us.  ‘Set your bandwidth on broad.’  And, mostly, it is about keeping going.  She approves of Woody Allen’s remark: ‘Ninety percent of life is just about being there.’  She returns to Jude Kelly’s idea.  ‘We have to stop delegating to the great ‘They”,’ she says.  ‘Stop waiting for mandates to be handed to us.  And start taking responsibility for problems which may not belong to us, but we almost certainly witness or suffer the consequences of.’

All great stuff.  So why do it?  ‘Because’ she concludes, ‘if you do not go outside your core circle, negotiate the complexities, develop the networks, and do it all successfully, your life becomes much more interesting.  And so do you.’

So there you are.  Over to you.  Whirlwind over.