Would Charities Work Better if They Made Profits?

At first look this seems a rather daft question. Charities for profit? Isn't that a contradiction? Well, yes, and no. The public would certainly find NSPCC plc a hard one to throw into the bucket for. So, on one level, yes it is a non-starter.

But I raise the question because I there is a hypothesis I would like to test. Which is this: Would NSPCC deliver more social bang for buck if it were owned and managed as a for-profit venture? Part of me, you see, believes it might just do that. And if that were so, what would that mean for the charity model of raising money and spending it?

First though, how on earth might a private NSPCC deliver more for children. Well, I am fairly confident that it would very quickly focus the business on areas where the evidence suggested most gains could be made for least investment. Charities are, in my experience, not as skilled at focus full stop. Nor do they like to kill programmes that are good - but not quite good enough. Secondly, a private NSPCC would definitely have fewer staff, less bureaucracy and a more simplified and faster decision-making structure. Almost without doubt. Thirdly, a private charity would be better at driving down costs and would do this instinctively, rather than as a nice-to-do.

But there will never be a private NSPCC so why bother even thinking about it? Well, it's not quite as simple as that. Many charities now do work in fields that for-profit companies also operate.

Take my own sector, advocacy services for vulnerable groups. While charities predominate, there are a few private sector players, one of which is owned by a professional friend of mine. His business is is carefully organised to make profit (which he then puts to a variety of good uses on top of providing for his family.

But my friend believes, correctly I think, that his broad focus on profit actually leads the company in the direction of getting it right as a service. On processes. On delivery. On costs. On people. On measureable impact. Yes, a profit focus actually helps, on some level, to get these others things right.

I say all this because we have struggled, as a non-profit minded organisation, for to get some of these things sorted quickly. It is only now, when the medium term future is less certain (i.e. our top and bottom lines are under threat) that I seem to be able to generate the impetus for change.

Indeed, I have often wondered, in my darker moments, whether if we were run for profit, like my friend's business, we would have resolved the drag-factors on our business which only now we are starting to resolve.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, I think what comes out for me is that we need to rid ourselves of the fantasy that profit just takes from delivery. That third sector organsisations are somehow better because we don't aim for profit.

This is lazy thinking. The truth is that many charities that could make a profit toput to good use actually refuse to do so in the misguided belief that it is always better to leave costs in the business. If charities produced profit-targets - and stuck to them - I am personally fairly sure that the sector would, in a very short time, be delivering the same for a lot less money.

So yes, while I agree that charities can never be run for private profit, I do believe charities would, overall, do more good if they set ambitious targets for profit (to be reinvested or whatever) and pursued them with the same vigour and focus as would a private sector business.

Fuck You Money

I was having coffee with a work-friend of mine last week. He is in his fifties and spent the first thirty years of his career in business making a lot of dough. His motivation wasn't the superstar lifestyle or hob-nobbing with the wealthy. Nor was it to just to achieve a particular score on the board.

Rather he wanted what he terms `Fuck You Money'. Enough cash to be able to say and do what he wanted. Never to have to answer to anybody again in his life. To express himself and be himself. He set this goal fairly early on in the game. He tolerated colleagues and environments which weren't really `him'. But he knew what he wanted and that the sacrifice would be worth it.

Don't get me wrong, this guy isn't in any sense retired. He works hard, but does only the work he chooses. On top, he also studies, travels and takes an active interest in his kids.

While my path will be different a big part of me identified with him. I too would love to get to a point where I have the total freedom my friend enjoys. For many of us, only a late and lucky retirement brings these kinds of benefits. How wonderful to enjoy them with twenty odd good years left in you.

I guess this is what `Fuck You Money' is all about. I wonder if that is the real privilege of becoming wealthy. Not the toys it can buy you, but the liberty it can bring.

Do I Have Another One in Me?

I have been asking this of late. Not another child (Katy makes those decisions) but another big venture. Ten years ago, you see, I burned with the desire to grow a large-ish social venture. I ached for success. I wasn't very happy. Speaking Up was kind-of therapy.

Today, I want to burn with the same ire. But, in truth, I don't. Not just yet anyway. Life has somehow got in the way. I am a lot happier now. I have, sort-of, proved myself. To myself and to others. My interests are more diverse. My energy levels are not quite what they were. I have grown conscious of the limits of organisations. I now understand that resources do not solve problems.

If I don't go on to do another one, however, part of me will feel rueful. There are, I know, a queue of financiers out there looking for great new ventures. I could put together a team relatively easily. I know so much more now than I did then. I could, I am sure, make a much bigger splash this time round.

So will I? At the moment, I am thinking probably not. Working with others who are doing the leading - perhaps. Non-exec-ing - certainly. Advising, consulting, I am probably your man. But doing it all again? Not easy to imagine. You never know, a long holiday, a bit of respite from fatherhood, a bit of premature hair-loss and, who knows, I may be all revved up again. Yet it seems distant and `other' right now.

Which, on one level is right pain - as a lost part of me wants to be an entrepreneur again. But on another, is probably a sign that I am now, ten years on, boringly normal.

Just Giving Deserves its Profits

A few weeks ago I wrote a column in praise of the excellent charity Help for Heroes (H4H). Today I am going to disagree wholeheartedly with their public criticism of the excellent Just Giving, a private company which has enabled over half a billion pounds for charity.

What is Just Giving's crime? It charges 5% commission on donations. It is privately owned. Run for a modest profit. Pays its CEO and staff very well indeed. Simple as that.

This, we are told, is wrong. Instead, H4H is advising donors to use another site, one that doesn't make profits. A site that has been around now for a long time but, strangely, hasn't raised a great deal of money. And which, despite its relaunch, will take a very long time to scale the heights acheived by Just Giving.

It is on issus like this that I despair about our elements within our sector. Surely what matters about Just Giving isn't that it is profitable but that it has transformed giving in this country. Everyone knows someone who has used it. It is a brilliant innovation. Gone are the days of sponsorship forms, running after people for money and maybe getting round to claiming Gift Aid. Just Giving takes care of all of that. Charities should be falling all over these people in gratitude, not criticising them!

The oppobrium comes, I think, from a deep naivete about the way things like Just Giving happen in the first place. The founders had to develop new technology. They had then to get take-up to high enough levels to cover massive early outlays. And, on a personal level, they had to put their reputations and, probably, personal lives on the line for several years. Just to stay alive.

Now they are successful, yes, it all looks very good for them - the two owners have 10% each of the company. But it was not always thus. Not that they were motivated first by profit - both had a bigger goal: to transform UK fundraising. It was just that they figured the best way to do this was through a profit-pursuing company.

So come on, if you are one of those people nodding with agreement at the criticisms of Just Giving, ask yourself this. Would you prefer a return to the dark-age we were in before their appearance? Would you be happy for that half a billion to have been, at best, a hundred million - with next to no Gift Aid collected?

Thought not. So let's judge achievements, not mechanisms. Ends not means. And recognise a brilliant success story for what it is.

Getting Personalised

This week I met Simon Duffy, the founding CEO of In Control and Winner of the Royal Society's Albert Medal (previous winners include Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Winston Churchill, Tim Berners-Lee).

Simon has recently moved on to set up a new initiative, the Centre for Welfare Reform. Though he would probably eschew such an accolade, Simon is one of the most influential people in the world right now in the world of social reform.

For it was Simon who persuaded the UK Government to try out personalised budgets, which are now the centrepiece not only of social care reform but also the latest thinking in education and health. Pretty much single-handedly, he changed the terms of political discourse on the issue of social care in this country. A Game-Changer, if ever there was one.

What makes him thus? Well, Simon is one of a uncommon type of person who can not only think in new ways but also deliver real change on the ground - and use that to augment his thinking. In the UK, we tend to split into either eggheads or pragmatists. Simon is both, which makes him special.

He is also radical in that he doesn't feel constrained to think in terms which speak to current policy fashions. He is further along the curve - and if the mainstream doesn't buy in just yet, he doesn't particularly worry. This gives him an uncommon freedom among intellectuals, many of whom are tied into the needs of the Beltway.

His new initiative is the Centre for Welfare Reform. Except it isn't `new' in that it builds on his core idea of positive citizenship. It also shares the critique of government made by InControl, namely that the system we have now is the hugely wasteful relic of a by-gone era of industrial-scale solutions delivered by a big state. The net effect of this has been the pulling apart of the`free' supports that people most require: Their own dignity as citizens. Their families. Their communities.

Sounding familiar? Well, this is what Simon was saying before even New Labour came along. But instead of just changing the system by influencing government (he's through with that after the experience of working with civil servants on In Control) he now wants to make real things happen and start the revolution from below. By working on new initiatives that show how, at a very local level, the big concepts can be played out.

Coming from most people this sounds wide-eyed stuff that would make you smile. But Simon Duffy isn't a person to be underestimated. He doesn't bend and, to a point, doesn't care what people think about his ideas.

But he's done it before - and he might well do it again. Watch out World.

Our Friends in the North

Sometimes the day you've just had sets you up for the one to come. This morning I am full of energy. Brimming in fact. Up at daybreak I ran through the first light which, within a couple of miles had become yet another sky blue Autumn day.

Yesterday till lunchtime I spent at our Youth Parliament for South Yorkshire, held in Barnsley. Here elected "MPs" with disabilities got into some serious dialogue about public transport with politicians (three local Westminster MPs), Councillors (about 5 attending) and various senior officers and transport company reps.

