A Tuesday evening in April.. Arrive at the local school on an estate I represent to find 50 people from the community have given up Eastenders to come and talk together about how to improve their area. I am late so skulk in and slide silently into my seat. The format is the one you’ve seen a thousand times with a desk at the front with councillors, the local copper and a minute-taker from the council then row after row of seats.
Fifteen minutes in, it doesn’t feel great. We are still on the constitution and elections to the new committee. Most people don’t understand what is going on. There’s a silence impatience and a few of the older folk are starting to drop-off. Then the questions. “Why isn’t the Council/police/authorities doing that or that?” “Why haven’t we got a community centre?” “Who is going to clear the leaves this year?”.
The format lends itself to this perfectly. The passive citizens in the audience, those “responsible” at the front. Like 95% of the audience, I am getting both bored and impatient. A question comes up about the county council. I am invited to speak in “response”. I then take a small risk. I tell the audience that whatever they believe about we at the front could do for them was, by and large, an illusion. We can’t do that much, and that the best thing they could do was to set up not a residents association to harangue the system but a residents action group that just decided what to do then do it. I then offer an initial £2.5k to the best ideas and ask them to split into groups for 20 minutes to share their ambitions for the estate and asked the assorted heads at the front to each join a group.
Things warm up very quickly and, for a while, I could hardly hear above the buzz from the groups. People were enjoying the task. Sure the moaning was still there, but given the invitation to do stuff rather than to complain, most wanted the former.
This was evidenced during feedback when a spokesman for each of the six groups came to the mic and spoke. These contributions were all of a really high quality. Eloquent, measured, considered and brief. The meeting had found its voice. People had all, on some level, had a chance to speak. The line between the responsible and the community had been blurred as person after person volunteered not only good ideas but also a public commitment to help make them happen.
Had we not chopped things around – and I thanked the Chairman afterwards for permitting the change-tp-plan – I am not sure how things would have ended. We would have heard less and what we did hear would have been a lot less positive. As things are, we are moving forward with optimism and a feeling that it is up to us what do do next.
Two observations here in relation to the Big Society. The first is that there is, within people, a desire to contribute to the well-being of their community if there is an easy and co-ordinated way of doing so. We simply struggle to get simple mechanisms formd properly in most communities. So it is right of Cameron to press on this. But whatever one does, it has to be them driving it, not people like me.
Second is about formats. Whoever came up with the row-of –chairs approach to meetings and slipped it into the national DNA did us no favours. It kills any potential stone dead. I was surprised, if I m honest, that Council `community development’ officers who do this sort of thing for a living don’t have the insight to know this and are happy to sit at the front having turds thrown at them. It clearly doesn’t work.
As it is, we are in a better place. In a month’s time we are meeting to talk about how some of the ideas generated this evening can be made happen. Sure I will continue to try to get holes in the road fixed but my main role here, I hope, will be to support what folks want to do, not do it for them.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Don't Listen To Me
When it comes to politics I tend to get things wrong. Nick Clegg? Wrong leader, I said after being love-bombed about Vince on the doorsteps this last year. Twice I had seen the man, once at an ACEVO event, once in person to talk about the third sector. At the ACEVO event he was dull and verbose. One to one, he was likeable, intelligent and I wondered why he couldn't come across like that on telly.
Which is why I for one was surprised by what happened on Thursday. Although I am sure the Lib Dems are in a mini-bubble, it is stunning to see the polls respond to one event as they have. For a few days it has been possible to dream of a mould-breaking election. The reason Clegg succeeded was that he made even Cameron look like business-as-usual. After all his effort this last five years, Cameron will be deflated this weekend. Good politics, Nick.
Being a pessimist, I suspect the polls will level out as quickly as they surged forward for the Lib Dems. Weaknesses on Europe, crime and defence will be played up and the Tories in particular will paint the Lib Dems as flaky. Most won't stick but enough Middle-Englanders will take the bait. And those in Tory-Lab marginals will still, sensible, vote tactically anyway.
But it has been fun and interesting. Clearly there is appetite for something quite different, a clean break, something honest and straight. Clegg is representing that in the way Blair once did and watch how people respond. Cameron, for a while, did this too but it feels like he's been around forever and his lightness of touch appears to have deserted him. A lost Mojo at the last fence.
So, all to play for. This morning in my weigh-the-Tory vote constituency I banged in my garden sign in defiance as much as hope. Our hope is a good second against a popular local Green who defected from the Labour Party last year. Bury St Edmunds has been Tory since 1911 so we know history is not on our side. We have to take the long-view!
Which is why I for one was surprised by what happened on Thursday. Although I am sure the Lib Dems are in a mini-bubble, it is stunning to see the polls respond to one event as they have. For a few days it has been possible to dream of a mould-breaking election. The reason Clegg succeeded was that he made even Cameron look like business-as-usual. After all his effort this last five years, Cameron will be deflated this weekend. Good politics, Nick.
Being a pessimist, I suspect the polls will level out as quickly as they surged forward for the Lib Dems. Weaknesses on Europe, crime and defence will be played up and the Tories in particular will paint the Lib Dems as flaky. Most won't stick but enough Middle-Englanders will take the bait. And those in Tory-Lab marginals will still, sensible, vote tactically anyway.
But it has been fun and interesting. Clearly there is appetite for something quite different, a clean break, something honest and straight. Clegg is representing that in the way Blair once did and watch how people respond. Cameron, for a while, did this too but it feels like he's been around forever and his lightness of touch appears to have deserted him. A lost Mojo at the last fence.
So, all to play for. This morning in my weigh-the-Tory vote constituency I banged in my garden sign in defiance as much as hope. Our hope is a good second against a popular local Green who defected from the Labour Party last year. Bury St Edmunds has been Tory since 1911 so we know history is not on our side. We have to take the long-view!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Who We Think We Are
Had an enjoyable meeting yesterday with Allison Odgen Newton from Social Enterprise London. We got onto the election and the class system in this country. Upper-class, she was remarking, is really about your relationship to the Doomsday Book.
Although I didn't ask, I sensed Allison's own relationship to the Doomsday Book might be a bit closer than my own! But, like millions of people who, until very recently knew next-to-nothing about their ancestry, my family have done some interesting recent digging.
The main discovery is that my lot aren't quite as straightforwardly working class as I thought. Because my grandparents all worked in the Lancs cotton mills I kind of assumed that at some stage in the 18th century we came off the land. Not quite so.
On my materal grandfather's side, the journey to Lancashire was via Scarborough. My great, great Grandfather, we discoved, was an architect, a Liberal Councillor and once stood for Parliament for the Liberals. He had several sons, one of whom, my Great Grandfather, married `below' himself, was cut out and moved to the thriving mills of Lancashire to start-over. He then had 12 sons, including my Grandfather, all of whom played a part in the Second World War and all of whom survived. A photo of them all back home in 1945 survives in the the local library.
On my Dad's side, my Great Grandfather, Tom MacWilliam was, we knew in domestic service in the late 19th century. He was in fact coachman to the Grant brother, mill owners who were the inspiration for Charles Dickens' `The Cheeryble Brothers'. The coachman in that novel is known as "Tommy" and is, apparently based on Tom MacWilliam. A small literary footnote I know but I felt strangely proud to know this.
I actually don't enjoy `Who Do You Think You Are' very much. All that faux-emotion at events 100 years ago. We often forget that we are all what Morrisey termed `Pale Descendents' of these characters, diluted many times by the generations. But it is good, I think to know where you've come from, even if it isn't the Doomsday book!
Although I didn't ask, I sensed Allison's own relationship to the Doomsday Book might be a bit closer than my own! But, like millions of people who, until very recently knew next-to-nothing about their ancestry, my family have done some interesting recent digging.
The main discovery is that my lot aren't quite as straightforwardly working class as I thought. Because my grandparents all worked in the Lancs cotton mills I kind of assumed that at some stage in the 18th century we came off the land. Not quite so.
On my materal grandfather's side, the journey to Lancashire was via Scarborough. My great, great Grandfather, we discoved, was an architect, a Liberal Councillor and once stood for Parliament for the Liberals. He had several sons, one of whom, my Great Grandfather, married `below' himself, was cut out and moved to the thriving mills of Lancashire to start-over. He then had 12 sons, including my Grandfather, all of whom played a part in the Second World War and all of whom survived. A photo of them all back home in 1945 survives in the the local library.
On my Dad's side, my Great Grandfather, Tom MacWilliam was, we knew in domestic service in the late 19th century. He was in fact coachman to the Grant brother, mill owners who were the inspiration for Charles Dickens' `The Cheeryble Brothers'. The coachman in that novel is known as "Tommy" and is, apparently based on Tom MacWilliam. A small literary footnote I know but I felt strangely proud to know this.
I actually don't enjoy `Who Do You Think You Are' very much. All that faux-emotion at events 100 years ago. We often forget that we are all what Morrisey termed `Pale Descendents' of these characters, diluted many times by the generations. But it is good, I think to know where you've come from, even if it isn't the Doomsday book!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Being Mr Benn
I have a varied life. Its a deliberate thing. I like the idea of being different people in a kind of Mr Benn way. I can be on the phone to Liam Black one minute and then in a pensioners' living room the next discussing a dropped kerb.
Which is where I was today at 6pm with the delightful Mrs Roberts, an 85 year old who contacted me to thank her for getting her own kerb dropped. Since my last visit in August she had lost her beloved chiwawaah Fangio. He hadn't been the same since an attack by an Alsation six months before and his poor heart gave out one night as he chased after a ball. She filled up. I knew this wouldn't be a short visit. Tears turned to laughter however when she told me she was considering a micro-pig which are now promoted as alternative house-pets. Good for people with allergies, apparently.
Following this I called on the 80 year old Mr Bradford to tell him I had persuaded the evasive Tree Surgeon from the council to cut some overhanging branches next month. The relief at having his light back caused him to pump my hand with thanks.
I have always liked old people. There is a simple joy in being that I get from easy conversation with people who are glad to see you. It never feels like wasted time. Whatever their foibles, they, more than any other group, make being a Councillor feel worth it. I just hope they all make it to 2013 when I am up for re-election.
Which is where I was today at 6pm with the delightful Mrs Roberts, an 85 year old who contacted me to thank her for getting her own kerb dropped. Since my last visit in August she had lost her beloved chiwawaah Fangio. He hadn't been the same since an attack by an Alsation six months before and his poor heart gave out one night as he chased after a ball. She filled up. I knew this wouldn't be a short visit. Tears turned to laughter however when she told me she was considering a micro-pig which are now promoted as alternative house-pets. Good for people with allergies, apparently.
Following this I called on the 80 year old Mr Bradford to tell him I had persuaded the evasive Tree Surgeon from the council to cut some overhanging branches next month. The relief at having his light back caused him to pump my hand with thanks.
I have always liked old people. There is a simple joy in being that I get from easy conversation with people who are glad to see you. It never feels like wasted time. Whatever their foibles, they, more than any other group, make being a Councillor feel worth it. I just hope they all make it to 2013 when I am up for re-election.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Spirit-Levelling
Kevin Gough died last week. He was 58. In 2005 he won £9 million on the Lottery. He died broke, alone and alcoholic. Before the big win, Kevin was happily married, worked in a bakery, couple of kids, plenty of friends. But the jackpot did for all that. He stayed on at work but colleagues grew hostile. He then blew millions on high-living and ill-advised ventures. He lost his marriage, his health and finally, last week, his life.
What does Kevin's story tell us? On one level it says something straightforward about how too much money can screw us up. But it also tells us that if you inject a large dose of inequality into our social relationships, you put them - and thereby yourself - at risk.
This simple idea - that the fact of inequality is the root of many social ills - is the main point of `The Spirit Level' , a major international study by academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Mental ill-health, obesity, imprisonment, violence and social isolation are all mitigated, they argue, by greater equality. In short, more equal countries like Japan and Finland have fewer social problems than the more socially stratified US and the UK. Inequality and broken societies are, the evidence says, incontrovertibly related.
What was personally challenging about `The Spirit Level' was that I had accepted growing UK inequality because I know that top 10% of earners contribute 50% of all income tax. Indeed it seemed to me almost `moral’ to allow top earners to go make hay - incentivized by globally low taxes - because we need them to pay for schools and hospitals.
However, two profound points have, I think, changed my mind. Firstly, the financial benefits of more tax coming from higher earners have probably been dwarfed by the costs of us allowing an unequal society to develop in the first place. The second is that in an unequal society even the better-off are far more anxious, fearful and unhealthy than if they lived in a more equal one. Equality, it seems, helps even high earners, even if like me we hate the extra taxation!
So what do we do? Collectively we in the third sector need to remind the parties at this important time that equality will benefit everyone. Politicians, particularly on the Right, need to know that the Big Society has, by definition, to be One Society, not several grossly unequal camps drifting further apart.
As civil society organisations, we need to continue to walk our talk. Thankfully, unlike the public sector, we never bought the bullshit that supersonic salaries buy success. This fallacy forgets that organisations are, in fact, human communities. And like poor Kevin Gough, our charities need a degree of equality if they are to survive and thrive.
What does Kevin's story tell us? On one level it says something straightforward about how too much money can screw us up. But it also tells us that if you inject a large dose of inequality into our social relationships, you put them - and thereby yourself - at risk.
This simple idea - that the fact of inequality is the root of many social ills - is the main point of `The Spirit Level' , a major international study by academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Mental ill-health, obesity, imprisonment, violence and social isolation are all mitigated, they argue, by greater equality. In short, more equal countries like Japan and Finland have fewer social problems than the more socially stratified US and the UK. Inequality and broken societies are, the evidence says, incontrovertibly related.
What was personally challenging about `The Spirit Level' was that I had accepted growing UK inequality because I know that top 10% of earners contribute 50% of all income tax. Indeed it seemed to me almost `moral’ to allow top earners to go make hay - incentivized by globally low taxes - because we need them to pay for schools and hospitals.
However, two profound points have, I think, changed my mind. Firstly, the financial benefits of more tax coming from higher earners have probably been dwarfed by the costs of us allowing an unequal society to develop in the first place. The second is that in an unequal society even the better-off are far more anxious, fearful and unhealthy than if they lived in a more equal one. Equality, it seems, helps even high earners, even if like me we hate the extra taxation!
So what do we do? Collectively we in the third sector need to remind the parties at this important time that equality will benefit everyone. Politicians, particularly on the Right, need to know that the Big Society has, by definition, to be One Society, not several grossly unequal camps drifting further apart.
As civil society organisations, we need to continue to walk our talk. Thankfully, unlike the public sector, we never bought the bullshit that supersonic salaries buy success. This fallacy forgets that organisations are, in fact, human communities. And like poor Kevin Gough, our charities need a degree of equality if they are to survive and thrive.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
My Secret Habit
I like a flutter. Not a big one. I haven't got a problem (guv) - honest. But I have an account at Betfair and like all gamblers I like to think I am up.
My thing isn't the horses or football but politics. Today I found 16/1 on Ed Balls for the next Labour leader. I'll take that. I also got some pretty reasonable odds on the Conservatives winning most seats and on taking the Rossendale Valley, where I cast my first vote in 87.
Betfair is good too. You're effectively betting against other people and odds are set by the pattern of betting rather than some shyster bookie. Betting doesn't seem shady any more.
While I am just playing at it, a friend of mine gambles big-time and, due to his superb knowledge of the `turf' is able to sell his tip commerically. Last year he made a cool £70k clear profit. Not bad for something he does in the evenings. Interestingly, he's a financial director of a very sober company so its all a big secret.
My life has just been augmented by an Apple Iphone. I am yet to even switch the thing on and part of me is reluctant knowing I will need to spend hours downloading `Apps' etc. If the thing can help me sort my life now I don't have a PA it will be worth a couple of hours of fiddling. I am actually considering asking her to moonlight for me as the thought of flying solo is so terrifying. Invoicing, bookings, making sure I have read stuff. Plus I am involved in so much stuff I can definitely see me dropping a major bollock in the next few weeks as a conference platform stands empty or a community meeting waits for its elected rep to appear.
Speaking of all that, it's not going too badly in life after CEO. Stepping down felt a bit like being an MP who has just lost the election. People suddenly aren't as interested. However, the phone has been ringing and email pinging. In April I will even make a bit of money, which I didn't expect to do (hence the extra flutter today).
Today (Saturday)felt like the first promise of Summer. I walked the kids to the park and, rather than feel bored, cold and agitated, as I usually do, I went with the flow, free of preoccupying thoughts and absorbed the sun. Carrying a tired 2 and 4 yr old a full half-mile back was not such fun, however and I was as grouchy as ever by the time I slumped in front of Football Focus and let it wash over me.
Despite a slightly stressful gingercake-making experience with my daughter, my sort-of relaxed day continued pretty much till bedtime. Going with the flow. Not thinking. I believe that is the secret you know. When I don't think I am a lot damn happier.
My thing isn't the horses or football but politics. Today I found 16/1 on Ed Balls for the next Labour leader. I'll take that. I also got some pretty reasonable odds on the Conservatives winning most seats and on taking the Rossendale Valley, where I cast my first vote in 87.
Betfair is good too. You're effectively betting against other people and odds are set by the pattern of betting rather than some shyster bookie. Betting doesn't seem shady any more.
While I am just playing at it, a friend of mine gambles big-time and, due to his superb knowledge of the `turf' is able to sell his tip commerically. Last year he made a cool £70k clear profit. Not bad for something he does in the evenings. Interestingly, he's a financial director of a very sober company so its all a big secret.
My life has just been augmented by an Apple Iphone. I am yet to even switch the thing on and part of me is reluctant knowing I will need to spend hours downloading `Apps' etc. If the thing can help me sort my life now I don't have a PA it will be worth a couple of hours of fiddling. I am actually considering asking her to moonlight for me as the thought of flying solo is so terrifying. Invoicing, bookings, making sure I have read stuff. Plus I am involved in so much stuff I can definitely see me dropping a major bollock in the next few weeks as a conference platform stands empty or a community meeting waits for its elected rep to appear.
