This article was excerpted in ICA:UK Nework News, issue 47.

After 16 years with ICA:UK, it is a curious feeling to have given notice to leave my role as Chief Executive at the end of September! I am excited by the prospects for both me and for ICA:UK, although I do feel some sense of loss already after so many years of close identification with ICA:UK. Nevertheless it seems to me for a number of reasons to be the right time for me to move on, both for ICA:UK and for me.

For ICA:UK, we have been clear that we need to reorient our strategy and restructure our roles in response to the radically changed operating environment that we now find ourselves in now. Since I began my role as Development Officer in 1996, ICA:UK has grown and developed almost beyond recognition. My departure will both require and facilitate further organisational change, and I think more effectively than I could lead it myself. With the addition of this year’s newly appointed Trustees and Savita as Board Chair, with the passion, expertise and capacity of our network of members, volunteers and associates, and with our strong and experienced team of core staff, I have no doubt that ICA:UK will meet that challenge. I hope that all those who care for ICA:UK and it’s mission and values will join together over the coming months and years to continue ‘to enable people to bring about change, toward a just and sustainable future for all’ in line with those values.

For me, I embarked upon this journey with ICA:UK in 1996 with the aim of working with other members to rebuild and grow a sustainable ICA organisation in Britain, at a time when we had no office or staff and close to zero annual turnover. I think that I supposed then that that might take 10-15 years. I feel that it is now high time that I allow ICA:UK the opportunity to sustain itself without me, and to reinvent itself without me for the next 10-15 years. Also I feel that it is time that I allow myself the opportunity to embark on some new challenges of my own.

I look forward to working initially at least on a freelance basis, based in London after two long years dividing my time between London and Manchester. I shall be available to work with ICA:UK as an Associate, if called upon for a particular project or to serve existing or new ICA:UK clients, and I plan to offer ICA:UK’s ToP facilitation training courses independently as a licensed Associate as well. I am pleased to have accepted a nomination for election to the Board of ICA International from next year, after completing my present two year term as Chair of IAF. Also I hope to find more time to read, to reflect and to write, and to explore whatever other new opportunities emerge.

Please get in touch with any queries or feedback about what this transition might mean for ICA:UK, and if you might like to offer your support, and please also feel free to contact me about my own future. Until 30 September I can be reached at martin@ica-uk.org.uk , and I can also be reached from now at martin@martingilbraith.com.

For a message from ICA:UK Chair Savita Custead, see also http://www.ica-uk.org.uk/a-new-transition-for-icauk.htm