Soon, a road-trip that started in June 1994 will, for me, finally come to a halt. Sometime in the next few months, I plan to stand down as Chairman of VoiceAbility. Just to remind, I was the founding CEO of Speaking Up, one of the two organisations that came together to form VoiceAbilty in April 2010. Seventeen years of involvement will come to a close.
Of all that time, I probably enjoyed the earlier and late parts the most. I am a natural 'early days' person and my temperament and skill-set is highly suited to start-up phase of organisations. But I also enjoyed my period as Chair enormously, striking a powerful parrtnership with our CEO, Jonathan Senker, who came from the other organisation we merged with, Advocacy Partners.
It was my hunch, correct as it turned out, that Jonathan, not I, was the right CEO for the new organisation. I had actually hit a natural limit to what I could bring to the job while I could see that Jonathan had miles of road in front of him. I could see that he would lead us to a better place.
Which already, in less than two years, he has. While like all organisations we have had to take some direct-hits, he's steered the ship extremely well, addressed our deeper challenges and built a great executive team around himself. Although quite tough decisions have been required, I have been delighted with our progress, particularly when I look around at what is happening to other organisations.
As Chair, my job has been to supply the CEO with the correctly calibrated blend of support and challenge that characterises this relationship, at its best. Not always easy to get right as a former CEO, but I think we have both been pleasantly surprised by how well we have ticked each others' boxes. Of course, I was always going to be a 'transitional chair', helping to seal the merger and our Governance thereafter, then riding off into the sunset, as the new organisation consolidated.
We are now very near that time so the search for a new Chair is on. This is something we are taking very seriously. We all know how important the Chair-CEO relationship is to the overall fate of an organisation. The person who leads our Board will have to be somebody not only of high quality with strong commitment and connections but have a reasonable amount of time to develop the board itself.
Also, we are particularly interested in people with a lived experience of disability or being a carer, though this is by no means essential. And because we have charitable status, we need a person who can afford to do this for no salary.
Interested? This is, take it from me, a great organisation and opportunity. VoiceAbility is a growing organisation with a great staff team and a strong group of trustees. I am leaving because it is right to do so, not because I feel a pressing need to so do. I feel my own legacy, as one of the founders, is now safe and that I can move on now. Seventeen years is enough time. While i still bring something, I personally don't think it is quite enough. So the search is on now for a replacement.
If you think you might be interested, contact karen.jefferson@voiceability.org for a pack. Or if you want a chat with me, I am on @deardenphillips - or leave a message in the comments box.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
How Soon Is Now?
Anyone of a certain age knows the song of this title. Just as most of the men will have, at some stage, had a monstrous crush on Kate Bush (or still have one in some cases). There comes a time in your life when you recall 25 years ago a lot more powerfully than five years ago. For it is these times, between our sixteenth and our twenty-sixth birthday that fix us in aspic.
And I am not just talking music here. There's people too. Many of my key friendships are now about 20-30 years old. I make new ones, sure, but it gets harder as you get older. Knowing someone for 20 years ties you to them harder than a shared hobby, work or a liking for Jonathan Franzen.
For me, time counts. Every year longer builds the heritage, even if the friendship becomes more challenging, as indeed one of two have done recently, as certain male friend have crash-burned rather than smooth-landed into middle-life.
You know when you're in safe company. I met two old uni friends recently, just for a couple of hours, after work for snatched pizza in London and I felt 'home' in a way I realised I hadn't done for quite some time. I confess too that I felt myself taking the genuine interest in their lives that I often struggle to muster on a daily basis. Quite what that says about my 'quality' I am not sure, but I am being frank.
It's books too. My reading recently has taken me deep into the 80s, the time I feel I come from: David Peace's 'GB84', Martin Amis' 'Money', Umberto Eco's 'Name of the the Rose'. I fight the urge to re-read. What's new to find out, I ask?
My political antennae reflect the tuning of the period. I am still politically moderate, my young identity wrought against both Militant, on one side, and Monetarism on the other. And still feel angry by the divisive legacy of Thatcherism while also feeling, on some level, liberated by the energy-kick which her new settlement gave to the country . Twenty five years on I am still anchored in a mental seabed of left and right, good and bad, north and south - even though my boat has somehow accommodated elements of all.
Being able to remember 25 years worth of adult life can either be depressing or liberating. At times, I feel there is nothing really new, that most of what I am ever likely to feel, think or say has already been said. That my life will spool predictably forward, each year like a new Van Morrison album - slightly different to the last one but, basically, the same songs. All that feels new on these days is the high-fear that comes with responsibility and others' expectations.
On other, better days, the super-stable nature of life in one's 40s feels comfortable and assuring. I have a life, a family, a structure, a place in the world. Yes, it's held together by the gossamer-strings of health and fortune, but, save for freak events, my life is probably as steady as life has been for anyone in any place at any time.
The challenge, at such times, is summoning the sense of possibility. Trying to believe that the next Van Morrison album will be different. That something you read might actually make you think afresh about life. That the next person you meet might change your life in some really quite unexpected way.
And I am not just talking music here. There's people too. Many of my key friendships are now about 20-30 years old. I make new ones, sure, but it gets harder as you get older. Knowing someone for 20 years ties you to them harder than a shared hobby, work or a liking for Jonathan Franzen.
For me, time counts. Every year longer builds the heritage, even if the friendship becomes more challenging, as indeed one of two have done recently, as certain male friend have crash-burned rather than smooth-landed into middle-life.
You know when you're in safe company. I met two old uni friends recently, just for a couple of hours, after work for snatched pizza in London and I felt 'home' in a way I realised I hadn't done for quite some time. I confess too that I felt myself taking the genuine interest in their lives that I often struggle to muster on a daily basis. Quite what that says about my 'quality' I am not sure, but I am being frank.
It's books too. My reading recently has taken me deep into the 80s, the time I feel I come from: David Peace's 'GB84', Martin Amis' 'Money', Umberto Eco's 'Name of the the Rose'. I fight the urge to re-read. What's new to find out, I ask?
My political antennae reflect the tuning of the period. I am still politically moderate, my young identity wrought against both Militant, on one side, and Monetarism on the other. And still feel angry by the divisive legacy of Thatcherism while also feeling, on some level, liberated by the energy-kick which her new settlement gave to the country . Twenty five years on I am still anchored in a mental seabed of left and right, good and bad, north and south - even though my boat has somehow accommodated elements of all.
Being able to remember 25 years worth of adult life can either be depressing or liberating. At times, I feel there is nothing really new, that most of what I am ever likely to feel, think or say has already been said. That my life will spool predictably forward, each year like a new Van Morrison album - slightly different to the last one but, basically, the same songs. All that feels new on these days is the high-fear that comes with responsibility and others' expectations.
On other, better days, the super-stable nature of life in one's 40s feels comfortable and assuring. I have a life, a family, a structure, a place in the world. Yes, it's held together by the gossamer-strings of health and fortune, but, save for freak events, my life is probably as steady as life has been for anyone in any place at any time.
The challenge, at such times, is summoning the sense of possibility. Trying to believe that the next Van Morrison album will be different. That something you read might actually make you think afresh about life. That the next person you meet might change your life in some really quite unexpected way.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Quiet Army of the Professional-Unemployed
It's not a problem that tends to be discussed in polite circles. But I am going to do it anyway. It's the new Quiet Army of people who used to have good jobs in the public and voluntary sectors who are not working.
These are not people who declare themselves out of work and go down the Job Centre. Nor are they the 'usual suspects' - the drongos who organisations tend to jettison early in a recession.
No, these are people of quality who used to be running things and who have great track-records. The recession is now eating into new territory - and nobody is safe.
How do I know? As a firm with a consulting offer, Stepping Out have experienced a massive spike in people who, for one reason or another, are available for freelance work. I'm talking about emails every couple of days.
Although people we hear fro are really impressive, we just don't have the volume of work to increase our pool just now. But what hits me is just how good many of these people are - they are not people who you'd expect to be prospecting for roles.
This is, of course, only the beginning. We are seeing a structural downsizing of both the state and voluntary sector. The gently rising curve of 2001-10 will, over the next two years, steeply plummet, leaving tens of thousands of people out of jobs. My advice to people in this position is threefold.
One is to consider switching sectors. Although the private sector isn't exactly booming, these firms are still hiring and spending.
Another is to think about downsizing or interim work. There isn't a massive market for senior third sector managers who earn 50k. There are thousands more jobs one layer down where there is a dearth of good people. Being in work is always better than being out of work - and allows a climb-back at some stage.
Finally, I advise people who are really capable to think about setting up in business themselves. It's extremely hard, especially at the moment, but if you can get through the first year, you're probably going to be OK. The rate at which organisations are shedding core people is creating some clear deficits in capabilites which have to be bought-in short-term. If you can define your focus, deal with the knock-backs and early solitude and create happy clients, it's likely that you'll emerge with a business on the other side.
I am considering a blog on how to set up a viable consulting business - but that would perhaps be shooting myself in the foot (which of course I am very good at doing). Another day!
These are not people who declare themselves out of work and go down the Job Centre. Nor are they the 'usual suspects' - the drongos who organisations tend to jettison early in a recession.
No, these are people of quality who used to be running things and who have great track-records. The recession is now eating into new territory - and nobody is safe.
How do I know? As a firm with a consulting offer, Stepping Out have experienced a massive spike in people who, for one reason or another, are available for freelance work. I'm talking about emails every couple of days.
Although people we hear fro are really impressive, we just don't have the volume of work to increase our pool just now. But what hits me is just how good many of these people are - they are not people who you'd expect to be prospecting for roles.
This is, of course, only the beginning. We are seeing a structural downsizing of both the state and voluntary sector. The gently rising curve of 2001-10 will, over the next two years, steeply plummet, leaving tens of thousands of people out of jobs. My advice to people in this position is threefold.
One is to consider switching sectors. Although the private sector isn't exactly booming, these firms are still hiring and spending.
Another is to think about downsizing or interim work. There isn't a massive market for senior third sector managers who earn 50k. There are thousands more jobs one layer down where there is a dearth of good people. Being in work is always better than being out of work - and allows a climb-back at some stage.
Finally, I advise people who are really capable to think about setting up in business themselves. It's extremely hard, especially at the moment, but if you can get through the first year, you're probably going to be OK. The rate at which organisations are shedding core people is creating some clear deficits in capabilites which have to be bought-in short-term. If you can define your focus, deal with the knock-backs and early solitude and create happy clients, it's likely that you'll emerge with a business on the other side.
I am considering a blog on how to set up a viable consulting business - but that would perhaps be shooting myself in the foot (which of course I am very good at doing). Another day!
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
How charities use and abuse consultants
It's coming up to a year since I set up my consultancy, Stepping Out, and I'm glad to say we've worked with about 25 clients - many in the third sector.
So what have we learned about how the sector uses external advisers?
Broadly, clients come in one of three types: Adventurers, Micro-Managers and Ditherers.
The Adventurers have a clear idea of what they want from you, yet are open to advice. They have a sensible, faff-free process for hiring you that respects everyone's time. They know you bring something new and welcome you into their world.
Crucially, the Adventurers roll their sleeves up too, learning from you as they go, rather than seeing you just as a hired hand. And should the project change, you can have a sensible conversation without them getting in a tizz. Trust rules.
At the other end of the scale are the Micro-Managers. Ostensibly, they want help, but their fixed ideas make them impregnable to advice. When searching for a consultant, they set up such a drawn-out process that many of the better ones walk away.
If they go on to choose you from the 50 consultants they have met, you're then handed a shopping list of stuff to report back on every week. If you can't comply, the relationship starts creaking. Raise this with them and they get very shirty. You seldom make any real money because they're always on the phone to you about something. In truth, the Micro-Managers get little value from external support: they may as well do it themselves and save the money.
But the trickiest group by far is the Ditherers. They seek outside help because they are lost in their jobs, fearful of the future and haven't done any new thinking for a decade. Which is fine, but their organisations are often in such a bad state that, as an adviser, it's impossible to know where to start. But you do start - and then halfway through (and this always happens) they shift the goalposts and you're back to square one.
Ditherers also tend to be easily distracted by day-to-day fire-fighting - and these days, especially, a general sense of despair as the abyss beckons. As a consultant, you end up in a bubble, struggling to gain any traction in the organisation. The assignment ends in a friendly enough way but with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction on both sides. The Ditherers then pick up the phone to another consultant and the whole dance starts again.
OK, these are caricatures and I am happy to report that nearly all of our clients are firm Adventurers. But we come across Micro-Managers and Ditherers in the third sector all the time - more than in the public sector, I have to say. Fortunately, one becomes more skilled at spotting them. Only Adventurers really benefit from external consultancy.