Speaking of all that, it's not going too badly in life after CEO. Stepping down felt a bit like being an MP who has just lost the election. People suddenly aren't as interested. However, the phone has been ringing and email pinging. In April I will even make a bit of money, which I didn't expect to do (hence the extra flutter today).
Today (Saturday)felt like the first promise of Summer. I walked the kids to the park and, rather than feel bored, cold and agitated, as I usually do, I went with the flow, free of preoccupying thoughts and absorbed the sun. Carrying a tired 2 and 4 yr old a full half-mile back was not such fun, however and I was as grouchy as ever by the time I slumped in front of Football Focus and let it wash over me.
Despite a slightly stressful gingercake-making experience with my daughter, my sort-of relaxed day continued pretty much till bedtime. Going with the flow. Not thinking. I believe that is the secret you know. When I don't think I am a lot damn happier.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
One White Line
It was December last year when, on my `Street Surgery', a very nice young mother asked me if I could do anything to discourage cars from blocking her drive. I said I would see what I could do and, with a very wide smile, left feeling pretty confident I could help.
It turned out I could. Without even dipping into my £10k Locality Budget, I was assured that this young lady could have a white line painted outside her property no-problemo. All we needed was a dry day and a lining team in the area.
Then the snow came and we had two months or so of rotten weather. She was fine with that and pleased that I had emailed to tell her. Two more months passed..still no line. Now she isn't so pleased. She's still being nice about it but, if I were her, I am not sure I would be.
I contact the Council. Apparently there hasn't been a team in the area on any of the recent dry days. I tell them that it is now April and this is making both me and the Council look crap, in the ways that the public think we are crap: slow, incapable of doing the simplest things etc. I offer again to pay a contractor to do it privately. No need they insist, it will be done. When I ask? Within the next couple of week. Guaranteed? We can't guarantee anything but Craig, we are your side here.
I like the Council man a lot, possibly too much even. I email the young lady and tell her that if it isn't done by the end of April I will personally pay for it to happen. As nice as ever, she says she doesn't believe me but will hold with me.
And that she's been stuck in her house for two days because somebody has left their car in front of her drive....is there anything I can do to help?
It turned out I could. Without even dipping into my £10k Locality Budget, I was assured that this young lady could have a white line painted outside her property no-problemo. All we needed was a dry day and a lining team in the area.
Then the snow came and we had two months or so of rotten weather. She was fine with that and pleased that I had emailed to tell her. Two more months passed..still no line. Now she isn't so pleased. She's still being nice about it but, if I were her, I am not sure I would be.
I contact the Council. Apparently there hasn't been a team in the area on any of the recent dry days. I tell them that it is now April and this is making both me and the Council look crap, in the ways that the public think we are crap: slow, incapable of doing the simplest things etc. I offer again to pay a contractor to do it privately. No need they insist, it will be done. When I ask? Within the next couple of week. Guaranteed? We can't guarantee anything but Craig, we are your side here.
I like the Council man a lot, possibly too much even. I email the young lady and tell her that if it isn't done by the end of April I will personally pay for it to happen. As nice as ever, she says she doesn't believe me but will hold with me.
And that she's been stuck in her house for two days because somebody has left their car in front of her drive....is there anything I can do to help?
Monday, April 5, 2010
Four Books: One Message
I try to `read around' a bit these days. Pick a range of stuff so I don't just hear the same thing over. So I walked out of Waterstone's in York on Saturday with the following: Phillip Blond's `Red Tory', David Willetts' `The Pinch', `The Spirit Level'by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Richard Layard's book on Happiness. Each of this lot sit somewhere between traditional right and firm left with Blond, obviously, astride the two.
And you know what? They are all saying very similar things. That materialism has hit definite upper limits in terms of what it can do for us. That happiness seems to be linked to levels of inequality in society. That striving for personal enrichment rather than the well-being of others is, quite literally, making us mentally ill.
The core message of all of these authors is that we have lost our way. That we have become so dissociative, so self-absorbed, so status-preoccupied that our quality of life is now actually in decline.
The solution, say all of our authors, is to eschew these values. That to be happy, paradoxically, involves thinking about ourselves less and others more. Forgetting ourselves seems somehow important for mental and physical well-being. There's lots of evidence here, its not just opinion.
Just how hostage we all are to the prevailing norms of our society, even those of us who consider ourselves on the less avaricious side, is clear to me when I look at myself. I am one of Thatcher's children. I compare myself with others all the time both in money and status terms. I obsess endlessly about my own life. Not so much how I am seen, but planning in quite calculated detail, how to be, in my own terms, successful. I like to think I inject this with balance and consideration for others, but I am, in the way my mind works, not all that different from the typical self-centred westerner these books roundly criticise.
How does one actually change? Not without difficulty I suggest. Despite the evidence that a more equal society will mean that Britain would probably be better for even those of us on higher incomes, I really struggle with the idea of 50% tax. To me, the idea of individuals reaping the rewards of their labour trumps the social equality argument, though obviously I accept the need to soften the impact of this principle through progressive taxation. Or is this my habituation to a low-tax society in which we tend just to put ourselves first regardless?
Whether I can change is, in a way, neither here or there. The die may or may not be cast. But my kids? The direction of travel, according to research, isn't good. Their upbringing in what has become a more self and body obsessed society than the one I grew up in during the 70s and 80s will, I sense, make a key difference to how they turn out. I want them not only to be decent people but also happy people. Trite to say perhaps, but it is every parents' first concern.
My hope, reading all these books, from left and right, is that we may, just may, be arriving at a consensus as a society that the addition of more material wealth into our lives has a nil or possibly negative effect on our well-being. And that, on a macro-level, by seeking a levelling of opportunity and outcomes, we may ourselves thrive more than we are doing today.
And you know what? They are all saying very similar things. That materialism has hit definite upper limits in terms of what it can do for us. That happiness seems to be linked to levels of inequality in society. That striving for personal enrichment rather than the well-being of others is, quite literally, making us mentally ill.
The core message of all of these authors is that we have lost our way. That we have become so dissociative, so self-absorbed, so status-preoccupied that our quality of life is now actually in decline.
The solution, say all of our authors, is to eschew these values. That to be happy, paradoxically, involves thinking about ourselves less and others more. Forgetting ourselves seems somehow important for mental and physical well-being. There's lots of evidence here, its not just opinion.
Just how hostage we all are to the prevailing norms of our society, even those of us who consider ourselves on the less avaricious side, is clear to me when I look at myself. I am one of Thatcher's children. I compare myself with others all the time both in money and status terms. I obsess endlessly about my own life. Not so much how I am seen, but planning in quite calculated detail, how to be, in my own terms, successful. I like to think I inject this with balance and consideration for others, but I am, in the way my mind works, not all that different from the typical self-centred westerner these books roundly criticise.
How does one actually change? Not without difficulty I suggest. Despite the evidence that a more equal society will mean that Britain would probably be better for even those of us on higher incomes, I really struggle with the idea of 50% tax. To me, the idea of individuals reaping the rewards of their labour trumps the social equality argument, though obviously I accept the need to soften the impact of this principle through progressive taxation. Or is this my habituation to a low-tax society in which we tend just to put ourselves first regardless?
Whether I can change is, in a way, neither here or there. The die may or may not be cast. But my kids? The direction of travel, according to research, isn't good. Their upbringing in what has become a more self and body obsessed society than the one I grew up in during the 70s and 80s will, I sense, make a key difference to how they turn out. I want them not only to be decent people but also happy people. Trite to say perhaps, but it is every parents' first concern.
My hope, reading all these books, from left and right, is that we may, just may, be arriving at a consensus as a society that the addition of more material wealth into our lives has a nil or possibly negative effect on our well-being. And that, on a macro-level, by seeking a levelling of opportunity and outcomes, we may ourselves thrive more than we are doing today.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Over the Line
Yesteday I left Speaking Up. Well, not completely as I am still the Chair, but it felt like a departure. Fifteen years of carrying a heavy bronze ball now over. The relief is still palpable and unexpected. A bit like still being drunk a day after two pints of bitter. But I will enjoy this feeling for as long as it lasts.
We immediately decamped for York from where I am writing now. We do house-swops which work on trust and are a fine way to holiday. Rather than a soul-less, high rent flat you move into the comfort and homeliness of other people's space. People you will never probably speak to let alone meet.
This week will see me doing a lot with the kids after a long pre-mergrt absence. Like many Dads I am prone to going AWL mentally for long periods and this is one thing about being a CEO I will not miss. Before the kids that job and organisation was my whole life really. Now that can't really happen again.
The big choice for me I guess will be whether or not I ever a) work again as a CEO or b) develop an organisation to scale. There is much about both that I no longer feel attracted to doing. Maybe this will change after a bit of a break but I suspect it won't. A lot of what drove me to build up an organisation in the first place is no longer there or has been satisfied by doing it once. I also feel that I have changed these last few years. I just don't have the same willingness to put my own and others happiness second to the requirements of a 250 person organisation - however fantastic the cause.
But neither do I wish to just chill out. Challenge is vital to me. I need, almost pathologically, to know I am making a difference. The intensity and hunger won't dissolve. It just won't look the same. I am hoping that my new ventures will, though smaller, be just as influential as any larger thing I might go off and run. There is a new thing gestating which is still not clear to me. But I know it is coming. Now there is space I hope it won't take too long to sweep me off my feet!
We immediately decamped for York from where I am writing now. We do house-swops which work on trust and are a fine way to holiday. Rather than a soul-less, high rent flat you move into the comfort and homeliness of other people's space. People you will never probably speak to let alone meet.
This week will see me doing a lot with the kids after a long pre-mergrt absence. Like many Dads I am prone to going AWL mentally for long periods and this is one thing about being a CEO I will not miss. Before the kids that job and organisation was my whole life really. Now that can't really happen again.
The big choice for me I guess will be whether or not I ever a) work again as a CEO or b) develop an organisation to scale. There is much about both that I no longer feel attracted to doing. Maybe this will change after a bit of a break but I suspect it won't. A lot of what drove me to build up an organisation in the first place is no longer there or has been satisfied by doing it once. I also feel that I have changed these last few years. I just don't have the same willingness to put my own and others happiness second to the requirements of a 250 person organisation - however fantastic the cause.
But neither do I wish to just chill out. Challenge is vital to me. I need, almost pathologically, to know I am making a difference. The intensity and hunger won't dissolve. It just won't look the same. I am hoping that my new ventures will, though smaller, be just as influential as any larger thing I might go off and run. There is a new thing gestating which is still not clear to me. But I know it is coming. Now there is space I hope it won't take too long to sweep me off my feet!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Social Care Green Paper
Not my most exciting blog title I know. But before you click-off give me 30 seconds. There are many strong arguments against the Social Care Bill which you can get from the national papers (essentially it is unaffordable and statist)but I want to make one more.
Mine is an argument about justice between generations. For explantion I will make this personal. I do not think I should have any obligation to contribute towards the eventual social care of, let's say, a retiring MP or Council-Leader of 70.
Why? Well, for a start, it is a heavy-bill. His generation is about 25% bigger than mine so we are asking for a small number of people aged 25-50 to pay for a much bigger cohort aged 50-75. This is a very big ask. And not only do my generation have the biggest personal debts (we have to pay silly money for houses sold to us by the generation ahead), we will also be responsible for paying the national debt they, as society's dominant generation, has left us.
It goes on. I will probably have to work hard till well into my 70s to generate the kind of pension which is quite normal for today's boomers and much of my income, even then, will be funding my kids education - which the generation before us got for nothing.
So you can see why I am a bit irked by this bill. It feels, to me, like a very large and dominant generational cohort working the system - again- to its advantage. I, for one, am not having it!
Mine is an argument about justice between generations. For explantion I will make this personal. I do not think I should have any obligation to contribute towards the eventual social care of, let's say, a retiring MP or Council-Leader of 70.
Why? Well, for a start, it is a heavy-bill. His generation is about 25% bigger than mine so we are asking for a small number of people aged 25-50 to pay for a much bigger cohort aged 50-75. This is a very big ask. And not only do my generation have the biggest personal debts (we have to pay silly money for houses sold to us by the generation ahead), we will also be responsible for paying the national debt they, as society's dominant generation, has left us.
It goes on. I will probably have to work hard till well into my 70s to generate the kind of pension which is quite normal for today's boomers and much of my income, even then, will be funding my kids education - which the generation before us got for nothing.
So you can see why I am a bit irked by this bill. It feels, to me, like a very large and dominant generational cohort working the system - again- to its advantage. I, for one, am not having it!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Big Offer?
To Millbank Tower and the Third Sector Summit with the Tories.
Although I obviously struggle a bit with the whole `Eton Rifles' thing (my issue, not theirs!), what makes this day interesting for me is that I actually agree with most of what they are setting out. They get it. They seem to understand how producer interest in the public sector really does work against the most vulnerable. There's a healthy impatience with the absurdities of the public sector. A much bigger philosophical embrace of civil society than even the better Labour Ministers could manage. Indeed, their `Big Society' idea is actually rather a good one - wish my lot had thought of it. One that they should be ramming home but, strangely, are not. Whatever folk in this sector think of the Tory-messengers, I suspect many agree wholeheartedly with the message.
So what of the day? Well, their refreshingly normal Treasury guy Phillip Hammond was eloquent and precise about how we need to attack public sector debt - and public sector productivity. He sees the sector as an ally in the search for value, along, I am sure,with the private sector. He promises radical early action to improve commissioning, open public services to competition and declutter commissioning processes . Odd though it is for me to say, I would feel safe in this man’s hands.
Francis Maude, though sufficiently rich to probably buy down a reasonable chunk of the deficit, manages to sound convincing about how it all works at the front-line for people leaving jail. Rather than meeting the drug-dealer at the gates, better, he says, they be met by a social firm like Blue Sky offering them a bed and a job. Blue Sky boast a 25% reoffending rate compared to the usual 80%. Although I am as mystified as most people by the gyroscopics of SROI (Social Return on Investment), this not a hard calculation to make.
Five quick `one minute’ examples of the third sector offer follow. Mick May of Blue Sky being, without reading it all out, easily the most gripping. A couple of other good ones. Others less compelling - why do some CEOs in our sector feel the need to sound like management consultants?
These were followed by a number of `panels' involving different Tory Shadows. Mine was on social care/health and was kicked off by Simon Antrobus, the very bright young CEO of Addaction. He made the case for early sector involvement in shaping service-specs - so that what's commissioned isn't just a pale version of the public sector. Couldn't agree more.
I had been asked to focus on personalization. I was lucky. The day before I had been for a walk in the park with my friend Gill and her profoundly disabled daughter Laura who, six months after her residential care placement broke down (£140k PA – dodgy private provider) is now back with Gill. Until we involved her MP, Councillor and the CEO of the local authority, Lauren's case was lost in the mad machine of local authority inertia, arse-covering and dysfunction.
The County Council CEO’s involvement, surprisingly enough, has speeded things up and an indicative sum for a personal budget is due in May (expected amount £70-£100k - big saving). However, it is unlikely that the full amount will be spent on industrial-style social care at all. Once people have budgets they tend to spend it on accessing the things they want in their lives (friends, pubs, cinema, the local park), rather than bog-standard care-home stuff, be from the public, private or voluntary sector.
My message to Andrew Lansley – the Tory Shadow was that Lauren's case is what you get when you leave a policy in mid-air, as Labour have done, with no legally enforceable right to a personal budget. We must immediately legislate to get rid the misnamed `Fair Access to Care’ – which keeps control of resources with the commissioners and providers – and replace it with the `RAS’ – the Resource Allocation System designed by Simon Duffy and InControl - a system now used in some LA areas which has been found to save money and improve outcomes.
Andrew Lansley was actually very good. He has been Tory Shadow since 2003, he’s a GP by profession and knows the brief. He started the job, he said, as someone incredibly supportive of the NHS. Although it is possible to find a number of quite contradictory Tory health policies in recent years, what Lansley said today I agreed with: GP fundholding, a stronger purchaser-provider split, a split in the budget between the NHS and public health and an opening up of the NHS to alternative providers - including the third sector. Not the whole answer but a good start. He described the NHS, interestingly, as a “secret garden”, with its own mores, language and non-invented-here syndrome that made it inpenetrable to outsiders. Perhaps an observation that says it all really.
The next session was on education. Here the meeting of minds was less apparent. The sector as a whole is, I fear is far more statist on this issue than it is, say, on health or social care.
The Tories, to their credit, condemned the local authority stranglehold which I see with my own eyes as a County Councillor. Even here in Tory Suffolk, the Council’s writ runs through its schools. Everything is controlled by a bossy and expensive bureaucracy which Gordon Brown himself would be proud of. How the Tories nationally will get these free schools through local government I don’t know.
Big messages? Well, there was a real meeting of minds, I felt, on what kinds of improvement was needed. And, given the clear political gulf between the people there and the Shadow Cabinet, there was a surprising level of fellow-feeling on the big issues.
Three things came out for me. Firstly, in the aggressive search for productivity there will be opportunities for low-cost, high impact solutions. We seem up for that, which we have to be. Innovation. Value. Risk. We're there. Secondly, there is a vital recognition that the public `secret gardens' have been privileged at the expense of other sectors and that this lot are more `on our side' in terms of their worldview than Labour were. Thirdly, the Tories now seem on-side with the need for a proper capitalisation of the sector. A necessity if payment by results becomes the norm.
Am I heartened? Yes and no. Yes because I basically agree with them. No because I think you need utter determination to see this stuff through. A programme which isn't going to be blown all over the place. A leader who isn't going to be run by the media or his MPs. My suspicion too is that the majority or political deal with the Lib Dems - won't be there to see through the necessary reform (imagine all those newly elected MPs in marginals defending their local hospitals) and we'll just be left with Treasury-driven budget-slicing, which would leave us with 1990s style public services with less money in them.
