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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

Local Tragedy shows the limits of the Big Society

On 19 June, I was at a country fair in a park in Suffolk. At 4.30pm, a horse took fright and bolted with an empty carriage, running full-pelt into a crowd. One person died and eight others were seriously injured. Myself and my little kids missed it all by an hour. A truly horrendous event.

The Nowton Park Country Fair was run by St Edmundsbury Borough Council, which also runs the park. I say this because I felt glad the state was there to deal with this. Yes, it is up to the council to deal properly with the aftermath, to oversee the inquiry and, possibly, to pay out compensation. Imagine if this park had been handed over to a half-ready community group with no real experience in event management.

I have been one of the people hammering away for this park to be given to the community to operate as a charity or social enterprise. I am now not so sure that this was the right idea. In truth, we're not ready.

Let's imagine things had gone my way and the park was now run by a social enterprise, of which I was a trustee. It is quite possible that I would have been sent to face the media or, harder still, a grieving relative. Alternatively, I could have spent the next month of my working life mired in dealings with the Health and Safety Executive.

But I won't be. A man called John at the council is doing all of this. And I am really grateful that John is there to deal with all of this properly, not me. Obviously, these incidents are rare - they can't be used to justify the retention of control of everything by the state. But they put up a flag upon which is written "be careful what you wish for".

Few in Whitehall will have heard about the runaway horse in Bury St Edmunds, but the debate about the big society rumbles on. Tories such as Steve Hilton, the Prime Minister's director of strategy, want to bring the big society to life by making it the main thrust of the forthcoming white paper on public service reform.

He wants to see more mutuals, community groups and charities running public services, including parks and playgrounds. Meanwhile, other Tories, many of them outside David Cameron's immediate circle, want a stronger, free-market flavour. Hello Capita, Serco, payment by results and the rest.

Sitting behind the free marketers' view is the idea that the big society can't really be counted on to deliver savings or improvements in public services, a view shared by the trade unions and many in the voluntary sector. Where the right wing of the Tory party differs is in its belief that the private sector can do it better.

As the third sector, we will soon have to decide where to place our support: a vision of public sector reform that puts us at the heart of things, or one that puts the private sector clearly in the driving seat.

Despite the tragedy of the past weekend and it salutary lessons, I know where I am putting my money.

Leading in a New World

Tomorrow evening I am, along with Liam Black of Wavelength, hosting a gathering of leaders of social enterprise spin-outs from the North of England and Scotland.

It's about 'Leading in a New World - and the challenges of running your own ship once liberated from the Big Machine of the public sector. For most of the men and women present, life will have got a lot more interesting since stepping out. But it will also throw up a load of challenges too. Not least of these is how to carry the whole weight of an organisation, often a pretty big one, into unknown new space.

Since stepping down as a CEO, and working alongside new CEOs and MDs I have learned a lot about leadership. The first thing I have realised is that I wasn't as bad a one as I thought. My shortcomings as a CEO were such that, by the end, I didn't actually rate myself that highly. I couldn't do numbers, I got stressed too easily and I couldn't manage process that well. Also, the job sucked me dry of creativity. I left feeling a husk of my former self.

However, watching the best of the leaders I now work with operate, I realised I wasn't so bad after all. For what I lacked in executive skill-set I made up for in other ways. People seemed to trust me. They knew what I was about and felt comfortable with that. Although I had visible weaknesses I didn't try to pretend I didn't and, somehow, this built loyalty and support, rather than disenchantment. And, even at the end, I managed to hang on to some degree of emotional intelligence, even as the organisation became increasingly systems and process-dominated.

Of all the leaders I work closely with now, the two I admire most are also people whose weaknesses are as apparent as their strengths. One of them will be in the room tomorrow, in fact. What I like most about them is that their values radiate from them. And not just their service-values either. Their core beliefs and priorities as human beings are very clear from the moment you speak with them. They have integrity. They show care. They are not just task-centred, but people-centred too.
In their different ways, they both have an energy and warmth which makes them good to work with. Not always easy, but always stimulating. Both are soft-hearted, but can also be very tough if crossed. But you always know where you are with them.

