To Cumbria. At the invitation of Dan Heery of Cybermoor, a technology-based social business. Dan is also Chair of Cumbria Social Enterprise Partnership.
Last Monday, Cumbria felt a long way away. I wasn't looking forward to the drive or the pile of email on my return. But I was glad I went. Cumbria, on a bright morning, is a blessing. I wound through Ambleside then Grasmere, home of Wordsworth. I can now see where the poems came from. My heart soared too, quite unexpectedly. There is something heavenly there.
I arrived in Keswick along with about a hundred others. The Lakes cover a massive area but people know each other and there is a villagey atmosphere - in a good way. My speech seemed to go down well. My message about the recession is to beat it by seeing it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to push the social business message. And, of course, to create a brilliant new offer for our times. Times when people are crying out for something they can trust.
During one speech I drift a little and start reading Liam Black's piece in Social Enterprise. He's clearly as spooked as I am by what's going on, where it is all going and what's going to happened afterwards. Plenty of social enterprises are going down he says and, of course, he's right. Because we are no better prepared than anyone else for what's coming. The final bubble to burst will be Government spending. That will be the one which hits us hardest because, at the end of the day, loads of us either do business with the Government or (still) get large subsidies from it. Liam generally calls things right. He also writes brilliant stuff and should, in my view, be writing for the Times or FT.
The best bits of the day happen during my `surgery'. I am set up at a table where people can come to discuss their challenges. Here I meet two elderly women (both at least 75)from Workington who saved the town's museum by taking it over from the council who were about to closed it. `We have a few dinosaurs to slay' one of them tells me before asking me to email a pdf of my presentation to her.
Then I meet Carl Hodge, a former RAF man who is business development guy for South Lakeland Society for the Blind. He's asking me if I think he should do an MBA. Judging by what he's achieved in a short time, I think he should be teaching on one. He's set up three trading companies, including a braille translation business which he bought out. He should be a case-study to send to charities who don't think they have any commercial potential. The word social entrepreneur could never be better applied.
Friday and I am in the North West, seeing the irrepressible Rob Harris of Advocacy Experience. Rob owns this business but is is very much a blended value entity - a social business in my view but it probably wouldn't get the Kitemark. Rob and I exchange views about how our own sector will come through the coming public sector recession. He shares my views about the lean times ahead. We both believe we're going to have to reinvent advocacy services that offer the same outcomes and quality but for at least 20% less cost. Its a tough square to circle but we both have ideas we're excited about.
Lunch with the excellent Matt Stevenson-Dodd at a lovely eaterie in the unlikely environs of suburban Warrington. There is a lot to do at his place and a lot hangs on how the organisation fares this next year. His quality will, I think, see him through, but its a tough assignment and he will need nerves of steel to deal with deep-seated issues, topped off, of course, by the recession.
On the way back, the phone rings. Its my exuberant business development director Paul Morrish. We have won another major tender, this time in Suffolk, in partnership with Out and About, a brilliant charity based in Eastern England. This brings to £2 million the new business Paul and his new team have brought in this quarter. After two extremely poor quarters this is a big relief. Paul is, of course, a big factor in this, though he would, being him, share the credit generously. To keep slogging away through a dark winter, losing time and again takes both guts and balls. Paul has both (!) and I am delighted for him.
So why, then, you might ask, am I still worrying about the recession if my sales are through the roof? Well, dear reader, it is because the party, for now, is still going on in the public sector. This is the last bubble to burst but the pin will be pricked in 2010, mark my words. If you want a feeling for how it will be look over the Irish Sea. A 6% drop in GDP. Unemployment at 15%. Public spending slashed. House prices down a third on peak. And that's just this year. Perhaps we won't get it quite so bad, but that's what's coming. I do not joke when I say to my people that we have two years, top, to secure the future of this organisation and its mission.
Oddly, I feel quite energised about it. I like white-knuckle rides.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Beating the Recession
I keep getting asked to do pieces about how to beat the recession at the moment so I thought I'd start by blogging about it.
My main response to the recession so far has been to fear it but not actually do that much! This is, so far, a mainly private sector recesssion. The 100,000 or so people signing on for JSA each month do not, on the whole, work for charities or councils!
However, this is changing. PriceWaterHouseCoopers have just predicted a 1.6% real annual reduction is public spending from 2010 till at least 2013 - or a 50 billion annual tax hike. As Andrew Rawnsley said in today's Observer, the game is up for the public sector - and their big deliver-partners such as charities, many of whom, like Speaking Up, now get most of their money from the state.