The young people acquitted themselves extremely well. Presentations were professional, brief and to the point. The responses were less brief but, generally of a high quality. The Parliament has a really interesting mix of purposes: empowerment, confidence-building, awareness-raising, creating new networks and, of course, building commitment towards change. Because it doesn't have any `power', it has to rely on influence - and this is I think what the dynamic of the day was all about. Very impressive and a reminder of what I am here to do.

A Full Stop for Full Cost Recovery

Full Cost Recovery. As a business-term, it sounds like something from a Czechoslovakian foundry circa 1973. But it is actually the pricing system for services from the UK third sector.

Full Cost Recovery. Think about that term and what it says. In effect, the message is "You owe it to me to pay the full cost I incurred in producing this service". No more, no less. Not what you want to pay or I am willing to accept. Just the "full costs", full-stop.

This does nobody a service. For providers it eliminates the prospect of profit. Which in turn means you can't build the business. For customers it means you have to pay the costs of production, whatever these happen to be.

So why are we in thrall to this idea? Shouldn't we really be thinking not about how we recover our costs but how we push down our costs so that providers actually want to use our services. I don' buy moral status of the costs of charities. Like all organisations, the cost of charities are subject to drift. To even imply someone else has a duty to meet them is ridiculous.

So let's hear less of Full Cost Recovery and more about how we drive down costs, create profits and grow our impact as a result. Full Stop.

Blackberries in October

They exist. In fact I made a fantastic haul just yesterday. I get pretty excited by blackberries. They are one of the few things you can actually, really eat from the Great Outdoors (I am no Ray Mears). And so many uses. Straight into porridge, or jam, or cooked with apple for a superb crumble.

Being able to get up from my desk and, within five minutes, be able to harvest a box full of blackberries is high on my reason-list for living where I do. While my garden is small, hop over the fence am I am in 200 acres of garden, peopled by the odd jogger or dog-walker.

Here I am in a classic Victorian park, planted 125 years ago with a range of native American cedars, redwooods and other `rare breeds' of trees. These tower above the oaks and sycamores, providing landmarks of where our house is from the fields and hills around.

Living here I think has told me that my location - as near to nature as possible - is as important to me as my actual dwelling. We could probably double the space for the money we spent to be here, but, I don't think I would ever swop this place, even for a suburban mansion. I am perfectly placed.

This is our first Autumn here. It isn't properly underway yet as the Indian Summer is clinging on but the first coldnesses are upon us and within weeks the blackberries will all be gone.

Until next year, of course.

Free Schools - Why I Support Them

Be in no doubt: The Tories are making the running at the moment. On welfare, they recognise the need for bold action and a step-change to making work pay. Likewise on education their free schools idea is a winner.

I say this not because I don't believe there will be huge difficulties. There will be. All sorts of problems will be caused when the first schools open - admissions, the challenge to existing schools, duplication, inequality - you name it. They will be legion.

But to dwell on these - as many will do - is to miss the larger point. Which is that free schools will break the current stranglehold that local authorities have on what is available to our children. Free schools allow resources to follow demand. They encourage diversity of provision. They pass economic power from people like me (or rather the educationalists I am elected to watch-over) to parents.

The reason I am probably sounding so fundamentalist on this issue is that the ecology of schools in my own town - Bury St Edmunds - is about to be completely destroyed by a local authority following a particular line that all schools should be two-tier.

This is regardless of the fact that just about every parent in the town (well I would say 85%) favours the current system. Three new County Councillors, myself included, were elected on a platform of local choice and opposition to this imposition. The money for change has pretty much dried up from Government. But still the juggernaut rolls on. Because, Suffolk's Tory leadership tells us, they have a democratic mandate to do whatever they like to education.

My own view is that it actually isn't up to politicians to tell people what kinds of schools people should send their kids to . Schools should conform to what parents demand of them.

Further to this, the effect of free schools will be to add a much-needed competitive edge to a system which seems stuck into the idea that we should have just the right number of places for the number of kids - resulting in even mediocre schools being guaranteed an intake. Competition, be it in the private or third sector - raises everyone's game - and shows the poorer players for what they are. Presently such schools are protected and just given exhortation to improve. Not good enough by my book.

While the new Free Schools will be disruptive, I think their presence will make Councils far more concerned than they are now with what parent, rather than Whitehall, wants.

Are you listening, Suffolk County Council??

Brutal but Necessary

As you probably know am a County Councillor in Suffolk. The word here is of cuts in spending of up to a third over the next few years. Yes, I said a third. Very soon, we’ll be looking at a very different local authority. Delivering less. No longer about `doing things’ - but making sure they are done .

But just how will this gap between budgets and aspirations be bridged? Well, the talk is all about “social capital” – community self-help, mutual support and voluntarism. This is the headline strategy and there’s even a new cabinet portfolio in its name!

Sounds great. Yet can we generate enough of this vintage stuff in the digital, dissociative 2010s? Nobody truly knows but a sensible guess is that it will be no magic bullet, especially in areas where people don’t look at each other in the street, never mind help old ladies across the road.

So, on top, will be the tried and tested stuff - but this time turbo-charged! A pay and recruitment-freeze. A mass cull of expensive in-house people. And out-sourcing of traditional local authority mainstays such as schools, care-management and children’s services.

Enter the third sector. People, quite rightly, don’t trust the private megacorps to organize education and care. Their track-record is patchy. By contrast, charities and social businesses are trusted, have the right cost-base and draw in community effort. They have it all to play for.

It will all be very brutal. But there might be something better – and more financially sustainable – at the end.

Wharfedale

Every so often, you have a day that takes you back to your 1970s childhood. When the sky is blue, your cares seem not to exist, pleasures are simple and everything flows.

One such day for me was Saturday as I hooked up with five old friends to climb Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales. We had come together from all points of the compass on Friday night to meet in Kettlewell, a stone-built village tucked between high ridges of millstone-grit. We have all bar one been at university together and our friendships span the last 20 years.

One of the good things about men as they get older is that they become less competitive and almost more feminine in their approach to friendship. There is great care taken to include, no bragging or ragging people to discomfort - the things about all-male company I have often struggled with in younger years. Also, beneath the beery bluster, there is a shared recognition of our connection and its meaning as the years take us forward.

The Dales were magical. Tucked away in the north of Yorkshire, they are less trodden than the Lakes and the Peaks but just as captivating. In the bright September sunshine, we ascended Wherneside and rested at its peak, with the Lakes rising visible on one side and Wharfedale spread out beneath us. We all sat in silence for a few moments, surveying, each in their own place, in tacit appreciation.

If there is one thing I have learned as I have become a little older, it is that life is precious. Even the difficult, anxious times. A choice between life and no-life, even a trying one, is, for me, no contest. The fact of life is a joy and a privilege, something lost on me in my youth, but something I now feel quite fiercely.

And never more so than at moments like this.

Brilliant New Face at SEC

I was delighted and not a little relieved to see Social Enterprise Coalition appoint Peter Holbrook as their next CEO.

Peter is the right choice. He is a successful social entrepreneur with a recent track record. He has achieved miracles in a short time in the least promising areas. He is an inspirational speaker. He can lead teams. He is deeply strategic. He embodies the best of our sector. And finally, he is not an inhabitant of the semi-political world in which a lot of social enterprise people seem to live. He is `real' - and represents a new type of leadership for what is now a bigger sector.

He inherits an organisation that his predecessor brought a long way. But it is also an organisation in need of adaptation. To a new Government, to a new economic period, to a growing level of interest in social business from the public and private sectors.

Peter has some big strategic questions to answer: Does SEC focus on `socialising' mainstream business or growing more orthodox social enterprises? Should SEC be more active in promoting social enterprise as an alternative to public sector provision - and if so how far should it go? Does SEC widen the tent and loosen its criteria for membership or do we go down the RISE line and keep SEC very much in the existing (and growing) social economy.

Whichever way Peter and the Board go, there will be risks. We could miss out on the possibilites offered by the private sector (Liam Black's point). Equally, we could end up looking like a coked-up version of CSR. We might end up transforming the face of the public sector. Or just end up creating pale imitations of the dross that is most publicly provided services today. More worrying for Peter is the fact that he has to balance the wishes of a movement rooted what I call the `left-field' social economy (the co-ops, the social firms etc) with the need (in my mind anyway) to accommodate models of social business that also involve private ownership.

Is is a complex set of challenges. On top of this, he has to get SEC off a diet of Government funding and gain it a reputation for being a shit-hot resource that all social enterprises want to pay to be part of. Not easy in the hardest time we've all faced.

However, if anyone is able to do this it is Peter. He has worked across sectors. He is someone we can all buy into, whatever our views. He can, I believe, create unity and manage conflict while taking us into new directions that recognise the way the world is moving.

While tempted to say what I think he should do in his first year, I have too much respect and liking for the man to add more to the pressure of expectation I know he currently feels.

What I do want to say though is that we must all of us get behind Peter. We may not agree with him on all things but he is the very best leader we have and he deserves our wholehearted support. He needs a couple of years without people on his back or publicly telling him how to do his job. Let's give this man the very best chance of success.

Handle with Care

I sometimes get asked to do talks at local events on the social enterprise agenda. This is what I said at a recent on I did in Suffolk:


We have an opportunity – Suffolk County Council will have a quarter to a third less resources within 5 years – but the same amount to do. It cannot afford to do it.

