Atelier WeekNotes w/c 10 Dec 2023
Co-founders as Creative Director and Managing Director? 2024: the year of waiting and damaging drift?
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (What’s needed, What’s ready? What can we do? What next?). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
Apologies for a slightly late WeekNotes. The week just gone marks the third anniversary of my late wife being diagnosed with cancer; this coming Friday would have been her 49th birthday. I imagine that many people miss loved ones over the festive season. Our feelings are particularly strong.
Good news: my children are needing less attention than the last 2 years. Other news: that just gives more space for my own emotions. My motivation has been low. I'm sure this is temporary. But has made the last few weeks a bit of a grind. Hence, less content of these updates, and their tardiness.
Also, a small structural change in the WeekNotes: more invitations to comment. One piece of reader feedback was that these updates spoke at the reader, but gave limited chance to dialogue. I'm going to add in the following so you have more chances to respond (if you like): a request at the end of the intro section; more use of the 'Leave a comment' buttons; and, asking more open questions for people to respond to in the text.
This week covers:
Priorities
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit -- no update this week.
2.Organising for abundance. Co-founders as Creative Director and Managing Director?
0/Detecting: 2024: the year of waiting and damaging drift?
No updates
Long list of things which have no update this week but which are on my mind.
How can the Atelier of What's Next be of service to you, and your purposes? We'd love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a challenge or idea to put in the studio. Maybe one of our existing topics appeals to you. What if you love to make new things happen by being part of the studio? Or if you have feedback or comments that would improve this deck. Either click the button below or email davidbent@atelierwhatsnext.org.
Priorities
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit -- no update this week.
2. Organising for abundance
Background:
Orientating Q: How can the Atelier be organised for enduring success? Dimensions: people (including co-founder(s)); legal set up; operating routines; on-going governance and so on.
Aiming for: specific propositions to test and (if work) then integrate.
Activities: 'stirring the pot' with the Introduction and Invitation; networking.
A minor breakthrough this week. I was in conversation with a former management consultant at a sustainability networking event. As we were working through the idea of the Atelier, and wanting co-founders, a particular model came to mind: creative director and managing director.
This is quite a common set up in fashion houses (who use the term atelier, after all), ad agencies, and even media companies. Both have a view across the organisation but lead on different areas. The creative director on the methods and ideas, the content and outputs. The managing director on the commercial and operational realities.
If the Atelier went with this model, then I'd have the creative director-like role, and the other co-founder the managing director.
Which would address a concern that I've had: having a co-founder who is too similar to me. Arguably that was one of the problems at my former employer Forum for the Future. The charm-led theory of change selected for people who could be part-expert, part-facilitator, part-influencer, part-strategist. All worthwhile things to be, but having a top team which is too similar creates problems in the long-term.
The other concern, of course, is about how to keep what I think is important while giving others who join in the chance to flex the Atelier so that they feel a sense of ownership. Having a co-founder who leads on different areas makes that easier. (Or speaks to avoiding robus challenge, which may not be a good thing.)
WHAT NEXT
Create a co-founder 'advert' for the new year.
0/DETECTING
2024: the year of waiting and damaging drift?
Each year I wonder if I should do a 'predictions for 2024' blog. Each year I run out of time, realising that the sheer amount of work to do proper, specific predictions (a la Superforecasting).
Rather than lots off specifics, right now I have a general prediction on mood: waiting and drifting.
At the parochial UK level, we are already damagingly adrift. 'Everyone' knows there will be an election by Jan 2025, at the latest (my bet: late autumn 2024, to do tax giveaways in the next Autumn Statement). Everyone is soft-pedalling. Business are holding back on investment decisions. The rumours are that civil servants are on go slow. The Tories have no substantive new ideas. Combined with a poor track record means they are going hard on all culture war all the time.
More generally, there are a lot of elections next year. Bloomberg has 40 national elections, representing 41% of the world's population and 42% of GDP. Most important is the US, but there is also India, South Africa, Taiwan and Ukraine.
There will be a lot of waiting to see how these all turn out.
This is especially true for the US. It looks like that Trump will be the Republican candidate. Whoever wins, the election process will likely ratchet up the polarisation, with a fair chance of the result being contested (either way) and also of civil disorder to violence.
Back in 2017, political scientist Francis Fukuyama (yes, the End of History one) argued that the first Trump presidency would be "a great natural experiment that will show whether the United States is a nation of laws or a nation of men". We can say now that the US is a nation of laws -- just, and only most of the time. I wouldn't make the same prediction for a second term.
It will be a very consequential election for the US, and so for many businesses and for the largest innovation capacity in the world today (though not as dominant as previously). If you're a business, why bet on climate action, when you can wait 10 months and find out what the depth of federal support will be? Especially as the possible reputational damage of going 'woke' is much more real and short-term than the benefits of action.
Then there is the next climate COP. I don't agree with activists calling the COP process a complete failure. In the last ten years, the project temperature rise by the end of the century has reduced because of these negotiations (from about 3.5C to about 2.5C, though finding a source for that factoid is tough). As I've heard Prof Johan Rockström put it, we've gone from catastrophe to disaster. Better than complete failure, but a long way short of success. And, as Bill McKibben puts it, winning slowly is the same as losing on climate.
COP28 ended with a few positives -- a Loss and Damage Fund, the naming of the need to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems. In the context of one of the warmest year's on record, these positives are, at best, winning slowly.
After the autocratic petro-state host of COP28 of the United Arab Emirates, COP29 will be in the autocratic petro-state of Azerbaijan. In this podcast with Prof Adam Tooze articulates how the two countries differ. The UAE has lots of state capacity and on-going allies (who want it to do well), which helped it get the few positives. Azerbaijan is weaker on both. Plus COP30 will be in Brazil, which currently has (and hopefully will have in 2025) a pro-climate action President.
So, it is easy to imagine success at the coming COP being about 'no backwards steps', and preparing for Brazil. Hence, a large risk of waiting and drifting. Which would be bad news for current and future generations.
What to do? What will you do? I can think of two kinds of things to do:
1.Creating inspiring examples. I don't agree with Milton Friedman on much, but I do like this quote: “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
I'd extend: not just ideas, but real life examples that policy makers and businesses can draw on, be inspired by, and/or copy, if needs be.
2.Preparing minds and mechanisms. The flipside of creating examples is having organisations ready to receive and act on them. One example from last week's update is the Future Governance Forum, focused on how to deliver a progressive government.
WHAT NEXT
Mulch more on how to approach 2024 so that I don't fall into a year of waiting and damaging drift.
Prepare for Living in truth in a time of culture war.
NO UPDATES THIS TIME
I’m leaving these in to remind myself of them.
TOPICS
Using Time Well.Background here.
Initiative interoperability.Background here.
Meeting policy makers where they are with narratives they can recognise.Background here.
Living in truth during a culture war. Background here.
METHODS
The fundamental Atelier steps. Background here.
Imagining transformative pathways for decision-making. Background here. I hope to share news of funding and a pilot in the coming weeks.
Forming frontier consortia. Background here.
An Atelier Hour. Apply coaching techniques in a quick taster session.
Nurturing social learning cycles.Background here.
Depth of Change Spectrum. Background here.
OPERATIONS
ReadingNotes. Background here.
Podcasts: Powerful Times here and Innovation for Sustainability here.
Theory of change. Concept: the Atelier will contribute to transformation by considering three levels (landscape, regime and niche) for itself, and all the interventions in the studio.
Being a Co-Founder. The challenges and experiences of being a start-up co-founder.