The better charities are now taking pre-emptive action. And, yes, I count Speaking Up among this number. It is clear to me as a CEO that everything is on the line for us in the next three years. Worst case is that we lose all our gains over the last five years and retreat to being a local charity in Cambridgeshire. Best-case is that we continue to grow, create abundant social profit and recast our business in the face of new needs. The likely outcome is something in between. My job, as CEO is to get as near to best-case as it is possible for someone in the top job to do.
So how will you beat the recession? Three things will matter. The first, and most important, is to advocate the right strategy for the organisation. Get this one wrong - and many do - and the mission stalls. And in a recession, a bad strategy stalls you real quick. Good strategy means understanding your environment and aligning the resources of the organisation - current and future- with changes in that environment. It sounds easy but its not. You need to look at everything, including radical restructuring, strategic partnerships and mergers, if this serves the mission long term. The alternative is failure. And CEOs that get strategy wrong will, I predict, be those signing on for JSA in a couple of years' time.
The second important thing for CEOs is to face the reality that the third sector is about to enter a deeply turbulent period - and act accordingly. This means using your power as CEO to cull projects and roles which you know, in your heart, aren't adding value. Things which, in the good times, you didn't really feel it was worth sticking your neck out about. Accepting that you, as CEO, will have to make tough choices is the first step to actually making them.
Thirdly, beating the recession will be about delivering services cheaper and better. This means recognising the needs of commissioners and funders and taking out cost, even when people say it can't be done. It also means being innovative, finding new ways to deliver more for less. The `burning platform' of the recessionw will give CEOs a one-off opportunity to press their staff to create the necessary change for organisations to survive.
So, three ways the recession: the right strategy, willingess to make very tough choices and a renewed focus on delivery, value and innovation. All of the above will require you, as CEO, to face-down people who think you're out to downgrade the work of the organisation. The response to this is to remind people that without the right changes there simply will be no organisation and the long-term mission will, withing a very short time, not exist. And if in doubt, remind yourself of your role as CEO: to protect the long-term mission of your organisation.
My main response to the recession so far has been to fear it but not actually do that much! This is, so far, a mainly private sector recesssion. The 100,000 or so people signing on for JSA each month do not, on the whole, work for charities or councils!
However, this is changing. PriceWaterHouseCoopers have just predicted a 1.6% real annual reduction is public spending from 2010 till at least 2013 - or a 50 billion annual tax hike. As Andrew Rawnsley said in today's Observer, the game is up for the public sector - and their big deliver-partners such as charities, many of whom, like Speaking Up, now get most of their money from the state.
The better charities are now taking pre-emptive action. And, yes, I count Speaking Up among this number. It is clear to me as a CEO that everything is on the line for us in the next three years. Worst case is that we lose all our gains over the last five years and retreat to being a local charity in Cambridgeshire. Best-case is that we continue to grow, create abundant social profit and recast our business in the face of new needs. The likely outcome is something in between. My job, as CEO is to get as near to best-case as it is possible for someone in the top job to do.
So how will you beat the recession? Three things will matter. The first, and most important, is to advocate the right strategy for the organisation. Get this one wrong - and many do - and the mission stalls. And in a recession, a bad strategy stalls you real quick. Good strategy means understanding your environment and aligning the resources of the organisation - current and future- with changes in that environment. It sounds easy but its not. You need to look at everything, including radical restructuring, strategic partnerships and mergers, if this serves the mission long term. The alternative is failure. And CEOs that get strategy wrong will, I predict, be those signing on for JSA in a couple of years' time.
The second important thing for CEOs is to face the reality that the third sector is about to enter a deeply turbulent period - and act accordingly. This means using your power as CEO to cull projects and roles which you know, in your heart, aren't adding value. Things which, in the good times, you didn't really feel it was worth sticking your neck out about. Accepting that you, as CEO, will have to make tough choices is the first step to actually making them.
Thirdly, beating the recession will be about delivering services cheaper and better. This means recognising the needs of commissioners and funders and taking out cost, even when people say it can't be done. It also means being innovative, finding new ways to deliver more for less. The `burning platform' of the recessionw will give CEOs a one-off opportunity to press their staff to create the necessary change for organisations to survive.
So, three ways the recession: the right strategy, willingess to make very tough choices and a renewed focus on delivery, value and innovation. All of the above will require you, as CEO, to face-down people who think you're out to downgrade the work of the organisation. The response to this is to remind people that without the right changes there simply will be no organisation and the long-term mission will, withing a very short time, not exist. And if in doubt, remind yourself of your role as CEO: to protect the long-term mission of your organisation.
Friday, March 20, 2009
On the Stump
Today I knocked on 200 doors. As well as seeing a lot of UPVC, I met a startlingly wide range of people. Happy ones, miserable ones, mildly aggressive ones, gay and happy ones. Most were older (I was calling in the daytime), nearly all were OK about me calling and I had a good old laugh with quite a few of them. I met three 90 year olds, all of whom vote, one who had voted Liberal since the 1930s.