They are talking about growing social capital as a solution. I am not sure most Tory Councillors could tell you what social capital was, let alone how they are going to grow it to levels that take up the slack of an over-expanded state. In truth there will be a hole where services used to be and a bit of money to fill it. We could be part of that solution and still do OK I believe

However,we need to be cautious about the public sector. Suffolk grew from 18,000 to 31,000 employees during the boom years. They looked after themselves. Other sectors grew too but not nearly by so much. Rather than put new business out to other sectors they took it on themselves.

Now that crisis is here the business isn’t there for them – and they want to find others to help them.

Fine, but I think you can see we’re dealing with an organisation with interests. Therefore we need to take care. If they want us in, they need to share risk and be a banker to risk-taking if necessary.

We also need to push them on the bits of business they would like to keep (the ones with safe Government money attached, I would predict).

What about social care management? What about children’s homes? Fostering services? Children’s centres? All expensively lodged in the public sector. We can do it better, cheaper I am sure of that.

But we cannot take all the risk or be taken to the cleaners – as Councils will tend to do once you’re off their generously funded books.

Finally, we are a tiny barely understood sector and need to develop alliances. The public don’t know who we are. Councillors think we are just part of the third sector. So too do most businesses. We are not significant players.

Therefore we need to build alliances with other sectors – especially business whose strengths tend to offset our weaknesses. Not all businesses are the same and we need to be sensitive to that.

To expand into what are currently public services will require working across sectors and not being precious what whether or not something qualifies as a social enterprise. Look at Serco and Turning Point if you want to see the shape of the future of public services.

Cameron's Love Bombs

We (the Lib Dems) will be doing well to hold onto our sixty-odd seats. Gains in the northern cities will be wiped out by losses to the Tories in the South and West.

Rawnsley is right, there is an `Anyone But Labour' mood out there which is pitching people towards Cameron, whose progressive rhetoric is capturing the attention of the under 40s - who are temperamentally liberal.

Our best - and only - chance is to try to paint Cameron as being like Blair - the ultimate politician, not particularly worthy of our trust. And contrast him with ourselves the `straight-talkers'.

We will also have to use Mr Cable to full effect. His resonance with voters, particularly older ones, is enormous. As a Councillor I knock on doors a lot and the esteem and trust people have for Vince is massive.

At the moment though, I am not optimistic. The Tories have momentum and in Cameron a leader who just about cuts it with the public.

2010 will not, I fear, be our mould-breaking year. 2014 or 2018 however maybe is - as Labour will, effectively, be finished in many parts of the country after next year's rout.

Strictly Wasteful?

I have spent most of the last two evenings watching `Strictly' with my wife, Katy, who loves it. As someone who tries to a probably-unhealthy extent to fill every hour with worthwhile "stuff", you can imagine how this must be for me. The programme's conclusion (after about 2 hours - it is interminable) fills me initially with relief then that crushing feeling that I will never get that time back. An unenjoyable indulgance, like the fourth pint or the second pack of McCoys.

So why was I in there watching Strictly and not in here watching the Lib Dem conference online? Well, it is to do with being married. Because if I didn't watch `Strictly' I wouldn't have done a single thing with Katy this week. Or, rather, a single thing we didn't have to do (sort out the kids) or that I wanted to do (she goes online when I am writing/blogging/working in the evenings.

Watching Strictly therefore is my way of saying that I know it's not all about me and just plainly and simply being together in a way that we are not most of the time. Therefore, no this time is not Strictly Wasteful (though I still mourn the opportunity-cost) but actually Time Well Spent. For without it, I might end up without my dancing partner, which wouldn't be good at all!

Social Capital & Social Fantasy

`Social capital'. This is the talk of the moment. It is the idea being bandied around by panicked councils as a solution to the fact that the state is now in retreat.

But the talk about social capital in relation to the pending crisis is a bit like the talk about `technology' as a solution to global warming. People don't actually know what it is, how to make it happen and how it will actually address the kinds of problems we face.

For now it is just a word people are using as a proxy for a solution that isn't actually in place yet.

But is `social capital' a solution? Let's start with what social capital actually is. Essentially it consists of the sum total of mutual support, positive networks , and community activity in a particular area. Social capital is intimately linked to levels of trust and feelings of safety and satisfaction with ones environment.

It tends to be high where communities are stable, self-confident and cohesive. It appears to positively correlate to affluence though there are some very mutually supportive communities in the poorest areas too - where other factors lock in social capital - such as strong community institutions or a shared history.

So, logically, social capital can be further developed and relied upon more as an alternative to the state more in areas where it is already existent ie. affluent areas like Bury St Edmunds and poorer but for historic reasons, socially cohesive areas like, for example, West Belfast.

And, to continue this line of thought, it will be less plentiful and reliable in areas that are already fragmented, troubled, untrusting. This means, therefore, that social capital will be lowest in precisely those areas where it will be most needed - the poor, fear-filled estates of East Manchester, West London, Liverpool 8.

Where does this leave us? Well, it seems to me that the idea that social capital will somehow bridge the gap left by the state is somewhat fallacious.

Even if we devote some new resources to generating social capital, you're actually assuming that this can be generated as a prior thing to those aspects of society which actually produce or reinforce it: success, confidence, trust, community.

Of course this isn't how it works. Success begets success and vice versa.

Yes, the idea of social capital saving the day is I think nonsense. There isn't enough of it where it is needed and you can't just magic it up from the desperation that defines the most run-down parts of the UK.

There is no magic bullet - it is better we admit this and stop this silly talk about social capital.

Big Splash in My Small Pond

Well, I can barely contain myself. I seem, on a small level to have contributed to a change in direction on a major issue. When I ran for Council, my main issue was the retention of three tier education in this area - something about to be ended by the Tories. The idea was to replace all secondaries using big new Government money and expand primaries on current sites. People round here didn't like this. They didn't believe it would improve things. Or that the money was there.

The Council were late to cotton on to this important truth. It seems an announcement of the climb down was coming at some stage but, as the result of a motion I and a colleague put into the Council yesterday, a statement was rushed out last night, ahead of the motion's being debated next week saying the plans were on ice.

The fact that they have done this reflects some difficult realities on the ground for the Tories here in Bury. In an election where they swept the board across Suffolk, here in Bury they lost three Councillors and myself, an indepdendent and a Green took their place. Since then, the self-styled `Bury Three' have been all over this issue in meetings, forums and the press. We have helped create a difficult environment for this policy to move forward in Bury without the full finances being there for it. Had Tories been in place I suspect they might have taken more risks.

I am pleased because all along people have told me I was chasing a lost cause, this was a done deal etc. This just goes to show that it is important to hold your line until events prove, beyond doubt, that the debate is over. This one isn't quite over yet but looks to be. Plans are on ice until finances become clearer or better - and I can't see that happening give that `Building Schools for the Future' seems to be at the top of any respectable right-wing think-tank's list of schemes to be culled under a new Tory Government.

So a victory of sorts and proof that politics does matter. Even at my level.

Let's Embrace Outsourcing

The 2010s will I believe be the decade that Councils stopped doing things. Or rather stopped doing things themselves and focussed on their core business of making sure things got done. For that is actually their purpose. They are not there to do things. And when they do, they're not normally very good at it (I can say this, I am a Councillor!).

But who would expect them to be any good at any one thing? These are ridiculouly over-diversified organisations. Indeed what other organisation would credibly claim it could competently look after abused children, manage the roads, support carers of older people, redevelop towns and empty the bins? All of these are specialisms. Councils are doing the football equivalent of playing in all positions when in truth they can do only one remotely well.

Barnet, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith, Essex. All of these Councils are leading the way in asking `Why should we deliver this?' and, if there is no compelling reason why, finding someone who can deliver best and cheapest. Although these are all Tory Councils, and I am a Lib Dem, I think history will prove them to be right and that all parties will live with this eventually, rather in the way they did once the Tories did what no-one else thought possible by smashing trade-union power.

The result of Councils asking themselves that big question is that they rapidly come to the conclusion that No, they ought not to be trying to run everything. No other business could run so much well, so why should they? Plus few other businesses are lumbered with the disatrous long-term costs that the public sector still bears (the six months paid sick leave, the king's pension etc). It makes sense to have fewer of these people on the books.

The logical outcome of all this is a much bigger future role for the private and third sectors. Now, the private sector is already limbering up, getting ready to run on the pitch. The third sector dressing-room, however, is a less unified place. Some players are hungry, keen to run into the new territory, seeing the possible improvements that can be made to the dismal offer made by local authorities to vulnerable groups.

Others though, while on the team-sheet, are more half-hearted. They want to do things but have reservations about what this might say about them as players. And a small minority are not going on that pitch for love or money. They line up with the Dave Prentice's (Unison leader) of this world and say that the state should continue to do most things and take the rap when it all goes wrong. Because that is democratic and at least the public sector is accountable.

Well, excuse me, this is where I come in, Mr Coucillor. Public services, just because, they are provided by local authorities are not more accountable to elected members than those provided by Capita or Turning Point. I would argue in fact that in-house services are less accountable. Because, essentially, they are `family'. Giving your family - the people you employ- the hard time they deserve is a lot less difficult than giving it to people in whom you have no other interest than what they do for you (or are saying they are doing). Outsourcing means more accountability, not less.

We stand at an important junction. In 1995, Suffolk County Council employed about 18,000 people. Today that number stands at about 30,000. An increase of over 50%. This is about to change. Not only is there less to spend, we now know that markets must be opened up. It has taken a long time but we're nearly there. The third sector needs to recognise that its time has come and get out on that pitch, determined to win.