Before they splash out, then, I would invite readers of Third Sector to reflect on whether they are, in truth, an Adventurer, Micro-Manager or a Ditherer. You might save yourself a lot of money - and your advisers a lot of heartache.
So what have we learned about how the sector uses external advisers?
Broadly, clients come in one of three types: Adventurers, Micro-Managers and Ditherers.
The Adventurers have a clear idea of what they want from you, yet are open to advice. They have a sensible, faff-free process for hiring you that respects everyone's time. They know you bring something new and welcome you into their world.
Crucially, the Adventurers roll their sleeves up too, learning from you as they go, rather than seeing you just as a hired hand. And should the project change, you can have a sensible conversation without them getting in a tizz. Trust rules.
At the other end of the scale are the Micro-Managers. Ostensibly, they want help, but their fixed ideas make them impregnable to advice. When searching for a consultant, they set up such a drawn-out process that many of the better ones walk away.
If they go on to choose you from the 50 consultants they have met, you're then handed a shopping list of stuff to report back on every week. If you can't comply, the relationship starts creaking. Raise this with them and they get very shirty. You seldom make any real money because they're always on the phone to you about something. In truth, the Micro-Managers get little value from external support: they may as well do it themselves and save the money.
But the trickiest group by far is the Ditherers. They seek outside help because they are lost in their jobs, fearful of the future and haven't done any new thinking for a decade. Which is fine, but their organisations are often in such a bad state that, as an adviser, it's impossible to know where to start. But you do start - and then halfway through (and this always happens) they shift the goalposts and you're back to square one.
Ditherers also tend to be easily distracted by day-to-day fire-fighting - and these days, especially, a general sense of despair as the abyss beckons. As a consultant, you end up in a bubble, struggling to gain any traction in the organisation. The assignment ends in a friendly enough way but with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction on both sides. The Ditherers then pick up the phone to another consultant and the whole dance starts again.
OK, these are caricatures and I am happy to report that nearly all of our clients are firm Adventurers. But we come across Micro-Managers and Ditherers in the third sector all the time - more than in the public sector, I have to say. Fortunately, one becomes more skilled at spotting them. Only Adventurers really benefit from external consultancy.
Before they splash out, then, I would invite readers of Third Sector to reflect on whether they are, in truth, an Adventurer, Micro-Manager or a Ditherer. You might save yourself a lot of money - and your advisers a lot of heartache.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Big Judgement Day
On Tuesday I am going to be a judge at the Big Venture Challenge run by Unltd and the Big Lottery Fund where 41 entrepreneurs compete to be one of 25 selected for a chunky investment package.
As far as these types of competition go, I am impressed so far both by the calibre of the 41 and the way the whole thing is being run. It is professional, brings the right kind of people in as judges and avoids Dragons Den cliches, going instead for a constructive interview process.
The pack arrived last week and I was pretty dazzled by the diversity of stuff we're looking at. Alongside well-known social enterprises in the employment sector there are start-ups and early stage businesses doing everything from clothing for disabled people through to franchising opps for the unemployed.
Well done to Unltd and the Lottery for putting all of this together. It all reads like a compendium of the best emerging stuff in social enterprise right now in the UK, all overseen by judges who know one end of a good business from the other. The fact that the BLF is getting into social investment also deserves polite applause (they will get an ovation when they do it as a matter of course).
Any criticisms? Not really. Well, not massive ones. A few applicants look like they're just plugging financial holes, others looking for that one ;last big slug' of finance that we all probably know won't get them over the line to sustainability.
Others look at bit too fancy for my liking - lots of important sounding people on the board but not a single sale yet to point towards. I do have a bit of a thing about stuff that is web-based. Perhaps it's being from outside London, but some of the ones I see look like they might just work in Shoreditch but probably not in Shaw (that's a small town near Oldham, btw).
How will I approach the judging? Well, one thing to be sure I will be courteous. Anyone hauling their ass in front of a panel deserves to be given a proper hearing. No grandstanding or wannabe Peter Jones'.
Having done it myself before, I know it's bastard-difficult to get things across without some pillock trying to look good by tripping you up.
The only time I went in front of a bunch of smart-alec wan**rs left me with a longstanding distaste for their organisation (you can guess, I didn't get the backing!).
The other thing when looking at these things is to be aware that you can only ever know so much as a panel member. Even when the papers are great, the people and pitches clear, you're left with what is essentially a choice between two punts. I have often been as confounded by the success of certain things as I have by the failures of others I thought were complete bankers.
In truth, however smart, experienced or informed, nobody knows what's going to be a hit. Social investment will always be as much an art as a science.
As far as these types of competition go, I am impressed so far both by the calibre of the 41 and the way the whole thing is being run. It is professional, brings the right kind of people in as judges and avoids Dragons Den cliches, going instead for a constructive interview process.
The pack arrived last week and I was pretty dazzled by the diversity of stuff we're looking at. Alongside well-known social enterprises in the employment sector there are start-ups and early stage businesses doing everything from clothing for disabled people through to franchising opps for the unemployed.
Well done to Unltd and the Lottery for putting all of this together. It all reads like a compendium of the best emerging stuff in social enterprise right now in the UK, all overseen by judges who know one end of a good business from the other. The fact that the BLF is getting into social investment also deserves polite applause (they will get an ovation when they do it as a matter of course).
Any criticisms? Not really. Well, not massive ones. A few applicants look like they're just plugging financial holes, others looking for that one ;last big slug' of finance that we all probably know won't get them over the line to sustainability.
Others look at bit too fancy for my liking - lots of important sounding people on the board but not a single sale yet to point towards. I do have a bit of a thing about stuff that is web-based. Perhaps it's being from outside London, but some of the ones I see look like they might just work in Shoreditch but probably not in Shaw (that's a small town near Oldham, btw).
How will I approach the judging? Well, one thing to be sure I will be courteous. Anyone hauling their ass in front of a panel deserves to be given a proper hearing. No grandstanding or wannabe Peter Jones'.
Having done it myself before, I know it's bastard-difficult to get things across without some pillock trying to look good by tripping you up.
The only time I went in front of a bunch of smart-alec wan**rs left me with a longstanding distaste for their organisation (you can guess, I didn't get the backing!).
The other thing when looking at these things is to be aware that you can only ever know so much as a panel member. Even when the papers are great, the people and pitches clear, you're left with what is essentially a choice between two punts. I have often been as confounded by the success of certain things as I have by the failures of others I thought were complete bankers.
In truth, however smart, experienced or informed, nobody knows what's going to be a hit. Social investment will always be as much an art as a science.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Why I am in Business
Today I mark a year in business with a dinner. But not alone! I spent it with my new Head of Delivery, Rob Fountain who starts with us on 5th September.
Year One has been pretty good, though I have to say, tough as hell. It started brilliantly with a substantial contract with what is now NAViGO Community Interest Company – which we helped step out from the public sector in April.
When I look back, I am amazed at how utterly fortunate we were to win that contract. I will always be grateful not only to their CEO, Kevin Bond, for taking a a massive punt on us but also John Willis, the Associate Consultant who travelled every week up North to deliver it so brilliantly for us.
There is no doubt in business that you need not only luck but the right people willing to back you. Kevin could easily have said ‘Where’s your track record?’ or ‘Can you guarantee delivery on this?’ before committing. But he just had a feeling, believed in us and we tried to repay his faith with amazing delivery.
One of the best things about this business has been the clients we’ve worked with. All of them have left behind secure public sector management jobs to lead a new venture. All have taken on more responsibility, stress and leadership in the belief that a better public service lies on the other side of the divide. All of these guys and women are mavericks, people who don’t fit the usual public sector template.
But it isn’t just altruism guiding them. All want to breathe, all want autonomy and to declutter their lives of endless public sector routines. All want to manage and lead in the true sense, not just be a middle-management number.
A year into something you ask yourself ‘Why am I doing this?’. At a values level, I am, in my small way, helping to create the kind of public services I would like my own family to use. Entrepreneurial. Responsive. Customer-centred. Delivered with pride and care by organizations which think and act like great businesses, not vile bureaucracies.
On a personal level, I feel I have set myself free, able to operate in a company I control and which frees me to do the right things by my family and friends as well as by wider society.
This includes setting up the Stepping Out Foundation which in September will receive its first portion of profit from the business. The Foundation will be a small ‘angel’ fund to help very early, community based social entrepreneurs with the seed money to get out the blocks. The money will be small at first and grow as the businesses get nearer to the bigger blocks of funding now available for social entrepreneurs.
It is really aiming at people in the position I was as 24 year old trying to get the early Speaking Up going. Those early few hundred quid meant more than just money. No buggering about with forms, reports, a ‘Dragons’ Den’ – just a cheque and a card to say ‘Good luck’. They showed trust, belief, support and solidarity – which I needed as much as the money.
We already have a bunch of people to back and it will be mainly focused on our communities out here in Suffolk. For while Stepping Out is social in a broad sense, the Foundation is social in a very specific sense and my aim is to grow it over time into a sizeable fund.
Thankfully, this year, I have something to put into the Foundation. Next year, I aim to make enough money to put a lot more in. I hope also to make a bit more for myself. I survived in Year One on half of what I normally make and have reinvested every penny of profit – bar what’s in the Foundation – back in the business. This will hopefully support our growth – but it may also buttress us during any difficult period ahead.
It’s this willingness to put everything into your business – your time, your energy and money you could go out any buy a conservatory with – that makes entrepreneurs different to other people. I know people who would sell their houses in order to save or grow their business.
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, but I understand from where they are coming. Businesses get under your skin in a way that jobs seldom do. They are somehow an expression of our true selves – and become totems of our independence and spirit.
Whether I will be cracking the champagne or drowning my sorrows in a year’s time I really don’t know. That’s one of the best and most motivating things about being in business. Nothing quite spurs you on like uncertainty. Having one success under my belt already has helped me shrug off the fear of failure.
While I know it would be bad, I also know that I would survive and bounce back, somehow. If failure is a dirty word, you often fail to start in the first place. Knowing you can live with it, is actually quite liberating.
Anyway, tomorrow we start year two. Myself, Rob, our two superb Non Execs, our Associates and our financial backers.
Wish us luck!
Year One has been pretty good, though I have to say, tough as hell. It started brilliantly with a substantial contract with what is now NAViGO Community Interest Company – which we helped step out from the public sector in April.
When I look back, I am amazed at how utterly fortunate we were to win that contract. I will always be grateful not only to their CEO, Kevin Bond, for taking a a massive punt on us but also John Willis, the Associate Consultant who travelled every week up North to deliver it so brilliantly for us.
There is no doubt in business that you need not only luck but the right people willing to back you. Kevin could easily have said ‘Where’s your track record?’ or ‘Can you guarantee delivery on this?’ before committing. But he just had a feeling, believed in us and we tried to repay his faith with amazing delivery.
One of the best things about this business has been the clients we’ve worked with. All of them have left behind secure public sector management jobs to lead a new venture. All have taken on more responsibility, stress and leadership in the belief that a better public service lies on the other side of the divide. All of these guys and women are mavericks, people who don’t fit the usual public sector template.
But it isn’t just altruism guiding them. All want to breathe, all want autonomy and to declutter their lives of endless public sector routines. All want to manage and lead in the true sense, not just be a middle-management number.
A year into something you ask yourself ‘Why am I doing this?’. At a values level, I am, in my small way, helping to create the kind of public services I would like my own family to use. Entrepreneurial. Responsive. Customer-centred. Delivered with pride and care by organizations which think and act like great businesses, not vile bureaucracies.
On a personal level, I feel I have set myself free, able to operate in a company I control and which frees me to do the right things by my family and friends as well as by wider society.
This includes setting up the Stepping Out Foundation which in September will receive its first portion of profit from the business. The Foundation will be a small ‘angel’ fund to help very early, community based social entrepreneurs with the seed money to get out the blocks. The money will be small at first and grow as the businesses get nearer to the bigger blocks of funding now available for social entrepreneurs.
It is really aiming at people in the position I was as 24 year old trying to get the early Speaking Up going. Those early few hundred quid meant more than just money. No buggering about with forms, reports, a ‘Dragons’ Den’ – just a cheque and a card to say ‘Good luck’. They showed trust, belief, support and solidarity – which I needed as much as the money.
We already have a bunch of people to back and it will be mainly focused on our communities out here in Suffolk. For while Stepping Out is social in a broad sense, the Foundation is social in a very specific sense and my aim is to grow it over time into a sizeable fund.
Thankfully, this year, I have something to put into the Foundation. Next year, I aim to make enough money to put a lot more in. I hope also to make a bit more for myself. I survived in Year One on half of what I normally make and have reinvested every penny of profit – bar what’s in the Foundation – back in the business. This will hopefully support our growth – but it may also buttress us during any difficult period ahead.