I think what I've learned over the last year, from both my work with Stepping Out and my observations of Suffolk County Council is that the human side of leadership is absolutely critical. It sounds an almost facile thing to say, but, so often, you see CEOs who don't appear to grasp this important truth. They think it's just about the tangible results, the outcomes. Of course it is, but you don't actually achieve these, organisationally, without the commitment which really great leaders embody.

That's where I think Suffolk County Council went wrong. While our leadership, both on the the political and executive side, had great ideas and the right policies (in my view), real, felt, support for what they were doing was, in the end, limited to handful of their own side. They were perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be aloof, arrogant and focused merely on the task-in-hand, not the people side.

The real challenge when you're leading is that, every day, you have a welter of things bearing down on you. Cross cutting demands. It's solitary work and you often feel low in energy and pre-occupied. You become incredibly pragmatic, at times too much so, because it can cut across your values. Staying the person you are, and the one people need you to be, is, in my view, the principle challenge of leadership for these new CEOs.

Mission Possible in the Kingdom of Fife

Spent a fascinating day in the 'Kingdom of Fife' last Friday as Chair of 'Mission Possible?', a conference examining the future of public services in Fife. For the unenlightened, Fife sits just north of Edinburgh, on the other side of the Firth of Forth. It contains a mix of legacy mining towns, such as Kirkcaldy and Leven, as well as posher parts such as St Andrews, alma mater of Will n' Kate.

I love going to other countries and getting a feel of their issues. Scotland's are similar to our own but in bold. Public spending is a bigger part of their economy (Fife Council is by far the biggest employer) and levels of business start-up are lower than in England. Coupled to that, Fife has to contend for investment with its better-known neighbours to the south, Glasgow and Edinbugh.

Which sets the scene for Friday's event, convened by 'Fife Partnership', a collaboration of all the public and voluntary sector bodies in the area, all, helpfully, contiguous - and aided by a decent history of working well together. Thanks to devolution, 'local' now matters in Scotland far more than in England, where localism is still in its birth-pangs. Councils like Fife have a general power of competency. It is both felt and appreciated. Indeed, the chances of a Holyrood Minister telling them how often to empty their bins is less up there, for sure.

To the event. It was kicked off by Cllr Peter Grant, the SNP leader of the council. I like the Nats. They have a style of their own which is a mixture of intelligent, pragmatic and modern. They just feel fresher and more vital than the standard-issue Scottish politicians that we are now so used to seeing.

He was followed by a deputy CEO Steve Grimmond, who began his career setting up co-ops in Dundee and, unusually for a senior local government officer, has an acute understanding of the limits of municipalism and the need to view resources as a whole, not just public money to be thrown, from high at society's problems. Steve is the kind of leader I think local government needs - he sees well beyond what is immediately in front of him.

After my speech was the highlight of the event. Occasionally, you stumble across a world-class speaker. One who lifts you, gets inside your brain, pulls out your heart and leaves the stage to prolonged applause.

The person in question was Sir Harry Burns, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland. Not a name familiar 'Down South', but an internationally recognised leader in public health. Burns' presentation compressed 40 years of learning into 40 short minutes.

Scots, he told us, do not suffer worse health only because of smoking, above-average drinking and deep-fried Mars Bars. Indeed, control for this and you still find Scots dying and and in poor health in far greater numbers than elsewhere in Europe. What is happening is that massive numbers of people, many young, are out of control, living kamikaze lives which lead, often, to suicide, alcoholism, serious mental illness and death.

Burns takes a decidedly non-medic view of health. He doesn't believe there's these two worlds, one of 'healthy people', the other of unhealthy'. He thinks we all flit in and out of good health all the time. What keeps us on the right side of health is a mixture of our habits, our relationships and our ability to cope with the world around us. People who are resilient can stay healthy more easily as their stress is kept in check and their lives stay in shape. The opposite is true of people whose life experiences have not protected them so that they can cope with life-events.

