208 Transition

I recently spent five weeks away with my family — two weeks in the Netherlands, the home of my late father-in-law, a week in Ireland, and two weeks in England. One week in England was spent in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, the home of Hastings for at least 400 years.

The timing wasn’t ideal. I’ve been working to build my consultancy, and the trip seemed to interrupt potential contracts. A week before we left, I was knocked back on a short-term role, and a proposal I’d submitted was deferred with a polite “not now.” I left filled with self-doubt, buoyed only by the sense of perspective a trip like this might bring.

My grandfather grew up in Nottingham, raised by his grandfather — a silk and lace merchant. I’ve been fascinated by Nottingham since childhood: Robin Hood, Nottingham Forest, Raleigh bikes, Paul Smith — all threads in a story I only half understood.

My first visit to Nottingham in 1995 coincided with the day I discovered my father had passed away. That morning, we had toured the City Ground. In 2006, my wife and I returned on a cold January week, bridging the hereditary gap between my orphaned grandfather and his grandfather, John Hastings — silk and lace merchant.

This time we added something more profound. We walked the familiar addresses, the graves, and the Lace Market — and, with the help of AI, I began to join the dots about the kind of man who could raise and educate eight children and his orphaned grandson. Like most systems, the clues revealed themselves through careful, connected study.

My great-grandfather, who died at 33, had been sent to Ockbrook School in Derbyshire, part of a Moravian settlement — a Protestant offshoot of the Lutheran Church originating in Bohemia. It was a statement of non-conformism against the prevailing Anglican and Catholic institutions, common in the silk and lace industry of the time.

That evidence — the tombstones, the education of the daughters as teachers and governesses, my grandfather’s place at Nottingham High School — all pointed to the same lineage: people who believed in learning, conscience, and self-made independence.

Non-conformists were not revolutionaries. They were reformers — practical idealists who valued education, dialogue, and personal integrity over authority. They humanised their faith through discipline, care, and conscience.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve cared deeply about learning. From school to postgraduate study in social work — itself a form of moral craft — to becoming a lifelong learner, I’ve always been drawn to that same discipline of conscience and reflection.

Over the years, I’ve wrestled with politics — leaning left, but wary of big systems, whether government or corporate. I once mistook my non-conformism for radicalism, but I’ve come to see that the performative nature of much “radical” change is the opposite of what I value. Real change, like real craft, respects lineage. It builds cooperation. It works with care.

As I came to understand this, my temperament — and my practice — started to make sense. I wasn’t a disruptor or an evangelist. I was something quieter: a non-conformist who works through dialogue, discipline, and conscience. Someone who believes people matter too much to be treated as instruments of change.

Over time, this understanding coalesced into four principles — Conscience, Dialogue, Capability, and Learning — my own version of a moral and practical model for change.

Conscience — The Pattern

The starting point for all real change.

What pattern guides your work?

Are your decisions aligned with what you know is right, or just what is expected?

How do you hold integrity when the system rewards expedience?

Conscience gives direction to complexity — it defines the shape of the lace before a single thread is woven.

Dialogue — The Thread

Where connection and repair happen.

Who do you genuinely listen to — and who don’t you?

What happens when tension appears between threads?

Can your organisation speak truth without fear?

Dialogue is how separate strands find strength together.

Capability — The Fabric

The systems, habits, and practices that make conscience and dialogue real.

What structures sustain good intent?

How do you build capability without control?

Where do your people learn to lead, not just comply?

Capability is the weave — the disciplined craft that gives structure and durability.

Learning — The Renewal

The act of reflection, humility, and adaptation.

What have we learned — really learned — from the last season of change?

Where do we pause to notice the pattern forming?

How do we stay curious in the face of certainty?

Learning is how the lace breathes — the quiet work of renewal that keeps it alive.

In the lace makers of Victorian Nottingham, I found a metaphor for organisational life. Each thread carried its own tension and colour, yet the beauty came from how they were connected — carefully, deliberately, and with mutual dependence.

Wholeness isn’t simplicity; it’s complexity held together by care.

That, I now realise, has been the thread running through my life and work all along.