It’s this willingness to put everything into your business – your time, your energy and money you could go out any buy a conservatory with – that makes entrepreneurs different to other people. I know people who would sell their houses in order to save or grow their business.
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, but I understand from where they are coming. Businesses get under your skin in a way that jobs seldom do. They are somehow an expression of our true selves – and become totems of our independence and spirit.
Whether I will be cracking the champagne or drowning my sorrows in a year’s time I really don’t know. That’s one of the best and most motivating things about being in business. Nothing quite spurs you on like uncertainty. Having one success under my belt already has helped me shrug off the fear of failure.
While I know it would be bad, I also know that I would survive and bounce back, somehow. If failure is a dirty word, you often fail to start in the first place. Knowing you can live with it, is actually quite liberating.
Anyway, tomorrow we start year two. Myself, Rob, our two superb Non Execs, our Associates and our financial backers.
Wish us luck!
Monday, August 22, 2011
Spinning Out Together
When I set up Stepping Out, I expected it exclusively to be about groups of public managers wanting to set up free-standing businesses. What I didn't anticipate was the appetite for partnerships between groups wanting to spin out and existing social businesses and charities. About half the calls we get at the moment are about this.
Why does it have appeal? Three reasons stand out. The first is that public managers are often well aware that they don't have the full set of capabilities to go it alone. And the idea of doing everything from scratch - setting up accounts, payroll, HR etc - is deeply off-putting. A partner who can bring know-how and some slot-in back-office functions has some appeal.
The second factor is that Councils and other public bodies feel a lot less nervous when a third party is involved. Having a 'name' organisation involved assures Councillors in particular that the venture is legitimate and that if a well-known name is willing to risk their reputation on a joint-venture project, they are safe to do so too. Plus, as risk averse organisations, councils like the idea that someone who know what they are doing will be helping to deliver the new service safely and on time.
The third factor, and this is crucial, is about values. Hardly anyone I speak to in public sector wants to go in with an organisation whose ethos is a million miles from their own. While they can envisage doing business and even delivering alongside an organisation set up purely for profit, the idea of being joint partners in an organisation which is clearly identified as money-making is, rightly or wrongly, a turn-off for most public managers - and, interestingly, Councillors too who need a simple 'good-change' story to tell to the voters that isn't 'privatisation through the back-door'.
How many of these conversations with come to anything we don't know, but I am struck by how many Councils, charities and social enterprises seem to want to work together on spin-outs. It's not a direction I anticipated but one which I can see a lot of mileage in.
Why does it have appeal? Three reasons stand out. The first is that public managers are often well aware that they don't have the full set of capabilities to go it alone. And the idea of doing everything from scratch - setting up accounts, payroll, HR etc - is deeply off-putting. A partner who can bring know-how and some slot-in back-office functions has some appeal.
The second factor is that Councils and other public bodies feel a lot less nervous when a third party is involved. Having a 'name' organisation involved assures Councillors in particular that the venture is legitimate and that if a well-known name is willing to risk their reputation on a joint-venture project, they are safe to do so too. Plus, as risk averse organisations, councils like the idea that someone who know what they are doing will be helping to deliver the new service safely and on time.
The third factor, and this is crucial, is about values. Hardly anyone I speak to in public sector wants to go in with an organisation whose ethos is a million miles from their own. While they can envisage doing business and even delivering alongside an organisation set up purely for profit, the idea of being joint partners in an organisation which is clearly identified as money-making is, rightly or wrongly, a turn-off for most public managers - and, interestingly, Councillors too who need a simple 'good-change' story to tell to the voters that isn't 'privatisation through the back-door'.
How many of these conversations with come to anything we don't know, but I am struck by how many Councils, charities and social enterprises seem to want to work together on spin-outs. It's not a direction I anticipated but one which I can see a lot of mileage in.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
What you learn when you work for yourself
It's approaching a year since I founded Stepping Out. Although it's my second time out on my own, it has felt like a debut because the foundation of Speaking Up (now VoiceAbility) was so long ago and, from fairly early on, it grew very quickly. I was not on my own for that long.
My intention this time is also to grow - but more slowly and with quality not volume as my focus. I also want to protect my life a bit and believe that good margins on a small volume are probably better than smaller ones on a larger one. Growth starts in September with our first employee. Rob came through 150 applicants and I have the blessing of having employed him before. So I know who I am getting. His quality and commitment are both incredible and I cannot wait for him to start.So I won't be a solo act for much longer!
What did I learn during my year as, in effect, a sole trader? I would point, if this is not excessive, to three things. The first is that you realise that your greatest resource is your time. I have become ultra-sensitive to how time is spent. An internal meter now tells me how well my minutes and seconds are being spent. Meetings, one finds, have to have a clear business benefit. Few go on longer than an hour. There is nearly always a focus and a decision. You know when it's over.
Ditto phone calls and emails. People in organisations often struggle to see this - indeed I did by the end of my time as a CEO. I would think little of a three hour senior meeting followed by a couple of interesting visitors - BANG - there goes another day.
The second thing I have learned is that clients crave a personal service they can trust. The experience of most people most of the time when it comes to the services they buy is mild disappointment. Whether it's dealing with BT, going for a meal on a Saturday or finding somebody to help their business, while the choice out there is dazzling, actually finding A1 service is very hard. Therefore the gaps in any market concern not what people obsess about - the uniqueness of one's offer - but the level of service offered. As a small business, you're in a strong position to offer incredible service and great value at the same time. This is what we have tried hard to do with Stepping Out, in a tough market place. And I believe this has helped us to achieve strong year one results.
The third piece of learning is that working for yourself is good for your personal development, confidence and all-round well-being. While you swim in a sea of uncertainty from month to month (I have no idea where income in October will come from), you also know that what happens in the business is nearly all it down to you. I find this reassuring, rather than worrying. Compared to, say, someone in a big firm or council, who has to wait on the decisions of others, I feel my future is in my hands. My 'job security' is a simple function of my attitude and activity, not a string controlled by a drunk puppeteer who neither know nor cares about me.
Further to this, I don't think one can underestimate the psychological benefits of having to get a grip on something, on yourself and push a business forward. Few people who do go it alone go back to a job - and i think this says something. Despite the hours and the effort, working for yourself seems to unlock a lot of human satisfaction. I am always, when I go speaking, evangelical about this, but the looks I get from my mostly-employed audience indicate that it's only something you understand once you've done it. Salaried people, however unhappy, can only see the risks involved and seem blissfully unaware of the risks of sitting inside organisations, going stale, losing confidence and waiting for the hammer to fall. Which increasingly now it does, of course.
So, what do you learn when you work for yourself. Three things: You care about time, you understand the importance of service and you grow as a human being.
So - what's stopping you?
My intention this time is also to grow - but more slowly and with quality not volume as my focus. I also want to protect my life a bit and believe that good margins on a small volume are probably better than smaller ones on a larger one. Growth starts in September with our first employee. Rob came through 150 applicants and I have the blessing of having employed him before. So I know who I am getting. His quality and commitment are both incredible and I cannot wait for him to start.So I won't be a solo act for much longer!
What did I learn during my year as, in effect, a sole trader? I would point, if this is not excessive, to three things. The first is that you realise that your greatest resource is your time. I have become ultra-sensitive to how time is spent. An internal meter now tells me how well my minutes and seconds are being spent. Meetings, one finds, have to have a clear business benefit. Few go on longer than an hour. There is nearly always a focus and a decision. You know when it's over.
Ditto phone calls and emails. People in organisations often struggle to see this - indeed I did by the end of my time as a CEO. I would think little of a three hour senior meeting followed by a couple of interesting visitors - BANG - there goes another day.
The second thing I have learned is that clients crave a personal service they can trust. The experience of most people most of the time when it comes to the services they buy is mild disappointment. Whether it's dealing with BT, going for a meal on a Saturday or finding somebody to help their business, while the choice out there is dazzling, actually finding A1 service is very hard. Therefore the gaps in any market concern not what people obsess about - the uniqueness of one's offer - but the level of service offered. As a small business, you're in a strong position to offer incredible service and great value at the same time. This is what we have tried hard to do with Stepping Out, in a tough market place. And I believe this has helped us to achieve strong year one results.
The third piece of learning is that working for yourself is good for your personal development, confidence and all-round well-being. While you swim in a sea of uncertainty from month to month (I have no idea where income in October will come from), you also know that what happens in the business is nearly all it down to you. I find this reassuring, rather than worrying. Compared to, say, someone in a big firm or council, who has to wait on the decisions of others, I feel my future is in my hands. My 'job security' is a simple function of my attitude and activity, not a string controlled by a drunk puppeteer who neither know nor cares about me.
Further to this, I don't think one can underestimate the psychological benefits of having to get a grip on something, on yourself and push a business forward. Few people who do go it alone go back to a job - and i think this says something. Despite the hours and the effort, working for yourself seems to unlock a lot of human satisfaction. I am always, when I go speaking, evangelical about this, but the looks I get from my mostly-employed audience indicate that it's only something you understand once you've done it. Salaried people, however unhappy, can only see the risks involved and seem blissfully unaware of the risks of sitting inside organisations, going stale, losing confidence and waiting for the hammer to fall. Which increasingly now it does, of course.
So, what do you learn when you work for yourself. Three things: You care about time, you understand the importance of service and you grow as a human being.
So - what's stopping you?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
On Cynicism
I have always been a slight cynic. Not in a sneering, told-you-so way, but in a rather regretful, resigned fashion. My cynicism comes and goes a bit, depending on what's happening and, frankly, what frame of mind I am in. Although I have always consciously worked by 'values', I often find these lofty flowers choked by the weeds of doubt about people and their essential natures.
Of course, human nature is a many and varied thing. I suspect that is what you learn as time progresses. Huge optimism, or indeed pessimism, is misplaced. Talking about human nature in a blanket way is a bit naive. My own journey has been, I suspect, one from being ultra-positive about motives and intentions - to a place where, on a good day, I can spot the subtleties of people's character quite well and reasonably quickly.
As one becomes more acquainted with the light and shade of human character, it is important, I find, not go negative, assuming people are just self-maximisers. Some people are, in many ways, assholes, but these traits often live side-by-side with other, more attractive ones.
When I look at the folk I really like, and seek to emulate, they are not necessarily the angels, but people who accommodate a variety of traits and, in a self-aware way, stay true to their essential nature while not being a slave to it. So I now like go-getting, self-promoting types, as long as this is leavened with self-awareness and a commitment to scraping off the rougher edges. In a way, I have a lot more time for this type of person than the unthinkingly generous.
All of this, of course, comes back to one's relationship with oneself. One of the attractions of Christianity, and of religion overall, is that it encourages us to embrace what C.S. Lewis termed our 'shadow self'.
It starts with the idea that we are flawed - which we all are - but also says it is OK to be this way as long as we take conscious steps to address it. I stop at the idea that only unconditional surrender to God will successfully address this issue - my point is more about the ultimate message that although we are all, to a point 'bad', we can also, simultaniously, not be a lost cause.
Work and life in one's 40s bring one up against one's nature quite a bit, I find. There's the back-breaking financial, social and emotional obligations of parenting and marriage. One is both trying to build a future and to live for today at the same time, aware of the half-time whistle about to blow.
It is tempting, often, to just look after yourself when you're carrying so much with you. You're also, as I have been saying, more worldly wise. You don't have the same blind-faith any more. You know that beneath any surface a lot more lurks, much of it never-to-be-know. And you have to navigate the iceburgs of human nature while appreciating both their beauty and their danger.
Go negative and you sail away from them altogether and you miss the best of life. Most of my 'highs', come through communion with others. But some of my lows have come through a dawning realisation that somebody isn't all I hoped they were and why-oh-why did I believe in them?
Overall, cynicism, while tempting and psychologically comforting is, I think, the wrong way to go. For you, for others, for happiness, for productive work - whatever. Societies based on deep scepticism tend to be low-trust ones and become self-fulfilling prophesies. But blind optimism is wrong too. We cannot base our society, our institutions or our workplaces on the notion that people will always do the right thing. This too is psychologically comfortable, but naive.
Instead we have to get comfortable with the complex reality of our 'grey' natures, the blend of whatever we have been born or nurtured to be. We also need to extend this comfort to our dealings with others.
Being human is, I am still learning, about accepting my own messiness and that of others. It is also about understanding that either delight or disappointment aren't the only two ways to feel about people.
And, finally, that if the cloud of cynicism isn't to settle, it is very important to work out where on the grey scale your key people are, and how you're going to deal with that.
Of course, human nature is a many and varied thing. I suspect that is what you learn as time progresses. Huge optimism, or indeed pessimism, is misplaced. Talking about human nature in a blanket way is a bit naive. My own journey has been, I suspect, one from being ultra-positive about motives and intentions - to a place where, on a good day, I can spot the subtleties of people's character quite well and reasonably quickly.