Scotland, he argues, has a lot of people whose early lives have not afforded them that protection. So they act-out, they become addicts or drunks, commit violent crime or at worst kill themselves. It is a fact that Scotland's suicide and murder rates make some of the rougher parts of London look like a playground.

The answer to Scotland's health problems, therefore, is not a health service based on treatment but a better, more nurturing society in which early care and support, in particular, is improved. The voluntary sector, he believes, has a vital role in developing the kind of supportive relationships which both protect people and reduce their risks to themselves and others.

Burns' quest for understanding led him to study the accounts of younger holocaust survivors. People taken in by strangers and adopted. Nearly 70% experienced extreme trauma as adults, with many experiencing profound mental health problems. But 30% didn't - and it was this 30% which is of interest. This group were those whose positive life-experiences since had afforded them greater protection from their early trauma. Something was protecting these people. It is this that we needed to recreate in our society.

This led to Burns' main point: that we need to take an asset-based view of people in general. Build on what's there, what's already good, not be forever seeking to treat the problem, like a surgeon excising a cancer. Our whole public investment is based on attacking these 'negatives', most of it doesn't work yet we persist. Even when we know other approaches, particularly the asset-based approaches to working with people championed by the voluntary sector are proven to work.

The action didn't stop there. Harry Burns was followed onstage by a leading Scottish police officer called Karyn McCluskey who is Head of Violence for Scotland, following a successful stint in the Met and other English forces. McCluskey, however, is not your standard copper. She trained as a nurse, is also a published academic and has a bit of the Louise Casey about her, in her impassioned, no-nonsense style.

She started by showing CCTV footage of a gang of hooded lads in Glasgow killing a man with a stab wound to the heart, then another of a man being macheted. The purpose was not, however, only to shock. It was to illustrate the limits to policing. She went on to explain how a community-based programme designed to create peer pressure of a different kind - community pressure - was reducing involvement in gangs.

This was heart-stopping stuff. The police work closely with the community on a scheme which brings gang members into close contact with the recently bereaved mother, of the man who will never work again due the 'Glasgow smile' carved by a machete into his face, like some kind of grotesque clown.

While this stuff cannot penetrate the hearts and minds of the most damaged, it has a huge effect on many and the 'Gang Amnesty' headed up by Karyn and her team - which offers immediate support- a team to go out - to gang members wanting an alternative, has been a success.

This was turning into the best event I had been to in a long time. And it wasn't over yet. Three local people spoke powerfully of how they had successfully mixed the resources within their communities with those of the state and other sectors and achieved powerful change.

Andrew Arbuckle told of how the community had taken disused brownfield land in his coastal town and created a new space which had transformed the fortunes of the area. Dr Margaret Hannah spoke about the Shine Project which has produced an entirely new form of support for older people, building, again, on their assets, networks and capabilities.

Finally, Josie Mitchell, a long-term resident of 'The Broom', one of the worst estates in Scotland 25 years ago, explained, movingly, how the residents there had formed up a housing association which now runs an estate which is a model of successful regeneration. Their very simple aim, now achieved, was to make the Broom a place where people wanted to come and live, not escape from.

Three golden threads ran through this event, which, by the way, put many of the London-based events I have been to of late to shame in terms of quality. The first was that where the state works successfully alongside people, rather than does-unto them, the results are transformative.

The second is that it is key, in an age of austerity, to create a strategy based on ALL of our assets - public, community, private, and then map these, AS ONE, onto our high level goals.

The third key message is that control and command in general - the modus operandi of most public organisations today, doesn't work and has to change.

That starts with politicians - and it has to start now.

Lobbying On Health

Like many of us I have been adding my voice to the often aptly named cacophony of views on how our health services can be delivered in the future.

The Lib Dems have clearly scored a victory in this debate but I am not necessarily celebrating. While there were big problems and risks in the Lansley reforms-as-were, there was much good too which is now at risk. One of these is the role of non NHS providers, including, if we're not careful, social enterprises. These could be the baby thrown out with the privatisation bathwater.

