Masterclass - Twenty-four hour turnaround

It’s not exactly a class, and he hesitates to dub himself a ‘Master’, but Jonathon Porritt’s Masterclasses show what a difference a day makes, as Roger East discovers.

Music masterclasses make compelling telly. Take a few talented young musicians, fired up by the occasion, burnished and bright-eyed. Their initial renderings of a well-known piece seem accomplished enough – until the maestro intervenes, introducing new perspectives, questioning their performance, challenging, guiding, restructuring, inspiring. On the couch at home, crisps at hand, we share their anguish and eventual exhilaration, and feel much more in tune with genius than we really are, as we nod in appreciation of the transformation wrought before our eyes.

Paul Tortelier set the gold standard for masterclasses two decades ago. Jonathon Porritt’s are a bit different from the great cellist’s. Well, quite a lot different, really. No lights, no cameras, no telly, no Tortelier – and, in place of ardent young musicians, a dozen or so senior business leaders assembling at a country house in Buckinghamshire.

If this were an Agatha Christie, you’d be wondering what would happen overnight. No murder will be announced – but there is drama here. The structure of the event will conform to the “three unities” of classical theatre – of time (unrolling within the prescribed 24 hour limit), of place (they’ll stay right here for the duration) and of action (trust Porritt to make sure that they won’t lose the plot). There’s a little tension in the air, too, as the participants mingle, sizing each other up, unsure of what to expect of the experience.

“If you’re comfortable about sustainable development, you’re not on the real planet.”

No one has ever come to a Sustainability Masterclass with Jonathon Porritt twice. He wouldn’t want that, though a few have asked. So nobody knows quite what’s coming. Porritt himself has a clear structure – seven sessions within 24 hours.

It sounds like an unremitting programme, and it is, with time off only to sleep, but plenty of breakout groups to keep things lively. As for his own input, he’ll never give the same talk twice: “If you just repeat the same material, it dies for you.” So what he says is studded with topical reference points, even if the “big picture positioning stuff” is thematically consistent each time. Interactive discussion is the name of the game, sharing the responsibility for generating ideas, and drawing out responses from people’s own experience.

The sessions are designed for senior business executives, at or just below board level. “We don’t get beginners,” says Porritt, “but my ideal participants are not the sustainability wonks. The point is to take people who have a working experience and knowledge of the broad terrain, but haven’t really been exposed to the full scope and impact of sustainable development issues in their business and their personal lives.” And then, of course, to expose them to it – or, as he puts it, “to take them through a number of different levels, internalising different perspectives, and moving them all the way from the very big global issues and even the cosmic stuff, through to personal responsibility and what they need to take on board at company level”.

The term ‘masterclass’ has long been extended beyond the creative arts – you’ll find it used now for everything from whisky tasting to ironing or online marketing. But Porritt seems a little uneasy about it. Not the ‘classes’ bit – there’s an important body of material on sustainability that needs to be transmitted, he says. It’s the ‘master’ connotations he shies away from – “the sense that these are the tablets of stone that I, Jonathon Porritt, bring down to you from the mountain”.

He avoids that, as he puts it, by using an evidence base – real stories about things he has seen happen – to open up the territory that his masterclass is covering, and then inviting the participants’ own perspectives. It’s essential to get participants to conduct “their own exploration and judgments on the implications of sustainability for themselves, and for their business responsibilities”.

“Much as I enjoy the combative ‘yes, but’ style of argument, in my masterclasses I use the inclusive ‘yes, and’ approach much more.”

Porritt may be the only person in the world who likes to describe himself as “a one-person stakeholder dialogue”. Ask him to sum up ‘in a word’ what he has to offer, and he’ll fail – it takes him several sentences. In essence, it turns on “having had access to so many perspectives on this sustainable development stuff, having done it for so long, that I feel I understand everybody’s perspective.

I don’t always sympathise with it, but I give breathing space to it. Much as I enjoy the combative ‘yes, but’ style of argument, in my masterclasses I use the inclusive ‘yes, and’ approach much more.” This does not mean pulling punches on the content and challenge of his subject matter. His aim is to help the participants interpret the radical nature of views that he shares – and of those he doesn’t.

He wouldn’t expect them, for example, to sign up to some of the anti-globalisation standpoints he covers, but he would want them to try to understand those who do, and where they’re coming from. He’ll drive the seven sessions along, to keep up with a taxing agenda. There’s a kind of helix structure to it all – a definite storyline, but one he pursues in circling sweeps, from the global to the personal, from the particular business example to the global context again.

And despite his intention of ‘teaching without preaching’, and the importance of an atmosphere of trust, he’ll take a special delight in winding up members of the group over dinner. This is his opportunity to raise the temperature by “going into zealot mode and beating up on them, opening up areas of complacency and inadequacy of response. If they’re too easily in a zone of comfort then they’re not thinking hard enough.

If you are comfortable about sustainable development, then you’re not on the real planet.” Porritt himself is no masterclass junkie – he looks forward to his own, but – surprised by the question – he realises he has never been to anyone else’s. Once he used to be a frequent attendee at talks by others, but now the closest thing he finds time for is reading books.

His masterclasses aren’t sold as the key to an exclusive alumni network – he’s confident enough that business executives “are amazingly good at self-organising the networks that are of use to them”, and well aware that they won’t put time into anything that doesn’t serve them directly. So is it just a souped-up talk by an inspirational speaker? There has to be more to it than the hackneyed phrase, a ‘wake-up call’, or senior business executives wouldn’t commit a 24-hour day to it.

So what is ‘the takeaway’? Wrong question, responds Porritt – at least if you’re counting up outcomes in terms of ticks against specific business issues you need to resolve. He will strongly resist the natural impatience to “get on to doing something about it”, convinced as he is that “if you try to do that before you’ve got people fully connected to what the issues are, you get the wrong kind of responses.

It doesn’t work.” Nor will the overall ‘takeaway’, or transformation, be the same for everyone. “To define the desirable outcome would be pedantic, trying to control something that is in essence uncontrollable.” But there are “things about sustainable development that I’d feel I’d failed if I didn’t convey.”

What are those things? “A sense of scale, a sense of threat, a sense of opportunity, and a sense of personal responsibility.” In other words, he’s been introducing new perspectives, questioning, suggesting, challenging – it’s up to the participants to make the music now.

THE LOW DOWN

22 July 2005

Roger East