The Joy of Collaboration Over Control

Excellent. Welcome. Hello, everybody. Kim, Ali. Good to see you again. And Susan, we're joined by your presence. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. The Secretary General for the Order of St John International. Is that correct? That's it. Yeah. Excellent. Brilliant. Perfect. Maybe a quick introduction from your side on exactly where the Order of St John works, what it is for those who might not be familiar with it.

Yes, so it's an unusual organisation in that we started more than 900 years ago in Holy Land where St John Hospitals, as they were called in those days, provided medical care to pilgrims and others who were in the Holy Land. And from that it became an order of chivalry, was disbanded under the Reformation in this country, and then was restarted during Victorian era provided the first ever ambulances to victims of industrial accidents effectively in the industrial revolution so mines, railways, mills and factories and today we're present in 44 countries around the world most of them in countries of the British Commonwealth and the United States and so that means Asia Pacific, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean and North America.

And the aims of the charity, which is both a charity and an order of chivalry these days, is to provide healthcare, community healthcare, so medical responses to needs in the community, but also fundamentally and right at the heart of what we do is first aid. So we are the people who provide pre-hospital care and training to others to allow them to provide pre-hospital care. So that includes things like CPR, use of defibrillators first aid at events. So you will have seen us in this country at large sporting and other events providing help. And those people save lives on a daily basis wherever we work. And we also train people in companies and schools and teachers and various others who might need to use first aid in the course of their daily life.

And then the community healthcare is very much adapted to the countries where we're working.

Brilliant, thank you. Yeah, you said it. I'm very familiar with St John's ambulance. It's part of community events. It's almost a feature of the event and I've been the recipient of many of your trainings over the years and have been able to utilise them. So having been in those encounters, it's been encouraging and confidence-inspiring to have had the training from your team. So I'm I'm very familiar and comfortable. But my familiarity with St John is at a local community level here in the UK. And you're talking about the international arm of the organisation. You listed a whole bunch of countries that you're working in there. So within the multi-lateral aid space, there's the term localisation, which is shifting the power to locally led entities.

It's a topic that's been around for well over a decade now. What does locally led action or localisation mean for St John as it operates around the world?

So we haven't had to localise because we've always been a locally led organisation. So I think you're right. Many people know us as their local St John ambulance. Very few people are aware of the fact that we are a global organisation. So whereas other international organisations like ours are pretty well known, we're unfortunately quite a well-kept secret internationally, but we are a federation so we're made up of 44 simply 45 independent charities with oversight from a board in London, but those each act independently and they are locally led and locally focused. So there is no question of anybody sitting here or elsewhere in our network coming in and telling the people in Malawi or Solomon Islands what it is they need and how they need to do it.

And I think that is one of our huge advantages. So both our staff and fundamentally the most important part of our delivery are volunteers of whom there are nearly 200,000 around the world, other people who deliver and they are drawn from the local community and they deliver to their friends, colleagues, families in the local community. So, that is, you can imagine that also has its own challenges because in a loose federation your control and your oversight has to be exercised mainly by cooperation, not coercion. And in an organisation which has a lot of volunteers, some of them young people, there are obviously issues around safeguarding, there can be issues around safeguarding.

And also if you're providing medical care, you want to make absolutely sure that quality of what you're delivering is really good because it's people's lives that are at risk. I mean I'm not suggesting for a minute that any one of our organisations doesn't do it correctly but I think that tension between the benefits of it being this loose federation of independent charities and the need to have that oversight is one of the things that my team and I grapple with on the daily basis.

Susan, do you think it's interesting because, you know, we've been talking about versions of localisation, locally led development in with different language for, I would say longer than 10 years, right, Thomas? I mean, it was for a long, long time. And it's always interesting to talk to people who work in organisations where it was designed that way. Cause it's like, well, it's so obvious. This is how you do it. There are so many organisations right now that are trying to maintain their legitimacy and their mission and their value while kind of transforming. So are you following, have you been following that conversation I guess is a question?

I know a little about that conversation from my previous life where I worked in the diplomatic service for over 30 years. So it's a conversation with which I'm familiar.

And then what are the lessons coming from an organisation that has kind of always been in this space for others that are looking to kind of transform or that are trying to even just do baby steps.

So I think one of the issues is that you need to be out, we'll come on to leadership later I think, but one of the issues that you need to be absolutely clear about is the quality of local leadership really makes a difference here. So you can't assume that you've got the right people doing it and you can't assume that those people who, you can't necessarily assume that people who've been the right person in the past or the right person today and getting that change embedded can be really hard because people feel very strongly about this charity. Many of them have been involved in it since they were five years old as cadets and have grown up through our youth programmes and are still there and they're in their later years.

So that I think is a huge challenge and I think that's something that you can't assume is going to work, so having the right people in place. I think also being very clear that what works in one place doesn't always work in another. Sometimes the principles are the right ones, but actually how you implement that on the ground can be very different. I think the other thing that we grapple with constantly is making sure that every part of the organisation has a voice in defining our strategies and our priorities and that when things are difficult for them, they have ways of feeling it back and being listened to.

One of the recent developments with St John is the implementation of a region, it's not a structure but a regional approach. So we were very conscious of the fact that the distance between somebody sitting in the Solomon Islands or Barbados and us in London, if they wanted to, A, be helped to improve, or B, articulate concerns. It sometimes felt like a long time of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and then Asia-Pacific. And those are informal structures. They're not government structures. They're not extra levels of bureaucracy, but a senior leader in each of those three regions has taken on the job of bringing them together.