That would be depressing - but as a `glass half-full' man, I wouldn't bet against it.
Although I obviously struggle a bit with the whole `Eton Rifles' thing (my issue, not theirs!), what makes this day interesting for me is that I actually agree with most of what they are setting out. They get it. They seem to understand how producer interest in the public sector really does work against the most vulnerable. There's a healthy impatience with the absurdities of the public sector. A much bigger philosophical embrace of civil society than even the better Labour Ministers could manage. Indeed, their `Big Society' idea is actually rather a good one - wish my lot had thought of it. One that they should be ramming home but, strangely, are not. Whatever folk in this sector think of the Tory-messengers, I suspect many agree wholeheartedly with the message.
So what of the day? Well, their refreshingly normal Treasury guy Phillip Hammond was eloquent and precise about how we need to attack public sector debt - and public sector productivity. He sees the sector as an ally in the search for value, along, I am sure,with the private sector. He promises radical early action to improve commissioning, open public services to competition and declutter commissioning processes . Odd though it is for me to say, I would feel safe in this man’s hands.
Francis Maude, though sufficiently rich to probably buy down a reasonable chunk of the deficit, manages to sound convincing about how it all works at the front-line for people leaving jail. Rather than meeting the drug-dealer at the gates, better, he says, they be met by a social firm like Blue Sky offering them a bed and a job. Blue Sky boast a 25% reoffending rate compared to the usual 80%. Although I am as mystified as most people by the gyroscopics of SROI (Social Return on Investment), this not a hard calculation to make.
Five quick `one minute’ examples of the third sector offer follow. Mick May of Blue Sky being, without reading it all out, easily the most gripping. A couple of other good ones. Others less compelling - why do some CEOs in our sector feel the need to sound like management consultants?
These were followed by a number of `panels' involving different Tory Shadows. Mine was on social care/health and was kicked off by Simon Antrobus, the very bright young CEO of Addaction. He made the case for early sector involvement in shaping service-specs - so that what's commissioned isn't just a pale version of the public sector. Couldn't agree more.
I had been asked to focus on personalization. I was lucky. The day before I had been for a walk in the park with my friend Gill and her profoundly disabled daughter Laura who, six months after her residential care placement broke down (£140k PA – dodgy private provider) is now back with Gill. Until we involved her MP, Councillor and the CEO of the local authority, Lauren's case was lost in the mad machine of local authority inertia, arse-covering and dysfunction.
The County Council CEO’s involvement, surprisingly enough, has speeded things up and an indicative sum for a personal budget is due in May (expected amount £70-£100k - big saving). However, it is unlikely that the full amount will be spent on industrial-style social care at all. Once people have budgets they tend to spend it on accessing the things they want in their lives (friends, pubs, cinema, the local park), rather than bog-standard care-home stuff, be from the public, private or voluntary sector.
My message to Andrew Lansley – the Tory Shadow was that Lauren's case is what you get when you leave a policy in mid-air, as Labour have done, with no legally enforceable right to a personal budget. We must immediately legislate to get rid the misnamed `Fair Access to Care’ – which keeps control of resources with the commissioners and providers – and replace it with the `RAS’ – the Resource Allocation System designed by Simon Duffy and InControl - a system now used in some LA areas which has been found to save money and improve outcomes.
Andrew Lansley was actually very good. He has been Tory Shadow since 2003, he’s a GP by profession and knows the brief. He started the job, he said, as someone incredibly supportive of the NHS. Although it is possible to find a number of quite contradictory Tory health policies in recent years, what Lansley said today I agreed with: GP fundholding, a stronger purchaser-provider split, a split in the budget between the NHS and public health and an opening up of the NHS to alternative providers - including the third sector. Not the whole answer but a good start. He described the NHS, interestingly, as a “secret garden”, with its own mores, language and non-invented-here syndrome that made it inpenetrable to outsiders. Perhaps an observation that says it all really.
The next session was on education. Here the meeting of minds was less apparent. The sector as a whole is, I fear is far more statist on this issue than it is, say, on health or social care.
The Tories, to their credit, condemned the local authority stranglehold which I see with my own eyes as a County Councillor. Even here in Tory Suffolk, the Council’s writ runs through its schools. Everything is controlled by a bossy and expensive bureaucracy which Gordon Brown himself would be proud of. How the Tories nationally will get these free schools through local government I don’t know.
Big messages? Well, there was a real meeting of minds, I felt, on what kinds of improvement was needed. And, given the clear political gulf between the people there and the Shadow Cabinet, there was a surprising level of fellow-feeling on the big issues.
Three things came out for me. Firstly, in the aggressive search for productivity there will be opportunities for low-cost, high impact solutions. We seem up for that, which we have to be. Innovation. Value. Risk. We're there. Secondly, there is a vital recognition that the public `secret gardens' have been privileged at the expense of other sectors and that this lot are more `on our side' in terms of their worldview than Labour were. Thirdly, the Tories now seem on-side with the need for a proper capitalisation of the sector. A necessity if payment by results becomes the norm.
Am I heartened? Yes and no. Yes because I basically agree with them. No because I think you need utter determination to see this stuff through. A programme which isn't going to be blown all over the place. A leader who isn't going to be run by the media or his MPs. My suspicion too is that the majority or political deal with the Lib Dems - won't be there to see through the necessary reform (imagine all those newly elected MPs in marginals defending their local hospitals) and we'll just be left with Treasury-driven budget-slicing, which would leave us with 1990s style public services with less money in them.
That would be depressing - but as a `glass half-full' man, I wouldn't bet against it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Meeting of Minds
`Meeting of the Minds’. While his sounds like a kind of NLP based dating game for the over-educated, it was in fact a gathering in London last night of a small number of leading civil servants, business people and the Social Entreprise Ambassadors. In Admiralty House, under oils of `The Battle for Martinique’ and other British naval glories, we discussed how the sectors could, just maybe, take working together to the next level.
On my table we were joined by Ray Mills of PWC, Rolande Anderson who heads up the Office of the Third Sector and the Minister herself (for about another seven weeks), Angela Smith. Plus the cool and bearded people from innovation company `What if?’.
Our challenge was this: We all hear about partnership between sectors - and we all know that not a lot of it goes on beyond initial conversations. We somehow lose tack with each other quite early. Yet we know that conventional business wants to do more with and for social enterprise and that we can help them to become better business. We know that social enterprise needs some of what some of the larger businesses can offer in terms of scaling, quality and big delivery. We also know that not a lot of what either Government or charities do is making a big enough dent in social problems for the money we spend. There is still an growing underclass, frightening numbers of half-educated schoolkids, a Russian Roulette in many of our hospitals. And a country that, overall is less happy, less employed and less associative than it was fifteen years ago.
Ray Mills, a straight-shooting Geordie, from Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) puts his cards on the table. He's just written a paper about partnerships with social enterprise. He likes us a lot. But he thinks social enterprises are also full of little messiahs who don’t want to grow large, successful businesses but prefer, in their hearts to be big fish in a small pool.
He adds that many big companies actually can’t find social enterprises to subcontract to, even when they want to. There just isn’t aren’t enough ambitious entrepreneurs out there – or any real way of finding those that exist. He has been charged by PWCs Board to come up with a strategy for social enterprise and he’s stuck on page one. He doesn’t yet quite know what to say to his Board. Inspire me, he said.
I was inclined to agree with a lot of Ray’s points. There doesn’t appear to be the pipeline of ambitious and capable entrepreneurs out there. Every social investor I speak to bemoans the dry pipeline. There's a lot of us, but few of us, it seems, that match the hunger to develop massive businesses that you tend to find in most private sector entrpreneurs. Part of this is, I am sure, the preoccupying drivers and limiters on many social entrepreneurs. We see growth often as a mixed bag - and, anyway, it is often a lot harder to grow a social solution than a commercial one, particularly if you're having to deal with the state.
At this point, someone then raised the big elephant question “Isn’t that because social entrepreneurs aren’t sufficiently incentive financially for them to go all-out for growth?” A small silence fell because, on some level, we all know this to be true. Social entrepreneurs, while not primarily financially driven are not driven-snow either. I include myself. Indeed when we signed up with Impetus Trust in 2004 I immediately made a deal with my Board which doubled my pay if we hit financial targets within three years. While this wasn’t the sole incentive (we were talking £30k going to £60k), it did actually, help to motivate me, especially when the going got tough. Had that deal not been there, I may have been more easily deterred. Perhaps we just need to be a bit more `out' about the fact that socia entrepreneurs need and deserve decent rewards as their ventures go through the pains of successful growth.
Ray was asking how PWC could help or work with social enterprises. My response was the story of ourselves and Impetus. Which could as easily have been the story of us an PWC, I tell him. Had PWC stood their balance sheet behind us, stuck in £400k (which they could, in fact, have got back later - Impetus elected gladly to leave it in) and put in their best talent to work alongside us, they could have been a partner is the Speaking Up story. It would have been as much their growth as ours. Speaking Up, while legally still a limited by guarantee company, would, in effect, have become a joint venture with PWC, with all the good effects for both organisations.
Unfortunately, back then, the big four were still sending smiling staff teams to repaint recently repainted community centres or dig woodand paths. CSR at that time was still deeply patronizing window-dressing. A day out of the office “all in a good cause”. Today, they want to engage. Not only because they want to do good in a troubled world and report a social bottom line – they do . But because they want the best talent to come work for PWC – and to enhance their financial bottom line.
I made this point to Ray. If the likes of PWC devote even 5% of their energy to social issues, they would probably eclipse the achievements of many of our national charities. Their understanding of value-chains, customers and business processes matched with the insights of social entrepreneurs and, to be fair, many of the major charities – could act as multiplier. Venturing together, using the assets of a successful commercial business in combination with those of a socially focussed organisation with ambition - be it a social business or charity (it doesn't particularly matter in my view) may, I believe, release as yet untapped value.
For once a fascinating evening, a real sense of potential - and a call to make in the morning.
On my table we were joined by Ray Mills of PWC, Rolande Anderson who heads up the Office of the Third Sector and the Minister herself (for about another seven weeks), Angela Smith. Plus the cool and bearded people from innovation company `What if?’.
Our challenge was this: We all hear about partnership between sectors - and we all know that not a lot of it goes on beyond initial conversations. We somehow lose tack with each other quite early. Yet we know that conventional business wants to do more with and for social enterprise and that we can help them to become better business. We know that social enterprise needs some of what some of the larger businesses can offer in terms of scaling, quality and big delivery. We also know that not a lot of what either Government or charities do is making a big enough dent in social problems for the money we spend. There is still an growing underclass, frightening numbers of half-educated schoolkids, a Russian Roulette in many of our hospitals. And a country that, overall is less happy, less employed and less associative than it was fifteen years ago.
Ray Mills, a straight-shooting Geordie, from Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) puts his cards on the table. He's just written a paper about partnerships with social enterprise. He likes us a lot. But he thinks social enterprises are also full of little messiahs who don’t want to grow large, successful businesses but prefer, in their hearts to be big fish in a small pool.
He adds that many big companies actually can’t find social enterprises to subcontract to, even when they want to. There just isn’t aren’t enough ambitious entrepreneurs out there – or any real way of finding those that exist. He has been charged by PWCs Board to come up with a strategy for social enterprise and he’s stuck on page one. He doesn’t yet quite know what to say to his Board. Inspire me, he said.
I was inclined to agree with a lot of Ray’s points. There doesn’t appear to be the pipeline of ambitious and capable entrepreneurs out there. Every social investor I speak to bemoans the dry pipeline. There's a lot of us, but few of us, it seems, that match the hunger to develop massive businesses that you tend to find in most private sector entrpreneurs. Part of this is, I am sure, the preoccupying drivers and limiters on many social entrepreneurs. We see growth often as a mixed bag - and, anyway, it is often a lot harder to grow a social solution than a commercial one, particularly if you're having to deal with the state.
At this point, someone then raised the big elephant question “Isn’t that because social entrepreneurs aren’t sufficiently incentive financially for them to go all-out for growth?” A small silence fell because, on some level, we all know this to be true. Social entrepreneurs, while not primarily financially driven are not driven-snow either. I include myself. Indeed when we signed up with Impetus Trust in 2004 I immediately made a deal with my Board which doubled my pay if we hit financial targets within three years. While this wasn’t the sole incentive (we were talking £30k going to £60k), it did actually, help to motivate me, especially when the going got tough. Had that deal not been there, I may have been more easily deterred. Perhaps we just need to be a bit more `out' about the fact that socia entrepreneurs need and deserve decent rewards as their ventures go through the pains of successful growth.
Ray was asking how PWC could help or work with social enterprises. My response was the story of ourselves and Impetus. Which could as easily have been the story of us an PWC, I tell him. Had PWC stood their balance sheet behind us, stuck in £400k (which they could, in fact, have got back later - Impetus elected gladly to leave it in) and put in their best talent to work alongside us, they could have been a partner is the Speaking Up story. It would have been as much their growth as ours. Speaking Up, while legally still a limited by guarantee company, would, in effect, have become a joint venture with PWC, with all the good effects for both organisations.
Unfortunately, back then, the big four were still sending smiling staff teams to repaint recently repainted community centres or dig woodand paths. CSR at that time was still deeply patronizing window-dressing. A day out of the office “all in a good cause”. Today, they want to engage. Not only because they want to do good in a troubled world and report a social bottom line – they do . But because they want the best talent to come work for PWC – and to enhance their financial bottom line.
I made this point to Ray. If the likes of PWC devote even 5% of their energy to social issues, they would probably eclipse the achievements of many of our national charities. Their understanding of value-chains, customers and business processes matched with the insights of social entrepreneurs and, to be fair, many of the major charities – could act as multiplier. Venturing together, using the assets of a successful commercial business in combination with those of a socially focussed organisation with ambition - be it a social business or charity (it doesn't particularly matter in my view) may, I believe, release as yet untapped value.
For once a fascinating evening, a real sense of potential - and a call to make in the morning.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Bowl Half-Empty
To West Stow Country Park just outside Bury St Eds with the kids. 'Englands First Village' we are told. This is where, on good days, a reenacted Anglo Saxon settlement is in full swing. Today was..well , half swing. A smattering of sack-clothed `peasants' and a poorly attended pre-medieval cooking demonstration (hog, anyone?) was all there was to see.
But our kids are too young for all that. We came for the recently refreshed outdoor play equipment. My two year old slammed his finger in the car door then banged his head wincingly hard on a slide but, as kids do, he yelled for 30 seconds... then carried on regardless.
After an hour both kids were finally worn out and we went to the onsite cafe, run, it appeared, by the local council. The idea - my idea - was to fork out fifteen quid to avoid the lunchtime shift at home - an hour of prepping, cooking , cajoling and cleaning.
If only life was so simple. Self service meant literally that. The only thing not up to yourself were the portions. My soup (Minestrone) was served up in one of those naff cooking pot-style bowls. But it looked a decent size. It arrived just over half full.
Id like to say I immediately took issue and requested more for my three quid but of course I didnt and instead fumed as the slit-mouthed catering assistant plonked down my pot before spraying the next table with a foul-smelling substance and cleaning it.
What it would have cost to fill the bloody thing I dont know. Seven pence? Nine? The small price of my contentment. And they didnt have the wit to realise that 40 year old dads who have spent an hour playing with kids or examining flint daggers need a decent lunch. Not a Weight-Watchers one. Particularly as he is normally the one paying.
I am, I realise already turning into a grumpy middle aged bloke. Only five years ago his sort of thing made me laugh. Now I want cry - or kill.
Only the day before I was chatting to my charity CEO friend Hannah Eyres who is a fellow Bolton fan . "You're a real glass half-empty-man arent you?" she mused as I gloomed about relegation, despite a thumping four-nil home win. Ten years my junior, and a member of the sunny Generation Y (I am a depressive X) Hannah always sees the bright side. Which, I tell her, you need if you are a Bolton fan.
I am ending the weekend with my children in a three way exercise in `cooperation' as we try, together, to fill the bird feeder with peanuts. I cannot convince my daughter that we dont need a kilo of nuts on the floor before we start to fill the small hanging dispenser. Wilf keeps trying to sit on the bloody thing, nearly breaking it. Then, out of of the blue, she lamps her brother full in the face (he was, it has to be said,asking for it). Tears all round. Wife appears. I am told to stop texting. I obey.
But our kids are too young for all that. We came for the recently refreshed outdoor play equipment. My two year old slammed his finger in the car door then banged his head wincingly hard on a slide but, as kids do, he yelled for 30 seconds... then carried on regardless.
After an hour both kids were finally worn out and we went to the onsite cafe, run, it appeared, by the local council. The idea - my idea - was to fork out fifteen quid to avoid the lunchtime shift at home - an hour of prepping, cooking , cajoling and cleaning.
If only life was so simple. Self service meant literally that. The only thing not up to yourself were the portions. My soup (Minestrone) was served up in one of those naff cooking pot-style bowls. But it looked a decent size. It arrived just over half full.
Id like to say I immediately took issue and requested more for my three quid but of course I didnt and instead fumed as the slit-mouthed catering assistant plonked down my pot before spraying the next table with a foul-smelling substance and cleaning it.
What it would have cost to fill the bloody thing I dont know. Seven pence? Nine? The small price of my contentment. And they didnt have the wit to realise that 40 year old dads who have spent an hour playing with kids or examining flint daggers need a decent lunch. Not a Weight-Watchers one. Particularly as he is normally the one paying.
I am, I realise already turning into a grumpy middle aged bloke. Only five years ago his sort of thing made me laugh. Now I want cry - or kill.