In Praise of League Tables for Charities

I know league tables are supposedly going out of fashion. I actually like them. For, whatever their flaws they tell us something. They satisfy our need for comparison. League tables are something people in the third sector get very edgy about. We just don’t seem to like the idea of a ranking. But this, of course, is to pretend we are all equal. That all charities deliver. The truth, and we all know this, is that not all charities do. Many are no good at all. And some actually probably do positive harm. Yet we hold back from saying this, fearful, I suspect, of what it will do to our brand (people trust charities, we mustn’t let them know that many of them are crap).

Personally I would welcome league-tables. Yes, I know they wouldn’t be perfect but that isn’t the point. They would give me an idea of where the organisations with which I am involved either as a donor, a trustee or a CEO, actually stand. Central to these league tables should be user-satisfaction. This would force charities to get some data on what users actually think of their services. Not a perfect measure of outcomes, I know, but a fair proxy that is easy and economic to find out. Don’t find out and this bumps down your rating. This would actually get charities taking users and customers more seriously than they do now.

However, I am not stupid. This won’t happen, I know. The sector is far too comfortable with the status quo to bother with any of this. Its marketing departments know that income depends more on corporate PR and flashy impact reports than the actual truth of a charity’s performance. Leaders in the sector are often cowardly when it comes to being properly transparent about their organisations. When did you last hear a charity CEO say publicly that they felt a particular programme or approach had failed or that their charity actually wasn’t the best thing since Mighty White? In truth, behind closed door, CEOs are willing to be very open about the shortcomings of their organisaiton but never, strangely in public.

As a donor this personally makes me very suspicious. I put money into organisations that tell the truth about themselves, even when this isn’t all good news. Because then I know I can trust that organisation. None of the causes into which I have put money or time would probably baulk at a league table. Openness is part of their culture and intent. It is part of learning, getting better, becoming more efficient, a better servant of the common good. We have allowed our sector to be hi-jacked by our marketing and PR departments, fearful that if we tell the truth support will drain away – or go to others.

A league table of charities would be a great leveler for those charities who deliver bang for buck – but who don’t have the PR machine to pull in the big donations. It would tell us what we needed to know about which organisations large and small actually did the business. I can’t see what any decent org would have to fear from this. So why aren’t we doing it?

Maximum Human Discomfort

Maximum Human Discomfort.

This is the phrase which came to mind today as I wandered around Liverpool St station. I wanted to pee – but didn’t have the 30p in change needed to go. I wanted to sit but there are perhaps 20 seats in the whole place. I wanted a café and there’s only a micro-Costa in a far corner.

25 minutes passed this way until the relative comfort and relief of the 1530 to Norwich. Does it have to be this way?

Do London stations have to be this bad (Kings Cross is just as bad?). Staff are dour and unhelpful should you need them.

They could all learn lessons from another main line station – Stowmarket.

As an experience, Stowmarket station is actually gratifying. Not just adequate but a positive contribution to ones day.

It starts with the staff. All helpful and empathic to the needs of the traveler. The shop is well stocked and sells cups of tea for a quid and employs the friendliest person in East Anglia on the till. The toilets are a dream. Pristine, hot water, towels. And free to all station-users. On the platform there is a lovely waiting room, all warm and nice-smelling.

But overall the experience of using Stowmarket station is one which recognizes one as a human being. In this sense it is additive to total happiness in the world.

By contrast, a place where you can’t pee, sit or relax is the opposite. Miserable, inhuman, nearer to a cattle-market than a key travel centre of the UK, Liverpool St station captures the very worst of this country.

When people ask me why I live in Suffolk, Stowmarket station is up there on my list of reasons.

Give Me Sunlight

This week I made good on a long-held promise to myself - to go see the work of Peter Holbrook and his team down at Sunlight in Gillingham, Kent. I travelled down there with one of my Trustees, John Willis, who was hoping to find inspiration for the renewal of Huntingdon Community Learning Centre - something of a White Elephant so far - but packed with potential.

So what is Sunlight? Well, one one level, its very simple. It's a `community anchor' type organisation. It is housed in a big building in the middle of a deprived area and within its doors lie a panopoly of resources for people to tap into, from the offices of of public sector and third sector organisations through to an alphabet-soup of informal self-help groups led by volunteers. On top of this, Sunlight runs a major catering operation and a number of community cafes in the town.

`All very nicebut what accounts for all the media and politician-attention this place gets?' I am hearing you say... `Is it all spin or is this something that merits special attention'.

I am glad to report that, for once, the hype lives up to reality. This is not just another high-octane community centre. There are a number of differentiators from most of what I have seen so far.

1. The business model. There are two aspects to Sunlight - the Development Trust and the Community Interest Company (CIC). The CIC pursues commercial opportunities - and now runs the whole of Medway Council's catering operation. Profit from this is used to support aspects of the Development Trust's work such as their offer of free space to new community groups or one-off grants to residents for key pieces of equipment (e.g. the new set of chef's whites bought for a local lad just off to college). Having profitable elements creates the space to ignite community action which otherwise would founder early through lack of support. The result is a much larger number of self-help groups than one would expect. And that means lots of good outcomes for little financial outlay.

2. The ambition. Most third sector organisations like to stay in their box. Manage public services? No thanks, that's government's job etc. Sunlight aspire not only to provide workspace to the GPs and Social Services teams in the area, tney want to run these services and plough the profit back into the community. The Sunlight team have bid, so far unsuccessfully, to manage the primary care & GPs surgery run from its building - but have been blocked from doing so by the PCT. Should they eventually pull this off - and add perhaps an outsourced Job Centre Plus - you've got a model of public service provision that could be the template for the 2010s and beyond. Which accounts for the interest of one D. Cameron and his team I suspect.

3. The community's involvement. Most community centres are run by well-meaning middle class people and follow a low-risk public sector template. So if you are poor and or vulnerable you can use the place OK but that is very much as far as it goes. You'll never work there, expect perhaps as a volunteer doing something very marginal. At Sunlight most of the staff come from the community. Many are former `users' of the centre and have developed into employees. Sure, this doesn't make for the smoothest of receptionists or the most cleanly polished floors I have ever seen - but it does make the place BELONG to the community. Obviously there are difficulties - the story of an overpromoted local finance officer made me wince - but these outweigh the benefits.

4. The ethos. Ethos is a difficult thing to pin down. It is everything but nowhere is it written down formally. The ethos of Sunlight is clearly one of what MBA students call its `core competencies'. People know what matters in Sunlight and align their behaviour accordingly. One example. In the cafe while we were there a woman three tables away burst into tears following a visit to the GPs (bad news, obviously). Within moments, a member of the cafe staff had come from the kitchen with a free cup of tea and was with the lady for half an hour. This is obviously beyond contract stuff, not in any job description - just the way the place works. No formal Compassion Policy. No Charter of Care or operations manual. Just a great ethos.

5. Entrepreneurial Leadership. Peter Holbrook, the CEO of Sunlight, doesn't like being talked up. He is very quick to point out that it is others, not him, leading the many facets of Sunlight's work. However, he provides an example of the kind of entrepreneurial leadership that makes the difference between an ordinary place doing ordinary things to an extraordinary place that is creating a new paradigm for how we tackle the challenges of our most deprived communities.

If cloning were already possible, I daresay that Peter and Sunlight would be rich from selling his DNA (as well as being a talented and energetic man, he is one of kindest and most compassionate people I have ever met). However, the fact that we can't yet recreate Peter at scale doesn't mean we can't support people like him to make things happen in communities all over the UK. You see, in the public sector, someone like Peter would probably lose his job or get burned up very quickly. He'd break some rule, take some level of risk deemed `inappropriate' and refuse to accept the glacial pace of change that public sector organisations seem to believe is acceptable. His counterpart - the drone we currently entrust with millions of pounds of public money does none of these disruptive things. But he doesn't do a lot else either. A socially enterprising government needs to say to PCTs and Councils that they have to support the Sunlights of this world (and without tying them up in constricting service-agreements) - or the people leading councils etc will lose their jobs. Sounds a bit harsh, crude, simplistic etc - but I can't see any other way to galvanise change.

6. A Whole Person Approach. Most services in this country are set up by people who have done a very long specialist training and believe that what they do is most important thing in the very world. They then fight with other professionals (who believe the same thing about what they do) for resources and before long you have a whole health and social care system set up around the people leading and managing services. Clients (me, you etc)of course come with a whole range of needs, some of which don't require a professional at all, just the company of others, or support from someone who had been there themselves. At Sunlight, a lot of the things on offer are not professional-led, they are led by residents. There is a recognition that people might want to do other things, access other areas. This is positively encouraged. People are not `owned' - or indeed seen as the `responsibility' of others and shunted off. If someone comes to Sunlight in crisis, having been beaten up and thrown out by their husband, they are not `signposted' elsewhere. There is an immediate and effective response. Someone stays with them through the process they need to go through and they aren't allowed to pinball around agencies or fall through gaps. Very different from the public sector and indeed many third sector agencies.

Overall my visit to Sunlight confirmed a lot of what I already believed. The bits of Sunlight occupied by the public sector were very telling of what is wrong and what any new Government needs to deal with quickly. Offices were large for the numbers employed, though often just full of junk and big piles of paper. You needed key-codes to get in even to offices. Peter I noticed couldn't easily access some areas. The Social Services assessment bit, for example, is full of kids equipment which, couldn't be used by the community even through it is empty much of the time. Although people were perfectly pleasant, there was still a touch of that feeling of `This is Us, you are the public/other, we have our rules and systems, fuck-off and wait till we're ready to see you'. People naturally don't trust this as much as Sunlight's approach. Which is why Sunlight want to take over those services.