And they act as the sort of improvement and support mechanism and then some of the more hard-edged policing and enforcement when that's necessary comes from my office in London and I think that that's really important because that that that distance can be hugely challenging and I think the other thing it does is it's building up cooperation within the region so you've got you've got you know somebody in New Zealand, St John in Fiji, because they're closer, they culturally are more aware of the things that are needed. But it might also be that somebody in Barbados has some really good information or practice or whatever experience that might help the person in Barbados.

So also fostering those links between the various organisations which don't involve necessarily the centre, it's a really important part of how we've done it.

Out of curiosity, I'm just thinking that you mentioned those local roots and the localised programming at country level and also those regional structure and of course the international office or had a quarter. So from leadership point of view, how do you see the role of those regional structures or the international office in supporting, enabling, empowering those localised solutions without getting in their way, without influencing or giving them that, you know, amplifying their voices and support.

So I think the important thing is to define very clearly who does what. So I think at the regional level it is very clear that they are not there to police, they're not there to wave a big stick, they're not there to enforce standards, they're there to encourage development and foster improvements and be the softer side of leadership if you like. In my office we also provide support, particularly financial support, when the rights or projects are presented to us, but our role is much more on the standards, governance, guidance side, and I think that's very clear. It means that we don't get to do the nice stuff quite as often, but you know that's fine.

It works exactly the sort of people who deliver that in the way it should be done. I think we've also made sure that we have information, best practice available globally. So we've recently developed a hub of a resource hub where all our best practices available and anybody can have access to that. So that's we see that as the role of my team in London as providing those tools to allow every establishment within the St John family to flourish. We are now fundraising probably for the first time ever seriously in my office in London and that is in order to provide resources for the individual establishments, many of which are not in any position to do that.

So we're not doing it and patronising here's a handout way, which is without wanting to sort of generalise and diss what has gone before. And it was a bit like that in the past. So somebody would come to us and ask for some money and we just, not quite, but it would be handed out to them, but without any sense of a sustainable plan for what that money or what those resources would be used for. So we're trying to make all that much more professional and much more valuable both in art for us, but all particularly for the establishments concerned. And we've just set up a brand new small grant fund for every establishment.

We've just given out the first grant, in fact. And that's a very, very quick process so that the establishments will put in a proposal to us and within two weeks they'll get a yes or no. They're relatively small scale projects, but they have to have the proper planning and everything to explain what they're doing and that that we feel and the people who decide are all, I mean, you will all be familiar with this, but they're all drawn from our community. They're not people in my office. So you have practitioners from around the globe who come together as a panel and take decisions on the proposals when they come to them.

This is really fascinating. You've just list, I'm not sure, Kim and Ali are thinking the same sort of thing.

There's so much to unpack!

Which one do I want to fall?

My takeaway, and Kim, Ali, you come in as well. Susan, you mentioned then three different things, right? You mentioned how governance works in a very decentralised entity that's entrenched and embedded in decentralised approaches, right? Um, you mentioned that you're now only beginning to go into the fundraising in London, the global north to be able to distribute to entities that are in other parts of the world and to be maybe a bit crude about it. I'm assuming you're referring to countries that would be classified under sort of colloquial terms as global south. Um, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Okay. Interesting. Come back to that then. Um, and then you mentioned another bit about shared learning.

And that to me, we've spoken about that within the multilateral age structures, as the kind of the ideal states where you've got, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, the globally connected entity can be that facilitation of shared learning, which just makes perfect sense to me. And you're describing a way of actually working. Now, the shift you're coming at this from an organisation, as you said, is already sort of very locally led in its in its model, in its architecture. So you've got an established governance structure that enables that. And many of the Global North, big INGOs at the minute are trying to work out how to do that, because they have to give up that control essentialisation, but retain that governance oversight.

So there's some fascinating links there. The money side of it is what they've typically already been doing, sitting with the money in the Global North and handing it out to the Global South. And that has been the centre of all the power dynamics and the power differential that exists, who holds the money, controls where things go, etc. So you're now kind of introducing those two dimensions backwards compared to many peer organisations. And then this ideal place of shared learning thing which we spoke about. I'd love to hear your thoughts on or advice for counterpart CEOs in INGOs, how to achieve that governance piece with a decentralised model, how you will avoid absorbing power, centralising power as you start to enter into a fundraising-based space, right?

And then lastly, what's the joy of leading a global entity that is so decentralised? So often we come to these conversations with a sense of dread and fear and trepidation and worry and angst around letting go of that control. And you phrased it beautifully by saying, being controlled by collaboration and cooperation, not coercion. And that's fantastic. And I'd love to hear a bit of joy about leading something like that, because that's in short supply in these conversations.

Okay. Shall we do the joy first? Please. I can do the joy first. So, I mean, I brought to this job, I've been in the job for five years and I brought to the job a lot of experience of working precisely using persuasion and collaboration rather than coercion. I think that it is one of the joys of this organisation that we don't control, we don't try to control and we allow others to flourish. So I see it almost as you know letting your children leave home and go to university and then have their own lives. I mean, it feels a bit like that. It wasn't always like that.

It used to be that the central priory, because that's what we call them, because establishments in England control the world from here. And in the late 1990s, a deliberate decision was made to let that go. And so we established a very small international office, there's sort of 15 of us here. And then the the independence was underlined and reinforced. Where we had a bit of a problem in the governance space was with our smaller organisations. So we have 12 really big ones, and they are apart from the eye hospital in Jerusalem and the priories of South Africa and Kenya. They're all in what you would describe as global North countries.

