We’ve been a bit silent recently while we finished an MBA and launched new projects in London. But now we’re back, and we’ve been reflecting on thought leadership, and what type of thinking creates the space to ‘challenge, imagine and transform’.

Thoughts can be like mosquitos. They can be small and noisy and buzz around endlessly in your head, sucking the lifeblood out of you. We all have mosquito thoughts. They are the thoughts that suppress and oppress us. I bet we also all know workplaces and organisations and social norms and political parties that, like mosquitos, generate thoughts that suck the life out of us. Thoughts and thinking that generate fear and annoyance, anxiety and stress.

Mosquitos endlessly buzz around looking to suck the life out of anything they can. At their worst, they poison systems, places, spaces and people, becoming a malaria that ends life and hope. At their most worst, systems and institutions can live with the malaria, slowly sapping the life out of all around them.

But thoughts can also be like dragonflies:

• Dragonflies transform – starting off as an ugly nymph living underwater, they become beautiful, dazzling flying creatures.
• Dragonflies do it differently – dragonflies can do things that no other insects can do with body structures no other insects have. They can fly backwards, loop the loop, hover and fly faster than any other insect.
• Dragonflies persevere – dragonflies pre-date the dinosaurs and can stay in the air all day without landing.
• Dragonflies can see multiple perspectives simultaneously – they have about 30,000 lenses in their eyes with 360 degree vision.
• Dragonflies embrace diversity – there are about 5,000 different species of dragonflies all over the world.

Thought leadership is more about the possibilities of the dragonfly than the endless monotonous buzzing of the mosquito.

There is always a battle for ‘thoughts’. An endless ongoing battle between mosquito thoughts and dragonfly thoughts.

And there is the related battle between mosquito actions, based on mosquito thoughts, and dragonfly actions, based on dragonfly thoughts.

This reflects the relationship between theory (thoughts) and practice (actions).

There are many destructive theories (buzzing around like mosquitos) that get embedded in destructive practice. Too often they lack critical reflection and provide a breeding ground for systemic malaria within people and institutions, countries and political parties, workplace cultures and home lives.

There is an urgent need for dragonfly theories that can be embedded in life-affirming practice that offers a renewed alternative to the poison of systemic malaria.

Our busyness over the past 12 months (no excuse) has slowed down our thinking, advocacy and actions for dragonfly-like practice.

We’re now back in the public domain to ‘challenge, imagine, transform’ thinking and practice wherever we can as part of the grander mosaic of people committed to replacing malaria systems with hope, justice and a safe future for people and planet.

Watch this space!