And the third sector...well you know I am often critical. But the organisations I metwere welcoming and upbeat, despite the shitty contracts they had with the public sector and being jammed into their offices like sardines.

We drove away four hours later (Peter had given up practically his whole day for us)not only inspired but INFORMED that there is another way with public services. This is why so many people right now are finding their way to Gillingham.

What Ordinary Enterprises Can Learn from the Third Sector

I have been asked to give a talk on this in the near future. Here is what I might say....

`How ordinary enterprises can learn from the third sector'. An interesting question as it is normally asked the other way round.

And I am perhaps the wrong person to ask on one level in that I have tended to bring learning in from the private sector to Speaking Up, rather than take my ideas from elsewhere in the third sector, much of which I think is run pretty badly.

But what can for-profit businesses learn from the way we lead and manage the Third Sector?

FIVE things come to mind.

The first is that we are excelent at securing employee commitment - that elusive `beyond contract' dedication. We do this because we are able to tap into people's deepest values. We offer people the opportunity to do paid work which resonates clearly with their personal sense of purpose. Most third sector organisations are able to do this, but particularly the smaller, more shambolic ones. These organisations are often close to the front-line and staff feel near to the issues.

Secondly, we are less hierarchical and more participative. The Third Sector CEO is not the God he is in the private sector. The culture of the heroic CEO just doesn't give. There is a stronger egalitarian ethos in most third sector organisations. As a result, there is a bigger emphasis on consensus in decision-making. People expect to be part of decision-making. Consultation is generally more widespread. This slows things down but ensures there is greater buy-in from those expected to implement decisions. The CEOs role is one of facilitator and broker more than commander.

Is this an advantage? I think it can be. Leaders in TSOs do not often go unchallenged. There is a greater check on left-field decisions. The down-side is that this can block progress, but it also means there is greater scrutiny of what is happening.

Thirdly, we are more stable, less short-termist and go bust a lot less. TSO take fewer risks. They see their mission in long-view. Seldom do they `bet the farm' on a big new idea. They seek to ensure the organisation's ability to do good is protected in perpetuity. We evolve and adapt without necessarily taking organisation-threatening risks. This is in common with many privately owned SMEs so not unique to the third sector. But it is also a result of our Governance arrangements which put the CEO and his team under a Board of Directors with legal responsibility for the mission long-term. The corrollary of this is that the third sector is undoubtedly less innovative and slower to respond to rapid change than it often needs to be- but it means fewer wasteful forays too.

Fourthly, we are trusted and values-driven. Trusted by users, by staff and by donors and commissioners. We are viewed as mission-led. Although our people earn reasonably well, we are viewed as being concerned, principally, with making the world a better place. Third sector organisations feel good to the people involved either as a user, a donor/customer, a volunteer or member of staff. We touch that part of people that wants and needs to be part of something bigger.

Fifthly, we are able to work to a variety of bottom lines. Contrary to what you might think, every third sector CEO has to make a profit. If he doesn't the organisation will quickly cease to exist as reserves are low and the banks don't help us. But we have to operate other bottom lines too, notably our social bottom-line and the interdependencies between them. Managing this balance makes a third sector CEO's task that bit more complex than than a CEO in an ordinary enterprise, I believe. This complexity finds its way into our commercial life too. While we operate in competitive markets we also have to create collaborative relationships with those same organisations we might compete with. Missions such as `Kill Caterpillar' have no place in our sector. Co-opertition is the norm.

Which brings me nicely onto mergers. There are relatively few mergers in the third sector. There just isn't the financial drivers to incentivise them compared to the private sector. While this means that opportunities to merge are often overlooked, it also means that mergers that are not a good idea - where the cultures of two organisations will not work together - don't get off the drawing board.

My own organisation is currently preparing to merge with another. While the strategic alignment has been clear from the off, it has also been critical that we stress-test the cultural fit between the two organisations. If it were wrong (and it wasn't) this would have been a deal-breaker. For the merger wouldn't ultimately have served our long-term purpose. I am personally of the view that a lot of private sector merger activity is driven by short-term goals and doesn't actually deliver much long-term value to either the holder of shares or the customer.
In this sense, the third sector I think has a more realistic view of mergers.

Overall, then, there are a number of things that ordinary enterprises can learn from the third sector:

1. Become better at securing employee commitment by making your company values and actions more consistent with the values of your employees. This means moving beyond rhetorical commitment to company action which makes employees feel they are there to do more than create shareholder value - an important and noble goal in itself, but often not enough to get people to go beyond contract.

2. Become less overtly hierarchical more consensual and participative. This means slower decisions but often better decisions and ones which people feel they own and will therefore implement with more determination. This also helps to build commitment to the company.

3. Take the long view. This is extremely hard for listed companies in which CEOs last on average less than three years.

4. Be trusted by having strong values and showing commitment to making the world a better place. This means going beyond CSR and the usual corporate Greenwash. The young in particular are very sensitised to this. A company with integrity will I believe attract the best `Generation Y and Z' talent in the future.

5. Teach your managers to work to a number of bottom-lines, not just one. We do this and it means that our organisations can account for themselves on a number of levels. I believe in time that all companies will need to account for themselves much more than they do now. Start now by training your managers to achieve and balance different types of success.

My overall view is that there is a huge infusion of learning to be had from the third sector. As part of Social Enterprise Day in November, we are inviting a range of corporate heads to job-swop for a day with a CEO of a social business. The learning of course cuts both ways. I have taken a great deal from the private sector. Your focus, your use of metrics, your professionalism and your ability to move quickly are all facets we in the third sector need to take from you.

Heroic Help

Heroic Help
One of the third sector’s unsung success-stories of the last couple of years is the charity Help for Heroes (H4H).

Set up in October 2007 by former Royal Greenjack Bryn Parry and his wife, it started as a sponsored bike ride. Today, only two years on, it has now raised many millions to directly help wounded servicemen and their families and is a household name.

There's a few things I like rather a lot about H4H. One is that it clearly provides something nobody else, particularly the Government, is delivering very well right now: direct, practical, timely help for wounded men. Help that the wounded themselves praise to high-heaven.

Especially when compared to the bureaucracy and insensitivity they often face from the Government. Indeed the contrast between HM Government and the no-nonsense, low-overhead, empathic approach of H4H could not be more stark.

Another is that H4H have drawn public attention to a forgotten group. While 200 service personnel have now died in Afhganistan, there are now estimated to be up to 4000 very seriously wounded men (and they are almost all men) who will need care-for-life, often with brain injuries as well as physical ones.

Little provision has been made in the public finances for them long-term. H4H, while scrupulously apolitical, has skillfully guided public and media attention, onto the issue.

A final thing I really like about H4H is that it has come in from left-field within the existing charity world leaving certain other forces charities feeling red-faced.

Good. That is what new organisations are supposed to do. Filling gaps and shaking up sectors that clearly hadn't been quite on the ball. All sectors benefit from competition and vigorous new entrants. It raises everyone’s game.

Or, in the case of H4H, actually changes the game. For H4H has, in quite an extraordinary way, caught the public mood, which was previously lacking means of expression, and turned it into something incredibly positive and powerful.

For me, H4H is primary evidence of the UK’s strong civil society and the openness of our system to motivated individuals to make good new things happen.

Wouldn’t it be great, therefore, to see Parry and his team headlining this Autumn’s conference platforms, rather than the predictable parade of top CEOs, think-tankers and quango-heads?

Fat chance I suspect. Because the chattering classes of the third sector tend to avoid discussing the our military heroes very openly (it is deeply unfashionable, I sense). But the truth is that we should all actually be garlanding Parry and H4H for their impact – and showing us all how it is done.

Because H4H represents the very best of the third sector and, yes, I will say it, the very best of Britain

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Am reading Tolstoy’s `Death of Ivan Ilych’ – a book that starts with a death – an agonizing one with `screams that lasted three days’ – probably cancer.

Then it charts the life of Ivan Ilych, an outwardly successful, conformist 19th century Russian judge who forgoes any forms of domestic happiness or emotional life for security, career-achievement and social respectability then, on dying, finds himself utterly alone, his colleaugues planning their promotions, his wife indifferent.

Only his peasant nursemaid and young boy enable him to sob and weep and be held, as he wants to be, by a family and friends that care.

The lesson? Don’t live your life to impress others and conform. They don’t care and your life will be wasted.

Elephant in the Room

I have been wondering for months whether to say this or not. To risk what people will say and think of me if I do. Yet it is something that privately people say to me all the time.

But I am going to say it anyway.

Our employment laws - and the way they have been interpreted by the courts are - I believe, are unjust.

I don't say this just because I am biased (which I am) but also because I actually care about justice.

So these laws...where do I start?

Perhaps most obviously, they make it unreasonably costly and difficult to deal with any kind of issue involving employees, be it organisational change or dealing with underperformance or indiscipline. Everything has to be treated like a legal process (which, of course, it now is, even in the very early stages).


Employers often live in fear of these laws ( I know, I am one). For these laws act as a stealth-tax on our income, time and mission/profit.

I am making a strong claim here so let me make a few statements and see what you think.

1. It should be reasonably easy for a company, or charity, to part company with somebody who isn't delivering their side of the bargain. Shouldn't it? Am I wrong here?

2. It ought to be possible, without a great deal of fuss, or expense, to make reasonable changes to people's jobs to suit the changing needs of users and customers. Wouldn't you agree? But it isn't.