As one becomes more acquainted with the light and shade of human character, it is important, I find, not go negative, assuming people are just self-maximisers. Some people are, in many ways, assholes, but these traits often live side-by-side with other, more attractive ones.
When I look at the folk I really like, and seek to emulate, they are not necessarily the angels, but people who accommodate a variety of traits and, in a self-aware way, stay true to their essential nature while not being a slave to it. So I now like go-getting, self-promoting types, as long as this is leavened with self-awareness and a commitment to scraping off the rougher edges. In a way, I have a lot more time for this type of person than the unthinkingly generous.
All of this, of course, comes back to one's relationship with oneself. One of the attractions of Christianity, and of religion overall, is that it encourages us to embrace what C.S. Lewis termed our 'shadow self'.
It starts with the idea that we are flawed - which we all are - but also says it is OK to be this way as long as we take conscious steps to address it. I stop at the idea that only unconditional surrender to God will successfully address this issue - my point is more about the ultimate message that although we are all, to a point 'bad', we can also, simultaniously, not be a lost cause.
Work and life in one's 40s bring one up against one's nature quite a bit, I find. There's the back-breaking financial, social and emotional obligations of parenting and marriage. One is both trying to build a future and to live for today at the same time, aware of the half-time whistle about to blow.
It is tempting, often, to just look after yourself when you're carrying so much with you. You're also, as I have been saying, more worldly wise. You don't have the same blind-faith any more. You know that beneath any surface a lot more lurks, much of it never-to-be-know. And you have to navigate the iceburgs of human nature while appreciating both their beauty and their danger.
Go negative and you sail away from them altogether and you miss the best of life. Most of my 'highs', come through communion with others. But some of my lows have come through a dawning realisation that somebody isn't all I hoped they were and why-oh-why did I believe in them?
Overall, cynicism, while tempting and psychologically comforting is, I think, the wrong way to go. For you, for others, for happiness, for productive work - whatever. Societies based on deep scepticism tend to be low-trust ones and become self-fulfilling prophesies. But blind optimism is wrong too. We cannot base our society, our institutions or our workplaces on the notion that people will always do the right thing. This too is psychologically comfortable, but naive.
Instead we have to get comfortable with the complex reality of our 'grey' natures, the blend of whatever we have been born or nurtured to be. We also need to extend this comfort to our dealings with others.
Being human is, I am still learning, about accepting my own messiness and that of others. It is also about understanding that either delight or disappointment aren't the only two ways to feel about people.
And, finally, that if the cloud of cynicism isn't to settle, it is very important to work out where on the grey scale your key people are, and how you're going to deal with that.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Concrete Issues
Just back from France. One thing you notice is just how big it is (4 x UK size) with about the same number of people in it. Which makes all sorts of things a lot easier - building high speed rail links, power stations, other 'grandes projets'. Here, you can't move for planning rules and regs, even when the economy is on its arse.
Or at least till now.
A little-noted bit of news amid the riots was a signal from the Chancellor George Osborne that planning rules are to be relaxed in favour of development. There is to be a 'default' position in favour of house-building. Rather than having to prove a need for a new development, house-builders will only have to point to 'demand'. Beyond the National Parks, the presumption will be in favour of development. No other areas are to be afforded any special protection from the bulldozers. The National Trust are up in arms and see it as the end of the world as we know it.
Are they right? What will Osborne's proposed changes mean for places we all live. I can only speak for Bury St Edmunds, where I live. And cards straight on table, I live in the countryside immediately outside. Like us all, I speak Nimby.
So in Bury, there is already a development plan in the public domain - the ' Vision 2031' which will see thousands of new homes built during the next 20 years to the west, north-west, east and south of the town, as well as certain villages.
Without doubt, Bury will become a' bigger place'. But, some perspective is needed here, not least from those loud voices in our commuity whose own homes were green fields less than 25 years ago. The scale of development this time round is no greater than in the 1960s, 70s and 80s which brought us, respectively, the Horringer Court, Nowton and Moreton Hall estates which now form our 'suburbs'.
In truth, Bury although a 'heritage town', a smaller version of York, Winchester or Cambridge, it has never been a museum piece and has successfully adapted to changing times. And, on the whole, the Councii's 2031 plan isn't a bad attempt to repeat this pattern.
However it is not perfect. The danger signs are already visible. House building has, in the 2031 document, crept into 'special landscape areas', including one a half-mile from me. Before Osborne's announcement, it was difficult to see how this was more than a worry to the people living there and those, like myself, who enjoy that particular small area of landscape.
Today, however, it is not hard to imagine emboldened developers in 2016 or 2020 pointing their bulldozers at other special landscape areas - which are plentiful immediately around Bury (and around me!), forming a Green-Belt in all but name.
But isn't controlling this what the Council is for, I hear you ask? Well, it is today but the truth is that Councils will, under Osborne's changes, be incentivised to be far more permissive than is currently the case, especially cash-strapped councils like St Edmundsbury.
You need to worry about this, wherever you are, if you're not in a town. Councils are currently kept in check by a combination of planning laws and voter-pressure. Take one of those away, and we do risk a free-for-all for the developers and little collective say in how the area is shaped.
And if you want to see what that looks like, go to Ireland, where planning is lax and builders do mostly what they like, free from popular control. Therefore, while we cannot be 'anti development' without, to some extent, being hypocrites (think about what your home once was) , we must, put pressure on our local Councillors to commit in writing to containing future development to that laid out already in agreed local plans (where they exist) - and no more.
Plus we have to ask national politicians to think again before giving carte-blanche to development anywhere. The truth is that development has always to be a balance of economic versus social / environmental concerns - while giving neither the upper hand. Councils need to be arbiters of this - by all means told to process things faster - but not tied to one agenda nor the other.
And we must, somehow differentiate between different types of landscape outside the National Parks and SSIs. Not all Green Fields are the same. Protection must be afforded to our most integral landscapes on a par to that afforded to the Parks.
And act we must. In the absence of comprehensive planning laws, democracy will be the only weapon we have left.
Or at least till now.
A little-noted bit of news amid the riots was a signal from the Chancellor George Osborne that planning rules are to be relaxed in favour of development. There is to be a 'default' position in favour of house-building. Rather than having to prove a need for a new development, house-builders will only have to point to 'demand'. Beyond the National Parks, the presumption will be in favour of development. No other areas are to be afforded any special protection from the bulldozers. The National Trust are up in arms and see it as the end of the world as we know it.
Are they right? What will Osborne's proposed changes mean for places we all live. I can only speak for Bury St Edmunds, where I live. And cards straight on table, I live in the countryside immediately outside. Like us all, I speak Nimby.
So in Bury, there is already a development plan in the public domain - the ' Vision 2031' which will see thousands of new homes built during the next 20 years to the west, north-west, east and south of the town, as well as certain villages.
Without doubt, Bury will become a' bigger place'. But, some perspective is needed here, not least from those loud voices in our commuity whose own homes were green fields less than 25 years ago. The scale of development this time round is no greater than in the 1960s, 70s and 80s which brought us, respectively, the Horringer Court, Nowton and Moreton Hall estates which now form our 'suburbs'.
In truth, Bury although a 'heritage town', a smaller version of York, Winchester or Cambridge, it has never been a museum piece and has successfully adapted to changing times. And, on the whole, the Councii's 2031 plan isn't a bad attempt to repeat this pattern.
However it is not perfect. The danger signs are already visible. House building has, in the 2031 document, crept into 'special landscape areas', including one a half-mile from me. Before Osborne's announcement, it was difficult to see how this was more than a worry to the people living there and those, like myself, who enjoy that particular small area of landscape.
Today, however, it is not hard to imagine emboldened developers in 2016 or 2020 pointing their bulldozers at other special landscape areas - which are plentiful immediately around Bury (and around me!), forming a Green-Belt in all but name.
But isn't controlling this what the Council is for, I hear you ask? Well, it is today but the truth is that Councils will, under Osborne's changes, be incentivised to be far more permissive than is currently the case, especially cash-strapped councils like St Edmundsbury.
You need to worry about this, wherever you are, if you're not in a town. Councils are currently kept in check by a combination of planning laws and voter-pressure. Take one of those away, and we do risk a free-for-all for the developers and little collective say in how the area is shaped.
And if you want to see what that looks like, go to Ireland, where planning is lax and builders do mostly what they like, free from popular control. Therefore, while we cannot be 'anti development' without, to some extent, being hypocrites (think about what your home once was) , we must, put pressure on our local Councillors to commit in writing to containing future development to that laid out already in agreed local plans (where they exist) - and no more.
Plus we have to ask national politicians to think again before giving carte-blanche to development anywhere. The truth is that development has always to be a balance of economic versus social / environmental concerns - while giving neither the upper hand. Councils need to be arbiters of this - by all means told to process things faster - but not tied to one agenda nor the other.
And we must, somehow differentiate between different types of landscape outside the National Parks and SSIs. Not all Green Fields are the same. Protection must be afforded to our most integral landscapes on a par to that afforded to the Parks.
And act we must. In the absence of comprehensive planning laws, democracy will be the only weapon we have left.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Riots - Viewed from France
While the UK was, to its surprise, having its shop-windows kicked i I was in Brittany. The only UK daily paper I could get my hands on was the Telegraph which I grabbed as soon as the campsite shop opened.
You get an interesting line of sight from the the country you're visiting. A few years ago, following his election, Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, had to deal with a load of rioting in the outer 'banlieux' of Paris, home mainly to Arab and African people. Calling the rioters 'scum', Sarkozy sent in the riot police in full-on gear to, essentially, beat the crap out of anyone stepping out of line. This is, basically, how the police operate in virtually any other country to our own, in these situations. They are, quite deliberately, scary-as-fuck.
Of course, for anyone who remembers the Miners Strike or indeed the inner city riots of the 80s, our police, for a time, were as racist and brutal as any to be found in Europe. But that has changed and these days the big idea is that the police is no longer a 'force', it is a service, reliant on consent, relationships and all of that.
Which was working out quite nicely until last week when all of the work of the last 30 years appeared to count for bugger-all. Indeed, the absence of a fear-factor for the police - which has always had an effect on me - even as a law-abider I shit myself if I get stopped by a blue-light - seemed to somehow give heart to the looters. Nobody, as they queue-ed up for trainers seemed at all worried that a six foot-six helmeted rozzer with a night-stick mightcome and club them over the head or spray CS gas all over them. Because, of course, that isn't how the police work these days. So people, well, had a laugh. As we all saw.
My biggest laughs this week came when the Telegraph were reporting all these middle-class types being caught nicking from PC World or Argus. One was a female A * student at Exeter Uni whose parents were millionaires. Others were teaching assistants, estate agents, all manner of things. For these people, as with all of them, I am not sure the motivation was actually acquisition, or that purely. I think it was excitement. Action. Being in the middle of it all. Secretly, most of us crave this. We find it, if we're lucky, in our work and, occasionally, in our relationships. But we mostly do without it. Unless it's served up to us on a plate, that is.
The remaining laughs I had were, and this sounds a bit cynical, at the latte-liberals of Clapham and places such-like, brushes-aloft wearing 'Looters are Scum' T-shirts. In my view, you can't live cheek-by-jowl with the underclass (who you spend most of your life carefully avoiding) without expecting at least some collatoral damage from time-to-time. All of these people claim to love the 'edginess' of London. Well, darlings, the edges occasionally get rough and smash a few windows. Get used to it. And if you really can't live with it, well move up here to Bury St Edmunds.
You get an interesting line of sight from the the country you're visiting. A few years ago, following his election, Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, had to deal with a load of rioting in the outer 'banlieux' of Paris, home mainly to Arab and African people. Calling the rioters 'scum', Sarkozy sent in the riot police in full-on gear to, essentially, beat the crap out of anyone stepping out of line. This is, basically, how the police operate in virtually any other country to our own, in these situations. They are, quite deliberately, scary-as-fuck.
Of course, for anyone who remembers the Miners Strike or indeed the inner city riots of the 80s, our police, for a time, were as racist and brutal as any to be found in Europe. But that has changed and these days the big idea is that the police is no longer a 'force', it is a service, reliant on consent, relationships and all of that.
Which was working out quite nicely until last week when all of the work of the last 30 years appeared to count for bugger-all. Indeed, the absence of a fear-factor for the police - which has always had an effect on me - even as a law-abider I shit myself if I get stopped by a blue-light - seemed to somehow give heart to the looters. Nobody, as they queue-ed up for trainers seemed at all worried that a six foot-six helmeted rozzer with a night-stick mightcome and club them over the head or spray CS gas all over them. Because, of course, that isn't how the police work these days. So people, well, had a laugh. As we all saw.