Then we have all the other smaller ones, most of whom are in the global South. We didn't have an institutional governance framework governing our relationship with those smaller establishments and that was problematical for us because they couldn't see the benefit of what we did for them and we felt that we didn't really have any levers to pull or any way to channel our support to them properly. So over the last 18 months or so we have written and now implemented a relationship agreement with every single one of those smaller organisations and you know you might have thought that there would be a lot of resistance to that because they could see if you if you're looking at it from a negative perspective that they were giving up control that we would be crawling all over them and requiring them to do things and and and there is that sort of post-colonial you know concern that it might look as if we were trying to do that.

In fact extraordinarily and this was a huge surprise to me and my colleagues, every single one of them apart from three welcomed this with open arms and they welcomed it because they wanted to have that relationship defined, they wanted to know what they could expect from us and they wanted to know what was expected from them in return and also to know that the support, they were support for them from us or at the regional level to allow them to to get to the point that in an ideal world, every single one of our establishments would be gold standard and everything they do. So that's been, I mean, I think that's a really, I mean, surprisingly easy for us to implement and it's been very positive.

And I think that's a model which is, it's not a particularly long document, but it's one which covers all the bases. And it also has a small bit of it, which says, if you don't sign up to this, or if you don't abide by our values, or if you don't read the standards, or if you're not transparent about your finances or whatever else it is, then there are things that will happen. And again, this is, I'm telling you to suck eggs now, but this is really important for an organisation like ours, where reputation and trust is so important to the way we operate. You know, if you're going to be calling it somebody in to train you in first aid, you want to know that you're getting people who are really good at what they do.

And so our smaller establishments now, I think, have a much better sense that they, you know, they have a dog in this fight, that actually maintaining the reputation means as much to them and that they are responsible for that in the same way as the prior in New Zealand and Australia or Canada. So that's been a, and for me, actually, you know, it's like any leadership thing. If your ego is not massive, then actually one of the most satisfying things you can do is to see the people that work with you flourish and sometimes overtake you. And I think that's one of the things about this new phase in our existence that it's seeing others flourish.

Basically it's about serving more lives. And that's why not having the control is actually quite liberating and I think it's a model which works really well for us.

It also means that I think that the board, we have a small board here in London which is made up of a rotating group of people from the various large establishments who come through and change over on a regular basis, they also have to be prepared to take tough decisions when things are not going right so you know and that that has been lacking in the past as well so the every part of this family needs to see that playing by the rules has benefits not playing by the rules has disbenefits and we need to show that without you know naming and shaming and making it public but I think that that's another important part of it and I think that's something which I think is a fairly recent development around the board table where you know the rubber is really hitting the road on that stuff.

And I think it's a, and we have really good examples of where we've done it, where we've removed local leadership, you know, after some difficult conversations, put somebody else in place and the thing has just gone boom and flourished. And again, we highlight those as examples of what happens when the right things are in place. So that's the joy of it. Shared learning. I would say one of our most successful programmes overseas is a mother and baby programme, which is now in six countries in Africa. We've just extended it to Ghana on the West Coast. The others are five countries in East Africa. It is an extraordinarily successful programme, reaching all over a million women, men and children in the last 10 years.

It provides pre and postnatal care. Make sure that women get into the system, get advice, go to clinics rather than trying to manage on their own, it improves the chances of having healthy babies and it improves the chances of the mothers not coming to harm during their pregnancies. It also provides contraceptive advice to women should they want it. So it involves the fathers in the process, which is a really, really important part of it for us. There is an extremely sophisticated monitoring and evaluation process that goes with it, so that we can see what works and what doesn't. And we are now using that model for a completely separate programme in the Caribbean, which is to do with training first-aiders, community first-aiders in communities in the Caribbean.

But the methodology is just being transferred because we've seen that it works. And that's a real example of that sort of shared learning and making sure that it is put to good use elsewhere in our family. And there are other instances, I think, where that would be possible, too. The North-South Money thing, our fundraising is not just for the Global South. I mean, there are programmes of every single one of our organisations as a charity. So, for example, there are programmes that my colleagues in Western Australia would like to carry out with the Indigenous communities there, which are remote and have serious health concerns and health challenges.

The money that they earn from their charitable work is not enough to fund some of these more ambitious programmes. So it is, you know, with the right focus, right at the heart and centre of our mission, it won't just go in that direction. So I hope that goes some way to undermining the idea that we're just we know we're sitting in London doling out monitor Africa and Caribbean associations and they're all involved in the process. I mean it's certainly not me or anybody on my team or the board deciding what is needed and some of them are very ambitious but need help to establish the basics first.

So I think that's the other thing that we're trying to do make them all self-sustaining in order to build up, you know, not overnight from where they are to being like St John Ambulance England. So I think that's important. And I told you about the relationship agreement at the beginning. So that's the government's piece.

What's interesting, the thing that I'm circling around, and you said it just a little bit ago, Susan, you said it at the very start, is in order to make these changes, you said, and I think you called out an elephant in the room and attention that we sometimes don't like to acknowledge, which is not everyone is going to stay with the organisation for the journey. Someone who made sense five years ago for where the organisation was may not make sense for the future of the organisation. And as many organisations, as I say, are bridging and building to the future, some are going to make that transition and be able to bridge and flourish.

and some just won't and where I where I work we talk about each employee needs to get it want it and can do it and those are the three questions do you get it do you want it and maybe I as an employee got it five years ago but I just don't get the direction or maybe I'm saying that I want it but really in my heart of hearts the whole power shift thing isn't working for me so I feel like this is a tension or an elephant in the room, we don't talk about enough that we can't bring everyone along. And what does that look like?