3. It ought to be quite possible for a company trying to stay alive to keep its best people without risking all sort of legal hassle. But it isn't. Quite the opposite in fact.

Instead many organisations are faced with a legal minefield in any of the above situations.

Dodging the mines means expert navigation from HR experts and lawyers. Organisations least able to afford this - like small charities - can end up in a lot of trouble.

Not, I hasten to say, for doing anything particular bad or immoral (not forgetting that some employers are shits). But, quite often, due to breaking fairly minor rules around consultaiton or accommodation to people's sensibilities about what they think their jobs should be.

And I should know because I have been there more times than I like to remember. Indeed in our early days, one such case almost brought down the business.

Yes, the whole future of a charity which now helps 5000 people a year put at risk because the law said we didn't consult someone `properly' about their redundancy. That cost us several thousand pounds we didn't have at the time.

Did the punishment fit the crime here? Was this `justice'? While there are aspects of the American system of capitalism I abhor, its lighter touch on employment law is something I would welcome.

I would welcome opinions, anonymous or not.

But if you do agree, and I believe most people actually do, then let's break this conspiracy of silence and tell the truth as we see it.

What If...Steve Jobs Ran the Public Sector?

Steve Jobs - the man who founded and runs Apple - is a hard man to please.

He is the ultimate hard-driven entrepreneur - a narcissistic over-achiever with the kind of personality that believes he can, literally, change the world by force of his own will.

He is known at Apple for asking the impossible - then getting it. The company's phenomenal innovation - which puts the rest of the industry to shame - is widely credited to this man's drive and the ridiculously high standards he sets.

For example, not only does he insists that all Apple devices look beautiful on the outside but also on the inside too. Even the sealed units the buyer never sees.

Jobs however is no tech-guy. He doesn't understand circuits or programming particularly. He is the ultimate user and his genius seems to be in getting people to produce the kind of gadgets that make us all gasp with awe.

So, onto my main point.

Jobs has made Apple into a company that achieves far, far more than should be possible. He works by a mixture of terror, exhortation and the inculcation of the very highest standards.

Is Apple a one-off, or could Jobs transform public services for the better?

The parallells, on first impression, feel ludicrious. Ipods and bin-emptying are not the same thing.

But over-achievement? Customer delight? Genius in design?

Public services could use a bit of this.

Jobs would, of course, have his work cut out. I suspect that the culture of consensus that dominates most public sector bodies would come under massive attack from day one.

He would also struggle, I think, to inculcate the notion of excellence into organisations for whom excellence was something limited to corporate literature sent out with the Council Tax bill.

But it would be an interesting experiment. One the world would, I am sure, learn something from.

And until we receive the public sector equivalent of the I-phone, it is something I will call for, however silly it makes me look.

Plane Glory

My boy is mad about planes. He's only 20 months old but everytime he sees one he points and starts yabbering.

So today I took him to an airshow. I wasn't expecting a great deal beyond boredom and nowhere to change his nappy yet, goodness, was I wrong.

Watching all manner of aircraft take off, jig around in the air, pretend to be dog-fighting, about to drop a payload etc was riveting (as was watching Wilf's delight with proceedings).

The crowning moment came with the Spitfire. It did a kind of duel, not with a Messerschmitt but with an American Mustang (much the superior plane, being 5 years later).

Seeing the Spitfire rise, bank and descend against an azure August sky made my heart soar and my eyes prick with primitive pride.

For these aircraft, and the people in them, during a period of only a few days,over similar fields and skies, sixty-nine years earlier, basically gave Hitler pause for thought. Aerial defeat would have made a sea-borne assualt on the UK eminently more possible.

As the Spitfire touched down and its pilot emerged, I didn't think about the few to whom we owe so much etc but about the fact that sometimes our lives contain very short periods - days, hours, minutes that are of definitive importance.

Not to the future of the free world perhaps but to ourselves, the people around us and, for the odd person, wider society. Moments which shape everything else forever.

I can think of two, maybe three in my own life. Two are intensely personal, the third being the day I decided to leave my job to set up Speaking Up.

And then Wilf distracted me from my reverie with a squeal that announced the arrival of a Lancaster Bomber...

Do Intentions Matter in Social Enterprise?

Do Intentions Matter in Social Business?

I was talking the other week to a mate of mine with a commercial background who told me he thought that social enterprise was a was a `slippery concept'.

His big point is that the line between `social business' and pure, for-profit business' is actually misleading.

`How so?’ I asked.

`Well’, he said, `think of mobile phones in Africa. There is this company he knows that is mad for making money. So mad in fact that they risked a lot of capital, time and energy on sticking mobile phone infrastructure across a load of African countries. Tricky places to do business. Lots unpleasant Goverments to deal with. High risks’.

He continued `The company is doing OK and money will be made. But the bigger net effect is that lots of African entrepreneurs are now able to develop businesses, build up the economy etc, thus producing a lot of more `social benefit' than, say, a maize-growing co-op run by a social business. A “double-bottom line”, if ever you've seen one!’

`So’, he asked with a flourish,`Which is the more convincing social business? The one doing more good (whatever the starting intentions) - or the one with all the right intentions, ownership models etc.?’

I sat and I pondered. One on hand, my friend's view is a rehash of Adam Smith - the idea that selfish intention translates into communal benefits.

On the other though, he raises an interesting question: Might he actually be right - to a point? That certain ordinary companies' outputs - like the mobile phone one - can also produce quite clear `social benefits' which, were they produced by a social-firm, be celebrated in the end of year social accounts.
And, leading from that, could such a firm be rightfully garlanded as a social business?

The response to all this from the majority in the social enterprise world would always be that the mobile phone co. is not social enterprise. Both the lack of social intent and private ownership would count them out, regardless, it seems of how much good they do.

Where am I ? What it comes down to, I guess, is whether a social business should be defined mainly by the production of socially accountable outcomes (in this case the development benefits produced by mobile phone use in Africa) or whether it always has to defined in terms of intention, the way it is run, its ownership structure and so on.
I personally think that outcomes (what really happens) should have a greater bearing than the way things are put together – though I do also think these things matter too.
Therefore for me, the mobile phone company is a kind of social business. Not quite in the same way as most readers of In Touch – granted – but if their business generates massive social returns, I guess it has to has to be, doesn’t it?

So far so philosophical.

But ask yourself this. The phone rings. Its a 21 year old who had just been given £5m in their trust fund to change the world. He wants your advice.
Knowing what you know now , how would you advise them to do with it in order to make the biggest social benefit? £5 million into a series of CICs - or into those funky guys putting mobile phones into Africa who are looking for their next slug of investment?

I think I know what I'd be saying.

Its 1989 again

Or you would think so given how many times I have heard or seen the Stone Roses in the media this week. Yes, its 20 years (where did that GO?) since the release of THAT album. I was a student then. A second year politics undergrad at Newcastle. As usual I was a little late getting on to them, missing not only their local gig at Uni but also a chance the year before to see them in a dive in M60.

Listening to the album now it still sounds very good. But is it great? Is it up there with the Beatles, Dylan and the Clash? Is it great art or just brilliant rock music? Ask me 20 years ago I would have said yes to all three questions.

Today I am not so sure. I am not sure the Roses represented anything much beyond a kind of Manc casualism. While something in their music touched me when I was 20 it doesn't move me today in anything like the same way, now that I have heard a lot more.

No, I think the Roses are great mainly in the sense that they were perfect in their time. Like Oasis in 94, like the Arctic Monkeys in 06. I am not sure people listening new to them now will quite see the fuss. Yes a great album by a band which had a new sound and some striking songs but not, in the wider musical scheme of things, a band of unusual innovation, statement or emotional reach.

Still, you can't really beat ` I Am the Resurrection' - go to Spotify and play it NOW.

On Denmark

Just returned from a fortnight in a sleepy suburb of a town I am sure you won't have heard of called Soro, not far from Copenhagen.

Two weeks in a non-touristed area of a new country gives you a sense of how a place works. You use the roads, the shops, the trains. I also talked to people. Taxi drivers, people in shops (they all speak English). I happen to have a Danish friend who has also lived in the UK.

So what are my main impressions? Well this is a Sensible Country. People drive with their lights on in the daytime. There is a strong sense of`rules' both on the road (where traffic accidents are uncommon) and off, where people have a Germanic sense of order, cleanliness and public solicitude.

The Danes themselves are, overall, more relaxed, quieter, less ostentatious and possibly a little duller than Englanders. They are, generally, well educated and
the society as a whole is definitely less divided socially than our own (though this is changing I am told).

In terms of politics and society, Denmark typifies Continental Europe. Taxes are high (about 50% of basic income) and unemployment benefit is about 80% of your work income. People work less intensively than in the UK and there is, generally, more gender equality, with Dads doing more at home than in the UK. While there is a much-talked about problem with free-riders (people `taking' the system for all it is worth), many Danes regard that as preferable to the kinds of problems created when an underclass has revenge on its mind.

Would I live there? Probably not, though I am not sure I would mind living there if I was born and raised in Denmark. There is a stronger form and structure to life here which the person I am now would fund a little too rigid. Careers are more traditionally defined and Danes change jobs far less. Professions are stronger. The state is, clearly, a bigger force than in the UK or US, where you're more `on your own'. The upside of this is clear: a safer, cleaner and probably less pressurised society than our own (Denmark is, apparently, the happiest country in the world). The downside is that the place lacks `edge' and you have to pay about £30,000 for a new Ford Focus (the state adds a whopping sales tax on just about everything).