To this end, I have been lobbying, among others, Norman Lamb, who really understands health and the party to speak with colleagues, particularly their Lordships, who might not be aware of the small miracles being achieved by the Central Surrey Health's and City Partnership Hull's of this world. Achievements any self-respecting Lib Dem should be proud of.

The plain truth of the matter in health and social care is that different parts of the system require different combinations of competition and collaboration. The argument to keep competition out of say, a big city hospital's coronory services in order to be able to deliver a specialism it otherwise couldn't can be matched, just as powerfully, by the case to introduce competition into areas like speech therapy or physio, where only one, often very sloppy, NHS provider, can legally claim public money for its work.

My point here is that different permutations of competition and collaboration, integration and break-up, are required across the system. This point is somewhat lost in the binary discussion in even the intelligent newspapers - and in politics. Their Lordships - who are often above this sort of thing - have been joining in with our own Lord John Pugh sounding off about Stephen Bubb's involvement with third sector capital provider Social Investment Business. This is exactly the kind of nonsense I fear could lead Lib Dem peers to try to kybosh social enterprise health providers too on the grounds that they are are kind of privatised service.

It has been interesting watching this unfold. Cameron is clearly highly sensitive to public opinion and a pragmatist, possibly too much of one. Too many U turns and he'll start to look very weak. Politically the Lib Dems needed to play this one as a win and, for once, seem to have got the politics right after a shocking year.

Lansley, on the other hand, is heading for Northern Ireland, as they used to say.

Social Enterprise the Irish Way

Just back from Louisburgh, a place which sounds like it should be in Tennessee or Wyoming but is in fact in Co Mayo, Ireland. It was a 24 hour flying visit to speak to the 2011 Finalist for Social Enterprise Irelands's Social Impact Awards.

What a setting. We flew into Knock, an airport built by a priest on a hilltop so that people could come see the nearby shrine. These days it is the gateway to the remoter towns of the west, for one of which I was headed.

I was picked up by the Cex of SEI, Sean Coughlan and we spent a pleasant hour and a half going over the recent election there followed by the visit of our Queen.

Irish politics, if you haven't noticed, has undergone a seismic shift with the dominant party (Fianna Fail) reduced to 19 seats - which would be the equivalent of Labour or the Tories getting less than 80. For the first time, it seems, old party allegiances have been abandoned in a collective protest against the economic collapse and the cronyism of the Irish state.

This, coupled with the Queen's visit, which is helping put to bed the longstanding issue between the UK and Ireland, make this feel like a time of reappraisal, Sean believes - and I agree.

I have been all over Ireland but never to Mayo, Louisburgh is set among mountains and sea. The weather changes quickly,making it a place of ever-shifting colour, light and shade. It never feels the same for long. The event was at the home of Declan Ryan, one of the founders of Ryanair, who is Chair of Social Enterprise Ireland and the One Foundation, Ireland's biggest social investor.

Declan is an aviation nut who now sets up airlines in emerging countries. Unlike a lot of big business guys, he is very unassuming and is the opposite of the 'Big I Am'. In fact, me being slow, it took me quite a while to work out who he actually was - halfway through a conversation in fact.

The event itself is about selecting from a field of about eight, the three strongest candidates for a significant social investment from the One Foundation, an investment that will enable significant scaling up. I didn't get to talk to everyone but at dinner I had a chance to talk to two candidates at length.

One was Sean Love. A former Director of Amnesty Ireland, Sean has paired up by novelist Roddy Doyle to set up Fighting Words. Staffed mainly by volunteers, it runs free creative writing and storytelling workshops for students of all ages to enhance creative writing skills and build their confidence in writing ability and self-expression.

In just over two years the centre has hosted 13,000 primary school children, 6,000 secondary students and 5,000 adults. Ireland is full of 'name' writers and artists, many of whom, with no accolade, show up and deliver sessions. Sean is heavily oversubsribed and wants to scale the programme.

Another was Krystian Fikert, a young Polish man set up MyMind in 2006, while employed with Google, in response to what he saw as the complicated nature of the Irish mental health system. MyMind provides affordable and accessible mental health services within the community, which aims to bypass the need for clinical referral, long waiting lists and high- cost services through ePsychologist, an innovative online support model.