At the same time, one of the things you just said, Susan, when you said, I was surprised that people wanted us to have more. Oftentimes, what you were saying is it's just a human being thing. Human beings like consistency, and they like clarity. But in order for that to work, there needs to be an established mutual bi-directional trust and respect so as long as there's the trust and respect in a shared common vision what I'm hearing you say is well we're actually we're increasing how we are transparent and clear and we are increasing how we are consistent but I'd love to hear from all three of you your thoughts on this not everyone can can make it across the bridge and what does that mean for leaders maybe who are listening because I'm sure you've all had examples of that in your past.

So, okay, I have a couple of things in my mind. The first thing from what you mentioned, Susan, I think what I'm reading between the lines is investment in leadership. That's my take on the things that you mentioned. And just to think about what you can mention, there is this famous quote, usually they say a Ford said it, where he's saying, if I asked people what do you want, they would have said faster horses. So I think from my perspective, sometimes you actually don't need to bring everyone on board. And also from my perspective, sometimes progress doesn't mean that everyone now will share the same idea, want to achieve the same thing, trying to work toward the same impact.

It means that people, they have different perspective, different approach, maybe different directions, possibly different strategies, but in the end of the day, as I always say, it's about we, the people, it goes into that direction. So maybe you don't really need to break everyone on board and create that alignment. The third thing I want to say from my end, which is addressing another elephant in the room, which is that in the sector, we usually talk about localisation, digitalisation, climate action, collaboration. We want that, we love that, we talk about it. We got very good with that terminology and we are really very good when it comes to our literacy on that, excellent.

But unfortunately, when it comes to donors and funding, we, majority of the times we follow their strategies, we are squeezed by focused areas and there is very strong tension there. So I think, from my perspective, it's very complicated process because you have to take all that into account. Susan, did you want to come in?

Yeah, so I think, I don't think any of the progress and any of the transformation which has happened in St John in recent years would have happened without one person who is our most senior leader outside the Royal Family who is an Australian. He's worked in the private sector in health care for a long, long time. He came into this with a clear idea that things needed to change and he hasn't just made trends during this process, you know, but he recognises that everybody has a role as a part to play and he talks about, we've just had our AGM last week and he concluded by talking about a phenomenon which he'd seen in the past and I've seen this too, particularly in my old job, where people would come together for one of those big meetings and all nod the heads and say it was fantastic.

And on the plane, on the way home, and certainly when they got back to their home base, they'd start saying, oh, those people in London, oh, they just talk, I don't agree with any of it. But you know, I think we've, I think we've got beyond that. And I think that that is because he's such a brilliant leader. It's also because the leaders in our individual establishments have been have changed. He's had a personal role in making sure that the people who have been on the shortlist are the right sorts of people in an organisation like ours, there has been, there can be an element of you've been around for the right number of times and done the right number of right sorts of jobs so you automatically get the top job eventually.

That has meant that we have not been diverse in any way in our leadership in the past and that is also, I mean it's a slow process as you all know but that is changing too. We're also for the first time ever and I'm really pleased that this has happened because I mentioned it in my recruitment interview that it was something that was missing. We have a global leadership development programme so we bring together young middle career most of them people from across the St John family so you've got people from the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, the Caribbean, wherever, they come to London for a residential thing, then they have mentoring and they each bring a project that they want to work on.

Those people are much more diverse than our current leadership. They have been told that when they see things in their home establishments that are not right they are empowered to speak up and challenge them because that's part of the problem with an old relatively small c-conservative organisation like ours and I think the more that we can do that the better. So if you combine that with cracking down and dealing with poor leadership which doesn't abide by our values for whatever reason then I think you begin to send the message and the people who are attracted to those leadership positions also change because they see what they can get out of it.

And within my own small team, I've had significant turnover of staff. I mean, we haven't actually pushed anybody out of the door, but there are some people who probably didn't feel entirely comfortable with the direct, it's not really even the direction of travel, it's the way in which we are working and what we were being expected to deliver, you know, it's quite, it's quite the pressure is constant, and there's always something new. And we also need to show the trustees and the rest of the organisation in our value. So that means that there's always something that we need to do. And I think to go back to the point about, you know, sometimes you have to do things when not everybody agrees with you, absolutely right.

This resource hub that we set up, there was extreme scepticism when we floated the idea with the Board to start with. And now everybody thinks it's absolutely fantastic. So sometimes the executive, if the executive knows it's the right thing to do, probably just has to convince the chair or at least say just give us a go and then get on and do it. And what we now do at our AGM each year is we have a session where we report back on what we discussed last year and we show them and we done it. I think that creates that atmosphere of trust and confidence which I think is absolutely fundamental to all of this.

There is no way in which you are ever going to be be able to achieve change unless you have that trust, confidence and transparency. And not just to talk about the good stuff, we had a session, I'm not gonna go into the details, we had a session at the AGM where two of our establishments talked in great detail about some things that had gone wrong. And we all said five years ago that wouldn't have been possible. So I think that that's the other part of that picture, you know, that you leave your ego outside the door and you come in and you're honest and you're transparent about the challenges that you face so that we can all learn from each other.

