February is often the month when leadership feels most exposed.

By now, organisations like Communities 1st are expected to be operating as though the year ahead is settled. Budgets should be agreed. Plans signed off. Staff reassured. Services confirmed. And yet, across Hertfordshire and beyond, many voluntary and community organisations are doing all of that without knowing, with certainty, what their funding position will actually be.

I’ve become increasingly cautious about simple explanations for complex problems. We are living through a period shaped not by a single crisis, but by the interaction of many: sustained economic pressure, demographic change, rapid technological acceleration and, in parts of the world, open conflict and violence. These forces don’t operate separately. They collide, compound and reshape how people behave, what institutions can realistically hold, and where responsibility is felt.