What struck me about the group, overall, was their quality and energy. It reminded me a bit of that first day of the Ambassador programme when 20 of the UK's best all came together for the first time.

They have their work cut out. Ireland's economy is weak. Problems are growing almost as quickly as the pot is shrinking. These guys will depend on the country's new Government being willing to press the reset button in many areas of public policy - such as mental health, suicide prevention, education and the environment.

Which means taking on vested interests such as unions and the media. Easier in a small country where Ministers and MPs are often a phone call away. But harder, given the scale of mountains to climb.

I decided, after a bit of faffing around to waive my fee for this one. Not because I am a great guy but because I got as much out of this trip as anyone got out of me. Most of what I see I have seen before, in earlier version.

This was a bit different. I felt I was with the best of a generation, the people who are going, one way or another, to be the shapers of this country's future. To spend time among them was my privilege.

Sunday Reflections

Enjoying a calm Sunday after a breathless week. Business has quickened in the last couple of months. Suddenly I am not finding the time to blog, Tweet or follow the daily trail. Big proposal went in Friday. Should it come in I will feel the business really has legs.

One of the things I do to wind down is sort out the garden. Not planting or digging, just mowing and tidying. Then a trip to the tip. I love going there. Am I the only bloke who feels a strange purposefulness in filling my boot and heading down the dump? The one I use is a great place, one of the best in the country - managing to recycle 86% of what is left there. Which, when you look into the vast skips, is an achievement. All those settees, lawnmower, computers, fence-panels and rusty bikes.

Like a lot of us, I think a lot about the long-term future. All the stuff we produce and throw. One of my tasks today was to get rid of a knackered trampoline. All that metal and fabric - in the skip after two years. OK it'll get used again but this shaded my enjoyment of the trip. I look at my boy, three and half, in the front seat. Fresh, clean, beautiful. Then into the skip, Old, dirty ugly. I wonder, as I often do now, whether this is the best of it. What he'll be living in as a 41 year old? Will he be richer, poorer, healthier? Or will the world have changed beyond all recognition, as I fear it will? That's when I stop thinking.

I think what got me going this week was watching 'Megacities' by Andrew Marr. He goes to Dhaka, Shanghai, Mexico City, London. Half a million people enter Dhaka each year. Mexico City is several times the size of London. Nine billion people will be 15 billion within a generation. How's it all going to work with both oil and water running out, not to mention a warmer world? Will my boy be ok?

Yet our politics can't really cope with any of this. It's too big. And as individuals we seem only able to respond when the crisis is in the now, just like in WW2, where we faffed around as a nation until 1939 when it took the prospect of invasion to get ourselves organised. We could see tragedy in the middle distance but until it was right up to our eyes we did very little.

There's a point you get to in adult life, I think, where you've got to decide what you really believe and will build around. I know a lot people who are convinced greens. Their views are unconventional. Stop growth. Prevent population growth. Create a basic-income for all etc. All of my life, I have tended to rail against the utopians, whether green or red. Their lack of pragmatism has always seemed futile and to play into the hands of the enemy - witness Labour in the 80s. That was the crucible in which I grew up. Pure but Losing. Then seeing the place I grew up left to the dogs. For this reason, politically I always preferred people like Blair who accepted certain things - as not to would, as progressives have always done, hand power to the wrong people.

But I do have my moments of doubt. At heart I want a high trust society in which we are drawn closer together than we are in England in 2011. I am a big admirer of what Alex Salmond is achieving up in Scotland, an interesting combination of economic nationalism, green investment and a social ethic I find really appealing. It is positive, hopeful and interesting. It challenges the givens while working within the grain of Scottish identity and values.

Which brings me back to where I started - Sunday. Back from the tip, listening to Jarvis Cocker on 6 Music, kids out, looking out over the beloved greenery of Nowton Park feeling lucky to be alive.

