Already, more than 20,000 people across the UK have been attending courses provided by an emerging, secretive organization called Common Purpose, a company that claims to provide advice and guidance for the country’s next leaders and high fliers. Whilst the company is non-profit, it has support from businesses and people like BBC business editor Robert Peston and Cressida Dick – the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. People who attend the courses are asked to explore the dark corners of their own psyches, confessing to their own strengths and weaknesses, and are also taken on workshops to mental hospitals, prisons and local tenants associations. Some of these courses cost as much as £5,750 and although anyone can apply, members are only chosen if they are assessed as having future leader potential. Their meetings are also held under the Chatham House rule which states that everything said within them is unattributable.
With rules and regulations like this it’s no wonder that the company has gone under scrutiny. Conspiracy theorists think that the Common Purpose are trying to take over the world and breed the batch of new leaders to shape a European super-state. Common purpose deny this and say they’re just providing opportunities for success to a wider and more diverse range of people.
[via BBC]
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Hi Ruby,
I listened to the documentary and have followed this closely as I work as the curriculum director at Common Purpose. We want people to learn how to understand and learn more about managing and leading change. Whether they are a community activist, a police officer, a lawyer or an owner of a small business, people all struggle with being able to lead and manage change. So many of the problems people face can’t be dealt with on their own, or within their own organisation. Tackling obesity came up on the BBC news this morning as an example. No one person or organisation will be able to solve this, so we need people from all sectors to talk, to learn from each other and work out how they can best lead change in and across their sectors together.
Our approach to doing this is experiential. So we get people talking to each other, sharing work and community based challenges. We take them to meet people who have been leading change, have succeeded and failed. It’s a learning approach that is becoming more common as business schools (among others) realise you can’t learn about how to handle change sitting with peers in a classroom. I assure you it’s not about the dark corners of the leaders psyche. We merely ask people to consider what they would like to be better about their leadership, what they find difficult and what they would like to change. Mostly this is done with people writing their ideas and challenges on flip charts, or discussing in groups, nothing more complex. This style of learning is also why we apply the chatham house rule so people feel comfortable sharing their successes and failures for learning, without worrying how that they may damage the reputation of their organisations.
Our cheapest course is £250 and we give some free places on it. It’s called the leadership masterclass (http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/resources/masterclash.aspx), and courses vary from this to the one you mention at £5 750 which is a week long residential for people who are dealing with leadership and change issues at a national level (There are also bursary places available for this – mostly for those from non-profit organisations or small business).
The application criteria are only two and they ask about your current responsibility as a leader and the likely contribution to the perspective and dynamics of the group that you will bring. The former is to make sure we have a good peer group on the course you apply to i.e. we run courses for people in more senior roles and for those in more junior ones and we often re-direct applicants to the appropriate course. The latter criteria is because the diverse range of participants is where a lot of learning comes from so we sometimes don’t take too many people from any one area e.g. if 5 lawyers applied to one course we wouldn’t take all of them (some would have to apply again to a later course).
I’ve started to blog about some of this stuff at http://www.leadingbeyondauthority.blogspot.com, and as an organisation we are paying attention to the criticisms and trying to work out how we can come across as less closed.
Thanks Oliver
March 13th, 2009 at 7:07 am
You can find out more about Common Purpose here:
http://www.stopcp.com
March 13th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Also go to google you tube and look up brian gerrish as well.Stop Common purpose!!!Stop the New World Order!
April 28th, 2009 at 12:47 pm