What we do
mētis utilises a distinctive combination of political analysis, behavioural insights, and change management to provide support to individuals and institutions seeking to improve process, policy and performance.
Over the last two decades we have been immersed in the politics of getting stuff done in uncertain conditions: from Baghdad to Belgrade, Cape Town to Kiev, Kigali to Kathmandu.
We have worked with politicians, ministers and officials to help them fix the problems that matter, but in ways that make those same problems easier to fix tomorrow: building the structures, systems, and skills that create institutional resilience.
That has involved helping politicians and ministers in places like Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan improve policy, legislation and service delivery, and rebuild deeply fractured states.
It has seen us work with parliaments across sub-Saharan Africa train new politicians, help manage their constituency work and support the strategic development of parliamentary democracy.
We have provided training and mentoring for women political leaders navigating every level of their political system in places as diverse as Lebanon, Tanzania and Egypt.
And we have supported politicians and political parties with campaigning, communications, cross-party dialogue and managing the transition to government, from the Balkans to Bangladesh, and across the Middle East and Africa.
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Developing the craft of political leadership
We now use that extensive international experience to train, support and advise politicians, ministers and officials at every level of government.
Our form of institution-building from the inside is a craft which prioritises people, politics and behaviour.
The most effective politicians recognise the limits of formal power, and that impact depends more on their capacity to leverage informal power.
Politics is about navigating institutional structures, understanding opposition and aligning the interests of diverse stakeholders by convening, collaborating and coalition-building.
These are human skills. Understanding what motivates the actions of others, being astute enough to engage with them, and adaptive enough to adjust to uncertainty, without losing sight of the strategic aim.
It is these skills that are central to the craft of political leadership, and are the essence of mētis.
The mētis development framework
Purpose. Process. Policy. People. And politics.
There is very little, if any, professional development for politicians that covers these skills. In fact, there is very little professional development for politicians at all.
That which does exist concentrates on formal process and policy. For example, how ministries are structured, the stages of the legislative process, how the policymaking process works.
It tends to deal with theory more than how government actually functions in the real world.
Our training, advice and analysis instead revolves around the practice of politics, and building the creative skills needed to fix the things that matter.
Our framework has five parts:
- Purpose: clarifying strategic objectives over a set period, such as a parliamentary term
- Process: understanding institutional systems and rules, in theory and practice
- Policy: building up policy expertise in specific areas
- People: understanding the logic of human behaviour
- Politics: developing the political skills to effect change
We aim to provide politicians, ministers, officials and advisers with the technical skills that allow them to understand institutional processes, but also give them the political skills that allow them to navigate them.