My resident survey is designed to drill down to the key issues upon which I will base my campaign. Middle Schools come high up, especially for Mums and Dads (Bury's Middle School system is being abolished by the Tories in the next few years). I was amazed by how local a lot of people's concerns are: parking, traffic nuisance and so on. A lot of people see themselves as powerless in the face of officialdom and, over time, just resign themselves.
I was surprised by how many people want to talk. Not just older people but also the young mum, surrounded by her kids, talking about the parking problems in the street. The teacher talking about the schools. People, I noticed, weren't looking to me for answers but to be heard.
Today has shown me how important knocking on doors is to identifying support. You get a pretty good sense of who might vote for you come the election. Most are happy for you to come back. They appreciate seeing someone from one of the parties, once they realise you're not flogging something. But the most precious haul from today was the 30 or so people who I think will vote for me, particular if I go back nearer the election. Few of these are, I sense, committed Lib Dems, but, rather, people who responded particularly well to the visit and the message. If I can do enough of this type of day, between now and the election proper, I reckon I can harvest a lot of votes.
The territory today was mostly quiet residential streets, mostly bungalows with neat gardens, a five year old Nissan in the drive and `Neighbourhood Watch' signs on the door. Not Labour territory, by default Tory but, I noticed, not committed Tory.
Politically the thing that stuck me most profoundly was the number of people (10-20) who said they would vote Lib Dem if Vince Cable was leader. The man seems to strike a massive chord with voters. Indeed, at this rate, I will be trying to get my photo done with him, such is he a hit with voters. Cable is seen as straight-talking and right about things. Indeed had the leadership election been a year later, I have no doubt now that he would have been taking us into the next election. Clegg, by contrast, isn't mentioned. People just don't know him and his similarity, visually, to Cameron, won't, I feel, help us come next year.
I did, at a few doors, encounter some raw anger about the political class. A real bitterness that politician have screwed-up big time and got away with it, their own financial futures intact. The `plague on all your houses' reaction wasn't common (perhaps five people in all) but edges with anger, which you tend to register.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed myself today. For any aspiring politician, this is a necessary rite of passage. You have to listen to people, you have to connect with their concerns. You also have to empathise because if you don't do this, you're not going to win their support, especially as a Lib Dem in a town divided mostly into Con-Lab. My reception, on the whole, was positive, better than anticipated and it made me want to do it all again soon.
It also made me believe that, with a fair wind, I can actually win.
My resident survey is designed to drill down to the key issues upon which I will base my campaign. Middle Schools come high up, especially for Mums and Dads (Bury's Middle School system is being abolished by the Tories in the next few years). I was amazed by how local a lot of people's concerns are: parking, traffic nuisance and so on. A lot of people see themselves as powerless in the face of officialdom and, over time, just resign themselves.
I was surprised by how many people want to talk. Not just older people but also the young mum, surrounded by her kids, talking about the parking problems in the street. The teacher talking about the schools. People, I noticed, weren't looking to me for answers but to be heard.
Today has shown me how important knocking on doors is to identifying support. You get a pretty good sense of who might vote for you come the election. Most are happy for you to come back. They appreciate seeing someone from one of the parties, once they realise you're not flogging something. But the most precious haul from today was the 30 or so people who I think will vote for me, particular if I go back nearer the election. Few of these are, I sense, committed Lib Dems, but, rather, people who responded particularly well to the visit and the message. If I can do enough of this type of day, between now and the election proper, I reckon I can harvest a lot of votes.
The territory today was mostly quiet residential streets, mostly bungalows with neat gardens, a five year old Nissan in the drive and `Neighbourhood Watch' signs on the door. Not Labour territory, by default Tory but, I noticed, not committed Tory.
Politically the thing that stuck me most profoundly was the number of people (10-20) who said they would vote Lib Dem if Vince Cable was leader. The man seems to strike a massive chord with voters. Indeed, at this rate, I will be trying to get my photo done with him, such is he a hit with voters. Cable is seen as straight-talking and right about things. Indeed had the leadership election been a year later, I have no doubt now that he would have been taking us into the next election. Clegg, by contrast, isn't mentioned. People just don't know him and his similarity, visually, to Cameron, won't, I feel, help us come next year.