Is Cinderalla back at the Ball? My latest piece for Third Sector magazine

Times have changed for the leaders of the voluntary sector. Cast your mind back 10 years, to 2001. It felt then that, like Cinderella, the sector under New Labour was being spirited from a life cleaning ovens and sweeping floors and invited to the ball. The government wanted to engage with the sector, and to spend money on it. Its prince saw how well those in the sector understood the problems of the time - and how we could help him to build the new kingdom.

The 2000s were our ballroom years. A group of talented leaders emerged who inspired confidence and admiration. They enjoyed the privileges of the court and an increasing familiarity with those holding power. As the prince swung our sector around the dancefloor, we were eyed with jealous suspicion by some outside the gilded circle. What price, they asked, were we paying for this proximity? But the riposte was that while we sometimes got too close to government, we had credibility - and a massive bounty to show for our trouble.

Then midnight struck. A new, more sceptical prince came to power. Our gown immediately turned to sackcloth, our chariot back to a pumpkin, our horses back to mice. We were unceremoniously cast out of the kingdom. Even our name, the 'third sector', was denied and replaced with a new one of the prince's choosing: the 'big society'.
The reason, of course, was that the new prince had different, more ascetic tastes. The ball was over and he had inherited an impoverished kingdom. He decided the third sector had become part of the furniture, no longer reflecting its roots. So he took away most of our money and told us to get by without state handouts.

And his loving gaze passed over us and moved to the fields beyond the palace walls where 'real people' tended the fields and helped the needy without regard for goings-on in the court. They didn't ask and they didn't get. These were the real heroes, he declared as he slammed the door, giving us just enough corn to get by until we could support ourselves.

Of course, we were cross. Before the new prince's ascent to power, we had done our bit to win his heart. We had responded with enthusiasm to his new ideas, even the ones we had doubts about. Some of us even came up with plans to make them happen. Alas, to no avail. Cinderella was politely, but firmly, sent packing.

That was last year. So what is happening now? Having banished us, the new prince, I sense, realises that, without the third sector's goodwill and know-how, his own 'big society' - led, in theory, by the yeomen in the fields - will struggle to get traction.

The penny is dropping that, while Cinderella may have gorged herself on the palace's fine food and wine, she has left a hole that needs to be filled. Indeed, she now finds herself invited back on the quiet. Not held as close, nor treated as lavishly and indulgently.

But definitely back

How do we stop abuse in care?

If you didn't watch last night's Panorama, then watch it on Iplayer. It concerns the treatment of people with learning disabilities by one of the UK's biggest private social care providers. Panorama shows people being physically and verbally abused by staff who are clearly out of all control.

I would like to say that this is shocking by its novelty. But the truth is that I have seen similar things with my own eyes, albeit less often. And I have, throughout my time in advocacy, frequently come across stories of such goings on. The truth of the matter is that mostly goes on without senior managers knowing about it.

I don't have to think hard to recall one home I worked in. Presided over by a powerful personality, M, who clearly had 'issues', staff and residents alike were afraid of her. M was a bully and, on her bad days, a bit of a sadist. People would sit in their own shit if she felt they had done it to 'piss her off'. People's genitals would be laughed about as though they weren't there. On one occasion, she struck someone, not hard, but enough to know where they stood. Families even were intimidated by her. She had everyone in her thrall.

I was just a relief worker - this was one of many places I worked as a 23 year old. Having nothing to lose, I complained about M to senior managers verbally. Nothing happened. I put it in writing and threatened to go public. M was suspended. Then others came forward to substantiate and add their stories. People who themselves had joined in with M in her constant goading. By the end of it, M was lucky not to go to jail. Thankfully none of the other staff lost their jobs. They were all, in essence, decent people led by a monster.

This episode taught me something very important about people and leadership. Without great leaders in those places I worked, they quickly become hellish as staff take their cues from whoever is in charge. Which brings me back to the role of private companies in public services. I am categorically not one of those people who thinks that profit cannot be honestly made out of providing good care and support. That is nonsense as experience every day tells us. Nor is the answer for care to be socialised. The NHS, let's remember was only last week lambasted, again, for letting elderly patients effectively starve to death on its wards. And one of the last big learning-disability scandals was at Orchard Hill, an NHS facility.