Only the day before I was chatting to my charity CEO friend Hannah Eyres who is a fellow Bolton fan . "You're a real glass half-empty-man arent you?" she mused as I gloomed about relegation, despite a thumping four-nil home win. Ten years my junior, and a member of the sunny Generation Y (I am a depressive X) Hannah always sees the bright side. Which, I tell her, you need if you are a Bolton fan.
I am ending the weekend with my children in a three way exercise in `cooperation' as we try, together, to fill the bird feeder with peanuts. I cannot convince my daughter that we dont need a kilo of nuts on the floor before we start to fill the small hanging dispenser. Wilf keeps trying to sit on the bloody thing, nearly breaking it. Then, out of of the blue, she lamps her brother full in the face (he was, it has to be said,asking for it). Tears all round. Wife appears. I am told to stop texting. I obey.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Pilgrimage
Returned today from 24 fairly mad hours in Newcastle where I did a keynote address to ACEVO North's conference at the ultra-modern Sage Centre, Gateshead, known also to the locals as `The Slug', due to its funny shape.
I made the mistake of saying how good it was to be back in NEWCASTLE, but several members of this lively audience immediately put me right on that one. Otherwise it went well. My usual message of optimism, the need for bold, upbeat leadership and opportunism in troubled times.
Other presentations set out the opportunities and risks of post 2011 in more detailed terms. It's all getting familiar now so I won't repeat.
Also caught up with two third sector CEOs, Liz Wright of Skills for People and Hannah Eyres of Keyfund, one of the Impetus Trust charities. Skills for People is where it all started for me in terms of my ideas for what became Speaking Up. I volunteered there for three years which is when I met Liz who was CEO back then. She is still there today, enjoying it and grappling like all of us with the future-question. In a way Skills is what Speaking up would have been had it remained in one main location. Intensely local, able to change quite quickly, probably a bit easier to manage / control - but also very dependent on a few key relationships. Fantastic organisation still, though, and I always feel indebted to them for the opportunity they gave me as a 22 year old with ideas above his station!
I also catch up with some buddies. One, Graham, who was at college with me has had his life blighted by serious mental illness and, while coping admirably, has struggled to meet his high potential, a source in itself of some understandable anguish. We tend to speak every week on the phone but meeting is often quite tricky for him as he tends to become anxious and paranoid after a while. It goes well though, and we call it a day after an hour.
Newcastle, for me, is always a pilgrimage. My formative years (18-24) were spent there and the place feels mixed up with who I am. Decreasingly so, as the years wear on, but I am always transported when I am there. Like me, the place has changed beyond recognition since the late 80s when it was still in post-industrial malaise. Indeed, the Sage Centre, where I stood earlier today, was just a scrapyard on the deserted south bank of the river Tyne. I can think of no other English city, bar perhaps Manchester, which has seen such profound physical change in recent years as Newcastle.
I jump on the train back at lunchtime, view the bridges over the Tyne and settle down to `The Pinch' - the new book by David Willetts. Its an impressively researched and beautifully written book about intergenerational justice by a man who is the kind of Conservative I have always liked and, indeed, share many views. Even if you don't like Tories, read this book, you'll be surprised at its thoughtfulness and insight.
At Peterborough I leave the rail network. Crossing England is nowhere near as easy as getting up and down and this is where I leave my car. If Newcastle is one of my favourite cities, Peterborough, for a host of reasons, is my least. Bland, ugly and spiritless, with a slight tinge of menace, I am always relieved to be back on the A1. To home. Wilfred awaits me with characteristic happiness soon to be joined by his rather more sophisticated sister, who weighs coming to see me versus going straigh to the TV and, wisely, comes to say hello.
I made the mistake of saying how good it was to be back in NEWCASTLE, but several members of this lively audience immediately put me right on that one. Otherwise it went well. My usual message of optimism, the need for bold, upbeat leadership and opportunism in troubled times.
Other presentations set out the opportunities and risks of post 2011 in more detailed terms. It's all getting familiar now so I won't repeat.
Also caught up with two third sector CEOs, Liz Wright of Skills for People and Hannah Eyres of Keyfund, one of the Impetus Trust charities. Skills for People is where it all started for me in terms of my ideas for what became Speaking Up. I volunteered there for three years which is when I met Liz who was CEO back then. She is still there today, enjoying it and grappling like all of us with the future-question. In a way Skills is what Speaking up would have been had it remained in one main location. Intensely local, able to change quite quickly, probably a bit easier to manage / control - but also very dependent on a few key relationships. Fantastic organisation still, though, and I always feel indebted to them for the opportunity they gave me as a 22 year old with ideas above his station!
I also catch up with some buddies. One, Graham, who was at college with me has had his life blighted by serious mental illness and, while coping admirably, has struggled to meet his high potential, a source in itself of some understandable anguish. We tend to speak every week on the phone but meeting is often quite tricky for him as he tends to become anxious and paranoid after a while. It goes well though, and we call it a day after an hour.
Newcastle, for me, is always a pilgrimage. My formative years (18-24) were spent there and the place feels mixed up with who I am. Decreasingly so, as the years wear on, but I am always transported when I am there. Like me, the place has changed beyond recognition since the late 80s when it was still in post-industrial malaise. Indeed, the Sage Centre, where I stood earlier today, was just a scrapyard on the deserted south bank of the river Tyne. I can think of no other English city, bar perhaps Manchester, which has seen such profound physical change in recent years as Newcastle.
I jump on the train back at lunchtime, view the bridges over the Tyne and settle down to `The Pinch' - the new book by David Willetts. Its an impressively researched and beautifully written book about intergenerational justice by a man who is the kind of Conservative I have always liked and, indeed, share many views. Even if you don't like Tories, read this book, you'll be surprised at its thoughtfulness and insight.
At Peterborough I leave the rail network. Crossing England is nowhere near as easy as getting up and down and this is where I leave my car. If Newcastle is one of my favourite cities, Peterborough, for a host of reasons, is my least. Bland, ugly and spiritless, with a slight tinge of menace, I am always relieved to be back on the A1. To home. Wilfred awaits me with characteristic happiness soon to be joined by his rather more sophisticated sister, who weighs coming to see me versus going straigh to the TV and, wisely, comes to say hello.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Shedding My Skin
Soon I will no longer be the Chief Executive of Speaking Up. Indeed, I have already relinquished day to day running to my superb replacement Jonathan Senker who, I believe is the right person to lead the new merged organisation long-term.
Handing over the reins has in some respects been surprisingly easy. When you are confident of the person coming in, and know they share your values, it is actually quite easy. Not quite so easy is where this leaves you as a person in the world. Our status is a bit like our health. We sort of take it for granted, indeed hardly notice it - till its no longer there. Then, coughing and wheezing, we chide ourselves for not appreciating what we had - and wonder when we'll be back to our normal selves again.
Probably the most challenging part of this journey for me, then, will be the reinvention of myself that is a requirement of the the transformation of what-was to what will be. Whether I like it or not, I am no longer Mr Speaking Up. It's now on my CV but no longer my calling-card. Indeed, it would be a mistake to do what I have seen many others do - become known primarily for what they were, rather than what they are doing now.
Which leaves me with the question of how I define myself now - before I actually have something clear to say about what I actually am these days. In truth, I am between things. Freelancing for a bit till I decide on the next big thing. Something which I am sure will be interesting, fun and restorative. But hardly something on which I can hang my hat.
I suppose I will always be the person who set up Speaking Up - but I can't - and shan't live on my capital for long. Time to shed my skin.
Handing over the reins has in some respects been surprisingly easy. When you are confident of the person coming in, and know they share your values, it is actually quite easy. Not quite so easy is where this leaves you as a person in the world. Our status is a bit like our health. We sort of take it for granted, indeed hardly notice it - till its no longer there. Then, coughing and wheezing, we chide ourselves for not appreciating what we had - and wonder when we'll be back to our normal selves again.
Probably the most challenging part of this journey for me, then, will be the reinvention of myself that is a requirement of the the transformation of what-was to what will be. Whether I like it or not, I am no longer Mr Speaking Up. It's now on my CV but no longer my calling-card. Indeed, it would be a mistake to do what I have seen many others do - become known primarily for what they were, rather than what they are doing now.
Which leaves me with the question of how I define myself now - before I actually have something clear to say about what I actually am these days. In truth, I am between things. Freelancing for a bit till I decide on the next big thing. Something which I am sure will be interesting, fun and restorative. But hardly something on which I can hang my hat.
I suppose I will always be the person who set up Speaking Up - but I can't - and shan't live on my capital for long. Time to shed my skin.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Three Scenarios for Health Post-Election
I recently agreed, thanks largely to the charms of the young Ralph Michell of ACEVO, to be part of an ACEVO task force on health and social care. Reluctantly, because there's nothing I enjoy less than three hours of jaw-ache abou which up and coming somebodies in the Blah Blah Commission or DH we simply must get on-side.
So I arrived today, and sat through the first hour wondering what else I could be doing....Then arrived our special guest, Paul Corrigan. Paul used to advise Alan Milburn, then John Reid and Tony himself on health policy. He was here to talk us through three scenarios for health - two in the event of a Tory victory and one for hung Parliament.
What followed was was fascinating. Scenario 1. Decent Tory win - with a reform agenda on health. An emergency budget which spares health but still only gives a small increase. NHS becomes independent though a constitution (take out the politics) and has a regulator. GPs are given serious budgetary power.
This quickly picks off the PCTs as commissioners and starts quickly to impact on hospital admissions as primary care grows, proportionately, in relation to acute, hospital-based treatments. Smaller hospitals start to go bust. Lots of politics. Government holds its nerve. We have bigger regional specialist hospitals, some specialist units, both public and private for common ops that need doing locally, lots of local polyclinics in small places (like Bury St Eds I presume). Far fewer bog-standard hospitals where you hope you don't have to go if you get cancer or need tricky surgery - and want to live to tell the tale.
Under this scenario, the NHS becomes more decentralised, has a diversity of suppliers - including third sector organisations - (leading to more efficiency) and a more sane allocation of resources.
Scenario 2 - Narrow Tory win. Same pressures but this time without a reform agenda. This time a `cash agenda'. Here the Treasury is running the show. Every penny spent is in Treasury line of sight. Ultra-centralist. Reserves from Foundation Hospitals all pulled into centre and sent to prop up Trusts in Tory constituencies about to go under. Thin majority prevents strategic approach. Little in way of reform of NHS to actually drive change from below. Definite short term cash-saver but negligible in terms of long-term saving or reconfiguration of NHS into something that can deliver its own value. Third sector isn't gaining much in this scenario as current problems are `locked in' without a proper reform agenda to move things on.
Scenario 3 - Hung Parliament. Like most people I speak to, this is seen as worst of all worlds. The markets react badly. UK loses triple A, run on pound, bank rates rise and we are effectively, in the hands of the banks. Politically there is a total vacuum as the Government struggles for overall direction. We end up with an austerity budget but no policy on health to go with it.
Huge tumult as society and public goes through febrile period as it becomes clear we lack clear leadership. Everyone is fighting for life and working short-term. Not easy. Third sector is resilient and uses its `asset-base' - the public's trust, its own relationships and creativity - to find a role.
What made this presentation so compelling was Paul's clear sense of how the state works in particular scenarios. I asked at the end how he saw things in five years. His hope is for the main triad of the current `20th century' welfare state - hospitals, prisons and welfare' - and the producer interests that underpin them - to be rendered obselete by alternative generated by civil society.
Nobody, he said, would create the particular response to the problems we have now by inventing today's welfare state. It needs to be superceded and third sector organisations - with their innovation, ability to involve users and create value-adding partnerships - were part of the answer.
If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, go. Paul Corrigan. Superb.
So I arrived today, and sat through the first hour wondering what else I could be doing....Then arrived our special guest, Paul Corrigan. Paul used to advise Alan Milburn, then John Reid and Tony himself on health policy. He was here to talk us through three scenarios for health - two in the event of a Tory victory and one for hung Parliament.
What followed was was fascinating. Scenario 1. Decent Tory win - with a reform agenda on health. An emergency budget which spares health but still only gives a small increase. NHS becomes independent though a constitution (take out the politics) and has a regulator. GPs are given serious budgetary power.
This quickly picks off the PCTs as commissioners and starts quickly to impact on hospital admissions as primary care grows, proportionately, in relation to acute, hospital-based treatments. Smaller hospitals start to go bust. Lots of politics. Government holds its nerve. We have bigger regional specialist hospitals, some specialist units, both public and private for common ops that need doing locally, lots of local polyclinics in small places (like Bury St Eds I presume). Far fewer bog-standard hospitals where you hope you don't have to go if you get cancer or need tricky surgery - and want to live to tell the tale.
Under this scenario, the NHS becomes more decentralised, has a diversity of suppliers - including third sector organisations - (leading to more efficiency) and a more sane allocation of resources.
Scenario 2 - Narrow Tory win. Same pressures but this time without a reform agenda. This time a `cash agenda'. Here the Treasury is running the show. Every penny spent is in Treasury line of sight. Ultra-centralist. Reserves from Foundation Hospitals all pulled into centre and sent to prop up Trusts in Tory constituencies about to go under. Thin majority prevents strategic approach. Little in way of reform of NHS to actually drive change from below. Definite short term cash-saver but negligible in terms of long-term saving or reconfiguration of NHS into something that can deliver its own value. Third sector isn't gaining much in this scenario as current problems are `locked in' without a proper reform agenda to move things on.
Scenario 3 - Hung Parliament. Like most people I speak to, this is seen as worst of all worlds. The markets react badly. UK loses triple A, run on pound, bank rates rise and we are effectively, in the hands of the banks. Politically there is a total vacuum as the Government struggles for overall direction. We end up with an austerity budget but no policy on health to go with it.
Huge tumult as society and public goes through febrile period as it becomes clear we lack clear leadership. Everyone is fighting for life and working short-term. Not easy. Third sector is resilient and uses its `asset-base' - the public's trust, its own relationships and creativity - to find a role.
What made this presentation so compelling was Paul's clear sense of how the state works in particular scenarios. I asked at the end how he saw things in five years. His hope is for the main triad of the current `20th century' welfare state - hospitals, prisons and welfare' - and the producer interests that underpin them - to be rendered obselete by alternative generated by civil society.
Nobody, he said, would create the particular response to the problems we have now by inventing today's welfare state. It needs to be superceded and third sector organisations - with their innovation, ability to involve users and create value-adding partnerships - were part of the answer.
If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, go. Paul Corrigan. Superb.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
So What Are Your Overheads?
Today in Third Sector magazine, the Tory Shadow Charities Minister Nick Hurd lays into Futurebuilders for...shock...a 16% management overhead.
Now, I am not sure where he has worked before - I think it was for a bank - but I am not sure Nick has a lot of idea of what it takes for charities to be effective. This sort of political dog-whistling is just what we don't need. My overheads are around 16% and I'm happy to say so. Ask most CEOs and they will tell you the same. OK, I am pushing mine down to 14% to stay competitive but 16% isn't unusual.
This focus on our overheads is very fucking tiring, to be honest. As Martin Brookes from New Philanthripy Capital recently said, we need to be much less fixated with costs and a lot more interested in outcomes. If this is as clever as the Tories re going to get about our sector I would actually rather deal with another five years of the newly humanised Gordon Brown.
I like Nick Hurd as a bloke. He is fresh, human and bright. These sort of attacks don't do him or the Tories any favours. If he wants to call time on initiatives like Futurebuilders, I would respect him a lot more if he just came out and said it rather than engage in this kind of showboating.
Now, I am not sure where he has worked before - I think it was for a bank - but I am not sure Nick has a lot of idea of what it takes for charities to be effective. This sort of political dog-whistling is just what we don't need. My overheads are around 16% and I'm happy to say so. Ask most CEOs and they will tell you the same. OK, I am pushing mine down to 14% to stay competitive but 16% isn't unusual.
This focus on our overheads is very fucking tiring, to be honest. As Martin Brookes from New Philanthripy Capital recently said, we need to be much less fixated with costs and a lot more interested in outcomes. If this is as clever as the Tories re going to get about our sector I would actually rather deal with another five years of the newly humanised Gordon Brown.
I like Nick Hurd as a bloke. He is fresh, human and bright. These sort of attacks don't do him or the Tories any favours. If he wants to call time on initiatives like Futurebuilders, I would respect him a lot more if he just came out and said it rather than engage in this kind of showboating.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Entrepreneurs Bill
Yes I know there is too much legislation already. Indeed I read that it is Steve Hilton's idea for the Tories to pass NO new legislation during a first term. A very good idea too but one that shows that Hilton is, at the end of the day, a blue skies man and not a pol.
Anyway, what do we need an Entrepreneurs Bill. Well, we need, at the end of the Brown-era to rediscover enterprise. Now that there are no jobs, we need, as we did in the 80s, to encourage a new generation of people to have a go in business. To do this we have, again, to create a culture of entrepreneurship, a buzz and energy about it that has been missing in this era of Easy-Job.
What would be in it? Five things. First, everyone setting up a new business would be given a one-off payment of £4000. Just enough to get a laptop, a landline and the time to win your first order. Secondly, there should be no tax (0%) on all new businesses for their first five years. People setting up businesses shouldn't have to worry about the taxman. They need every penny they can get.
Thirdly, there should be tax-breaks for Angel investors. Angels give start-ups the help they desperately need when nobody else is there. Fourthly, nobody running a small business should have to put their home up as security. The state should stand behind small business people as solidly as it stood behind the banks. Take away the punitive risks associated with business-failure and many more people will be liberated to take risks.
Fifth, the old chestnut, red tape. Employees of new businesses will waive their employment rights for a further year. New businesses will not to be VAT registered for three years.
This may not even need legislation. But a bill setting all his out would see thousands of new ventures spring up overnight, reducing the dole queue and liberating the energy of tens of thousands of people to set up the businesses whose taxes will eventually pay our way out of this mess.