My biggest laughs this week came when the Telegraph were reporting all these middle-class types being caught nicking from PC World or Argus. One was a female A * student at Exeter Uni whose parents were millionaires. Others were teaching assistants, estate agents, all manner of things. For these people, as with all of them, I am not sure the motivation was actually acquisition, or that purely. I think it was excitement. Action. Being in the middle of it all. Secretly, most of us crave this. We find it, if we're lucky, in our work and, occasionally, in our relationships. But we mostly do without it. Unless it's served up to us on a plate, that is.
The remaining laughs I had were, and this sounds a bit cynical, at the latte-liberals of Clapham and places such-like, brushes-aloft wearing 'Looters are Scum' T-shirts. In my view, you can't live cheek-by-jowl with the underclass (who you spend most of your life carefully avoiding) without expecting at least some collatoral damage from time-to-time. All of these people claim to love the 'edginess' of London. Well, darlings, the edges occasionally get rough and smash a few windows. Get used to it. And if you really can't live with it, well move up here to Bury St Edmunds.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Talent - who needs it?
All my life, I have had a funny relationship with sport. I have always played it but, in truth, never very well. Despite both parents being accomplished, I never got the gene; I have always been an effortful, though essentially incapable sportsperson.
Why am I telling you this? Partly because I have been enviously watching the British Open and seeing the super-talented make it all look really easy, but also because I believe in application over talent. In some respects, I am glad that while I didn't get the sports gene, I did get the one with the code that reads "prove to them you're good enough". I say this not to boast, but to say that I did quite well on not a lot of talent.
The same goes for me with work. I am well within the normal range in most areas, but I diligently polish the tiny bit of silver I've been handed, whether it's turning myself into a passable public speaker or a writer of columns for Third Sector.
Which brings me to my subject today: talent. I hear a lot of nonsense talked about this in our sector. The consultancy firm McKinsey & Company started it with the so-called War For Talent - a paper it published way back that basically said there's only a little bit of talent about and organisations should kill to get hold of it. By talent, it meant naturally super-performing people, most of whom happen, it seems, to have overflowing self-confidence and an Oxbridge education - the people already running the show. Not folks like me - or you, probably.
I think this sort of talent is grossly over-rated in all sectors, including our own. What isn't sufficiently rated is what I will simply call the right attitude: people with a compulsion to deliver, who, by sheer effort of will, get themselves up to a performing level are, in my reckoning, worth a lot more than the naturally brilliant.
In my life as a chief executive, I've met loads of born-supersonic people who didn't do very well, either in work or life. They always sounded good - that's easy when you give off confidence - but, on cool reflection, were total non-achievers. In truth, they were lazy or wasted their gifts by not giving enough of themselves.
So would I not rather have a team of Derby winners in my organisation than a bunch of earnest nags, I hear you ask? Doesn't true success require both talent and effort?
Ideally, yes - you need both. But I haven't met many thoroughbreds who aren't also draining to manage, and who are willing to give you years of their lives before they head off for new challenges. Talent is often thinking of the next thing, not what it is doing now.
So you can keep your talent. Give me an honest scrapper or grafter; someone who knows they have to prove themself. A person who understands that it takes five years to achieve anything worth writing home about. They are nearly always the better bet as an employee or business partner. These are the people our sector needs now
Why am I telling you this? Partly because I have been enviously watching the British Open and seeing the super-talented make it all look really easy, but also because I believe in application over talent. In some respects, I am glad that while I didn't get the sports gene, I did get the one with the code that reads "prove to them you're good enough". I say this not to boast, but to say that I did quite well on not a lot of talent.
The same goes for me with work. I am well within the normal range in most areas, but I diligently polish the tiny bit of silver I've been handed, whether it's turning myself into a passable public speaker or a writer of columns for Third Sector.
Which brings me to my subject today: talent. I hear a lot of nonsense talked about this in our sector. The consultancy firm McKinsey & Company started it with the so-called War For Talent - a paper it published way back that basically said there's only a little bit of talent about and organisations should kill to get hold of it. By talent, it meant naturally super-performing people, most of whom happen, it seems, to have overflowing self-confidence and an Oxbridge education - the people already running the show. Not folks like me - or you, probably.
I think this sort of talent is grossly over-rated in all sectors, including our own. What isn't sufficiently rated is what I will simply call the right attitude: people with a compulsion to deliver, who, by sheer effort of will, get themselves up to a performing level are, in my reckoning, worth a lot more than the naturally brilliant.
In my life as a chief executive, I've met loads of born-supersonic people who didn't do very well, either in work or life. They always sounded good - that's easy when you give off confidence - but, on cool reflection, were total non-achievers. In truth, they were lazy or wasted their gifts by not giving enough of themselves.
So would I not rather have a team of Derby winners in my organisation than a bunch of earnest nags, I hear you ask? Doesn't true success require both talent and effort?
Ideally, yes - you need both. But I haven't met many thoroughbreds who aren't also draining to manage, and who are willing to give you years of their lives before they head off for new challenges. Talent is often thinking of the next thing, not what it is doing now.
So you can keep your talent. Give me an honest scrapper or grafter; someone who knows they have to prove themself. A person who understands that it takes five years to achieve anything worth writing home about. They are nearly always the better bet as an employee or business partner. These are the people our sector needs now
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Should Councillors be paid?
I sit on a Council and get ten grand a year for my trouble. Yes, ten grand. I actually think that's quite reasonable. Plus we get a 14% pension contribution. The public are often surprised when you tell them. They think, bless 'em that we all do it for nothing. Add on mileage and lunches and it's a cool 12k-15k for a part-time job.
I find myself split on the issue of Councillor pay. While I don't claim the mileage, I feel a bit odd being paid for what is essentially community service. Ten grand is a lot of money for some people. It costs our Council £0.75m in allowances alone, probably a million when you add on mileage, pensions etc. OK, that one five hundredth of the budget, but it is a cost.
Aggregrate the cost of all our councils in Suffolk - there are six district Councils all with about 40 Councillors each, all getting about £5k allowances plus expenses and you've got a further cost of, all in, about £1.5m. So costs of democracy are about, all said £3m for a typical Shire County.
Is this worth it? And could we get more some other way? There are two possible approaches to this. One is to ask whether having no pay or expenses would get us at least as good as we have now. I suspect, looking around the chamber, that the allowance is probably supplementing quite a few pensions. Pull it and I would bet about a quarter would be gone at the next election. However the other side to this is that the allowance does make it possible for low earners to do the role.
Part of me - the mischievous side - does feel attracted to the idea of cutting allowances altogether. We'd soon see how many community champions were left. It would also mean, now that the benches were no longer silted up with jaded Allowance-takers, that the parties would need to go looking for talented new people who were not motivated in any way by the money.
Another possible approach is to go the other way - to have far fewer Councillors, perhaps 25 for the County and 10 each for the Districts - two thirds fewer - but make the job a proper job, rather than a half-job. This would mean a £15-£25k role rather than a £5-10k one - but would effectively make being a Councillor a proper job. The upside would be that the role would attract people who would do it but can't afford to do it and hold down a job - the downside is that it would mean that anyone with another career would be deterred.
There's no really perfect answer to this. There are clearly too many Councillors. There are far, far too many crappy Councillors who do very little for anyone. The party system keeps talented people at bay and protects people who couldn't get a job at Tesco. We know all of that.
But I can't, at the moment, think of a new way to do local government which convincingly rectifies these problems. Fewer, smaller Councils sure. Quotas maybe? I would personally be in favour, even if I lost out as a middle-aged man (but youthful in council-terms). PR for local government? Certainly. But I might as well make an argument for leaving our doors open when we went out to work. All of this is idealism.
These turkeys are smart enough not to vote for Christmas.
I find myself split on the issue of Councillor pay. While I don't claim the mileage, I feel a bit odd being paid for what is essentially community service. Ten grand is a lot of money for some people. It costs our Council £0.75m in allowances alone, probably a million when you add on mileage, pensions etc. OK, that one five hundredth of the budget, but it is a cost.
Aggregrate the cost of all our councils in Suffolk - there are six district Councils all with about 40 Councillors each, all getting about £5k allowances plus expenses and you've got a further cost of, all in, about £1.5m. So costs of democracy are about, all said £3m for a typical Shire County.
Is this worth it? And could we get more some other way? There are two possible approaches to this. One is to ask whether having no pay or expenses would get us at least as good as we have now. I suspect, looking around the chamber, that the allowance is probably supplementing quite a few pensions. Pull it and I would bet about a quarter would be gone at the next election. However the other side to this is that the allowance does make it possible for low earners to do the role.
Part of me - the mischievous side - does feel attracted to the idea of cutting allowances altogether. We'd soon see how many community champions were left. It would also mean, now that the benches were no longer silted up with jaded Allowance-takers, that the parties would need to go looking for talented new people who were not motivated in any way by the money.
Another possible approach is to go the other way - to have far fewer Councillors, perhaps 25 for the County and 10 each for the Districts - two thirds fewer - but make the job a proper job, rather than a half-job. This would mean a £15-£25k role rather than a £5-10k one - but would effectively make being a Councillor a proper job. The upside would be that the role would attract people who would do it but can't afford to do it and hold down a job - the downside is that it would mean that anyone with another career would be deterred.
There's no really perfect answer to this. There are clearly too many Councillors. There are far, far too many crappy Councillors who do very little for anyone. The party system keeps talented people at bay and protects people who couldn't get a job at Tesco. We know all of that.
But I can't, at the moment, think of a new way to do local government which convincingly rectifies these problems. Fewer, smaller Councils sure. Quotas maybe? I would personally be in favour, even if I lost out as a middle-aged man (but youthful in council-terms). PR for local government? Certainly. But I might as well make an argument for leaving our doors open when we went out to work. All of this is idealism.
These turkeys are smart enough not to vote for Christmas.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Black Box versus Big Society Public Services
I got a letter on Friday. It was from Francis Maude. Of course, it wasn't to me personally, just the hundreds of others that eagerly signed up to the Cabinet Office's efforts to promote mutuals and social enterprises in public services.
Before and just after the election there was a lot of heat and light about this. Talk was of a million public sector workers moving into social enterprise by 2015. Privately I thought fat-chance but it was good to see this ambition. Then we saw the Cabinet Office struggling to gain traction across Government departments - never easy at the best of times but made harder by the countervailing desire of the Treasury to keep the public services market open with a clear preference for 'pay and play', 'black-box' services. These would be delivered by whoever won the contract. None of this Big Society, 'co-creation of services' nonsense.
Hence the rather rubbery White Paper on Open Public Services a couple of weeks ago. A Green Paper in all but name (have you ever seen a White Paper with a list of questions for the reader??), this paper was clearly about getting something out, not presenting a clear Government position.
What it does for spin-outs can be more clearly expressed by stating what it dodges. In short, the three 'P's. Procurement, Pensions and People. It doesn't tell public bodies that they can give spin-outs contracts and enjoy support from the centre in doing this. It doesn't clear the mud about pension-rights for staff joining a spin-out or going back into the public sector afterwards. It doesn't allow give clear rights to people who want to do this the entitlement to do it, assuming the business-case is there. Compared to the Academies Bill, which made all of the above very clear - with mass spinning out as a result - this White Paper was lightweight.
All is not gloom. The Government's own Mutual Support Programme opens in the Autumn and there are signs that the Department of Health's successful Social Enterprise Investment Fund (SEIF) will also reopen for business soon. Conferences are aplenty, and some have more than just consultants in attendance, notably the Employee Ownership Association's excellent event this month.
Further to this, there are also signs that local authorities in particular are rising from the canvas following the knockout blow from this current year's financial settlement. While a punishing in-year programme has needed to be put in place, absorbing all energy to date, councils are now eyeing the horizon and looking more strategically at the question of how they deal with greater demand and fewer resources long-term.
The answer many are coming up with is that you can only really deliver more and better public services through a more fulsome engagement with citizens and communities. The public service cake used to be just made of one ingredient: public money. In future, the cake will be more complex, combining public funds, private funds, citizen effort and community endevour. The tailored, equitable services we all want will only come with all of these extra element 'baked-in'.
The questions most councils up and down are now grappling with is how to do this. Legacy services are expensive and ineffective but often politically incendiary because of what they represent. Public libraries are an example. The potential for libraries as community-hubs is well-documented but you need to convince people of the need for a new type of settlement for these kinds of institutions to work properly. This includes volunteers on top of paid staff, fundraising on top of public funding, paid for services on top of free ones, a business outlook on top of a social one.