Yeah, and fantastically important what you just mentioned there about that recognition of the journey where we've come from and where we are now, what's possible now as uncomfortable as it might have been in the moment and it's difficult. It was possible, whereas previously it wasn't. I don't think that's recognised as much, that journey that we go on. But also on this point on transition and people moving and things, I think the aggregate for me, people, it sorts itself out, right? People leave natural transition, natural turnover. People will kind of reach the end of their road and then they'll leave and then I move on to another.

Where I find it's become problematic and where you've had people hanging on for too long is when, for example, the job market outside of that isn't fruitful for them, right? And so they're staying because they want the paycheck, right? And the job security and they don't think leaving they're going to get there's too much risk in leaving. That's one big challenge. Another big challenge I've seen with it is the higher up you go, right? The more senior people get and then ultimately at the top, right? If there there's a challenge of people not being you know the organisation naturally is evolving and moving on and they're not moving and you've alluded to this.

I don't want to put words in your mouth that you said but where you've had to change leaders in decentralised and quasi-franchised-esque kind of structures, that can be a big challenge. And I've seen that happen where you've had a CEO and or a board chair, they either independent or in cahoots with each other, that are doing everything you listed sort of in that relationship agreement, you know, you're not transparent about your finances, you know, they've just increasingly done this, and suddenly your global organisation has gone, well, hang on a minute. Changing them and having that changing process is interesting to see if this is playing out with your counterparts and peers, but a chilling effect being unable because of the independent nature of those entities, being unable to force a change and having to manage that transition through other means is a chilling effect to this sense of letting go, right?

And then it comes back to not spoken, I'm sure, but understood, so under the scenes and when people have quiet moments to themselves, those egos of I don't want to admit I'm no longer the right person to lead this. Those are big elephants in the room. And it's very difficult to see where that goes.

And those are exactly the sort of people who for the links to the British crown, the ceremony and things that goes along with being a member of the Order of St John, those are some of the people that are very much stuck in the past. And you're right. Now, if people have signed up to our relationship agreement, we have the tool, but obviously some of the ones who've decided not to sign up happen to be the ones who are not behaving, of course. But you know, either through not so gentle persuasion, in the case that's already happened before the relationship agreement was in place, the sort of things that were going on in that particular place was so bad that the threat of going to the local police was probably enough.

I mean it wasn't abuse or anything like that but it was fraud and I think we had a fairly strong leverage of push. With the others, then you have to get really tough, you know, and there are legal things you can do to close down an organisation. And, you know, particularly as a charity, which has charitable objects, if you can prove that the person who's in charge is not actually behaving in a way to further those objects, then I think, you know, but this is difficult and you're right, sometimes sitting in my office with my colleagues, we can feel like we're always the bad guys. I mean, I'd much rather be involved in helping people flourish through the community of practice or whatever else it is or providing mentoring all that lovely stuff but somebody's got to do it because if you don't do it the problems in X will get worse and it will blow up in our faces one day and we will then be faced with you know two problems first of all given our status and the fact that we are a crown order of chivalry you know that that that means that some very serious people could be embarrassed if something goes seriously wrong um but also the effect on our on our global reputation could be really, really bad.

So, yeah, I mean, I have a background in my old life in human resources. And I used to feel when I was sitting in my old job sometimes on a Friday afternoon when yet another case came onto my desk that 90% of my time was taken up by probably 2% of the 15,000 people we had working for us. And it's probably true. But on the other hand, somebody had to do it. And then you do have to draw a line at some point. You have to say, okay, enough is enough. you might have got away with that in the past, but if we're serious about being a values driven organisation, which we are, then that has to mean something.

It's not just a post-it note stuck on the wall.

Speaking my language, I would like all of us to think about, so in this conversation I have heard multiple examples of leadership. And in this podcast we've talked quite a bit Susan about the leaders of tomorrow. And both the leaders of tomorrow, if I am an executive who is sitting in that chair and maybe I have risen up the ranks but I'm finding myself having to bridge to that new world. Or if I am just coming out of university or I'm a young professional and maybe I don't have all that baggage. So what are skills that I should be learning? What are the skills and capacities that leaders of tomorrow need?

And I've heard ego, leave your ego at the door. I've heard about the transparency, values driven all of these things. But there's things that have been scattered throughout this conversation. I'd love for us just to kind of draw them all together because I think it's starting to paint a picture.

So the things I think that are missing from what I've said so far, I think courage is really, really important. So the courage to take those tough decisions sometimes, curiosity. So, you know, being really interested in the organisation that you're leading. And in our case, you know, that means not just interacting with the senior people, it means when you're travelling around, which many of our leaders do, going out and talking to, you know, to the people who are actually doing this work on the ground, you know, to the woman who's visiting the villages in Malawi and talking to the pregnant mothers, to the person who's training the community health workers in the Caribbean to the woman who has the therapy dogs in Canada, you know, these are the people who actually, they're doing it.

They're the people who are carrying out our mission. I think that's really important. And the other thing, I mean, and it's trite and everybody says it always, but I think really good communication skills are absolutely crucial because, you know, you can be doing the best thing in the world and you can have the best vision in the world, but if the people out there, the rest of the organisation doesn't hear what you're doesn't understand that, doesn't see how it relates to them, then you're never going to get anywhere.

Yeah, I agree. And I'm smiling because one of my words was curiosity. I used that one a lot.