My contact with public services was interesting. The libraries in Denmark are not like ours. They are a bit like a swank version of Waterstones that include funky play areas for kids. Its all open plan, lots of PCs, a swing for the kids and staff moving around, interacting, not sat behind desks. Everyone uses them. That's the key, I think. In the UK, they are for the committed, the elderly and the vulnerable. Staff are surly and god help you if you ever bring a book back late. Most of us, frankly, stay clear of the places.

On the trains, they are, again, quite swank, but no nicer than when I first went there in 1999. It was here we had our only crap, totally un-Danish experience when, having lugged our 20lb buggy and two small kids on the train, to be asked to leave the carriage by a young conducter who deemed the train too full (it was about half as full as trains I often travel on in the UK).

Thinking we were about to be escorted to the specialcarriage with the fitted play-area and coffee lounge, I obligingly got us all off but was then told that the next train would be in an hour, we could try our luck then. Needless to say, the special child-friendly Danish carriage doesn't exist! For anyone who has small kids, you can imagine how this felt and how utterly buggered up all our feeding, sleeping etc schedules were for the whole day. I felt like standing my ground, Brit-style, but sensed my fellow passengers would have no truck with a bolshy foreigner trying to flout the rules.

Overall though, the place is better than here for kids, though the UK is fast-catching up. My liking of Denmark comes from its people who are mild, friendly and socially-minded. I would rather lose my wallet in a Danish town centre than a British one. And I think I would rather walk through one on a Saturday night, if I am honest. It is clearly a place more at ease with itself in which there is a sense of perspective. More negatively, I think it is teeny bit boring. You haven't got the kind of diversity and fashion we have. And it capital doesn't pulsate even as much as some of our provincial cities.

Do visit if you get a chance. But take your wallet and a few good books.

No Dumb Blond

At an evening bash I went to the other week, the after-dinner speaker was Philip Blond of the think-tank Demos. He was so good that I waved away the banofee pie. Superstardom surely awaits.

So what’s Philip Blond all about? Well, he is the catchingly titled 'Red Tory'. With compelling confidence, Blond lambasts not only Brownite statism (which we all expected) but also rampant individualism, materialism and monopoly capitalism (which, frankly, we didn’t). Both left and right get it in the neck.

As a third-sector person, a lot of what Blond said resonated. He argued that the `vertical lines’ between citizen and state have, over time, rubbed out the `horizontal’ ones which bind us together as a society. Where once we looked to each other, we now look to the state.

Or, alternatively, we seek personal liberation in possessions, easy sex or a kind detached `self-realisation’.

To support his case, Blond cited studies showing that the least cohesive communities of 35 years ago were more cohesive than the strongest ones of today. Think about that.

As he was speaking I thought about the pre-1945 world of mill-town Lancashire that my grandparents used to tell me about. The Co-op. The club. The penny insurance for the doctor. The immense pride in self-reliance.

My grandparents contrasted this lost world to the isolation, fear and humiliation they felt in old age.

I found myself attracted to a lot of what Blond had to say. We do need to regenerate the kind of social capital and community cohesion which many of us so crave. On which the health of society and our organizational missions depend.

And the public sector has, I agree, diminished our society rather than formed its highest expression, particularly in the last 12 years. It now feels less about public service than public servants.

Does this make me a Red Tory too? Probably not. I wasn’t entirely sure that Red Toryism is actually, when you strip it down, actually much more than Wet Toryism. There was one other big question. Can we, in 2009, push the toothpaste back in the tube and return to the more mutual world of my grandparents?

I say not. The atomization of society today is a product of a host of unstoppable technological and social economic factors – not all of them bad. Give me my life over that of my grandparents, any day.

Finally I am not sure I buy Blond's theory that our society is actually broken, though I see his point. Few places in the world, outside the UK, have struck such a sensible balance between individual self-determination and powerful bonds of care and obligation between its citizens. Bonds expressed most powerfully indeed in our own third sector.

Signing Off

This will be the last blog for two weeks as I explore the delights of Denmark - and maybe even Sweden if we are feeling adventurous.

But, house-burglars of the world, don't come to Rose Cottage unless you want to find the Matzen family between you and my laptop, Paul Smith suit and Smiths 12 inches.

Because we are house-sharing again. Yes, its the modern, cheap and far more interesting way to holiday than three grand on a condo in Florida/Crete/Algarve etc.

Our destination is Soro, one of the oldest towns in Denmark. The Matzen family have an amazing wooden house which is massive and beautiful. Trains to Copenhagen take an hour and our friends Elise and Tomas are an hour the other direction at Odense.

This holiday feels just in time. I am ACHING for a break. This last few months have been really full. The last week has seen a drastic improvement in my health and state-of-mind but it has been real fast, seat of pants stuff.

The usual mix of fun, teamwork, elation and disappointment at work. These days I am better at sitting back and remembering that the earth will still be turning, whatever happens at Speaking Up. Staying calm is, I am learning, a first-order virtue in a CEO role.

I am leaving my team in charge for a couple of week. This is of course no problem for me but they are stretched and I do worry about overload if anythign major happens when I am gone. As I have said on this blog before, I have one of the best senior groups a CEO could hope for. Hard-working, supportive and talented. One or two of them are much better all-rounders than me and will, I am convinced, go on to much bigger things than I am ever likely to do.

I learned early on not to be scared of talent, of having bright people around me. Such people make you as a CEO look good, even if it is clear how much brighter they are in many respects. For it is you that bring them in.

Only an idiot appoints people less talented than themselves. Better, in some areas of organisational life, to be one of the Weakest Links than a Giant Among Pygmies!

My council life this week has been a succession of calls to mainly older residents about the things that make their lives a bit miserable such as clanking drains, overhanging trees, dodgy pavements etc.

Not always things I can fix but I do find this work - the listening and the solving of life's little problems, oddly enjoyable. It is a bit like being Mr Benn, the TV cartoon, going into the wardrobe and coming out someone else - a COUNCILLOR.

I think I find this work a refreshing change. Plus I rather enjoy workign with the older generation, always have, probably because of my superb and sadly deceased grandparents: Jack and Jenny, Alec and Hilda. All long gone and affectionately rememembered.

Time to go. A bientot!

Telling It How It Is

I shared a platform last week with the famously mouthy civil servant Louise Casey. You may remember her for ASBOs and her desire to convicts wearing bright jackets on community serice.

And no she hasn't changed. Go hear her if you get the chance. Not only because she has enormously interesting things to say - but also because of how she will make you feel.

Casey is unusual not for her views (she sounds like a lot of the people I meet on the doorstep) but for the fact that she is willing to state them within the elite policy community in which she operates. Views which many of us express and share privately - but wouldn't share in public for fear of looking `bad' or out of step with the prevailing elite-view.

And it is this disjunction between the elite-set terms of public debate and what most people feel that concerns Casey the most. As public servants (in the broadest sense) we often do not, she says, comfortably reflect or express the public's views or concerns in what we do.

This has taken us to a point where many of the public feel that things such as the Human Right Act are there to protect other people, that the only way to lose a job these days is to say something deemed `racist' and that public bodies care about arcane, politically correct agendas- equality,rights and `elf and safety' more than actually helping them.

Watching someone like Louise Casey speak made me realise, thunderbolt-style, just how contricted much of our public discoure actually is. How unfree and self-censoring we actually are. And I decided there and than to follow her lead and take even more risks when on a platform - even if this means fewer invitations to speak or write.

Fogbound

As my life has gotten more hectic since my election, my mind fuller, by body tireder, my sleep shorter and my General Well-Being (to borrow the Cameroon expression) scoring, at best, seven out of ten, I am coming to a rather awkward realiation that I may have taken too much on.

I say may. It could be that things will settle down and equilibrium will magically reninstate itself. Perhaps. Or maybe not. Two things brought me to rude awakening. One was catching something. I don't know what - Swine Flu. Ordinary flu. Or just a Bad Cold. Either way, I was just bajaxxed by it. Complely knocked-over. I went to work of course and carried on but against all my inclination which was to sleep.

The other was my children. They are a barometer of how connected I feel to other people. When feeling is subdued in me, as it gets at times, it is only with them - the two beings in the world about whom I care most - that I notice. I go through the motions ok and I'm not sure they notice but I do. An absence. A gap once filled with joy. A lack of energy in my heart. A dryness of mind.

What do I do? Well, its really, for now, about soldiering on. Getting shut of my cold. Sleeping properly. Getting through things. Then looking at what might go if this doesn't work. Not the Council, nor my job but possibly other things. Let's just see.

The challenge for all of us is to reach that sweet spot between being fully alive and engaged - and probably fully loaded - then avoid tipping into the fog beyond.
I tilt between the two. In love with life and Fogbound.

Where you are?

Small Victories

Yesterday I scored my first `six' as a Councillor when I secured a dropped kerb and some pavement repairs for a disabled 85 year old resident, Mrs Roberts.

She had me round the other week and, after a tour of the problem (her new scooter couldn't mount the Eiger-like kerb near her house) she recounted stories great Lib Dem councillors of yore, which proved an very well judged strategy to spur me into action. I turned down the cup of tea and told her I would do my very best and come back in a week.

So I took photos on my Council Blackberry and emailed them in, half expecting a `Computer Says No' type response and rehearsed my indignant response as I pressed Send.

However, I was in for a nice surprise. A couple of days later I got a call. For the first time since election I felt the tingle of power as a nasally chap from the highways department described, in loving detail, the action to be taken following my representations. They would add, they said, a jet-wash of the scummed-up pavements near Mrs Roberts' house as an extra!

