Slowing down to go faster
We are working on a series of blogs which say more about how we work and what we do. This first one is by Jo Kennedy, Lead Partner.
Over the last few years, I have found myself talking about ‘slowing down to go faster’. I can’t remember where I picked up the phrase, but it has been around as long as the story of the tortoise and the hare. And it goes down well. People quote it back at me. They like the idea that slow doesn’t need to be forever, going slow for a while will mean that you can ultimately get things done quicker. I know that I began using it as a way of justifying going more slowly, particularly for the senior leaders I work with who are ‘time poor’ and under a lot of pressure to ‘get things done’. Some of that pressure feels justified, they are being paid by the public purse and we all know that education, health and social care in Scotland need serious attention. The poorest people in our communities are being failed every day. Leaders need to act, but they need their actions to have impact.
One of our team asked me why I was encouraging people to go faster at all. What is our addiction to speed, why do we think it is a good thing? It was a good question and a hard one. My first thought was ‘slowing down is a hard sell these days’. My second thought was more generous. I do believe that slowing down releases energy and provides momentum for change. In Gestalt practice the paradoxical theory of change posits that exploring the ground fully, ensuring that everyone gets a chance for their perspective to be heard and understood generates movement in the right direction. Feminist leadership practice talks about building an organisation ‘with soul’[1]
‘Am I exaggerating when I say that we work and work, with no time to stop and think about what it is we deliver so diligently? No time to speak amongst ourselves, no time to listen to our bodies, hearts and minds and no time to listen to our own organisations?... We need to learn to be present in the world and really soak it in; this brings vibrancy to our daily lives, our work and organisations.’ Hope Chigudu
Systems theory proponents would come to the same conclusion, exploring the different components of a system and shining a light on the connections between them often highlights were communication is blocked and what could change to enable a better ‘flow’.
Now when I start a team session, I often ask participants to put their feet on the ground and slow their breathing down. In previous times I wouldn’t have dared, partly for fear of being labelled too ‘wacky’, but I am not sure I used to feel the need to so much either. Now pausing and thinking feels like a precious commodity at a leadership level, in particular. Without that breath, we spend our time downloading rather than dialoguing, and I notice that I become as breathless as they are, desperate to finish with a list of actions, which become the end in themselves.
When they do pause to share what they really care about, to explore their purpose and to acknowledge all their roles in making that happen I have experienced teams achieve a ‘flow’ state characterised by a sense of excitement and ease leading to the generation of ideas and plans which they can all get behind. This last part can happen very quickly.
Slowing down allows us to look around and see whose voices are being drowned out by those who shout the loudest or are more articulate or more powerful. Working in disenfranchised communities, I have witnessed how when we slowed down to listen to the dreams of parents for their children and supported them to recognise their own strengths, there was no stopping them. It took time to gain their trust, and to address some of the immediate issues that they were facing. But once they felt taken seriously, they moved fast, going on to set up their own community organisation, to raise funds for community events and to influence local service provision. These women have provided energy throughout the system: to senior leaders, practitioners and funders, and the solutions they generate feel more likely to succeed than those we were devising without them. In this work we have moved from a position of ‘power over’ to ‘power with’ achieving a real collaboration between leaders, practitioners on the ground and parents. As they become more confident the parents are discovering the ‘power within’ themselves.[2]
Slowing down to include is a challenge which brings its own rewards. Slowing down to acknowledge that we have never been in this place before, and that we don’t know what to do next is harder. The poet Keats called the ability to do this ‘negative capability’. This ‘not knowing’ recognises that the solutions of the past, which are at our fingertips, are not necessarily our guide for the future. It demands a real acknowledgement of the situation now and it invites a wide range of those affected to step in to generate new ideas together. Otto Scharmer describes this process in his Theory U model[3]. As new ideas emerge, energy picks up and they can be tested, learned from and adopted or abandoned in favour of others which work better, fast.
Slowing down to go faster, is a snappy catchprase but a dangerous shorthand, colluding with a dominant narrative that speed is an end in itself. Slowing down we become more sure-footed, taking action that makes a difference together. I’m going to encourage the groups I work with to hold out for that.
[1] Chigudu Hope and Rudo: Strategies for Building an Organisation with Soul (2015)
[3] https://www.u-school.org/theory-u