A question of commitment?

An opportunity arose this week that made Jonathan and I re-think our development of Children Unite.  I guess this happens periodically when you’re setting something new up….various opportunities arise and you have to decide whether to take them and change direction slightly, or not and keep on the same path. The opportunity is only a possibility – so I can’t talk about it openly but it would mean Jonathan being away for six months next year.

I’ve been thinking about it non-stop of course.  It’s forced Jonathan and I to look again at our roles and our professional partnership within Children Unite and we’ve come to a few conclusions:

• The set-up stage (this first year) is slower than both of us anticipated;
• My interests lie in the awareness raising and advocacy work we plan to do;
• Jonathan’s interests lie in the consultancy services we plan to offer;
• We don’t need to be equally involved in running the organisation;
• We are both equally committed to Children Unite;

This feels like some big conclusions to me.  And articulating them here helps me to feel that I will put this learning into practice.  So this blog is enabling me to do what I’d hoped…to reflect on and learn from the twisting path Children Unite is on.

When two people are setting up an initiative it is hard for either of them, at some point or another, not to question the commitment of the other. The last two points should really read: ‘we don’t need to be equally involved in running the organisation to prove that we are both equally committed to Children Unite!’

I’ve been surprised at how often we have had to look at these fundamental issues over the past year.  I’d naively assumed that you get an idea for how you want to run an organisation and you stick to it but this hasn’t been the case at all.  I have a picture in my mind of Children Unite as an amoeba-like structure with a very thin and permeable skin. Through osmosis various ideas change the structure of the organisation, some are ‘keepers’ and stay and some get pushed out again.

I think it’s because I was so heavily involved in writing the legal structure of Children Unite (our Memorandum and Articles of Association) and articulating this to the Charity Commission that I have had a bit of an immovable picture of the organisation.  Certainly, the visual image I have of Children Unite as a legal entity (and you’ll have probably noticed I seem to think in a visual way) is of a ladder and it’s very logical step-by-step order.

An amoeba and a ladder are very different images! Hopefully we’ll get somewhere in the middle (and I can’t come up with an example here – not even a joke one – please supply your own!). Visualising our future is something we all do I suppose – whether this is literally a ‘snapshot’ image or some words that sum up where, who or how you want to be.  And it is not wrong to adjust that image but, when it comes to Children Unite, I believe I have a duty to share my updated thoughts with the people closest to the organisation – to Jonathan and to the trustees.