Graham Leicester – författare

Innovation is a necessity in a changing world. But what kind of innovation?'Sustaining innovation' props up and temporarily fixes structures and processes that are failing - making them cheaper, faster, safer, more efficient.'Disruptive innovation' shakes things up. Typically however disruptive initiatives offer only short-term impact or are eventually adapted and 'mainstreamed' to help sustain existing systems. That is particularly true in the public, social, cultural and civic sectors where the natural patterns of renewal that have been developed in market settings (creative destruction, sophisticated financial support etc.) are generally absent.Only 'transformative innovation' can deliver a fundamental shift towards new patterns of viability in tune with our aspirations for the future.This book offers a first stand-alone practical guide to how to realise transformative potential at scale. It offers six elements for policymakers, funders and innovators:Knowing: how to expand our sense of what constitutes valid knowledge to become more comfortable with complexityImagining: how to conceive, develop and design transformative initiatives to carry a group's longer term aspirationsBeing: how to organise for action, manage the process, and sustain the people involved over timeDoing: how to introduce the new in the presence of the old, enrol others and figure out what to do when you don't know what to doEnabling: how to construct a policy framework for long term transition and provide smart financing to matchSupporting: how to develop systems and structures to support a culture of renewal in our public, social and civic systems. It concludes with an invitation to join a growing community of transformative innovators around the world - a network of hope in powerful times.

If the idea of a conceptual emergency was wacky and original when it was taken up in the first edition of this booklet, it now appears inescapable. Brought on by the global credit crunch and the collapse or effective nationalisation of so many familiar institutions (HBOS, Lehman Brothers, Woolworths...), we face a fresh crisis of faith, as the instability of our previous perceptions of identity, morality, cultural coherence and social position is revealed. In a world where we are losing our collective bearings, we urgently need leadership inspired by fresh and insightful thinking. This booklet provides a remarkable amount of both. The authors are writing under the banner of the International Futures Forum (IFF), an innovative and forward-thinking group that has inspired many communities to respond powerfully to severe social and economic challenges. "Ten Things" records IFF's learning over seven years on how to take more effective and responsible action in a world we do not understand and cannot control. This second edition has been expanded and updated with seven inspirational case studies from around the world, generated by the work of the IFF.Insightful yet playful, compact, readable and touchingly illustrated, this is a gem of a book. It will appeal to managers and organisational and political leaders but also to environmental campaigners, social psychologists and educationalists.

Don’t adapt to the future of higher education. TRANSFORM IT.The rise of online courses, growing costs, declining completion rates, increasingly diverse student populations, disruptions from outside innovators—as the leader of a higher education institution, you’re facing unprecedented upheaval. Rather than simply managing this change, you can harness it to dramatically improve the future—for your students, for your institution, for society at large. It’s about bringing together the complex array of stakeholders in higher education—including administrators, faculty, boards, regents, and directors—to engage in honest and creative conversations about where the system is and where it ought to be. Transforming Higher Education provides what you need to face the future head on. Through its proven “Three Horizons” framework, you will:* View today’s disruption not with fear, but with curiosity and courage* Initiate and manage difficult strategic discussions among all stakeholders * Build the future into your planning, while respecting current governance* Create and implement a new strategy that makes the future part of the presentTransforming Higher Education provides three plausible scenarios for the future of higher education. By exploring what the future might bring, you can better prepare for your role in creating it.Right now, you’re looking at unparalleled opportunity. We all are. Whoever seizes it with courage, wisdom, and an effective, inclusive strategy will be at the forefront of education innovation—and will shape the lives of generations to come.  

Don’t adapt to the future of higher education. TRANSFORM IT.The rise of online courses, growing costs, declining completion rates, increasingly diverse student populations, disruptions from outside innovators—as the leader of a higher education institution, you’re facing unprecedented upheaval. Rather than simply managing this change, you can harness it to dramatically improve the future—for your students, for your institution, for society at large. It’s about bringing together the complex array of stakeholders in higher education—including administrators, faculty, boards, regents, and directors—to engage in honest and creative conversations about where the system is and where it ought to be. Transforming Higher Education provides what you need to face the future head on. Through its proven “Three Horizons” framework, you will:* View today’s disruption not with fear, but with curiosity and courage* Initiate and manage difficult strategic discussions among all stakeholders * Build the future into your planning, while respecting current governance* Create and implement a new strategy that makes the future part of the presentTransforming Higher Education provides three plausible scenarios for the future of higher education. By exploring what the future might bring, you can better prepare for your role in creating it.Right now, you’re looking at unparalleled opportunity. We all are. Whoever seizes it with courage, wisdom, and an effective, inclusive strategy will be at the forefront of education innovation—and will shape the lives of generations to come.

Building on a 1980 essay by psychologist Carl Rogers, the authors consider the qualities and competencies needed by the 'person of tomorrow' to help society navigate complexity in turbulent times.