Where I am driving here is that I think the solution to the big question councils are grappling with lies in social enterprise. This defines social enterprise not in the frame of the public-private continuum, but as an entirely new approach to producing the public goods that most of us wish to see in our communities. For this reason, we should see their development as outside the usual EU procurement mindset that preoccupies most commissioners of services. Local authorities should be freed up from worrying about that and worry instead about how they are going to best combine their own resources with those of communities and citizens.
Can't the private sector do this just as well? Cannot a tender spec be written that is broad enough and open-ended enough to allow the private sector to do all of the above? While I don't totally rule it out, it is important, at this stage, to be able to convince all sides - local politicians, the public, staff and users - that we all need to bring what we have to the table. The profit motive, while a noble and good thing - just doesn't work in this sort of context. The trust - barely there now - required to bring about a new settlement, is going to be absent if people believe the profit motive is at work, however well-intentioned this is.
There are another couple of reasons why I think the private sector isn't quite right for leading this kind of change. Firstly, the track record of the large-scale private sector in social innovation, at least the sectors I know - disability - isn't that strong. Investment goes where the money is, even if it's in rebuilding long-stay institutions that undo years of social progress.
Secondly, I think the risks for private investors are too open-ended. You can't nail these specifications down hard enough. Outcomes will need to flex and evolve, not be fixed at the the beginning. It's just not natural private sector territory, at least the large end of the private sector. Certain small players, with a balanced approach to profit versus other goals (like us in fact) will be part of it, I am sure. But the big players- Serco and the like, I struggle to see them engaging.
Which bring me back full-circle to spin-outs. I believe in them because they co-mingle public money, citizen and community effort together into something new and different from the 'black box', 'pay and play' public services beloved of the Treasury. What we're talking about is not black box but big society, good society, call it what you will. And, of the competing world views out there just now, for me, Big/Good Society is right one when it comes to our future public services.
Before and just after the election there was a lot of heat and light about this. Talk was of a million public sector workers moving into social enterprise by 2015. Privately I thought fat-chance but it was good to see this ambition. Then we saw the Cabinet Office struggling to gain traction across Government departments - never easy at the best of times but made harder by the countervailing desire of the Treasury to keep the public services market open with a clear preference for 'pay and play', 'black-box' services. These would be delivered by whoever won the contract. None of this Big Society, 'co-creation of services' nonsense.
Hence the rather rubbery White Paper on Open Public Services a couple of weeks ago. A Green Paper in all but name (have you ever seen a White Paper with a list of questions for the reader??), this paper was clearly about getting something out, not presenting a clear Government position.
What it does for spin-outs can be more clearly expressed by stating what it dodges. In short, the three 'P's. Procurement, Pensions and People. It doesn't tell public bodies that they can give spin-outs contracts and enjoy support from the centre in doing this. It doesn't clear the mud about pension-rights for staff joining a spin-out or going back into the public sector afterwards. It doesn't allow give clear rights to people who want to do this the entitlement to do it, assuming the business-case is there. Compared to the Academies Bill, which made all of the above very clear - with mass spinning out as a result - this White Paper was lightweight.
All is not gloom. The Government's own Mutual Support Programme opens in the Autumn and there are signs that the Department of Health's successful Social Enterprise Investment Fund (SEIF) will also reopen for business soon. Conferences are aplenty, and some have more than just consultants in attendance, notably the Employee Ownership Association's excellent event this month.
Further to this, there are also signs that local authorities in particular are rising from the canvas following the knockout blow from this current year's financial settlement. While a punishing in-year programme has needed to be put in place, absorbing all energy to date, councils are now eyeing the horizon and looking more strategically at the question of how they deal with greater demand and fewer resources long-term.
The answer many are coming up with is that you can only really deliver more and better public services through a more fulsome engagement with citizens and communities. The public service cake used to be just made of one ingredient: public money. In future, the cake will be more complex, combining public funds, private funds, citizen effort and community endevour. The tailored, equitable services we all want will only come with all of these extra element 'baked-in'.
The questions most councils up and down are now grappling with is how to do this. Legacy services are expensive and ineffective but often politically incendiary because of what they represent. Public libraries are an example. The potential for libraries as community-hubs is well-documented but you need to convince people of the need for a new type of settlement for these kinds of institutions to work properly. This includes volunteers on top of paid staff, fundraising on top of public funding, paid for services on top of free ones, a business outlook on top of a social one.
Where I am driving here is that I think the solution to the big question councils are grappling with lies in social enterprise. This defines social enterprise not in the frame of the public-private continuum, but as an entirely new approach to producing the public goods that most of us wish to see in our communities. For this reason, we should see their development as outside the usual EU procurement mindset that preoccupies most commissioners of services. Local authorities should be freed up from worrying about that and worry instead about how they are going to best combine their own resources with those of communities and citizens.
Can't the private sector do this just as well? Cannot a tender spec be written that is broad enough and open-ended enough to allow the private sector to do all of the above? While I don't totally rule it out, it is important, at this stage, to be able to convince all sides - local politicians, the public, staff and users - that we all need to bring what we have to the table. The profit motive, while a noble and good thing - just doesn't work in this sort of context. The trust - barely there now - required to bring about a new settlement, is going to be absent if people believe the profit motive is at work, however well-intentioned this is.
There are another couple of reasons why I think the private sector isn't quite right for leading this kind of change. Firstly, the track record of the large-scale private sector in social innovation, at least the sectors I know - disability - isn't that strong. Investment goes where the money is, even if it's in rebuilding long-stay institutions that undo years of social progress.
Secondly, I think the risks for private investors are too open-ended. You can't nail these specifications down hard enough. Outcomes will need to flex and evolve, not be fixed at the the beginning. It's just not natural private sector territory, at least the large end of the private sector. Certain small players, with a balanced approach to profit versus other goals (like us in fact) will be part of it, I am sure. But the big players- Serco and the like, I struggle to see them engaging.
Which bring me back full-circle to spin-outs. I believe in them because they co-mingle public money, citizen and community effort together into something new and different from the 'black box', 'pay and play' public services beloved of the Treasury. What we're talking about is not black box but big society, good society, call it what you will. And, of the competing world views out there just now, for me, Big/Good Society is right one when it comes to our future public services.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Is capital punishment justified in Norway?
On a weekend when 80-odd young people lie dead and Amy Winehouse also died I find myself feeling pretty flat. Tomorrow the agent of Norway's killing gets his chance to air his views, and justify his actions, in the courtroom.
That no air will ever again pass the lips of scores of Norway's best young people seems insufficient to prevent his grandstanding. Were I a parent I am not sure I could easily countenance that indulgence at this time. This man should, at this early stage, be forced to stay silent. This is not his time.
I am not a pacifist but I really struggle with the notion of killing. Being able to do it, I mean. There are moments, perhaps in extreme self-defence, when ending another's life seems just about imaginable. But to take life after life, to hunt people like rats takes some kind of deranged detachment.
Each life ended in a solitary moment by a single shot was one nurtured by hundreds of thousands of mindful actions of love by others. Today, the lives of tens of thousands - parents, siblings, friends, teachers, uncles, aunts - will have been changed permanently. Every death does that. Needless, shocking deaths like this are never truly gotten over.
Which brings us onto the perpetrator. If my children had been among those slain, I am sure I would, on the day after, be happy to personally avenge what happened. This feeling would, I suspect, be replaced, in the following weeks, by a desire for judicial killing. But this defies my intellectual belief that good societies do not kill even people like this. Yet while my children had been robbed of theirs, their killer living would be difficult to take.
What I am saying is that after this incident, I am not sure my liberal convictions on capital punishment could stand the test that those parents are going to go through once the shock of what has happened has subsided and grief takes it long toll.
That no air will ever again pass the lips of scores of Norway's best young people seems insufficient to prevent his grandstanding. Were I a parent I am not sure I could easily countenance that indulgence at this time. This man should, at this early stage, be forced to stay silent. This is not his time.
I am not a pacifist but I really struggle with the notion of killing. Being able to do it, I mean. There are moments, perhaps in extreme self-defence, when ending another's life seems just about imaginable. But to take life after life, to hunt people like rats takes some kind of deranged detachment.
Each life ended in a solitary moment by a single shot was one nurtured by hundreds of thousands of mindful actions of love by others. Today, the lives of tens of thousands - parents, siblings, friends, teachers, uncles, aunts - will have been changed permanently. Every death does that. Needless, shocking deaths like this are never truly gotten over.
Which brings us onto the perpetrator. If my children had been among those slain, I am sure I would, on the day after, be happy to personally avenge what happened. This feeling would, I suspect, be replaced, in the following weeks, by a desire for judicial killing. But this defies my intellectual belief that good societies do not kill even people like this. Yet while my children had been robbed of theirs, their killer living would be difficult to take.
What I am saying is that after this incident, I am not sure my liberal convictions on capital punishment could stand the test that those parents are going to go through once the shock of what has happened has subsided and grief takes it long toll.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
What's holding back spin outs?
Having spent a whirlwind year alongside spin-outs I would point to three key challenges to doing it.
Finding the right people
Every successful business needs a brilliant team. Most spin-outs have one or two brilliant people and a handful of OK ones. Many are reluctant to improve the quality of senior management as the organisation grows. This will be a particular challenge I believe in the health Right to Request. These are massive businesses in a complex market and organisations don’t often quite appreciate how far their top team and board is from where they need to be.
Managing growth
Growth and quality often run in opposite directions. Few organisations can walk and chew gum at the same time. The trouble is that growth seldom comes in manageable quantities and many spin out orgs are faced either with few prospects or projects which stretch the organisation to breaking point. Understanding in SE organisations about how to manage growth is often fairly low. The project management and change-management capabilities are seldom there. So growth poses a real danger to quality I feel in spin outs.
Focus
Many spin out organisations I come across are less clear about what exactly they are trying to achieve than their commercial equivalents. Or if they are, it isn’t particularly specific. This is rooted I think in the multipurpose nature of these organisations and the desire to find some kind of balance. But there’s often a reluctance to commit to particular levels of growth or profit. Even social goals remain pretty general. These should be articulated, committed to and worked towards with the same focus as private organisations go after profit. For out of certainty comes focus and energy. Spin-outs can lack this I feel.
Spin-outs have been a slow-burn for some time now, certainly in health and social care. Compare our sector to the academies sector if you want to see a real pace of change. Indeed In Suffolk half of our secondaries will be converted to academies by September. A stunning pace of change.
Part of the reason for this is that successive governments have stood full-square behind their creation and have not permitted local authorities to get in the way. Another reason is that Heads tend to be confident, capable people who can lead. For me a lot will come down to the content and message of the Public Services White Paper.
Will the Government encourage councils to offer guaranteed contracts to spin-outs for at least 3 years? Will they offer a simple route through the pensions question? Will there be a small fund for grants to new spin-outs to get them going? This is the support needed for the sector.
What other support might they need? In my experience, spin-out need both hard, technical support in terms of legals and financials and a lot of soft support in terms of coaching and leadership development. Unfortunately in my view, far more resources go into the hard end than the soft end and I think this has to change now that there are clear templates for spin-outs. The principal requirement of the new spinout is to be ready for independent life and to have the capabilities to operate and grow from a standalone position. That is mainly about people.
The right people with the right capabilities. That is where I think the focus should be more than it is now.
Finding the right people
Every successful business needs a brilliant team. Most spin-outs have one or two brilliant people and a handful of OK ones. Many are reluctant to improve the quality of senior management as the organisation grows. This will be a particular challenge I believe in the health Right to Request. These are massive businesses in a complex market and organisations don’t often quite appreciate how far their top team and board is from where they need to be.
Managing growth
Growth and quality often run in opposite directions. Few organisations can walk and chew gum at the same time. The trouble is that growth seldom comes in manageable quantities and many spin out orgs are faced either with few prospects or projects which stretch the organisation to breaking point. Understanding in SE organisations about how to manage growth is often fairly low. The project management and change-management capabilities are seldom there. So growth poses a real danger to quality I feel in spin outs.
Focus
Many spin out organisations I come across are less clear about what exactly they are trying to achieve than their commercial equivalents. Or if they are, it isn’t particularly specific. This is rooted I think in the multipurpose nature of these organisations and the desire to find some kind of balance. But there’s often a reluctance to commit to particular levels of growth or profit. Even social goals remain pretty general. These should be articulated, committed to and worked towards with the same focus as private organisations go after profit. For out of certainty comes focus and energy. Spin-outs can lack this I feel.
Spin-outs have been a slow-burn for some time now, certainly in health and social care. Compare our sector to the academies sector if you want to see a real pace of change. Indeed In Suffolk half of our secondaries will be converted to academies by September. A stunning pace of change.
Part of the reason for this is that successive governments have stood full-square behind their creation and have not permitted local authorities to get in the way. Another reason is that Heads tend to be confident, capable people who can lead. For me a lot will come down to the content and message of the Public Services White Paper.