Anyway, what do we need an Entrepreneurs Bill. Well, we need, at the end of the Brown-era to rediscover enterprise. Now that there are no jobs, we need, as we did in the 80s, to encourage a new generation of people to have a go in business. To do this we have, again, to create a culture of entrepreneurship, a buzz and energy about it that has been missing in this era of Easy-Job.
What would be in it? Five things. First, everyone setting up a new business would be given a one-off payment of £4000. Just enough to get a laptop, a landline and the time to win your first order. Secondly, there should be no tax (0%) on all new businesses for their first five years. People setting up businesses shouldn't have to worry about the taxman. They need every penny they can get.
Thirdly, there should be tax-breaks for Angel investors. Angels give start-ups the help they desperately need when nobody else is there. Fourthly, nobody running a small business should have to put their home up as security. The state should stand behind small business people as solidly as it stood behind the banks. Take away the punitive risks associated with business-failure and many more people will be liberated to take risks.
Fifth, the old chestnut, red tape. Employees of new businesses will waive their employment rights for a further year. New businesses will not to be VAT registered for three years.
This may not even need legislation. But a bill setting all his out would see thousands of new ventures spring up overnight, reducing the dole queue and liberating the energy of tens of thousands of people to set up the businesses whose taxes will eventually pay our way out of this mess.
Friday, February 12, 2010
You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello
Last night was my final Annual General Meeting as CEO of Speaking Up. I am going on April 6th. But not off into the horizon. Into the Chair.
AGMs are normally stolid affairs. Rows of mostly empty plastic seats in a dusty community centre. A drone through an arcane agenda followed by cheap coffee, a digestive and let's get the hell out of here.
Not ours. The Speaking Up AGM is a proper AGM - don't get me wrong - accounts, constitutions, elections and all that. We just make it fun and celebratory. The rule of thumb is that the more boring the subject matter the more fun we try to make it. So the finance report told people how many more Mars Bars our reserves this year boughtthan last's year figure. You get the idea.
We also acknowledge achievement. Our users present the best of the work we have done alongside them. Last night, our `Promote the Vote' team told the story of how they helped hundreds of people with learning difficulties to get registered for the 2010 General Election.
My goodbye speech, as usual, didn't follow the plan I had made earlier. Following a valedictory round of applause from the audience instigated by Fred Heddell, my mischievous Chair (who knows I don't like a big fuss), I made three points.
First that I wasn't the right guy to lead anymore, that Jonathan (Senker, CEO of Advocacy Partners) was and that they should support him as much as they had supported me.
Second that we are already feeling the pain of the public sector recession and that it will get worse before it gets better.
And finally, to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, that failure, on any level, is not about being knocked down - its about not getting up. That resilience will see us through. That being on the leading edge of social change isn't an easy meal-ticket - and that we need to dig deeper than ever into our creativity to take forward our mission.
Patrick Butler, Head of Education, Health and Society at the Guardian, who was our special guest, told us the story of Kodak, who used to make the film that went in cameras. For a while they thought digital cameras were a fad. They carried on thinking this until it was nearly too late.
Then, finally, they reinvented themselves as a digital company, building on their trusted Kodak brand. But not before losing tens of thousands of jobs and almost going under.
The lesson is that it is important to change ahead of the curve if you can. Patrick's view, and I think I agree, is that the public sector, indeed all of the social sector, is about to have its Kodak moment.
Those best placed to survive, he predicts, will be the innovative, the passionate, the connected and the forward-thinking. Generously, he included Advocacy Partners Speaking Up in that category.
I hope he is right. For we face some big challenges. We are in a sector - advocacy services - which is maturing. The big growth has gone. We are seeing the commodification of the sector as a uniform product that is seen by customers as the same whoever sells it - like oil or potatoes. There is evidence of a race to the bottom now in price in which new players, unencumbered by any historic pattern of delivery, are coming along with models of delivery which, while probably not better ,are certainly a lot cheaper.
Do we join this race with all the risks that involves? Or do take another kind of risk - and move away from this business over time, leaving them to it, and develop our mission into new as yet unexploited space, so that our organisation looks very different to what it does now in five years time?
All these are the big strategic challenges that I, as Chairman of Trustees, will be asking our CEO to work through with all of our people with over the coming months following merger.
While we don't have to make a one-off decision to jump one way or another, we have to decide, within a year at the most, what the most effective way to realise our mission actually is in the 2010s. An exciting task - but a daunting one. Because the risks, either way, are high and unknown.
Afterwards, one of our business supporters said, `This is your 2007 - see it like that and you'll find it a lot easier'. Time to both dig in and imagine our way out.
AGMs are normally stolid affairs. Rows of mostly empty plastic seats in a dusty community centre. A drone through an arcane agenda followed by cheap coffee, a digestive and let's get the hell out of here.
Not ours. The Speaking Up AGM is a proper AGM - don't get me wrong - accounts, constitutions, elections and all that. We just make it fun and celebratory. The rule of thumb is that the more boring the subject matter the more fun we try to make it. So the finance report told people how many more Mars Bars our reserves this year boughtthan last's year figure. You get the idea.
We also acknowledge achievement. Our users present the best of the work we have done alongside them. Last night, our `Promote the Vote' team told the story of how they helped hundreds of people with learning difficulties to get registered for the 2010 General Election.
My goodbye speech, as usual, didn't follow the plan I had made earlier. Following a valedictory round of applause from the audience instigated by Fred Heddell, my mischievous Chair (who knows I don't like a big fuss), I made three points.
First that I wasn't the right guy to lead anymore, that Jonathan (Senker, CEO of Advocacy Partners) was and that they should support him as much as they had supported me.
Second that we are already feeling the pain of the public sector recession and that it will get worse before it gets better.
And finally, to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, that failure, on any level, is not about being knocked down - its about not getting up. That resilience will see us through. That being on the leading edge of social change isn't an easy meal-ticket - and that we need to dig deeper than ever into our creativity to take forward our mission.
Patrick Butler, Head of Education, Health and Society at the Guardian, who was our special guest, told us the story of Kodak, who used to make the film that went in cameras. For a while they thought digital cameras were a fad. They carried on thinking this until it was nearly too late.
Then, finally, they reinvented themselves as a digital company, building on their trusted Kodak brand. But not before losing tens of thousands of jobs and almost going under.
The lesson is that it is important to change ahead of the curve if you can. Patrick's view, and I think I agree, is that the public sector, indeed all of the social sector, is about to have its Kodak moment.
Those best placed to survive, he predicts, will be the innovative, the passionate, the connected and the forward-thinking. Generously, he included Advocacy Partners Speaking Up in that category.
I hope he is right. For we face some big challenges. We are in a sector - advocacy services - which is maturing. The big growth has gone. We are seeing the commodification of the sector as a uniform product that is seen by customers as the same whoever sells it - like oil or potatoes. There is evidence of a race to the bottom now in price in which new players, unencumbered by any historic pattern of delivery, are coming along with models of delivery which, while probably not better ,are certainly a lot cheaper.
Do we join this race with all the risks that involves? Or do take another kind of risk - and move away from this business over time, leaving them to it, and develop our mission into new as yet unexploited space, so that our organisation looks very different to what it does now in five years time?
All these are the big strategic challenges that I, as Chairman of Trustees, will be asking our CEO to work through with all of our people with over the coming months following merger.
While we don't have to make a one-off decision to jump one way or another, we have to decide, within a year at the most, what the most effective way to realise our mission actually is in the 2010s. An exciting task - but a daunting one. Because the risks, either way, are high and unknown.
Afterwards, one of our business supporters said, `This is your 2007 - see it like that and you'll find it a lot easier'. Time to both dig in and imagine our way out.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Rage at the Machine
I was recently lifted by Charlie Leadbeater who talked about Participle's amazing work buiding services from the bottom up. Then y/day I attended the living death that is the Children and Young People's Scutiny Committee.
Here we get the biblical detail of all sorts of services the council either provides or pays for. So much detail in fact that you need a detective's eye to find the real story. But what strikes you between the eyes is the sheer scale of the mountain to climb if anything is ever going to change in relation to the way we organise for good outcomes. Everything to do with children and young people is done in a `multi-agency' way. Which sounds great. But what that actually adds up to is a lot of meetings, a lot of IT and not a lot time spent working with children and families.
What I find hardest of all is that nobody is saying anything. Not even the Tories. Even they, in local government at least, have bought into the Ed Balls world of multiple strategies, directives and a style of service that is shaped around regulation, not around the user or customer.
`Safeguarding' is the latest example of this. Now everyone who gives a kid a lift to school football or plays the guitar in a school play has to be checked on a register. Let's not pretend this is about looking after kids. Its about protecting organisations. God only knows what all this costs - and its another fad, imposed on all of us by a Government that has, frankly, lost the plot a time ago.
I actually admired some of the people who had to pitch up yesterday in front of a bunch of Councillors (half of whom know very little about the subject) and explain what is being achieved, where the challenges lie etc. I don't envy them their jobs. Many look grey and strained from years of managing upwards and working in ways that I am sure are counter-intuitive.
What's the answer? I honestly don't know. Politically someone has to say this is enough and it isn't working. That the emporor we all worship is naked and failing. My fear is that even with a change of Government, we aren't going to see much change in the over-strategised and machine-like approach of the state to our major challenges.
Ed Balls' legacy will be safe for many years to come, I suspect.
Here we get the biblical detail of all sorts of services the council either provides or pays for. So much detail in fact that you need a detective's eye to find the real story. But what strikes you between the eyes is the sheer scale of the mountain to climb if anything is ever going to change in relation to the way we organise for good outcomes. Everything to do with children and young people is done in a `multi-agency' way. Which sounds great. But what that actually adds up to is a lot of meetings, a lot of IT and not a lot time spent working with children and families.
What I find hardest of all is that nobody is saying anything. Not even the Tories. Even they, in local government at least, have bought into the Ed Balls world of multiple strategies, directives and a style of service that is shaped around regulation, not around the user or customer.
`Safeguarding' is the latest example of this. Now everyone who gives a kid a lift to school football or plays the guitar in a school play has to be checked on a register. Let's not pretend this is about looking after kids. Its about protecting organisations. God only knows what all this costs - and its another fad, imposed on all of us by a Government that has, frankly, lost the plot a time ago.
I actually admired some of the people who had to pitch up yesterday in front of a bunch of Councillors (half of whom know very little about the subject) and explain what is being achieved, where the challenges lie etc. I don't envy them their jobs. Many look grey and strained from years of managing upwards and working in ways that I am sure are counter-intuitive.
What's the answer? I honestly don't know. Politically someone has to say this is enough and it isn't working. That the emporor we all worship is naked and failing. My fear is that even with a change of Government, we aren't going to see much change in the over-strategised and machine-like approach of the state to our major challenges.
Ed Balls' legacy will be safe for many years to come, I suspect.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Tower Block of Horrors
Four MPs, four poor families living in inner city tower blocks. It's Wife Swap meets Question Time. And very entertaining it is too. The MPs (Austin Mitchell, Mark Oaten, Nadine Dorries and Tim Loughton) have to live-in and cope on benefits.
Three are toe-curlingly awful. Austin Mitchell is, well, basically a twat. The kind of person for whom term-limits were invented. A fat, complaisant salary-taker who has clearly lost any sense of purpose.
Nadine Dorries is a hungry self-made Tory. Attractive and personable on one level but horribly self-satisfied too. Fifty quid from home sneaked into her bra didn't endear her to her Scouse host.
Mark Oaten is a strange one. How this tissue-skinned man ever through a selection meeting I don't know. He was clearly very upset when recognised by local youths in Dagenham as the bloke who shagged rent boys (referred to by Oaten himself as `affairs').
Tory Tim Loughton is the only one who came out with any credit. Low-key, unjudgemental, human, helpful and kind. He was the only one who attracted any respect from his hosts.
And what of the hosts? All were nuclear families with two parents and two or more kids. Few worked. Most were sympathetic on one level but were clearly held back by long-term worklessness and its associated problems. One woman spent a third of her £150 weekly shopping budget on cigs. She justified that on the grounds that MPs were also abusing their expenses. Fuzzy logic but it worked for her.
I came away a bit depressed. The MPs were low calibre and of limited character. Their hosts seemed hopelessly locked into stand-still lives on benefits. Their kids were wonderful but poignantly still unaware of the world they had landed in. Still happy, still open, like all kids. Seeing them sharing a box room with four siblings and eating only microwave food had my eyes pricking.
As an elected politican I felt a tinge of shame. Tower Block of Commons, although essentially soap, communicated something fundamentally true about the self-seeking nature - be it for money (Mitchell), status (Oaten) or advancement (Dorries) - of most MPs. And their inability - or lack of real interest - in representing the needs of society's most disadvantaged people.
A smaller Commons please.
Three are toe-curlingly awful. Austin Mitchell is, well, basically a twat. The kind of person for whom term-limits were invented. A fat, complaisant salary-taker who has clearly lost any sense of purpose.
Nadine Dorries is a hungry self-made Tory. Attractive and personable on one level but horribly self-satisfied too. Fifty quid from home sneaked into her bra didn't endear her to her Scouse host.
Mark Oaten is a strange one. How this tissue-skinned man ever through a selection meeting I don't know. He was clearly very upset when recognised by local youths in Dagenham as the bloke who shagged rent boys (referred to by Oaten himself as `affairs').
Tory Tim Loughton is the only one who came out with any credit. Low-key, unjudgemental, human, helpful and kind. He was the only one who attracted any respect from his hosts.
And what of the hosts? All were nuclear families with two parents and two or more kids. Few worked. Most were sympathetic on one level but were clearly held back by long-term worklessness and its associated problems. One woman spent a third of her £150 weekly shopping budget on cigs. She justified that on the grounds that MPs were also abusing their expenses. Fuzzy logic but it worked for her.
I came away a bit depressed. The MPs were low calibre and of limited character. Their hosts seemed hopelessly locked into stand-still lives on benefits. Their kids were wonderful but poignantly still unaware of the world they had landed in. Still happy, still open, like all kids. Seeing them sharing a box room with four siblings and eating only microwave food had my eyes pricking.
As an elected politican I felt a tinge of shame. Tower Block of Commons, although essentially soap, communicated something fundamentally true about the self-seeking nature - be it for money (Mitchell), status (Oaten) or advancement (Dorries) - of most MPs. And their inability - or lack of real interest - in representing the needs of society's most disadvantaged people.
A smaller Commons please.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Two Conferences, One Message
My week started at Voice 10 the annual social enterprise shindig - this year in Cardiff. Stars of the show were Peter Holbrook, the new SEC CE, and the Social Enterprise Mark, the new badge of respectability for social busineses.
The Mark is discussed in depth on the Social Business Blog but I would say, for now, that I am still to be convinced of its utility. I hope I am actually wrong here - but I am not quite sure it's going the way of Fairtrade or the Soil Association marks, which have been transformative in their fields.
Voice is a good place to meet people. Social enterprise has a lot of good characters. People who care - but also get things done. This, really, on reflection, is why I come.
My week ended at the Guardian Public Services Summit at the Grove, Herts. This is one of those rather plush country conference centres with a golf course, White Company toiletries and enough fluffy white bathtowels for a Premier League football team.
This was a good conference, opening with the former Canadian PM Paul Martin telling delegates how he cut a quarter from public budgets, prioritised spending (rather than taking equal slivers from all budgets) and used social entrepreneurs to address a range of long-standing needs. His advocacy of social enterprise was perhaps the surprise for many of the public sector delegates. His big message, one I hope, the Tories hear, was the need to open up both public and capital markets to the social business sector. Right on,
My favourite presentation was from Participle-founder Charlie Leadbeater. Participle are working with Swindon Council where there are 316 chaotic families. The chaos in these families is added to, Leaderbeater told delegates, by the welter of professionals working with these families, from the police, schools and health services. Each child from one of these costs Swindon about £250k per annum. The results we get from this are well known - low achievement and often a life of crime and replication of these problems in the next generation.
After months spent among these families - living among them and listening to them - Partciple came to the conclusion that two keyworkers, costing around £50k would do as much good as the current arrangement. That's quite stunning. The reason, he says, is that public services spend 70% of their time dealing with the accretion of processes and systems which have arisen around vulnerable children. And, over time, adversarial relationships with these families have resulted in massive `gaming'of the system, which further increases direct and transactional costs.
The legacy of this event, if there is one, the take-away message is that there is no real way to adapt the system incrementally if substantial savings are to be made or outcomes improved. Therefore it all comes down to whether it is possible to reboot the public sector as something quite different both in shape and core purpose.
It has taken a crisis of this scale to generate these kinds of thoughts. It may well take another crisis of an even bigger one to generate the kind of radcial innovation at scale to overcome what one writer recently termed `The Blob' - the huge, pervasive and powerful collection of interests in keeping the fundamentals of the public sector just as they are.
The Mark is discussed in depth on the Social Business Blog but I would say, for now, that I am still to be convinced of its utility. I hope I am actually wrong here - but I am not quite sure it's going the way of Fairtrade or the Soil Association marks, which have been transformative in their fields.
Voice is a good place to meet people. Social enterprise has a lot of good characters. People who care - but also get things done. This, really, on reflection, is why I come.
My week ended at the Guardian Public Services Summit at the Grove, Herts. This is one of those rather plush country conference centres with a golf course, White Company toiletries and enough fluffy white bathtowels for a Premier League football team.
This was a good conference, opening with the former Canadian PM Paul Martin telling delegates how he cut a quarter from public budgets, prioritised spending (rather than taking equal slivers from all budgets) and used social entrepreneurs to address a range of long-standing needs. His advocacy of social enterprise was perhaps the surprise for many of the public sector delegates. His big message, one I hope, the Tories hear, was the need to open up both public and capital markets to the social business sector. Right on,
My favourite presentation was from Participle-founder Charlie Leadbeater. Participle are working with Swindon Council where there are 316 chaotic families. The chaos in these families is added to, Leaderbeater told delegates, by the welter of professionals working with these families, from the police, schools and health services. Each child from one of these costs Swindon about £250k per annum. The results we get from this are well known - low achievement and often a life of crime and replication of these problems in the next generation.