So I'm going to move on. I often use curiosity with creativity. And I use those two words

either way round, but I use them together. So I would add creativity to the mix as well. along with discernment, right? I think one of the leadership traps that we've become too comfortable with is a rush to fix, is a desire for a solution, right? Whereas actually pausing and having just a little bit of discernment, whether you call that reflection, whether you call that processing, whatever you wanna refer to it as, I think that act of discerning and reflecting and staying with the trouble, sticking through that discernment when it gets tough and uncomfortable, we've got to stay there. And one of the ways to kind of smooth the way through a lot of these challenges and I hesitate to use the word mitigation, but a better word is not coming to my mind yet because I hesitate on mitigation because it places it in a sort of risk based language framework.

And I don't want that to be the case, but one of the ways I think you can reduce the number of sort of difficult dynamics that you have in the future is by having a strong relational leadership dynamic to what you're doing right and it speaks to your communication point Susan but I think it goes a little bit beyond that right it's about that emotional intelligence to be relational with people and have that human-to-human connection with individuals because that's where trust is built and when you get into that space actually many things that become quite severe and significant challenges are identified much earlier on and or are just navigated even if the outcome remains the same that one of the two individuals leaves, that process has just navigated a lot easier with a lot less aggravation and emotional stress and turmoil that goes with it.

So it's a relational dynamics. Yeah. And it has to be underpinned by integrity. 100%. Yes.

The other thing is, you know, if you say one thing to one person and one thing to somebody else, and you are not seen to embody those values yourself, then you're in no position really to insist did other people do it?

Absolutely.

Kim, literally, I wrote a book that I didn't publish answering that question, 25 chapters.

Why is it not published? Publish it, publish it. It's just sitting there on your computer.

This year, 25 chapters. I'm going to summarise them in one, two minutes. There are two things that come to my mind. A friend of mine told me this thing that stuck in my head and I thought about it, that electric light didn't come from continuous improvement of the candles. And I think in that sentence, there is something to think about as leaders or emerging leaders that sometimes it's not about looking at something and try to continue working on it, try to improve it, optimise it and all that. Sometimes it's about pausing, thinking, being curious and courageous and then try to reimagine how certain things works. The other thing, which is a sentence, I like so much, hope and history rhyme.

And sometimes there is hope in history, which means for emerging leaders and leaders in general, sometimes about stepping back, thinking about the past of all the examples that we had of interventions, organisations, programme design, thinking and all those things and try to learn from it and bring it to the present. So I think it's the balance between the ability of being curious, rethinking, reimagining certain things and be courage and build something. And also the ability to pause, think about the past, reflect, look at the present and then live in the future long enough before it even happens. So I think that balance is what comes to my mind thinking about emerging leaders and leaders and all that, and of course 25 chapters.

And I think the hope and history thing is so relevant to what we do, because the hope is that we can save more lives and touch more people's and help more people with their medical issues.

But the history is that that is what we've been doing for 900 years and it relates back to we are a completely ecumenical organisation, anybody can be a member of the Order of St John, anybody comes to our door, they get treated in the same way, including in the Middle East where that is a particularly important part of what we do. And I think always reminding ourselves that But that is where we come from and that is still what we are trying to achieve today is really important and young people in particular find that very, very attractive because one of our challenges of course is making sure that we maintain that flow into the organisation of young volunteers in particular and then making sure they want to stay with us.

And this sort of sense of purpose and history is something that they find very attractive.

And Ali, what you're saying about, you know, reimagining and having the vision and reimagining that reminded me of our last episode talking with Vanessa from the Impact Alliance, because, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand. Are you talking about what I call small T transformations, right? So it's the small incremental things where you are increasing efficient. It might look like you're increasing efficiency. But my argument would be it's a small t transformation if you're changing the way in which you're operating So you mentioned this to Susan It's not only always what you're doing, but how you're doing it Who isn't at the table how you're living your values, but then the big t transformations are they're like should we even be here?

questions and you need as a leader you need to be able to Hold both at the same time and know when small t transformations are building up and know when you have to kind of throw a a big T transformation into the mix.

Yeah, and I think some of the things that, you know, today that we and anybody in our situation are grappling with is, you know, what is the impact of the way the world is, you know, the big, wide, crazy, scary world? What, how does that impact on what we do? You know, being such a values led organisation, you know, there are difficult questions we sometimes have to ask ourselves because we pride ourselves on being apolitical. We're not we're not activists in some places we do advocacy, but we are definitely not activist organisation There are people within our within our ranks who would like to be more activist and being very clear about that aspect of who we are and the impact of not maintaining that on our ability to operate across the world I mean there are places where that's more of an issue than others but almost everywhere we work You know, we need to be seen as objective, apolitical, so that if, for example, there's a political protest, we can go in and offer first aid to whoever it is who's protesting and the security forces as well if we need to, you know, so that it's these are really difficult issues and I'm not, I, you know, there are people who find that a really uncomfortable, understandably a very uncomfortable conversation.

It's fascinating that you bring this in and I'm conscious of time and I'm also aware that I might be dropping in the beginning of a much bigger conversation than we've probably got time for, but this introduction of the sort of how an organisation lives its values and associating that with the need to transform, big or small t, there's a growing sense and I'm speaking about this from surveys and data that have been conducted in the private sector, corporate sector, but a growing awareness or realisation that values are expensive to live. When push comes to shove, when money gets tight, values are expensive. And I get why that can be spoken in a corporate sector, but when you start to transfer the same dynamic into the social impact, non-profit charitable space, suddenly it becomes deeply uncomfortable.