Will the Government encourage councils to offer guaranteed contracts to spin-outs for at least 3 years? Will they offer a simple route through the pensions question? Will there be a small fund for grants to new spin-outs to get them going? This is the support needed for the sector.
What other support might they need? In my experience, spin-out need both hard, technical support in terms of legals and financials and a lot of soft support in terms of coaching and leadership development. Unfortunately in my view, far more resources go into the hard end than the soft end and I think this has to change now that there are clear templates for spin-outs. The principal requirement of the new spinout is to be ready for independent life and to have the capabilities to operate and grow from a standalone position. That is mainly about people.
The right people with the right capabilities. That is where I think the focus should be more than it is now.
Friday, July 8, 2011
42 and....ok with it
Later this month I turn 42. Not with any particular angst - quite the opposite in fact. My forties so far have been kind to me. I feel in the best bit of my life. Health is good. I feel happy most of the time. I have both a history and a future. My life feels anchored. I kind of know what I'm doing most of the time now. Things don't really faze me any more. Even when things are a bit frantic, I feel calm. After all, nobody's probably going to die.
So far so banal, I guess. But I sometimes wonder whether I am getting too comfortable. The forties are a funny decade. In fact, from what I see, it's not a decade in its own right, but the weird interim between of this period just after the end of your thirties- when you've got hair, status and a future (a place in which I am basking now) and this pretty wild place just before the beginning of your fifties when your hair falls out, your wife decides she doesn't like you and nobody takes your calls any more. A time when you become Part of the Past.
I have, in recent years, observed many a happy early 40-something morph, over a few years, into a troubled 47,48 or 49 year old. They almost always have a marital crisis, even if this doesn't involve leaving their wife or partner. A job or career suddenly feels no longer right and they go through an awful period of transition where they have to define theirselves anew, either through redundancy or simply not being able to face the old job any more.
On a personal level, they become taciturn, a bit unpredictable, given to mood-swings. They drink more. More often than not, they gain weight and look a lot older. If they're really unlucky, their physical health starts to go bad too. Lots of aches, pains and minor ailments.
I am, of course, talking about the famous mid-life crisis. This is as real as day, in my view and it appears to affect most people. I know far more men than women, but I also think it affect females too, but in a different way. The good news is that most people seem to get through it. Health, happiness and direction all return. There's an acceptance, somehow, of whatever it is that was bringing them down. Life, they realise, is too short for staying in a hole. Changes are made, a new phase begins. The cycle of life brings them a kind of peace or concilation with their lot.
Which is why working with people in their 50s is normally so good. Men, particularly, seem to have gotten over their competitiveness by that stage. Their new predisposition seem to be pulling them towards collaboration rather than besting other people. Their edges seem taken off. Emotional intellegence seems greater in older men and they often have a nurturing side that maybe wasn't there in their younger selves.
When I reflect on the future, I know that life will change. I am fairly sure I will go through some tricky period of adjustment as I mentally transit from being still relatively young to truly middle-aged. I think it just goes with the territory.
But I look forward too to what will emerge on the other side. I think I have worked out now that happiness, for me (and for many) depends on long-term anchors in my life, a sense of purpose and living according to the values I feel increasingly aware of with the passage of time. It is also about gratitude. Appreciating what I have and feeling thankful every day. Knowing who I am now will, I hope, help me through the bumps and grinds of middle age and bring me out on the other side a better person than I am now.
So who is scared of becoming 42? Not me (honest!).
So far so banal, I guess. But I sometimes wonder whether I am getting too comfortable. The forties are a funny decade. In fact, from what I see, it's not a decade in its own right, but the weird interim between of this period just after the end of your thirties- when you've got hair, status and a future (a place in which I am basking now) and this pretty wild place just before the beginning of your fifties when your hair falls out, your wife decides she doesn't like you and nobody takes your calls any more. A time when you become Part of the Past.
I have, in recent years, observed many a happy early 40-something morph, over a few years, into a troubled 47,48 or 49 year old. They almost always have a marital crisis, even if this doesn't involve leaving their wife or partner. A job or career suddenly feels no longer right and they go through an awful period of transition where they have to define theirselves anew, either through redundancy or simply not being able to face the old job any more.
On a personal level, they become taciturn, a bit unpredictable, given to mood-swings. They drink more. More often than not, they gain weight and look a lot older. If they're really unlucky, their physical health starts to go bad too. Lots of aches, pains and minor ailments.
I am, of course, talking about the famous mid-life crisis. This is as real as day, in my view and it appears to affect most people. I know far more men than women, but I also think it affect females too, but in a different way. The good news is that most people seem to get through it. Health, happiness and direction all return. There's an acceptance, somehow, of whatever it is that was bringing them down. Life, they realise, is too short for staying in a hole. Changes are made, a new phase begins. The cycle of life brings them a kind of peace or concilation with their lot.
Which is why working with people in their 50s is normally so good. Men, particularly, seem to have gotten over their competitiveness by that stage. Their new predisposition seem to be pulling them towards collaboration rather than besting other people. Their edges seem taken off. Emotional intellegence seems greater in older men and they often have a nurturing side that maybe wasn't there in their younger selves.
When I reflect on the future, I know that life will change. I am fairly sure I will go through some tricky period of adjustment as I mentally transit from being still relatively young to truly middle-aged. I think it just goes with the territory.
But I look forward too to what will emerge on the other side. I think I have worked out now that happiness, for me (and for many) depends on long-term anchors in my life, a sense of purpose and living according to the values I feel increasingly aware of with the passage of time. It is also about gratitude. Appreciating what I have and feeling thankful every day. Knowing who I am now will, I hope, help me through the bumps and grinds of middle age and bring me out on the other side a better person than I am now.
So who is scared of becoming 42? Not me (honest!).
Thursday, July 7, 2011
An Open Future for Public Services? Think Again....
This week sees the publication of the Coalition's new Open Public Services White Paper. From what I understand, its content has been the subject of a tussle between the Steve Hilton wing - who see public service reform as a touch-paper for the Big Society (mutuals, community and third sector providers etc) and the Treasury who, I am fairly reliably informed, see BS as a load of old shit and just want to do a mixture of heavy-duty public sector efficiencies and quiet outsourcing to the private sector.
Whatever the truth is, the Bill we see will not be the free-for-all we were promised by the Coalition last year. Why? In one word - NHS. The idea of an open market for public services has, in effect, been put back by the revised Lansley reforms.
Even if the remaining policy is actually more market-friendly than the public realise, the politics has overtaken the policy and it's now virtually impossible to bring out a public services bill that is about 'privatisation', even in its most benign forms. As my friend Nick Seddon of Reform said just the the other day, you don't hear Andrew Lansley or anyone else talking about creating the biggest social enterprise sector in the world any more.
So what will be in the Bill? It will be a nice warm bath for fans of the Big Society I expect. There will be stuff in there about charities and communities taking over services and probably quite a bit about mutuals. And relatively little about the private sector, I anticipate. So a triumph for the forces of civil society?
Well, not quite. The brutal truth about the civil society sector, including social enterprise, is that we probably stood a better chance, as we did in the health sector, if the provider market was properly opened up to all sectors. This bill is, in effect, the work of an enfeebled, cowed Government that feels chastened by public opinion on the NHS and is becoming increasingly led by political rather than policy considerations.
So, rather than sponsoring a powerful Public Service Bill that has the key parts of the public sector properly opened up to other sectors, we will see some opening to civil society organisations which, in reality, will translate into a fairly small overall effect on the whole. If I were David Prentice or Bob Crowe, this is the kind of outcome that would suit me.
The truth is that it is only when you have bold, landmark legislation - like the academies bill that you see radical change. In Suffolk, where I live and am a Councillor, over half of our upper schools have 'stepped out' of LA control to become academies. This is because the centre has been very clear and strong about this. LAs themselves cannot stop them and when you take away the impediments it happens. The speed has been breathtaking. As a school governor I have seen it go from thought to reality in a few short month.
The same is not true in other parts of the public sector. Anyone else in the County Council has to go through the usual impedimentia and it is really still rather hard to spin out- even in a spin-out-friendly council. The academy experience tells us that it isn't the actual doing that is difficult, it is the organisational context stuff that is hardest. Most of the spin-outs I deal with tell us they spend tremendous energy dealing the organisations they are are part of, none of whom are compelled to let them go.
My point here is that in what is still a highly centralised country, legislative drive from the centre makes a massive difference. My fear about this new Open Public Services Bill is that it will not be the landmark White Paper it needs to be but a here-today-gone-tomorrow piece of candy-floss that keeps the sector happy but makes no real dent on the real challenge of public services transformation in this country.
Whatever the truth is, the Bill we see will not be the free-for-all we were promised by the Coalition last year. Why? In one word - NHS. The idea of an open market for public services has, in effect, been put back by the revised Lansley reforms.
Even if the remaining policy is actually more market-friendly than the public realise, the politics has overtaken the policy and it's now virtually impossible to bring out a public services bill that is about 'privatisation', even in its most benign forms. As my friend Nick Seddon of Reform said just the the other day, you don't hear Andrew Lansley or anyone else talking about creating the biggest social enterprise sector in the world any more.
So what will be in the Bill? It will be a nice warm bath for fans of the Big Society I expect. There will be stuff in there about charities and communities taking over services and probably quite a bit about mutuals. And relatively little about the private sector, I anticipate. So a triumph for the forces of civil society?
Well, not quite. The brutal truth about the civil society sector, including social enterprise, is that we probably stood a better chance, as we did in the health sector, if the provider market was properly opened up to all sectors. This bill is, in effect, the work of an enfeebled, cowed Government that feels chastened by public opinion on the NHS and is becoming increasingly led by political rather than policy considerations.
So, rather than sponsoring a powerful Public Service Bill that has the key parts of the public sector properly opened up to other sectors, we will see some opening to civil society organisations which, in reality, will translate into a fairly small overall effect on the whole. If I were David Prentice or Bob Crowe, this is the kind of outcome that would suit me.
The truth is that it is only when you have bold, landmark legislation - like the academies bill that you see radical change. In Suffolk, where I live and am a Councillor, over half of our upper schools have 'stepped out' of LA control to become academies. This is because the centre has been very clear and strong about this. LAs themselves cannot stop them and when you take away the impediments it happens. The speed has been breathtaking. As a school governor I have seen it go from thought to reality in a few short month.
The same is not true in other parts of the public sector. Anyone else in the County Council has to go through the usual impedimentia and it is really still rather hard to spin out- even in a spin-out-friendly council. The academy experience tells us that it isn't the actual doing that is difficult, it is the organisational context stuff that is hardest. Most of the spin-outs I deal with tell us they spend tremendous energy dealing the organisations they are are part of, none of whom are compelled to let them go.
My point here is that in what is still a highly centralised country, legislative drive from the centre makes a massive difference. My fear about this new Open Public Services Bill is that it will not be the landmark White Paper it needs to be but a here-today-gone-tomorrow piece of candy-floss that keeps the sector happy but makes no real dent on the real challenge of public services transformation in this country.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Can the private sector save social enterprise?
MPs have published a report saying that the government's programme to create public service mutuals needs still stronger support and communication from central government if it is to build on its initial success. It also noted the government's hope that new public service mutuals will be created jointly with private sector partners.
The government is keen for these kinds of partnerships to develop because they bring in private capital to help set up, run and grow new public service business. Each of the "right to requests" from the NHS has cost the government tens of thousands of pounds to set up, so a strong private credit line is a tempting alternative to using public money.
Second, a private partner would bring commercial and practical help. Public sector spinouts tend to be led by passionate managers who can lack the experience to run a large enterprise, and who are expected on top of the day job to set up a new organisation from scratch. A private partner can provide all sorts of business start-up and growth knowhow.
And partnerships of this type would, potentially, expand the number and size of public service ventures. For all the hype, there are still only a small number of spun-out public sector businesses, and many employ fewer than 100 people. But the government wants to see a million public sector workers in mutuals by 2015, which means large organisations are going to have to be created at lightning speed. It is hoped the private sector can help achieve this.
But will the marriage between public manager and the private sector work?
One concern is the compatibility of each side's goals. So far, public sector mutuals tend to be more focused on social rather than commercial aims. Few appear to have share capital financially worth much to staff. They tend to be defined by a passion for people, place or profession, and they often aspire to stay local and be more personal. Every person I have met who leads a spun-out organisation is motivated by social purpose. They identify strongly with public sector values – albeit ones that see a mutual or social enterprise as the appropriate vehicle for this.
A private company, however, will, quite rightly, be mostly concerned with its shareholders' or directors' interests, and that will include a strong focus on growth, either by merger or acquisition and on cutting costs quickly.