After months spent among these families - living among them and listening to them - Partciple came to the conclusion that two keyworkers, costing around £50k would do as much good as the current arrangement. That's quite stunning. The reason, he says, is that public services spend 70% of their time dealing with the accretion of processes and systems which have arisen around vulnerable children. And, over time, adversarial relationships with these families have resulted in massive `gaming'of the system, which further increases direct and transactional costs.
The legacy of this event, if there is one, the take-away message is that there is no real way to adapt the system incrementally if substantial savings are to be made or outcomes improved. Therefore it all comes down to whether it is possible to reboot the public sector as something quite different both in shape and core purpose.
It has taken a crisis of this scale to generate these kinds of thoughts. It may well take another crisis of an even bigger one to generate the kind of radcial innovation at scale to overcome what one writer recently termed `The Blob' - the huge, pervasive and powerful collection of interests in keeping the fundamentals of the public sector just as they are.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Jottings
Have been a bit quiet of late, I know. Lots going on at work which I can't yet talk about publicly but will be doing after February 11th. Those who know me well will know what this is. For those that don't, it begins with an M and sounds a bit like Murder. While barely a ear in the cornfield of world-events, this M-thing will mean a lot of change for me personally. Anyway, more on that later.
Am thinking a lot about public services at the moment. I think we are going to see the biggest changes in public sector since the 1940s during the next few years. Sadly it has taken a financial crisis to get us here but, perversely, I am glad. In 15 years acquaitance I have been stunned by how far public services are from what is happening in other parts of the economy and society. A separate world. Like one of those museums where people dress like Victorians and make their own clothes. Just bizarre.
This sounds insulting I know. I feel my public sector readers already heating their keyboards...But, you know, it ain't personal. Some of the most talented people and noblest spirits in this country work in the public sector. My wife and half of my friends do. The problem isn't the people. It really isn't. It's other things. Too much political involvement in delivery. Lack of competition in key areas. Organisations that are too big and diversified to be good at anything in particular. Unions that hold too much sway. Professions that control resources rather than citizens. A universal feeling of disempowerment even at the top. A loss of confidence.
All this won't be solved in five years, not even ten. It is a 20 year project. Someone however has to get it going. I have become convinced that the Labour Party is too beholden to the professions and unions to take serious action. For a long time, the Tories were simply untrustworthy when it came to the common good - seeing this only in disaggregration. Today's Tories seem to realise that there is a `commons' which we must make a priority. A commons in which public services - however delivered- are the correct focus of political discourse and action - not an afterthought or a concern simply of the centre-left.
Does this mean I trust the Tories? No, I don't. Politicians, I know myself, are often staggeringly shallow and poorly informed. Many don't read or think a great deal. A surprising number are driven by ego and power alone. And George Osborne is, from all reports, a right shit. However, they will I believe be the next Government. And given this, and the fact that their analysis isn't all wrong, I invest more hope in them than I would be if Labour were to win again.
My own party is, of course, not mentioned here. That is mainly because we won't win nor, I believe, hold the balance of power. This pessimistic assessment comes from the two-horse nature of the forthcoming contest added to the fact that the Lib Dems do not, this time, have clear stand-out ideas such as getting out of Iraq or abolishing tuition-fees or free care for the elderly. Not that these are realistic any more I agree. But the party needs something more than a more `liberal Britain'. Sorry Nick, I like you but this isn't going to grab them.
Am thinking a lot about public services at the moment. I think we are going to see the biggest changes in public sector since the 1940s during the next few years. Sadly it has taken a financial crisis to get us here but, perversely, I am glad. In 15 years acquaitance I have been stunned by how far public services are from what is happening in other parts of the economy and society. A separate world. Like one of those museums where people dress like Victorians and make their own clothes. Just bizarre.
This sounds insulting I know. I feel my public sector readers already heating their keyboards...But, you know, it ain't personal. Some of the most talented people and noblest spirits in this country work in the public sector. My wife and half of my friends do. The problem isn't the people. It really isn't. It's other things. Too much political involvement in delivery. Lack of competition in key areas. Organisations that are too big and diversified to be good at anything in particular. Unions that hold too much sway. Professions that control resources rather than citizens. A universal feeling of disempowerment even at the top. A loss of confidence.
All this won't be solved in five years, not even ten. It is a 20 year project. Someone however has to get it going. I have become convinced that the Labour Party is too beholden to the professions and unions to take serious action. For a long time, the Tories were simply untrustworthy when it came to the common good - seeing this only in disaggregration. Today's Tories seem to realise that there is a `commons' which we must make a priority. A commons in which public services - however delivered- are the correct focus of political discourse and action - not an afterthought or a concern simply of the centre-left.
Does this mean I trust the Tories? No, I don't. Politicians, I know myself, are often staggeringly shallow and poorly informed. Many don't read or think a great deal. A surprising number are driven by ego and power alone. And George Osborne is, from all reports, a right shit. However, they will I believe be the next Government. And given this, and the fact that their analysis isn't all wrong, I invest more hope in them than I would be if Labour were to win again.
My own party is, of course, not mentioned here. That is mainly because we won't win nor, I believe, hold the balance of power. This pessimistic assessment comes from the two-horse nature of the forthcoming contest added to the fact that the Lib Dems do not, this time, have clear stand-out ideas such as getting out of Iraq or abolishing tuition-fees or free care for the elderly. Not that these are realistic any more I agree. But the party needs something more than a more `liberal Britain'. Sorry Nick, I like you but this isn't going to grab them.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Citizens or Consumers?
Despite the commitment to public sector reform from all political parties, it is still unclear which ideas will dominate as we reshape public services in the coming decade.
There are calls for locally-based, co-produced and self-directed public services, but there is an easier approach to reform that is much further advanced: super-commissioning, or the aggregation of different workstreams and small contracts into ever-larger contracts for high-volume services, delivered mostly by big national organisations. Welfare-to-work services, secure care services for people with mental health problems and care of elderly people have all seen rapid consolidation to bigger players.
Unfeted and largely unsung, super-commissioning appears to be growing more than personal budgets, where there are still only 30,000 or so users. It means bigger contracts and fewer players, but, to be fair, can result in faster, cheaper and better public services.
So will the next government take a gamble on localised, self-directed, co-produced services? History would suggest not. It would break precedent for any government to tolerate the quirks, messiness and risks of letting public services evolve from the bottom up.
It would also be much harder for any government to crank the handle in Whitehall to shape costs and outcomes. On top of this, there would be postcode lotteries, duplication and genuine limits on what can be achieved, as well as predictable calls from the media for the government to "get a grip".
However, these are unusual times. A cut-down version of existing services will not deliver enough savings, and politicians, particularly those on the centre-right, now seem aware of a fork-in-the-road choice – a choice set out by Simon Duffy, director of the Centre for Welfare Reform and one of the founders of the In Control project, as that between the professional gift model of public services versus the citizen model. Are we going to be consumers of "gifted" public services, designed and provided by other people, elsewhere, or are we citizens who not only shape our own public services but also contribute to the services of family, friends and neighbours?
One demonstration of this is a new London service organised by public services thinktank Participle, whose Get-Together service enables older people to connect up, for themselves and others to fight isolation.
Duffy's citizen model will probably be given some sort of chance by a future government, but it is politically risky. Super-commissioning isn't nearly as loved by the politicians, but it quickly saves money by lifting and shifting large tracts of the public sector, mostly unreformed, out into new bodies.
Both sides have testing questions to answer. Can a citizen-based model of public service work if a demanding, highly-taxed population is unwilling or unable to take more responsibility? Do such services cost less? Who is accountable when things go wrong? Might citizen-based public services be strangled by the bureaucratic bindweed that comes with any relationship with the state?
Super-commissioning of public services also faces stern questions. High transaction costs could mean more spent on regulation and verification. And what is the place for the millions who may be willing to help others in their community as part of a new civic understanding that also involved being cared for themselves?
The citizen model sees a place for this massive potential resource, but it is harder to see the role of such a contribution in the world of super-commissioning.
There are calls for locally-based, co-produced and self-directed public services, but there is an easier approach to reform that is much further advanced: super-commissioning, or the aggregation of different workstreams and small contracts into ever-larger contracts for high-volume services, delivered mostly by big national organisations. Welfare-to-work services, secure care services for people with mental health problems and care of elderly people have all seen rapid consolidation to bigger players.
Unfeted and largely unsung, super-commissioning appears to be growing more than personal budgets, where there are still only 30,000 or so users. It means bigger contracts and fewer players, but, to be fair, can result in faster, cheaper and better public services.
So will the next government take a gamble on localised, self-directed, co-produced services? History would suggest not. It would break precedent for any government to tolerate the quirks, messiness and risks of letting public services evolve from the bottom up.
It would also be much harder for any government to crank the handle in Whitehall to shape costs and outcomes. On top of this, there would be postcode lotteries, duplication and genuine limits on what can be achieved, as well as predictable calls from the media for the government to "get a grip".
However, these are unusual times. A cut-down version of existing services will not deliver enough savings, and politicians, particularly those on the centre-right, now seem aware of a fork-in-the-road choice – a choice set out by Simon Duffy, director of the Centre for Welfare Reform and one of the founders of the In Control project, as that between the professional gift model of public services versus the citizen model. Are we going to be consumers of "gifted" public services, designed and provided by other people, elsewhere, or are we citizens who not only shape our own public services but also contribute to the services of family, friends and neighbours?
One demonstration of this is a new London service organised by public services thinktank Participle, whose Get-Together service enables older people to connect up, for themselves and others to fight isolation.
Duffy's citizen model will probably be given some sort of chance by a future government, but it is politically risky. Super-commissioning isn't nearly as loved by the politicians, but it quickly saves money by lifting and shifting large tracts of the public sector, mostly unreformed, out into new bodies.
Both sides have testing questions to answer. Can a citizen-based model of public service work if a demanding, highly-taxed population is unwilling or unable to take more responsibility? Do such services cost less? Who is accountable when things go wrong? Might citizen-based public services be strangled by the bureaucratic bindweed that comes with any relationship with the state?
Super-commissioning of public services also faces stern questions. High transaction costs could mean more spent on regulation and verification. And what is the place for the millions who may be willing to help others in their community as part of a new civic understanding that also involved being cared for themselves?
The citizen model sees a place for this massive potential resource, but it is harder to see the role of such a contribution in the world of super-commissioning.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Predictions for 2010
Big charities going under. A rash of major mergers. Mass-sackings of CEOs. Fall-outs with Government. My predictions for 2009 all turned out to be wrong, in fact, it was business as usual for many of us. So am I eating humble pie? Well - no. I think I was right in everything - except my timing.
Our sector, you see, is a bit like the public sector - trapped by its recent history. With noble exceptions, most of our major charities are simply doing a better job than the Government of delivering First Generation Public Services. These services, though much better and more efficient, share the doomed formula of high cost and low effectiveness of nearly all First Generation Public Services.
Therefore, the absolutely critical challenge facing all major UK charities is how to create Second Generation Public Services that are better, cheaper and faster - and “co-produced” by a population used to having things done for them. This is the public services equivalent of moving from the mainframe computer to the IPlayer in one go. It is going to require a revolution. In innovation. In design. In delivery.
How might this play out? Well, the learning from other sectors is that dominant First Generation organisations tend to be usurped by smaller, more imaginative ones. Small-scale experimentation, backed by risk-capital generating thousands of ideas, a handful of which become the mainstays of the future.
Although we must be realistic about comparisons with Silicon Valley, the forthcoming fiscal crisis is going to open up the public realm to similar processes. Not only will this be the end-game for many public sector agencies, it could be ours too with the cancellation of contracts for standard-issue public services from our bigger charities. Instead, new players will come along with entirely new ways to produce social benefit.
If you think this sounds far-fetched, then wake up. Participle is a social business which redesigns public services from the ground-up. Founded in 2007, without a legacy of First Generation services, Participle is free to focus on clean-break approaches – which many councils are already buying into. Whether the big charities behave like Participle - or still carry on fighting the last war - will be the sector’s biggest single test in the 2010s.
Which brings me back to those predictions. Firstly sackings. There are not enough radical thinkers leading top charities so, yes, some CEOs will need to make way. Secondly mergers. There will be an urgent need for capital to fund innovation and redesign so there will be more mergers. Thirdly, relations with Government. The sector will need to take bigger risks in its relationship with Government if we are to become a decisive force for change in the 2010s. The relationship can take it. We must stop the toadying and have the confidence to lead.
Our sector, you see, is a bit like the public sector - trapped by its recent history. With noble exceptions, most of our major charities are simply doing a better job than the Government of delivering First Generation Public Services. These services, though much better and more efficient, share the doomed formula of high cost and low effectiveness of nearly all First Generation Public Services.
Therefore, the absolutely critical challenge facing all major UK charities is how to create Second Generation Public Services that are better, cheaper and faster - and “co-produced” by a population used to having things done for them. This is the public services equivalent of moving from the mainframe computer to the IPlayer in one go. It is going to require a revolution. In innovation. In design. In delivery.
How might this play out? Well, the learning from other sectors is that dominant First Generation organisations tend to be usurped by smaller, more imaginative ones. Small-scale experimentation, backed by risk-capital generating thousands of ideas, a handful of which become the mainstays of the future.
Although we must be realistic about comparisons with Silicon Valley, the forthcoming fiscal crisis is going to open up the public realm to similar processes. Not only will this be the end-game for many public sector agencies, it could be ours too with the cancellation of contracts for standard-issue public services from our bigger charities. Instead, new players will come along with entirely new ways to produce social benefit.
If you think this sounds far-fetched, then wake up. Participle is a social business which redesigns public services from the ground-up. Founded in 2007, without a legacy of First Generation services, Participle is free to focus on clean-break approaches – which many councils are already buying into. Whether the big charities behave like Participle - or still carry on fighting the last war - will be the sector’s biggest single test in the 2010s.
Which brings me back to those predictions. Firstly sackings. There are not enough radical thinkers leading top charities so, yes, some CEOs will need to make way. Secondly mergers. There will be an urgent need for capital to fund innovation and redesign so there will be more mergers. Thirdly, relations with Government. The sector will need to take bigger risks in its relationship with Government if we are to become a decisive force for change in the 2010s. The relationship can take it. We must stop the toadying and have the confidence to lead.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Heroes and Celebrities
Just been watching one of those ITV/The Sun Pride of Britain type events. But rather than mawkish tales of done-good, this was about the courage of those serving in our armed forces. Despite deep reservations about the format ("Here tonight to present the award for Most Courageous Act, ex Spice Girl Emmmmma BUNTON"), the programme, almost despite itself, really worked.
Yes, what this slightly weird juxtaposition of celebrity-format and real, ordinary heroism emphasised was the graphic contrast between the individualism of the entertainment world versus the teamwork and solidarity of the forces. Had this not been ITV and the Sun, I could have believed this format had been chosen simply to underline this point.
Because time after time, the young men and women who came onto the stage, having had their acts relayed through reconstructions, were completely self-effecing, universally praising of colleagues and keen to attribute all success to the unit. None revelled in the glory and, many, you sensed, didn't like the attention at all.
What struck me is that the Forces are clearly putting something into people which is, in my book, good. Concern for others. Teamwork. Modesty. Courage. I don't often get emotional when I watch the telly.
But I do, oddly, when it comes to the things I hear about from Afghanistan and Iraq. The things people do to preserve life and to help their comrades. It moves me to tears, partly because it shows a side to us which is often overlain with other, prosaic concerns.
Life in Bury St Edmunds, even during its more animated moments, doesn't make many demands on one's higher nature. A door opened here, 50p in a cup there.
If things ever did get hairy - if I was in anything like the situations I saw tonight - I am not sure my own selfishness, bedded in through years of ease and habitual self-preservation, wouldn't get the better of me.
I would hope for better, but whether I could deliver a fraction of what I saw tonight, I doubt.
Yes, what this slightly weird juxtaposition of celebrity-format and real, ordinary heroism emphasised was the graphic contrast between the individualism of the entertainment world versus the teamwork and solidarity of the forces. Had this not been ITV and the Sun, I could have believed this format had been chosen simply to underline this point.
Because time after time, the young men and women who came onto the stage, having had their acts relayed through reconstructions, were completely self-effecing, universally praising of colleagues and keen to attribute all success to the unit. None revelled in the glory and, many, you sensed, didn't like the attention at all.
What struck me is that the Forces are clearly putting something into people which is, in my book, good. Concern for others. Teamwork. Modesty. Courage. I don't often get emotional when I watch the telly.
But I do, oddly, when it comes to the things I hear about from Afghanistan and Iraq. The things people do to preserve life and to help their comrades. It moves me to tears, partly because it shows a side to us which is often overlain with other, prosaic concerns.
Life in Bury St Edmunds, even during its more animated moments, doesn't make many demands on one's higher nature. A door opened here, 50p in a cup there.
If things ever did get hairy - if I was in anything like the situations I saw tonight - I am not sure my own selfishness, bedded in through years of ease and habitual self-preservation, wouldn't get the better of me.
I would hope for better, but whether I could deliver a fraction of what I saw tonight, I doubt.
Friday, December 18, 2009
On Trusteeship
Trusteeship. This touches on my life from many angles. I am a Trustee – of Impetus Trust, a social investor. I am a CEO who works to a board of Trustees. I have also set up about five organisations all of which have needed a Board of Trustees to run them. Within Boards I have played all the roles. Chair (twice). Secretary (three times) – but never Treasurers. I have seen good boards, bad boards and goddamn ugly ones. Unlike the Golden Eagle – of which there is only one type – there are as many variants of the Trustee Boards as there are birds in the sky.