No, it isn't just about public-private. It is about mission and leadership. It is about focus on what matters. If these places are run according to imperatives beyond providing best-service, things slide. The best places I worked were, bizarrely, run by the same group that employed M. Two miles down the road, their other place was and still is exemplary. I would place my own child there. What made it work was strong, empowered, proud local leadership backed, yes, by management with good values.

This is one reason I prefer spin-outs to either retained public sector or outright privatisation. Ownership and control we know have a positive effect on behavour. So too does focus and specialism and a strong sense of social purpose. We will, of course, one day see a scandal in a spin out. But I think in organisations which lose their sense of purpose through an excessive focus either on profit or too much public-sector politicking, when eyes leave the ball, the chances of scandal are all the more extreme.

My thoughts today are with the people on the wrong end of the kicks, shoves and hair-pulling in that programme. Several people today are in custody and hopefully those people are now safe. But, rather than just put this down to 'evil people', I hope this whole affair helps us think more carefully about the kinds of services - and the requirements of leadership - needed to keep people safe. Most people in social care are good, decent people. So too are most managers, right up to the top. I have no doubt that the company involved will respond in a concerned and reasonable way. I just hope that this also addresses some of the deeper reasons why these things happen.

What kind of leadership do we need in Suffolk now?

I listened to Andrew Marr's interview with Barack Obama yesterday. For me he embodies what leadership is all about. Clear, strong values. Calmness in adversity. Sensitivity to human feeling. An ability to raise others and paint a big picture - but also a clear eye for detail. Toughness when required but also persuasion as the main weapon.

When I was a CEO, I didn't always rate myself as a leader that much. I could, I think, inspire people, I could build a picture - but I never felt sure enough of myself as a manager of people. I need to be liked that little bit too much. People, I think, found me just the wrong side of flexible - a bit of a pushover. I also flapped quite a lot, sometimes not very privately either. Painfully aware of my weaknesses, I always felt like an actor who had only learned half his lines.

I know this isn't unique. I know all CEOs feel, to some extent, frauds waiting to be unmasked. I know few that ride that delicate balance between having good relatonships with colleagues and having the wrong sort of dynamic - either not being sufficiently 'above the fray' or so far above it that people can't relate to you.

The best advice I ever had was to be myself. This meant, of course, accepting that I was never going to be a Barack Obama, but it also meant that I was going to be authentic. People tend, I found, to respond well to that. By following the contours of your personality, rather than a template for leadership, colleagues found, eventually, a way to work around certain predictable patterns. Interestingly, by being more frank about my weaknesses, support mechanisms developed where they didn't before. By being more human, I didn't I find become less 'CEO-like'

Which bring me on today's matters in hand. In Suffolk, we are currently without a CEO. She is on long-term leave pending the outcome of an investigation into the organisation's culture. Her style was a funny mix of visionary, inspirational and confrontational. I make no bones of the fact that I like Andrea Hill. She is smart, interesting and brave. But she's got a very different 'leadership face'. Which, in my experience, has been to show no weakness, to meet fire with fire and to be fairly brutally honest in her assessments of people and situations. She doesn't sweeten any pills.

The net effect of her style was mixed. On the one hand, she drew some great people into our Council who have been rainmakers. She also gave our Council clear direction, energy and agenda. On the other, she was a divisive figure who seemed, to staff, to be scary and remote, cold and unsympathatic. My guess is that she needed a 'front' just to get through some very difficult times - but that in creating this may have made matters more difficult for herself. That a little more of herself shown would, ironically, have taken some pressure off her.

Obviously, nobody knows what happens next. It's a matter for HR and the leaders of the Council to decide what happens. My fear is that if she doesn't come back, the Suffolk experience may become a cautionary fable for Councils who might seek to do things differently. But perchance she does return, I think she would do well to review a leadership style which, while inspiratonal to some was difficult for many to deal with. And that it was the many, in the end, that saw off some of the ideas with which she was most closely associated.