These are legitimate goals, and, arguably, the only way to create large organisations. But you can see a potential tug-of-war here, with one side driven by a growth agenda and the other living in fear of becoming remote from its community – and of losing control to a private partner.
Can both sides meet at least somewhere in the middle, with private investors accepting the potential constraints on return introduced by being partly employee-owned and former public managers bowing to some of the commercial imperatives of investors?
As someone working every day alongside public managers, I hope we can find ways to bring necessary investment and expertise to the table. Unlike in continental Europe, this is unlikely to come from the state. So we need to examine closely how to do this while ensuring the values we hold close are upheld.
The government is keen for these kinds of partnerships to develop because they bring in private capital to help set up, run and grow new public service business. Each of the "right to requests" from the NHS has cost the government tens of thousands of pounds to set up, so a strong private credit line is a tempting alternative to using public money.
Second, a private partner would bring commercial and practical help. Public sector spinouts tend to be led by passionate managers who can lack the experience to run a large enterprise, and who are expected on top of the day job to set up a new organisation from scratch. A private partner can provide all sorts of business start-up and growth knowhow.
And partnerships of this type would, potentially, expand the number and size of public service ventures. For all the hype, there are still only a small number of spun-out public sector businesses, and many employ fewer than 100 people. But the government wants to see a million public sector workers in mutuals by 2015, which means large organisations are going to have to be created at lightning speed. It is hoped the private sector can help achieve this.
But will the marriage between public manager and the private sector work?
One concern is the compatibility of each side's goals. So far, public sector mutuals tend to be more focused on social rather than commercial aims. Few appear to have share capital financially worth much to staff. They tend to be defined by a passion for people, place or profession, and they often aspire to stay local and be more personal. Every person I have met who leads a spun-out organisation is motivated by social purpose. They identify strongly with public sector values – albeit ones that see a mutual or social enterprise as the appropriate vehicle for this.
A private company, however, will, quite rightly, be mostly concerned with its shareholders' or directors' interests, and that will include a strong focus on growth, either by merger or acquisition and on cutting costs quickly.
These are legitimate goals, and, arguably, the only way to create large organisations. But you can see a potential tug-of-war here, with one side driven by a growth agenda and the other living in fear of becoming remote from its community – and of losing control to a private partner.
Can both sides meet at least somewhere in the middle, with private investors accepting the potential constraints on return introduced by being partly employee-owned and former public managers bowing to some of the commercial imperatives of investors?
As someone working every day alongside public managers, I hope we can find ways to bring necessary investment and expertise to the table. Unlike in continental Europe, this is unlikely to come from the state. So we need to examine closely how to do this while ensuring the values we hold close are upheld.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Why Social Enterprise Sector Needs to Get Off its Pulpit
In a brilliant piece for the Guardian's Social Enterprise Network, Rob Greenland recently pleaded for us to take a more nuanced view of profit. One which places it in an intelligent conversation about the right level of profit, rather than a binary one which pits 'for-profit' organisations against 'not-for-profit' ones.
This is where a lot of the talk in social enterprise finds itself. You are one or the other. For or against private profit. Like any binary approach it contrasts the good guys with the not-so-good, those 'in it for themselves' versus 'those in it for the common good'. If social enterprise were to have a 'national anthem' it would be Billy Bragg's (wonderful) 'Which Side Are You On'?
But this worldview misses important realities. Firstly, as Greenland points out, it forgets that profit is often the fair reward for risk or effort in the same way that wages are the fair reward for the week's work. If there's proportionality there - and in many businesses there is - profits are as just from an ethical point of view as salaries or any other benefits. Indeed, saying to risk-taking investors that they can't make a profit - as the sponsors of Social Business Day are- is, in my view, ethically questionable. If we don't ask people to work for nothing, neither should we expect there to be no price for risk.
Secondly there is enormous variety within the 'for profit' world. For every Southern Cross, there are ethically run businesses which, when you look at them closely, deliver the 'blended return' that many social enterprises themselves aspire towards: they care for their people, they contribute to their community and recycle profit to produce general social benefits.
Indeed, go back 40 years, before the rise of the City and global financial capitalism, and much of business, particularly in Europe, even in the USA, operated in this way (for a really good account of how US corporations operated, read 'The Puritan Gift' by Kenneth Hopper).
Thirdly, by throwing a ring around 'not-for-profit' activity, the social enterprise sector anchors itself needlessly to a very small base, leaving the rest of the private sector that doesn't behave like Southern Cross feeling left in the cold. This is a real waste. The most interesting space, in my view, is that which is emerging between the hard end of the private sector and the existing world of social enterprise. It involves some ambiguity, some risks and yes, occasionally, it allows charlatans into the tent.
But it is also the most fertile soil that is still virtually untilled. This is starting, thank-heavens. You see it most vividly in initiatives like Liam Black's Wavelength, where private and social businesses help each other, learn from each other and, yes, occasionally do business together as a result.
On a very minor level, you're seeing it with businesses like my own, Stepping Out. This is essentially a private business but 20% of all net profit goes into a new Foundation which is supporting emerging social entrepreneurs. About 10% of Stepping Out's time goes on pro or low-bono work. Stepping Out has a clearly social aim - to change the UK public sector by supporting public managers to become social entrepreneurs - which has equal standing with its other goals.
But my decision, after much agonising, was that I could best pursue this business as a private company rather than as a social enterprise, as currently defined. Why? - you ask. To begin with I had to borrow £25k to get going. This was secured against my own assets. Then I had to work for six months without pay - and work bloody hard too. One screwed-up project or bad debtor and I was dead in the water.
A year in, of the £250k we've brought in, I've personally seen £25k of it, the rest has gone on wages, paying back loans and so on. Well, not all the rest. There's a profit you see. We're not sure yet, but it could be as much as £40,000. Let's imagine it is. £8000 will go on tax, leaving £32,000. About half of that will need to stay on the balance sheet to support our cashflow in year 2. We're now down to £16,000. Up to £4000 will go into the Foundation, leaving, at the very top, £10,000 for the business owner (me). Were I to pocket this, my earnings for the year will top £30k.
OK, I own the business, I hear you say, but that's my point - I own the business. That's the only reward I am getting here. A fair reward, I venture. If the business was 'asset-locked', I couldn't benefit from its sale, its balance sheet would be mainly socialised. There would be big limits on how much I could take out of whatever profit was produced. My contention (or perhaps more accurately my wife's) was that this model was not fair (I won't use her term), except to say it rhymes with forelocks!). In other words, a just outcome for me meant pursuing social goals through a private business.
I relay this story not to show my social credentials. Although I would like you to approve of what I have done, I am not going to lose sleep if people throw rocks. Those that do this tend to be fairly insulated, normally salaried and seldom on the wrong side of risk. The reason I am sharing this now is to underline that there's a world of socially minded people just beyond the outer-edge of the social enterprise sector whose pursuit of profit is neither immoral, self-centred or exclusive.
This group of people believe in balanced businesses that concile a number of objectives - social and environmental - alongside the requirement for profit. At the moment, we are viewed, from the pulpit of social enterprise, as mere 'for-profits'. I think the time is nigh for a big rethink. If companies are giving away a lot of their profits, let's consider bringing them in. Likewise if they are proving their social and environmental impact.
Social enterprise needs to be about progressive business, a broad church, a bit, dare I say it, like the Labour Party which mixes Blairites with the disciples of Tony Benn. Social enterprise in 2011 feels a bit like the SWP, a sect which, in forging its own exclusivity, limits any impact whatsover on the world beyond its immediate membership.
I know there are lots of people like me who feel a deep attachment to the social enterprise agenda of blended return and shared ownership, but are uneasy about the ring of steel thrown around it by its founding organisations. I believe, over time, that risks will be taken and the ring of steel lifted. For me, it can't happen soon enough if a progressive business sector of any strength is going to emerge to take on the darker forces that dog a successful, fair capitalism.
This is where a lot of the talk in social enterprise finds itself. You are one or the other. For or against private profit. Like any binary approach it contrasts the good guys with the not-so-good, those 'in it for themselves' versus 'those in it for the common good'. If social enterprise were to have a 'national anthem' it would be Billy Bragg's (wonderful) 'Which Side Are You On'?
But this worldview misses important realities. Firstly, as Greenland points out, it forgets that profit is often the fair reward for risk or effort in the same way that wages are the fair reward for the week's work. If there's proportionality there - and in many businesses there is - profits are as just from an ethical point of view as salaries or any other benefits. Indeed, saying to risk-taking investors that they can't make a profit - as the sponsors of Social Business Day are- is, in my view, ethically questionable. If we don't ask people to work for nothing, neither should we expect there to be no price for risk.
Secondly there is enormous variety within the 'for profit' world. For every Southern Cross, there are ethically run businesses which, when you look at them closely, deliver the 'blended return' that many social enterprises themselves aspire towards: they care for their people, they contribute to their community and recycle profit to produce general social benefits.
Indeed, go back 40 years, before the rise of the City and global financial capitalism, and much of business, particularly in Europe, even in the USA, operated in this way (for a really good account of how US corporations operated, read 'The Puritan Gift' by Kenneth Hopper).
Thirdly, by throwing a ring around 'not-for-profit' activity, the social enterprise sector anchors itself needlessly to a very small base, leaving the rest of the private sector that doesn't behave like Southern Cross feeling left in the cold. This is a real waste. The most interesting space, in my view, is that which is emerging between the hard end of the private sector and the existing world of social enterprise. It involves some ambiguity, some risks and yes, occasionally, it allows charlatans into the tent.
But it is also the most fertile soil that is still virtually untilled. This is starting, thank-heavens. You see it most vividly in initiatives like Liam Black's Wavelength, where private and social businesses help each other, learn from each other and, yes, occasionally do business together as a result.
On a very minor level, you're seeing it with businesses like my own, Stepping Out. This is essentially a private business but 20% of all net profit goes into a new Foundation which is supporting emerging social entrepreneurs. About 10% of Stepping Out's time goes on pro or low-bono work. Stepping Out has a clearly social aim - to change the UK public sector by supporting public managers to become social entrepreneurs - which has equal standing with its other goals.
But my decision, after much agonising, was that I could best pursue this business as a private company rather than as a social enterprise, as currently defined. Why? - you ask. To begin with I had to borrow £25k to get going. This was secured against my own assets. Then I had to work for six months without pay - and work bloody hard too. One screwed-up project or bad debtor and I was dead in the water.
A year in, of the £250k we've brought in, I've personally seen £25k of it, the rest has gone on wages, paying back loans and so on. Well, not all the rest. There's a profit you see. We're not sure yet, but it could be as much as £40,000. Let's imagine it is. £8000 will go on tax, leaving £32,000. About half of that will need to stay on the balance sheet to support our cashflow in year 2. We're now down to £16,000. Up to £4000 will go into the Foundation, leaving, at the very top, £10,000 for the business owner (me). Were I to pocket this, my earnings for the year will top £30k.
OK, I own the business, I hear you say, but that's my point - I own the business. That's the only reward I am getting here. A fair reward, I venture. If the business was 'asset-locked', I couldn't benefit from its sale, its balance sheet would be mainly socialised. There would be big limits on how much I could take out of whatever profit was produced. My contention (or perhaps more accurately my wife's) was that this model was not fair (I won't use her term), except to say it rhymes with forelocks!). In other words, a just outcome for me meant pursuing social goals through a private business.
I relay this story not to show my social credentials. Although I would like you to approve of what I have done, I am not going to lose sleep if people throw rocks. Those that do this tend to be fairly insulated, normally salaried and seldom on the wrong side of risk. The reason I am sharing this now is to underline that there's a world of socially minded people just beyond the outer-edge of the social enterprise sector whose pursuit of profit is neither immoral, self-centred or exclusive.
This group of people believe in balanced businesses that concile a number of objectives - social and environmental - alongside the requirement for profit. At the moment, we are viewed, from the pulpit of social enterprise, as mere 'for-profits'. I think the time is nigh for a big rethink. If companies are giving away a lot of their profits, let's consider bringing them in. Likewise if they are proving their social and environmental impact.
Social enterprise needs to be about progressive business, a broad church, a bit, dare I say it, like the Labour Party which mixes Blairites with the disciples of Tony Benn. Social enterprise in 2011 feels a bit like the SWP, a sect which, in forging its own exclusivity, limits any impact whatsover on the world beyond its immediate membership.
I know there are lots of people like me who feel a deep attachment to the social enterprise agenda of blended return and shared ownership, but are uneasy about the ring of steel thrown around it by its founding organisations. I believe, over time, that risks will be taken and the ring of steel lifted. For me, it can't happen soon enough if a progressive business sector of any strength is going to emerge to take on the darker forces that dog a successful, fair capitalism.
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