I have decided to focus my piece on the very simple question of `What makes for a successful board of Trustees?’.. And I boil this down to five things.
1. It is Non Executive. By this I don’t mean it doesn’t `do things’ but it leaves the running of the organisation day to day to the CEO and senior team. Its focus is on strategy (Are we set up to the right things?), performance (Are we doing these thing well?) and probity (Are we making proper use of the resources at our disposal?). Before it does anything else, a Board needs to do the above properly. Too many boards blur the line. Too many boards sweat the small stuff and leave the bigger questions unanswered.
2. The Chair is in charge. Third sector boards tend to be full of passionate people who like to talk and are full of ideas. They are also full of differences of view and contain competing swirls and eddies of opinion. The Chair brings all this together for the benefit of the staff employed to run the organisation. The CEO needs to know, once all the debate is done, what the Board wants delivered. A strong Chair will do this. A weak Chair won’t protect the CEO enough and she ends up being buffeted by a board that doesn’t speak with a single voice.
3. It is professionalized. Most people on boards join without a lot of previous experience of governance. They believe all sorts of things about their role. Seldom is there a role-description. Training? Induction? Appraisal? You’ll be lucky. This is wrong, just as it is wrong to neglect these for employees. You want a high perfoming Board, you need the same kind of inputs you give to a senior team. They do all of this at Impetus Trust, which has been my best Trustee experience to date.
4. Information for the Board is first class. Trustees are responsible in law for an organisation. Therefore the quality of reports needs to be strong. In order to do their job well, the CEO and senior team have to give robust financial, operational, sales and HR data to trustees at least once a quarter. Further to this, they must also explain `risk’ – where it is, what can be done to mitigate it – both in these immediate areas and strategically for the longer term. Trustees depend hugely on this information to do their jobs well.
5. The Chair/CEO relationship. A chestnut I know but the heart of any effective organisation is a smooth interface between Governance and Delivery. Where there is respect, trust and an understanding of each others’ roles. A good Chair will understand the CEOs role in developing strategy and a good CEO will respect the sovereignty of the Board in the choice of strategy for the organisation. I have witnessed these relationships at their best and worst. A charity can withstand a toxic situation – but never for long. Indeed it is one of the biggest risks to the success of the mission and needs, therefore, to be reviewed regularly by a third party on the board.
I hope this offers some insight from my 15 years with Boards. Although the Trusteeship model often frustrates me it is also a huge resource, it keeps us all honest and, more broadly, enriches our civil society. Long-term we need, I believe, to up the game of boards. I long for Paid Trustees – really strong professional trustees – who, like first class private sector Non Execs – are brought in to show the level to which volunteers need to aspire – but, sadly, we are a million miles away from that right now. I also have worries long-term about what the conservatism of Boards might do to the responsiveness of our sector to the massive opportunities in the 2010s and 2020s for an ambitious and energetic response to the breakdown of the big state.
But that is another blog for another time….
I have decided to focus my piece on the very simple question of `What makes for a successful board of Trustees?’.. And I boil this down to five things.
1. It is Non Executive. By this I don’t mean it doesn’t `do things’ but it leaves the running of the organisation day to day to the CEO and senior team. Its focus is on strategy (Are we set up to the right things?), performance (Are we doing these thing well?) and probity (Are we making proper use of the resources at our disposal?). Before it does anything else, a Board needs to do the above properly. Too many boards blur the line. Too many boards sweat the small stuff and leave the bigger questions unanswered.
2. The Chair is in charge. Third sector boards tend to be full of passionate people who like to talk and are full of ideas. They are also full of differences of view and contain competing swirls and eddies of opinion. The Chair brings all this together for the benefit of the staff employed to run the organisation. The CEO needs to know, once all the debate is done, what the Board wants delivered. A strong Chair will do this. A weak Chair won’t protect the CEO enough and she ends up being buffeted by a board that doesn’t speak with a single voice.
3. It is professionalized. Most people on boards join without a lot of previous experience of governance. They believe all sorts of things about their role. Seldom is there a role-description. Training? Induction? Appraisal? You’ll be lucky. This is wrong, just as it is wrong to neglect these for employees. You want a high perfoming Board, you need the same kind of inputs you give to a senior team. They do all of this at Impetus Trust, which has been my best Trustee experience to date.
4. Information for the Board is first class. Trustees are responsible in law for an organisation. Therefore the quality of reports needs to be strong. In order to do their job well, the CEO and senior team have to give robust financial, operational, sales and HR data to trustees at least once a quarter. Further to this, they must also explain `risk’ – where it is, what can be done to mitigate it – both in these immediate areas and strategically for the longer term. Trustees depend hugely on this information to do their jobs well.
5. The Chair/CEO relationship. A chestnut I know but the heart of any effective organisation is a smooth interface between Governance and Delivery. Where there is respect, trust and an understanding of each others’ roles. A good Chair will understand the CEOs role in developing strategy and a good CEO will respect the sovereignty of the Board in the choice of strategy for the organisation. I have witnessed these relationships at their best and worst. A charity can withstand a toxic situation – but never for long. Indeed it is one of the biggest risks to the success of the mission and needs, therefore, to be reviewed regularly by a third party on the board.
I hope this offers some insight from my 15 years with Boards. Although the Trusteeship model often frustrates me it is also a huge resource, it keeps us all honest and, more broadly, enriches our civil society. Long-term we need, I believe, to up the game of boards. I long for Paid Trustees – really strong professional trustees – who, like first class private sector Non Execs – are brought in to show the level to which volunteers need to aspire – but, sadly, we are a million miles away from that right now. I also have worries long-term about what the conservatism of Boards might do to the responsiveness of our sector to the massive opportunities in the 2010s and 2020s for an ambitious and energetic response to the breakdown of the big state.
But that is another blog for another time….
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Trust or Contract?
What will be the dominant ideas in public services in the next decade? Local or industrial-scale? Community-run - or conventionally managed? Delivered mostly by ordinary people – or qualified professionals? Funded on the basis of trust – or ever tigher contracts?
Looking into the 2010s there seems to be two boats racing down the river towards us toward the open sea beyond the next election. One is the Good Ship Community, a gaily painted river boat. It is captained by Tory Iain Duncan Smith but on its pretty decks we see all sorts of people who share a belief in small-is-beautiful, in bottom-up community solutions. They share a passionate belief in the unleashed power of social capital to solve entrenched social problems – and a belief in trust over contracts as the basis of efficient public services.
The other boat is the HMS Contract, a large pleasure-cruiser whose wake slaps the boughs of the Community. Its tougher-minded crew share the other boat’s belief that the state isn’t the best solution. But they are signed up not to a million blooming flowers of local particularism, but, instead, a vast `scaling-up’ of proven solutions, a new Super-DNA of `what works’, all delivered in a business-like, professional way - and sealed with contracts. They admire the intentions of HMS Community but don’t really think it is a serious approach to large-scale change.
Both vessels are ploughing towards to open sea with hope - and not a little momentum. Though smaller, the Good Ship Community has the backing right-of-centre politicians. Its offer of hope, its trenchant critique of big, top down approaches and its potential financial savings make political sense. What the Good Ship lacks right now in method, it makes up for in its plucky appeal to trust, mutual care and social entrepreneurialism .
HMS Contract isn’t nearly as loved by the politicians. But the bigger boat already has huge momentum. Its crew knows that there will be an immediate imperative, from 2011, to save billions by quickly moving large tracts of the public sector out into new bodies which are not only more efficient but also more responsive and innovative. The sheer industrial-scale of this exercise will, believe the crew of HMS Contract, require heavy-lifting of major players from both the charitable and private sectors.
The timescales and big numbers involved here – tens of billions – will, almost certainly, invoke a high managerial nature change-process. This would mean, in turn, that HMS Contract would be far more `fit for purpose’ than the more charming, but far less easy-to-engage Good Ship.
And what the crew of HMS Contract will tell you, sotto voce, is that local, social capital-based solutions just won’t be quick enough to put in place and won’t be sufficiently uniform, predictable or measurable enough to stop politicians worrying about standards. And, on top, they might not be particularly cheap.
It is true that both sides have some testing questions to answer. Can indeed a Trust-based approach to public services, in which contracts play little or no part, guarantee real-world delivery? What about accountability when things go wrong? Might small community ventures soon get strangled by the bindweed of bureaucracy that comes with money from the state?
And, to ask a very hard question, might this fragmented approach to change risk the repeated wheel-reinvention that happens when you don’t just take the proven best model and run with it?
However, HMS Contract also faces tough questions. Could the heavy transaction costs associated with the contract-culture actually result in more, not less waste? And, perhaps most importantly, what is the place in public services for of the millions of ordinary citizen who aren’t professionals or managers, who just want to do some good for others in their community? While the Good Ship welcomes this citizen-army on board, it is harder to see their place on HMS Contract.
It is my hope that the answers to both sides’ questions lie with the other. In collaborations between the Good Ship and HMS Contract which bring the best of both to bear.
We shall see.
Looking into the 2010s there seems to be two boats racing down the river towards us toward the open sea beyond the next election. One is the Good Ship Community, a gaily painted river boat. It is captained by Tory Iain Duncan Smith but on its pretty decks we see all sorts of people who share a belief in small-is-beautiful, in bottom-up community solutions. They share a passionate belief in the unleashed power of social capital to solve entrenched social problems – and a belief in trust over contracts as the basis of efficient public services.
The other boat is the HMS Contract, a large pleasure-cruiser whose wake slaps the boughs of the Community. Its tougher-minded crew share the other boat’s belief that the state isn’t the best solution. But they are signed up not to a million blooming flowers of local particularism, but, instead, a vast `scaling-up’ of proven solutions, a new Super-DNA of `what works’, all delivered in a business-like, professional way - and sealed with contracts. They admire the intentions of HMS Community but don’t really think it is a serious approach to large-scale change.
Both vessels are ploughing towards to open sea with hope - and not a little momentum. Though smaller, the Good Ship Community has the backing right-of-centre politicians. Its offer of hope, its trenchant critique of big, top down approaches and its potential financial savings make political sense. What the Good Ship lacks right now in method, it makes up for in its plucky appeal to trust, mutual care and social entrepreneurialism .
HMS Contract isn’t nearly as loved by the politicians. But the bigger boat already has huge momentum. Its crew knows that there will be an immediate imperative, from 2011, to save billions by quickly moving large tracts of the public sector out into new bodies which are not only more efficient but also more responsive and innovative. The sheer industrial-scale of this exercise will, believe the crew of HMS Contract, require heavy-lifting of major players from both the charitable and private sectors.
The timescales and big numbers involved here – tens of billions – will, almost certainly, invoke a high managerial nature change-process. This would mean, in turn, that HMS Contract would be far more `fit for purpose’ than the more charming, but far less easy-to-engage Good Ship.
And what the crew of HMS Contract will tell you, sotto voce, is that local, social capital-based solutions just won’t be quick enough to put in place and won’t be sufficiently uniform, predictable or measurable enough to stop politicians worrying about standards. And, on top, they might not be particularly cheap.
It is true that both sides have some testing questions to answer. Can indeed a Trust-based approach to public services, in which contracts play little or no part, guarantee real-world delivery? What about accountability when things go wrong? Might small community ventures soon get strangled by the bindweed of bureaucracy that comes with money from the state?
And, to ask a very hard question, might this fragmented approach to change risk the repeated wheel-reinvention that happens when you don’t just take the proven best model and run with it?
However, HMS Contract also faces tough questions. Could the heavy transaction costs associated with the contract-culture actually result in more, not less waste? And, perhaps most importantly, what is the place in public services for of the millions of ordinary citizen who aren’t professionals or managers, who just want to do some good for others in their community? While the Good Ship welcomes this citizen-army on board, it is harder to see their place on HMS Contract.
It is my hope that the answers to both sides’ questions lie with the other. In collaborations between the Good Ship and HMS Contract which bring the best of both to bear.
We shall see.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Close Down Risk, You Close Down Possibility
Last week in my role as local Councillor I knocked on a door. I was conducting my Street Surgery which sees myself and a team of four knock on about a hundred doors each week to see how we, as Lib Dem Councillors, can help. Better than a draughty community-centre any day!
Anyway, at one door I spoke to a young-ish woman who told me very clearly that she plans to set up a self-help group for young people with mental health issues and COULD I HELP? Delighted I said of course, I had a locality budget and could help with room hires, leaflets and general promotion. Great she said, that's all that would be needed as she'd do it all voluntarily.
Fantastic, I thought, as I walked away with her contact details.
But when I got home I realised I had spoken too soon. Because what I hadn't considered was the bureaucratic bindweed we, as a society, now choose to wrap around ourselves to protect ourselves against the risk of this woman being either a thief or an exploiter.
First of all, I can't give an individual money - not even a few quid, not even if I act personally as guarantor if it all goes wrong. She has to open a bank account (tried to do this recently??) for the group and preferably register the organisation. Secondly, therefore, I have to find an intermediary organisation. They, in turn, need to insure the activity so they are not liable and the woman herself would need to be trained in their procedures and vetted using a CRB check.
If this woman is still up for this after all this palaver I will be surprised. I hope she is - but will understand if she isn't. When I started Speaking Up, you just didn't need any of this stuff to just do things. I could put together groups without any of this stuff in place.
It seems that in the 15 years since I set up Speaking Up we have moved from being country that said "You know what - we trust and admire people like you enough to give you the benefit of the doubt - at least at first when you're trying to get going" to "We assume that anyone is capable of the vilest crimes and therefore we will treat everyone at every stage as though this is possible - and live with the risks that this approach itself creates".
And that risk is that "social capital" - the vital elixir of trust, participation, civic goodwill and contribution is extinguished at source. Where the effort to close down risk also closes down possibility.
Now, is that, on balance, a good thing, or a bad thing? I know where I stand.
Anyway, at one door I spoke to a young-ish woman who told me very clearly that she plans to set up a self-help group for young people with mental health issues and COULD I HELP? Delighted I said of course, I had a locality budget and could help with room hires, leaflets and general promotion. Great she said, that's all that would be needed as she'd do it all voluntarily.
Fantastic, I thought, as I walked away with her contact details.
But when I got home I realised I had spoken too soon. Because what I hadn't considered was the bureaucratic bindweed we, as a society, now choose to wrap around ourselves to protect ourselves against the risk of this woman being either a thief or an exploiter.
First of all, I can't give an individual money - not even a few quid, not even if I act personally as guarantor if it all goes wrong. She has to open a bank account (tried to do this recently??) for the group and preferably register the organisation. Secondly, therefore, I have to find an intermediary organisation. They, in turn, need to insure the activity so they are not liable and the woman herself would need to be trained in their procedures and vetted using a CRB check.
If this woman is still up for this after all this palaver I will be surprised. I hope she is - but will understand if she isn't. When I started Speaking Up, you just didn't need any of this stuff to just do things. I could put together groups without any of this stuff in place.
It seems that in the 15 years since I set up Speaking Up we have moved from being country that said "You know what - we trust and admire people like you enough to give you the benefit of the doubt - at least at first when you're trying to get going" to "We assume that anyone is capable of the vilest crimes and therefore we will treat everyone at every stage as though this is possible - and live with the risks that this approach itself creates".
And that risk is that "social capital" - the vital elixir of trust, participation, civic goodwill and contribution is extinguished at source. Where the effort to close down risk also closes down possibility.
Now, is that, on balance, a good thing, or a bad thing? I know where I stand.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Hygge
A week. This is as long between posts as I have left it recently. The reason is that life has suddenly gone up a gear, two even. The main thing is the potential merger I am working on. It's getting close to final decision-time and, as you'd expect, there is a lot of last minute stuff to do.
On top of this, my other juggling acts continue. Impetus Trust. Futurebuilders. School Governor. Writer. The Council. Thee latter is fine but takes a steady day or so of my time each week, including evenings and weekends. Not least here my efforts to kick-start a local development trust to take on a building currently owned by the council.
My role here is to use the role of Councillor as broker/bringer-together. What I notice is that people do kind of accept your right to act. If I was doing this just as a new person from the community, it would definitely be more of a struggle. More on that another time.
The week has brought me into close contact with a wide arc of people, which kind of says a lot about what is good about my life.
On one side of the arc sit the folks currently managing Southgate Community Centre,the local people I meet every week during my Street Surgery sessions and the young "MPs" with learning difficulties recently elected by their peers in Suffolk.
At the other side of the arc sit Phil Hope, Minister of State for Social Care, the new CEO of Mencap, Mark Goldring, Peter Holbrook, the new CEO of Social Enterprise Coalition, Phillip Blond, the Tory policy guru, and, next week, Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems.
At various points of the arc in between I meet people running our services, like Amy Jones, our incredible HR director and Paul Morrish, my talented Director of Business Development. Like Steve Cook Editor of Third Sector, Kevin Curley who leads the umbrella NAVCA for small organisations and Richard Corden who runs the Compact Commission and Simon Duffy, the inspiration behind personal budgets in social care.
I am very lucky to have the opportunity to hear from and speak with all of these people. That my job and various roles gives me this unusually rich picture of how life looks now.
What do I take from this fish-eye lens? One thing stands out. That we're at the end of something and the beginning of something else. Quite what that new world looks like is unclear but the parameters of recent years are starting to shift - and fast. From the 46 year old IT technician formerly on 50k who can't get near a job to guys running major organisations, everyone feels very uncertain and also fairly anxious about what lies ahead.
All we know is that it will be different. Making this feel like an opportunity is, for those with nervous dispositions, like myself, hard-going at times. While part of me is entrepreneurial and loves a challenge, a less publicised side of me actually likes the routine and predictable. The Danes have a word for it - hygge. Cosiness, stability, security.
The next few weeks look like being very important. Both are busy as hell and all feature very importantly in terms of the long-term outlook. I need to be at my best. December is often like this for me - a make or break feel to it. So I have been there before.
Doesn't make it any easier though, somehow.