In 2009, the first edition of Transformative Innovation set out a blueprint for educational reform in Scotland. This second edition incorporates the results and practical experience of introducing and managing that reform. The book's message has resonated with readers around the world: given the right kind of guidance and support, our institutions of education are perfectly capable of instigating the kinds of radical changes they need to make in order to prepare our young people for an uncertain future. The authors can say this with some confidence because the insights, tools, suggestions and recommendations in the pages of Transformative Innovation in Education are rooted firmly in practical experience. In partnership with the Scottish inspectorate of schools, IFF worked with a wide variety of educationalists, practitioners, policy makers and others to explore how transformational change might be achieved. As a result, IFF developed significant new resources to support transformative innovation in a highly decentralised, bottom-up, system-wide approach.Powerful frameworks for moving from insight to action developed by Jim Ewing are described in a substantial new addition to the original text on 'practical approaches to transformation'. The permissive policy framework set in Scotland by Curriculum for Excellence, which invites transformational change in the education system, has now attracted positive attention in different parts of the world - particularly the US, Asia and Australia. The 'three horizons' framework on which the book and the reform programme is based allows everyone free rein to share their concerns about the present system, to admit deeper aspirations that might be frustrated or under-realised today, and to design a 'second horizon' transition strategy to shift the system in that direction. This is not 'blue skies visioning' but hard-headed engagement with often uncomfortable facts about changes in the real world. But it also allows space for inspiration. For some readers, the question may remain: How can government and other agencies best support a permissive programme of radical innovation in education? How can schools themselves take the lead? This book explains how.It tells a story in six sections: a widespread international story of disappointment in educational reform the three horizons framework for thinking about longer-term transformational change the limitations of international models of 'standards-based reform' developing a transformative framework in Scotland an outline of the tools and processes that are shifting the Scottish system into the future recommendations for a policy framework to encourage transformative innovation in education: 'making shift happen'.

In his 1980 essay, The World of Tomorrow and the Person of Tomorrow, the psychologist Carl Rogers contemplated the future. He described those who would usher in this new era as people with the capacity to understand, bring about and absorb a paradigm shift.He added: "I have an uneasy feeling about this chapter... It is a beginning, an outline, a suggestion... I believe that what I am saying here will some day be fleshed out much more fully, either by me or someone else."Maureen O'Hara and Graham Leicester are uniquely qualified to flesh out Carl Rogers's vision (Maureen worked closely with Rogers for many years). Here they explore the competencies - the ways of being, doing, knowing and organising - that can help us navigate in complex and powerful times. They argue that these competencies are innate and within reach of all of us - given the right setting, plenty of practice and some gentle guidance. But they are seldom seen because they are routinely undervalued in today's culture. That must change, the authors insist, and this book is intended to begin that change.The book is based on the authors' extensive research and their practical experience observing the qualities demonstrated by some of today's most successful cultural, political and business leaders. They write of `persons of tomorrow' that they have witnessed:"We find that people who are thriving in the contemporary world, who give us the sense of having it all together and being able to act effectively and with good spirit in challenging circumstances, have some identifiable characteristics in common... They are the people already among us who inhabit the complex and messy problems of the 21st century in a more expansive way than their colleagues. They do not reduce such problems to the scale of the tools available to them, or hide behind those tools when they know they are partial and inadequate. They are less concerned with `doing the right thing' according to standard procedure than they are with really doing the right thing in the moment, in specific cases, with the individuals involved at the time. In a disciplined yet engaging way they are always pushing boundaries, including their own. They dance at the edge."Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of Notre Dame University, once said that leadership demands certainty: "You cannot blow an uncertain trumpet." On the contrary, argue Leicester and O'Hara, we must all learn to play the uncertain trumpet like virtuosos.It is an image that conveys the subtle discipline required of the `person of tomorrow' - an artistry that, they argue, is essential to restore hope in the future.

This feels like a moment of truth. For many years people have been warning that we live in extraordinary times, a change of age not just an age of change. International Futures Forum (IFF) has been amongst them - quietly advocating the need for radically different approaches to intractable problems in a world where we are off our familiar charts.​Many have said of the 2020 pandemic, as they said of the 2008 financial crash before it, that crisis also brings opportunity. But wishing will not make it so. Just as before, the old order remains remarkably resilient, has not left the field, and may well come back stronger and more sure of its worldview than ever. How can we best work to ensure that things turn out differently this time around?These four essays explore the resources we need to draw on in this as in any other crisis if we are to bend the arc of history “toward the hope of a better day”. The first is survival, then insight, perseverance, and hope – without which we cannot even start the journey.Raymond Williams wrote that our task is “to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”. But for Graham Leicester, hope is always possible and grounded in action. The real challenge is to make it convincing. Then we might attract the resources to match our ambitions and practical hope might frame the invigorating spirit of the next phase – recovery and renewal.