I wanted any reflection on that. I don't want to ask you a particular point on it, but any any reaction or response to how expensive values can be?

I think they can be, you know, we would have to think very carefully if we were asked to work with a government whose policies were completely contrary to our values. I mean so far that's not that's not a reason. There are places where it's you know on the margins but we haven't had to deal with that so far and I think that that's a conversation we have to have because either we either we believe it or we don't. So just say I mean fictional country, Ruritania, the Ruritanian government says St John Ambulance can go and help in villages where this ethnic minority is in the population but not that one.

You know what do we do there? Well it's pretty clear to me what I think we should do but but those are questions that we have to grapple with. And you have the same in fundraising. You know, I mean, this again, this is a very obvious question, but you know, do you, we have to in theory accept money from anybody who wants to give it to us unless we have a very clearly defined policy which says no, no, no, no, no. But there are things that I would feel very personally uncomfortable with. I mean, online, we do a lot of work in mental health first aid.

I would feel very uncomfortable about accepting money from an online betting company. I just, you know, I, but that's a personal thing. that's not an institutional thing. But these are all the sorts of questions which have a direct impact on who we are and what we do, and the board needs to have those discussions and be very clear. And as you said, it's not a decision you can come to overnight. These have to be conversations which evolve, and you have to come back to them and revisit them. Same with some of the things that the executive will present to the board. We think this is a great idea.

We'd like to go ahead and do this. And the ball is sometimes quite rightly, we'll say, I don't think we're quite ready for that yet. So we go away, we do a bit more work, we talk to our colleagues around the world a bit more, and we come back with a revised version. That makes much better policy. I mean, that's what I'm used to in my last life, and that's the way I think we all have to get used to doing it. And you're right, quick fixes are not the right things to do in most cases. And I think there's a real tension I think, particularly if you're looking at projects and spending of donor money, getting that understood and you talked, I think we talked earlier about some of the perverse incentives that can be attached to fundraising and funds raised, the intelligent donors and the ones who know the landscape understand that.

The mother and baby programme started very small and has built up. I would not, there are countries in the world which are not ready to have that. And there's certainly St John and establishments, which are not ready to run it. But as I said, we've applied that learning in a different context and made sure that we can make use of it elsewhere. But I think that, yeah, the need to have a quick fix, I mean, and in politics, it's even worse. So in some ways, this is much easier to manage in my current job than it was in my last one.

Brilliant. We're at time. There's much more I would love to go into. I'm sure Ali Kim have got the same. But you know, one thing we pride ourselves on almost in this pod is we don't ever try and reach conclusion. We're not here to solve a problem, right? But we are here to help explore and move forward. So I would love if, Kim, you've been throwing questions to all three of us. So let me throw one back to all three of you. What are the thoughts and immediate reflections sitting at the front of your mind from what we've spoken about in the last 45 minutes or so.

Ali, you look like you've been answered.

I just feel, you know, I like to talk so much about a humanitarian diplomacy. So from my perspective, a large part of what you mentioned Susan today and this investment in leadership and your team on the ground and navigating those complex things, either with donors or states or diplomats or even with community, it's so much like this a humanitarian diplomacy practice to be able to navigate all those things, things, the complicated part of it, the uncomfortable things around it, and stick to your values and be driven by it. So I feel this is what I would call a humanitarian diplomacy in action in that part of the programming.

Such a nice conversation. I really like it. Yeah. I mean, the word that's coming to my mind is a level of maturity. And I think it's a level of maturity of thought in the ability to navigate what is complex. So Susan you're not saying that any of this is easier any of this is is you know an easy fix, but being able to have The mature and maybe that comes from the length of time that of your organisation Just that sense of history, but having the maturity to say this is how we live This is where our lines are. This is how we operate. This is what happens if it doesn't work I think and having the confidence to do that is something that really is shining through from

Well, thank you. I mean, I really like the humanitarian diplomacy thing because of course that brings the two halves of my life together. So it's really nice to hear it. I think these sorts of conversations are really helpful for me because you can get a bit lost in the woods and just see all the 2% of your children who are the problem ones and actually standing back and thinking about where this organisation was and what I inherited and how we built a team and you know the ambition has grown significantly in the last five years and that's the thing that you refer to which is the joy you know even when it's really really hard the fact that you're surrounded by people who are enthusiastic and believe in what they're doing and want to get even better and more professional and allow us to be recognised for the global charity that we are is really, for me, I find that very, very stimulating and that's what keeps me going and even when those 5% are being difficult.

Absolutely.

And I was gonna say to the joy bit as well and you've been incredibly honest and candid throughout this conversation, which is hugely appreciated. So thank you very much for that. But because of that, and through that, and with the reference to the joy that can happen, I think there's so much in what you've spoken about today that would resonate with people that are, quote unquote, inside the multi-lateral architectures, right? And I think from the sort of local understanding of who's inside, I'd say St John is outside of that system, right, with a dependency on the UN mechanism and all the rest of it. And so I think there's a lot that your peers that are quite and quite inside could take from what you've said today, that there is life on the other side, right?

You don't have to be stuck on the inside of something that is really struggling with relevance and financing at the moment. So thank you for that. I think it's been it's been fantastically interesting. And yeah, I wish you every luck in the future. Thank you very much. Thanks enormously for the opportunity. It's been great fun. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Everyone's gonna find your joy today. That's the call. That's the call to action.