On top of this, my other juggling acts continue. Impetus Trust. Futurebuilders. School Governor. Writer. The Council. Thee latter is fine but takes a steady day or so of my time each week, including evenings and weekends. Not least here my efforts to kick-start a local development trust to take on a building currently owned by the council.
My role here is to use the role of Councillor as broker/bringer-together. What I notice is that people do kind of accept your right to act. If I was doing this just as a new person from the community, it would definitely be more of a struggle. More on that another time.
The week has brought me into close contact with a wide arc of people, which kind of says a lot about what is good about my life.
On one side of the arc sit the folks currently managing Southgate Community Centre,the local people I meet every week during my Street Surgery sessions and the young "MPs" with learning difficulties recently elected by their peers in Suffolk.
At the other side of the arc sit Phil Hope, Minister of State for Social Care, the new CEO of Mencap, Mark Goldring, Peter Holbrook, the new CEO of Social Enterprise Coalition, Phillip Blond, the Tory policy guru, and, next week, Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems.
At various points of the arc in between I meet people running our services, like Amy Jones, our incredible HR director and Paul Morrish, my talented Director of Business Development. Like Steve Cook Editor of Third Sector, Kevin Curley who leads the umbrella NAVCA for small organisations and Richard Corden who runs the Compact Commission and Simon Duffy, the inspiration behind personal budgets in social care.
I am very lucky to have the opportunity to hear from and speak with all of these people. That my job and various roles gives me this unusually rich picture of how life looks now.
What do I take from this fish-eye lens? One thing stands out. That we're at the end of something and the beginning of something else. Quite what that new world looks like is unclear but the parameters of recent years are starting to shift - and fast. From the 46 year old IT technician formerly on 50k who can't get near a job to guys running major organisations, everyone feels very uncertain and also fairly anxious about what lies ahead.
All we know is that it will be different. Making this feel like an opportunity is, for those with nervous dispositions, like myself, hard-going at times. While part of me is entrepreneurial and loves a challenge, a less publicised side of me actually likes the routine and predictable. The Danes have a word for it - hygge. Cosiness, stability, security.
The next few weeks look like being very important. Both are busy as hell and all feature very importantly in terms of the long-term outlook. I need to be at my best. December is often like this for me - a make or break feel to it. So I have been there before.
Doesn't make it any easier though, somehow.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Three-Eleven
Three-Eleven. This chilling-sounding number refers to 31st March 2011. Just over a year hence. When Government spending for the next three years will be set. When the world as we know it today, begins to end – and cuts kick in.
For those too young to remember, there are broadly two approaches to cuts: Salami-Slicing and Downsizing. Salami-Slicing takes a bit off everyone, so that everything looks the same - just 10% smaller, slower, worse .
Downsizing, on the other hand takes three forms. One is just abolishing recently added bits of Government spending that nobody will miss. Another is just offering less of something than before and asking the parent, patient or householder to make up the difference. The third is to still offer it - but find someone to do it who is better, faster and cheaper than the state.
We will, of course, see both Salami-Slicing and Downsizing from the next Government. What will be interesting will be the mix. My guess is that Downsizing will be the main order of the day. Because you cannot, in reality Salami-Slice 30% from most public services any more than you can take a blade off a helicopter and expect it to stay in the air.
You need a whole new way to fly.
Enter the third sector. Many of us are very nervous about Downsizing because a lot of what we do is discretionary - added-value, icing-on-cake type stuff. Activity easy to slew off without bad publicity. So should we be living in fear? Well, some of us, yes.
But the opportunities presented by Downsizing may well exceed the risks. We do things differently. We We speak to the needs of our time. The sheer weight of former state services that might fall our way could dwarf current Government funding to the sector. A future Niagra next to today’s gentle stream.
David Cameron is right about one thing: it’s all over for the big state. Never again will the Government be viewed as the natural provider of all health, education and welfare, offender-rehabilitation services. Yes, Government will fund, yes it will commission and keep us all accountable. But its clock is ticking down. Ours, by contrast, is coming up to the hour.
And there are other trends too which push our way. The Iain Duncan-Smith `Broken Society’ agenda plays straight to our incredible community sector. New money will flow here, if nowhere else. New bidding consortia such as 3SC, will help innovative third sector players to find those new ways to fly. And new social enterprises will shoot off from the NHS and local government as these sclerotic empires are, at last, broken up.
So Three Eleven need not chill your blood. Indeed it may even warm your heart!
For those too young to remember, there are broadly two approaches to cuts: Salami-Slicing and Downsizing. Salami-Slicing takes a bit off everyone, so that everything looks the same - just 10% smaller, slower, worse .
Downsizing, on the other hand takes three forms. One is just abolishing recently added bits of Government spending that nobody will miss. Another is just offering less of something than before and asking the parent, patient or householder to make up the difference. The third is to still offer it - but find someone to do it who is better, faster and cheaper than the state.
We will, of course, see both Salami-Slicing and Downsizing from the next Government. What will be interesting will be the mix. My guess is that Downsizing will be the main order of the day. Because you cannot, in reality Salami-Slice 30% from most public services any more than you can take a blade off a helicopter and expect it to stay in the air.
You need a whole new way to fly.
Enter the third sector. Many of us are very nervous about Downsizing because a lot of what we do is discretionary - added-value, icing-on-cake type stuff. Activity easy to slew off without bad publicity. So should we be living in fear? Well, some of us, yes.
But the opportunities presented by Downsizing may well exceed the risks. We do things differently. We We speak to the needs of our time. The sheer weight of former state services that might fall our way could dwarf current Government funding to the sector. A future Niagra next to today’s gentle stream.
David Cameron is right about one thing: it’s all over for the big state. Never again will the Government be viewed as the natural provider of all health, education and welfare, offender-rehabilitation services. Yes, Government will fund, yes it will commission and keep us all accountable. But its clock is ticking down. Ours, by contrast, is coming up to the hour.
And there are other trends too which push our way. The Iain Duncan-Smith `Broken Society’ agenda plays straight to our incredible community sector. New money will flow here, if nowhere else. New bidding consortia such as 3SC, will help innovative third sector players to find those new ways to fly. And new social enterprises will shoot off from the NHS and local government as these sclerotic empires are, at last, broken up.
So Three Eleven need not chill your blood. Indeed it may even warm your heart!
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Public Interest
Last week in a quiet police station in Bury St Edmunds, a phone rang. It was a man well known to the police, a section one offender (a sex offender to most of us) calling tosuggest that the newly bought and equipped children's home that Suffolk County Council were about to open next door to him might not be such a great idea, given his history of multiple rape, long-term imprisonment etc.
That this gentleman made the call should be applauded. That Suffolk County Council didn't do the usual reckie to make sure that the children in its care were being placed somewhere safe is, let's say, a rather large mistake. One in the eye for multi-agnency working (the police sort-of knew where he lived, apparently).
Those four children all currently live in my Division. I am their Councillor. My job at these times is to speak for their interests to those in control - their `corporate parent', Suffolk County Council.
So I write a fairly nice letter to the Cabinet Member for Children's Services. No reply. Another to the Director of Children's Service. Same. To the Leader of the Council. Zilch. I write to the local paper. No, they won't run this story. Half a million quid wasted (they can't sell the house now, of course). Kids made vulnerable. Massive management failure. Sorry, not interested. Spooky. Are they all Masons, I ask myself.
In despair, I contact the Chair of Children's Scrutiny Committee. Can I raise this at our next meeting? I ask. She's not sure if the rules allow this.
Local democracy in action. Had I been ranting and raving I might have understood people going to ground. But my letters were, if anything, understanding and placatory, suggesting system-failure not blame.
As those kids' Councillor I now feel, after pretty much a week of silence, angry and ignored. Parties with 55 of 75 seats don't need to listen to Opposition Members. Scrutiny is sidelined and chaired by their own side. Resultingly the Council becomes, more like a private members club than a representative body.
And when this kind of culture is modelled at the top, in which other views are ignored and the usual checks and balances are disregarded, it easily takes hold lower down.
From which arise the kind of royal fuck-ups that see us opening children homes next door to serial rapists - then acting like nothing happened.
Bad? It's disgusting.
That this gentleman made the call should be applauded. That Suffolk County Council didn't do the usual reckie to make sure that the children in its care were being placed somewhere safe is, let's say, a rather large mistake. One in the eye for multi-agnency working (the police sort-of knew where he lived, apparently).
Those four children all currently live in my Division. I am their Councillor. My job at these times is to speak for their interests to those in control - their `corporate parent', Suffolk County Council.
So I write a fairly nice letter to the Cabinet Member for Children's Services. No reply. Another to the Director of Children's Service. Same. To the Leader of the Council. Zilch. I write to the local paper. No, they won't run this story. Half a million quid wasted (they can't sell the house now, of course). Kids made vulnerable. Massive management failure. Sorry, not interested. Spooky. Are they all Masons, I ask myself.
In despair, I contact the Chair of Children's Scrutiny Committee. Can I raise this at our next meeting? I ask. She's not sure if the rules allow this.
Local democracy in action. Had I been ranting and raving I might have understood people going to ground. But my letters were, if anything, understanding and placatory, suggesting system-failure not blame.
As those kids' Councillor I now feel, after pretty much a week of silence, angry and ignored. Parties with 55 of 75 seats don't need to listen to Opposition Members. Scrutiny is sidelined and chaired by their own side. Resultingly the Council becomes, more like a private members club than a representative body.
And when this kind of culture is modelled at the top, in which other views are ignored and the usual checks and balances are disregarded, it easily takes hold lower down.
From which arise the kind of royal fuck-ups that see us opening children homes next door to serial rapists - then acting like nothing happened.
Bad? It's disgusting.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Ownership State
A new day, a new piece by the brilliant Phillip Blond. This time about how to change the state. Blond,predictably, attacks the sclerotic, centralising Target State. But he also attacks the New Public Sector of outsourcing, managerialism and internal markets.
Instead he proposes the Ownership State. What does he mean? Essentially, he sees a third way between the privatisation of the state and a Government-owned public sector. The `Ownership state' sees the conversion of public bodies into lots of little John Lewis Partnerships. Employee-owned in the main. Profit-making. Democratic. Front-line-led.
Blond clearly spent his years of obscurity reading very widely. For you see in his work all sorts of influences, including the radical `empowerment' gurus like Ricardo Semler, Henry Mintzberg and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Theory now put into practice by companies such as Harley Davison, Google and Goretex.
What do I think? On one level I find Blond very inspiring. He captures the problem very clearly and his solutions are original. Nevertheless, I find myself, as a product of my time (choice, competition, management-leadership), a little unconvinced.
However hard I try, I struggle to see public sector workers becoming more productive if given less rather than more management-guidance. And, having seen the chaos in some so-call democratic organisations, I have an abiding faith, however misguided, in role of a strong, insightful leadership in setting direction - and then incentivising and tracking it through solid operations-management.
But, as Blond says, my way has failed. We have tried all this stuff in the public sector and it's still there, on the floor, failing. Perhaps we do need to go one step further. Try some new stuff, like his employee-owned `civil companies' in which management `facilitates' and front-line staff `lead'.
Fills me with horror, but, hell, it's not as though we have much to fall back on.
Read more at
http://www.respublica.org.uk/sites/www.respublica.org.uk/files/The%20ownership%20state%20FINAL_0.pdf
Instead he proposes the Ownership State. What does he mean? Essentially, he sees a third way between the privatisation of the state and a Government-owned public sector. The `Ownership state' sees the conversion of public bodies into lots of little John Lewis Partnerships. Employee-owned in the main. Profit-making. Democratic. Front-line-led.
Blond clearly spent his years of obscurity reading very widely. For you see in his work all sorts of influences, including the radical `empowerment' gurus like Ricardo Semler, Henry Mintzberg and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Theory now put into practice by companies such as Harley Davison, Google and Goretex.
What do I think? On one level I find Blond very inspiring. He captures the problem very clearly and his solutions are original. Nevertheless, I find myself, as a product of my time (choice, competition, management-leadership), a little unconvinced.
However hard I try, I struggle to see public sector workers becoming more productive if given less rather than more management-guidance. And, having seen the chaos in some so-call democratic organisations, I have an abiding faith, however misguided, in role of a strong, insightful leadership in setting direction - and then incentivising and tracking it through solid operations-management.
But, as Blond says, my way has failed. We have tried all this stuff in the public sector and it's still there, on the floor, failing. Perhaps we do need to go one step further. Try some new stuff, like his employee-owned `civil companies' in which management `facilitates' and front-line staff `lead'.
Fills me with horror, but, hell, it's not as though we have much to fall back on.
Read more at
http://www.respublica.org.uk/sites/www.respublica.org.uk/files/The%20ownership%20state%20FINAL_0.pdf
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Meeting the Monarch
My turn came. [Voice from side] "Mr Craig Dearden-Phillips for Services to Social Enterprise".
I walked three paces, turned to face the Queen, nodded, walked forward. Her hand hung the medal on a clip that had been affixed to my suit and, he asked me how things were going at Speaking Up. "Shall I tell her about the merger?, I thought for a nanosecond before saying "Very well your Majesty".
Then she said "I believe this isn't your first Award". Wasn't sure quite how to respond but just said "No Maam, but nothing really touches this one!" before a hand was offered to shake, I walked backwards, nodded again, turned and walked off the stage.
I walked three paces, turned to face the Queen, nodded, walked forward. Her hand hung the medal on a clip that had been affixed to my suit and, he asked me how things were going at Speaking Up. "Shall I tell her about the merger?, I thought for a nanosecond before saying "Very well your Majesty".
Then she said "I believe this isn't your first Award". Wasn't sure quite how to respond but just said "No Maam, but nothing really touches this one!" before a hand was offered to shake, I walked backwards, nodded again, turned and walked off the stage.
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Worst Generation?
No, I don't mean the young. I actually mean the old. Or old-ish to be precise: the Baby Boomers. Born between 1945 and 1960.
Why so? Well, unlike their parents, the wartime generation, which, essentially "gave", this is, arguably, this generation that "took". While the generation that followed (Generations X and Y) tend to "cope". In the global time lottery, the Boomers won the star prize: Rising house prices, a growing state, free higher education, good pensions and a massive rise in living standards.
Meet your typical sixty something - Roy. He divorced at 47 (2 kids, then 13 and 15, now in careers) now living with Linda, his former PA who is ten years younger than him. Roy retired at 60 on a final salary scheme and now regularly travels the world with Linda. They own a five bedroomed house and two cars. Roy is investing his inheritance, which his parents (both now dead) scrimped-by over 50 years, in a couple of properties in France. Not that he will be leaving anything for his kids (this is his money) and he wants to live till he is 100!
And the grandchildren. Well, he's so busy he doesn't see them that much. It's never been the same with his kids since the divorce. He does get involved in the community. Sort of. He rings the local council when the leaves are building up on his path. But he's far too busy to sort it out himself. Things to do, you see. Golf, Bridge, garden.
Recognise the caricature? Well, that's because you will probably know someone who fits the mould. For this was the generation which thought it could have it all. Not just materially, in other ways too. You, me, the state, society, the earth even, could be said to be paying the price, now and tomorrow, for the life-choices of people like Roy.
The awkwardness on my part in writing this is, of course, that this is my parents' generation. My dear parents who I love dearly. In truth, they don't fit this caricature particularly well. They are still married. Their pension, like many, is in a mess. They live relatively modestly. And they structure their lives very much around their grandchildren.
But this doesn't detract from my broader point. The generation that lived before and the one that followed face bigger challenges. They took, we cope.
Those born after 1970 face the environmental crisis and the evidence-able knowledge of what happens when families go wrong. We know that flying around the world for fun is literally going to suck the air from or grandchildren's lungs. We know we will probably never fully retire.
Therefore we go about our lives with a little less hubris. Unless, we're completely ignorant, those of us under 45 know that it's not just about us.
The worst generation ever to have lived? Probably.
Why so? Well, unlike their parents, the wartime generation, which, essentially "gave", this is, arguably, this generation that "took". While the generation that followed (Generations X and Y) tend to "cope". In the global time lottery, the Boomers won the star prize: Rising house prices, a growing state, free higher education, good pensions and a massive rise in living standards.
Meet your typical sixty something - Roy. He divorced at 47 (2 kids, then 13 and 15, now in careers) now living with Linda, his former PA who is ten years younger than him. Roy retired at 60 on a final salary scheme and now regularly travels the world with Linda. They own a five bedroomed house and two cars. Roy is investing his inheritance, which his parents (both now dead) scrimped-by over 50 years, in a couple of properties in France. Not that he will be leaving anything for his kids (this is his money) and he wants to live till he is 100!
And the grandchildren. Well, he's so busy he doesn't see them that much. It's never been the same with his kids since the divorce. He does get involved in the community. Sort of. He rings the local council when the leaves are building up on his path. But he's far too busy to sort it out himself. Things to do, you see. Golf, Bridge, garden.
Recognise the caricature? Well, that's because you will probably know someone who fits the mould. For this was the generation which thought it could have it all. Not just materially, in other ways too. You, me, the state, society, the earth even, could be said to be paying the price, now and tomorrow, for the life-choices of people like Roy.
The awkwardness on my part in writing this is, of course, that this is my parents' generation. My dear parents who I love dearly. In truth, they don't fit this caricature particularly well. They are still married. Their pension, like many, is in a mess. They live relatively modestly. And they structure their lives very much around their grandchildren.
But this doesn't detract from my broader point. The generation that lived before and the one that followed face bigger challenges. They took, we cope.
Those born after 1970 face the environmental crisis and the evidence-able knowledge of what happens when families go wrong. We know that flying around the world for fun is literally going to suck the air from or grandchildren's lungs. We know we will probably never fully retire.
Therefore we go about our lives with a little less hubris. Unless, we're completely ignorant, those of us under 45 know that it's not just about us.
The worst generation ever to have lived? Probably.
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