There does seem to be more firefighting dragging you into the day to day management rather than the strategic thinking and visioning. Now it’s all about  enabling the organisation to bounce back, it’s repairing fractured relationships and coming up with new ways of tackling the thorn issues of balancing an over stretched, inadequate budget, keeping the board’s ambitions realistic and addressing the recruitment challenge.

You do need space in an over crowded diary , time to think, and the opportunity to address your development needs,  to share your insights and gain from others.

Ideas like the four day week experiment that cut staff turnover and saved money without a drop in performance.

One of the best ways is vir facilitated peer group learning sets. Sharing experiences and insights with others in similar organisations facing similar challenges in a safe environment. Somewhere you can open up about your frustrations in the secure knowledge this will not find its way back to the chair or board members.

Of course this is not a new model of leadership development but previously it was targeted at second and third tier executives often those newly appointed or relatively in experienced but ambitious. What’s different is targeting Directors and chief executives particular those with years of experience at this level. The people who previously would have felt confident that there were few problems/challenges they had not encountered in the past. But post Brexit, post Covid and post austerity and with a new Government determined to show they are different, well old ways don’t work.