Great. Well, I found plenty this afternoon, so that's lovely. Thank you.

That's it. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you. Bye bye. Cheers, Kim. Cheers, Ali. We'll see you soon. Bye bye. Bye bye. So we just come off with Susan quick hot debrief. How did we find that conversation? What do you think?

You are well. Yeah. Sorry. Waiting for the others to jump in. Kim.

I found it really interesting. I always find it interesting when as you say, Thomas, someone is coming kind of from outside the space that a lot of the people that I am often working with it. But I'm always surprised by how much is transferable. Yeah. Like, in some ways, the conditions are a little bit easier. Otherwise, everyone would have done it by now. But there is so much transferable learning.

I would disagree with that conclusion that they would have done it by now.

I think they're held back by a sense of, you know, pleasure in their own displeasure or better the devil, you know, or just the uncertainty in the risk of making the step. I think is is too big a psychological step for many people.

Do you think it's psychological not structural?

Yeah, yeah, I do. I think if they were to be purely machinist learning, you know, just just take the data and think they would the step is very obvious to take. It's a psychological step that I think is a bigger challenge for people to make. Yeah,

I think there is a large part this is mainly psychological thing I could see it in so many engagement in the past two years when I spoke with organisations about transformation. It's just the psychology and the fear. The other part, I think it's what I called proceduralism. Sometimes people are stuck in the procedure and the process and know this should be done, this consultation should exist. This, that, all those things and then blocks them from progress. So they spend so much time focusing on the procedure rather than the outcome and the impact. And I think the third thing, it really require imagination and curiosity. I really think that large part of the challenge that we faced in the sector, especially with large international NGOs, is imagination challenge.

They just couldn't imagine how it looks like in practice. And you could see it in conversation and all that. They keep trying to rebrand something that we already did before. And that's why it came to my mind when we were talking that thing about the electric light didn't come out of continuous improvement of the candle because sometimes if you keep looking at the same system, try to improve it, improve it, improve it without trying to rethink and reimagine, it's a struggle. But I have to admit, I really liked how Susan was open about both the challenges and the progress that they are making and how the conversation was smooth.

If I was listening to this conversation, I would expect that that the hosts gave her the question. In reality, she had no clue what we are going to talk about. Even ourselves, we didn't really have an idea how that will be the conversation and all that. So I think it was really nice, smooth conversation.

So maybe this is what our next podcast, just the three of us should be on because it's not that I disagree with you. I have seen many examples of the psychological being the thing that that is like that is the barrier to change but I still there's a lot that's structural that that when I'm thinking of if I am in a traditional organisation and maybe you could say to your point Ali you know big T transformation it's sunsetting sure and so then you get into the ego and this and that. But there's a lot to unpack there of if I'm a CEO and this is also values under pressure is my is my obligation to my employees is it to the mission is it to the and there's not really a right or wrong answer it's easy to say it from the outside of course it's to the mission in the broader sector.

But when I'm sitting here and I have 300 people on payroll it is a little sure there's there's an element of ego there but there's also an element that is not just psychological. And the funding constraints, the way that the system is set up, we're not starting from scratch. It's not a blank piece of paper where everyone is doing it. So because we're being asked to bridge, I think it's a little bit more complex than that.

I agree with you. It is. And I love the idea of going into this in more depth, the three of us next time because it's certainly worth that that investment of time. It would also be a lovely link between Vanessa's the last one and this as well in terms of going because I think we often we're we're also not able to distinguish between the structural and the emotional right there's identity fits into so much of this as well as of that and then you go back I used to constantly save when I was in Save the Children on the localisation thing right because that seemed to be people challenging the identity of the organisation I'm like But the founders of the organisation raised the first 10,000 pounds to founders to save the children raised.

They gave to a local organisation to respond with, right? So if you're pulling heritage and pedigree in front of us on this, then actually localisation is where we should be and shouldn't have ever left, right? So yeah, there's so much to unpack in it, there really is. But yeah, I thought Susan was wonderful. I thought, as you said, so much resonance between what the challenges are they're facing and what current CEOs are facing. And the fact that there's joy in it, I love that bit. I love the way that she was able to articulate the joy she has in the current setup and structures compared to where she used to be in her previous role and work, which I think is probably a little bit similar to where many INGOs are now.

There we go.

But gosh, how do you get through it if you can't find the joy?

Yeah. No, agreed. Agreed. I just think and I hope that most people do have that joy and they are able to, you know, close their laptop at the end of a day and go, God, that was a good day and fill the energy and the motivation. I just, I brought it into that conversation because it never, it never really features in the discourse of change that we're having, right? In the bigger group conversations, we're always talking about the problems of it and the angst of it and all the rest of it. I'm like, but it's a good thing sometimes as well.

Yeah. I have a confession to make. I actually recently I started unfollowing some NGOs from my field. Are you going to name a chain? Are you going to name them? No, I'm not going to name them. But I just felt it's too much. Like, okay, I do want to be aware and see what's happening here and there and all that. But sometimes we need to focus also at what excites us, what motivates us, what brings us together, all those things. I'm not a fan of continuance working on the language that divides us and show the differences. So that's why, unfortunately, I had to do that here and there just to at least clear my feet a bit and then I will reassist again and all that.

I really like that you brought joy to the conversation. And that was really nice question and it was really nice answer by Susan. Yeah, excellent. Cool

Excellent. Well, thank you both real pleasure as always and Yeah, we'll speak to you on the next one Until next time. Take care both