That this result felt incredibly satisfying I cannot deny. Being a third sector CEO is like pushing water uphill and herding cats, all at the same time. It is hard most of the time to feel like you're making any difference at all. The results are so far down the line.

Today, though, I felt like the man from Delmonte about to drop in to and say yes. A sweet feeling. And I might take that offer of a cuppa this time!

Red Light Flashing

As I have said before, this job takes me into some interesting places. Yesterday it was into the home of Lilly, a lady in her 80s who is using a personal budget (PB). Historically, Lilly just got services sent into her home. Now she has to manage the money and can, in theory at least, decide who and how that service is delivered.

Which is where we come in. Carolann, our Support-Planner, to be specific. Carolann is working with Lilly to help her to identify and plan for what she wants. This means working as a mixture of advocate (ensuring her voice is heard) and broker (helping her think through how she might use any remaining cash to make her life better).

I believe this type of service is the future of Speaking Up and (if we merge) Advocacy Partners. Not today or tomorrow but in perhaps five to ten years time. For this is way the world is going. People like Lilly don’t just need advocacy but a mixture of support, preferably all from the same trusted person. The old boundaries are coming under increasing pressure as the potential of new hybrid services is realized.

This is new ground. Space we need to be in as the next decade unfurls. It is, I guarantee, going to be a very hard few years for public services and charities delivering public sector contracts. Public spending through local councils and PCTs has gone up 50% in real terms in the last seven years. And it is now expected to drop quite significantly year on year. Not back to 2002 levels but quite a way. Every single seminar or presentation I attend as CEO is saying the same thing: Red Light Flashing.

The challenge for us at Speaking Up is immense. No less than to re-invent what we do and how we do it. If we fail to do this I believe that we will, very quickly, be overtaken by newer, cheaper operators. To avoid this we have to accept that we need to start working differently very quickly. Reshaping our processes in advocacy and Active Voices so that we can boost outcomes without spending any more. And make a shrinking budget deliver the same good.

How do we do this? Well, that is what I am hoping our staff and users can tell me. Getting more from less is never easy. It involves difficult choices, new ways of working and, yes, being more decisive about who needs our service the most.

These are never easy calls to make. But if our mission is to make it to the 2020s, we must not shy from this

How it Was For Me

I have been a CEO in the not-for-profit sector for about 15 years.

It all started when I worked in social care for disabled people. I noticed how poor the outcomes were when set against the colossal sums spent on people’s care and support. What I also noticed was how much better the outcomes were for disabled people who had the ability to represent themselves effectively. Have a voice. Speak up. So one day I made a decision to start a new organisation dedicated to just this. Speaking Up.

My journey began as a start-up with me as the only employee. Unpaid of course - I was 25 so money didn’t matter. It is a great time of life to take risks. I got the start-up funding after a year, and my second employee was a disabled man. Today I lead 150 people up and down the UK, a mix of disabled and non-disabled people.

In 2009 the mission stays the same: we still exist to support people with disabilities or mental health problems (and, occasionally, both) to control their own lives. We do this through mentoring, advocacy and self-help activities. Our strapline is Voice, Action, Change. One leading to the next. We work with 4000 people a year and are becoming a well-know charity and social business.

What has been distinctive about my journey is that I have been a CEO through every stage of organisational development. From seedling to sapling. From sapling to mighty oak. Each has made different demands, required a different ‘me’. Early stage leadership is all about passion, energy and workrate. It also involves being a polymath-operator, moving from selling to delivering then onto finance and governance all over the course of a single morning!

As we moved from ’seedling’ to ’sapling’ the demands changed. The passion that got me going up until now had to give way to a more considered approach. I had to step back and audit the skills I needed to deliver my mission through others. At this stage, the selection of key `cornerstone’ individuals becomes the major hurdle for a CEO to overcome.

This done, we grew into a mature ‘tree’ of an organisation, and the demands change again. Our organisation has evolved from being a unitary thing – myself and the people immediately around me – to a hydra-like being, with lots of different functions and, in our case, geographies.

As CEO, my task was then is to create a shared sense of purpose, co-operation and common values which, in turn, allowed a strategy to emerge. The management aspect of leadership becomes exclusively about creating a brilliant senior team around you and nurturing them. Not simply leading from the front like a First World War Colonel leaping over the trench. Imploring others to come with me!

Finding those people, trusting them to deliver and keeping them individually and collectively focused is now my main role as CEO. Developing the organisation, overseeing the development of strategy and providing clear leadership are now the chief skills. Very different from the early ’social entrepreneur’ days – which is why so many entrepreneurs leave early on and professional management comes in.

So why did I stay? Well, I knew I had to evolve with my organisation or leave – and I felt I could adapt to its needs. The journey was not without bumps and my skills have always lagged behind the demands of the job. But I worked hard to develop myself – getting an MBA on the way – and, eventually, turned myself into a proper CEO.

How different is it in the third sector from the private? In some ways, I suspect it isn’t that different at all as a CEO anywhere. The stuff I have written just now is probably true of any growing organisation, whether it exists to make money or not.

The difference perhaps comes in the nature of third sector organisations which are less deferential and hierarchical, and the role of Trustees that hold CEOs accountable and, in theory at least, set strategy. Things are slower, on the whole, and generally speaking organisations develop at a less frantic pace and take fewer risks. Procedure also plays a bigger role, making some third sector organisations feel more like the public than the private sector.

Overall though, I believe that most high quality third sector CEOs would do well in the private sector if they chose to go there. For most of them though, the third sector is where they remain. Either because their values have taken them there. Or, like me, they get hooked early on and stay addicted to its challenges.

If you’re thinking of a career in the third sector my best advice is to show some interest first and volunteer either as a trustee or front-line volunteer. This will help you understand the sector’s values and mark you out from the thousands who profess to want to come into the sector but show no evidence of previous interest.

If you are considering social entrepreneurship, go for it. But think carefully about whether you can cope with the work-rate, lack of structure and wide skill-set it demands. Many start, few succeed. From there, if you do succeed, always be aware that the skills that got you going to begin with won’t be the same skills to lead a larger going concern.

Overall though, don’t be deterred. The sector has a skills shortage and people with fantastic training are thin on the ground. Don’t be put off by lack of experience. Just be prepared to be challenged. It certainly won’t be what you are used to!

Twitter Correction

My new Twitter site (I lost the login details of an earlier, aborted attempt to get onto Twitter) is

www.twitter.com/deardenphillips

My username is also `deardenphillips'

Sorry for confusion

Am tweeting daily so please become my followers!

C

`Building Britain's Future' - Why this is bad for social enterprise

How should social entrepreneurs respond to Building Britain's Future, Gordon Brown's recently announced plans for the next Parliament?

Well, if I were you, I would be pretty skeptical. If you run a social enterprise that delivers public sector contracts, Building Britain's Future will not change the fact that your business is likely to come under seismic pressure from the most dramatic cuts in public spending since the late 1970s. Public spending is the last great bubble to burst.

So let's get real here. You know it. I know it. Most of the Cabinet knows it! Britain has run out of money for new public spending commitments, especially un-costed ones like in Building Britain's Future, which promises enforceable rights to public services far into the future. These ‘entitlements', according to the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies, were unsustainable even before the recession came along. Now they are just fantasy. Brown's promises therefore are not worth the fag packet they were written on. And to even imply that the public spending jamboree is going to continue is, for me, bordering on irresponsible.

Which is why Building Britain's Future was, for me as CEO of a public sector oriented social business, such a big ‘miss'. What could have turned it into a ‘hit'? Number one for me was a convincing story about how Labour in power would use the opportunity afforded by recession to bring in game-changing reforms in the way public services are provided. Breath-taking, audacious reform which would see the social business sector play a decisive role in both shaping and delivering new style public services for the 21st century. Services that not only delivered more, cheaper and better, but delivered in ways which put individuals and communities centre stage, like the stuff you see in places like Sunlight, led by the inspirational Peter Holbrook - things the state could never and will never do. This is the real opportunity agenda for social enterprises working with the public sector. And, at the moment, it is going begging.

What about business-to-business or consumer-facing social businesses? I think you should be equally wary. You will already have been deep in recession for at least a year and are probably yelping with pain. Unfortunately for you, Brown's measures at £5bn (little of it new) don't make a tiny bit of difference to when or how quickly recovery begins. Britain is a £1.1tn economy of which the government spends about £650bn. In terms of recession-impact Building Britain's Future is a flea-bite on an elephant. It won't help you one bit.

What Building Britain's Future will do, however, is cement the perception internationally that Brown isn't willing to acknowledge the need to control our debt. This will do social businesses like yours no good at all. It adds to the risk in 2010 or 2011 of quickly rising interest rates, tax increases and the vapourisation of consumer confidence…again. This is the real nightmare we must avoid at all costs. If this happens - and it will if whoever in government doesn't get a grip on public debt - we will sink into a second ‘dip', which will signal game over for many social businesses that, from what I hear anecdotally, are already on the edge of survival.

Yes, Building Britain's Future is, from a social enterprise perspective, more of a hazard than an opportunity. It is pure politics, designed to shore up Labour's core vote. Nothing more, nothing less. It isn't serious policy. There is nothing in it for our sector. If it was there would be a price tag and some specifics about the role social entrepreneurs will play. Hell, even Barack Obama name-checks us these days! No, sorry, Building Britain's Future takes us further away from a critical breakthrough than ever.