I did, at a few doors, encounter some raw anger about the political class. A real bitterness that politician have screwed-up big time and got away with it, their own financial futures intact. The `plague on all your houses' reaction wasn't common (perhaps five people in all) but edges with anger, which you tend to register.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed myself today. For any aspiring politician, this is a necessary rite of passage. You have to listen to people, you have to connect with their concerns. You also have to empathise because if you don't do this, you're not going to win their support, especially as a Lib Dem in a town divided mostly into Con-Lab. My reception, on the whole, was positive, better than anticipated and it made me want to do it all again soon.
It also made me believe that, with a fair wind, I can actually win.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Parish Rewards
In December we moved to Nowton, a village of 30 houses and 100 souls, two miles south of Bury St Edmunds. To the north,it is bounded by Nowton Park, a former private estate now owned and managed by St Edmundsbury District Council. Its sort of National Trust-lite. Big trees, well-signposted walks but with five-a-side pitches and free parking too. Perfect.
To the South, West and East, sit acres of wide-open Suffolk pasture and arable land, gently rolling, the austerity punctuated by occasional trees and the odd, interesting fold in the land. The village is spread over a couple of square miles so nobody is really on top of each other. This spacing out gives an airy, liberated feel to the place. There are people but not in your face, a community but in no sense a commune.
Presiding over local village affairs is the Parish Council. I first went to see them upon arriving because a couple of visitors to the house, having left, returned to the door, white-faced and shaken having just avoided being hit by cars on the blind bend before our house. Wanting to take action to slow traffic but, at the same time, not offending local sensibilities about signage etc I went to Parish Council and my County Councillor, and asked for their views. Thankfully they backed me and two months later we have a letter from the Suffolk County Council committing to a series of measures which will, I hope, make a difference.
Tonight I showed up to the Parish Council meeting to say thanks and drop off a card to the convenor of the Parish. Apparently, this is a rare success, due, in part they think to the drive coming, in the first instance, from a local resident, rather than the parish representative body, something I found both odd and a bit perverse.
Just now, later on, in my inbox there is a mail from the Convenor. Would I mind taking regular responsibility for keeping the bus shelter across the road clean and also mowing the grass around the village sign opposite our house?
I smile and reply saying that nothing would give me more pleasure.
To the South, West and East, sit acres of wide-open Suffolk pasture and arable land, gently rolling, the austerity punctuated by occasional trees and the odd, interesting fold in the land. The village is spread over a couple of square miles so nobody is really on top of each other. This spacing out gives an airy, liberated feel to the place. There are people but not in your face, a community but in no sense a commune.
Presiding over local village affairs is the Parish Council. I first went to see them upon arriving because a couple of visitors to the house, having left, returned to the door, white-faced and shaken having just avoided being hit by cars on the blind bend before our house. Wanting to take action to slow traffic but, at the same time, not offending local sensibilities about signage etc I went to Parish Council and my County Councillor, and asked for their views. Thankfully they backed me and two months later we have a letter from the Suffolk County Council committing to a series of measures which will, I hope, make a difference.
Tonight I showed up to the Parish Council meeting to say thanks and drop off a card to the convenor of the Parish. Apparently, this is a rare success, due, in part they think to the drive coming, in the first instance, from a local resident, rather than the parish representative body, something I found both odd and a bit perverse.
Just now, later on, in my inbox there is a mail from the Convenor. Would I mind taking regular responsibility for keeping the bus shelter across the road clean and also mowing the grass around the village sign opposite our house?
I smile and reply saying that nothing would give me more pleasure.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Startin' Over?
On June 4th I am, for the first time in my life, standing in an Election. It is the local government poll for Suffolk County Council. I am standing in Hardwick Division (or ward) for the Liberal Democrats who, last time, got 28% of the votes next to the victorious Tories' 39% and lowly Labour's 25%. Winnable-ish. But on the same day as the Euros with the Tories sky-high in the polls, I am not the bookie's choice!
Why and why now? Its a good question. The answer, I think, is that I feel its the next stage for me. You see, I've chosen so far to express my politics almost exclusively through my work. Speaking Up has been, in a way, my way of saying to the world what I believe in: personal empowerment, self-direction, social equality and an entrepreneurial, non-statist approach to social change.
For a long time, I felt this was the only real way for me to change the world. Politics seemed slow and, at times, pointless. I wanted to focus, laser-like, on issues I cared about and make a difference, without wasting a gram of energy on the heat and light of politics. Added to this, I didn't, as a younger man, have the skill, insight or inclination to be effective beyond what I chose to do through the organisations I set up.
But that has changed. I am a bit older now. I understand the world better. My skills have broadened, my confidence grown. I also know better what I believe now, which sounds odd, but I took a long time to truly make up my mind on many things.
Coupled to all this, my days of serial entrpreneurship feel like they may be behind me now. Like a blocked songwriter, I just don't have another tune in me right now. As Paul Weller once said, `after a while, they just stop coming'. He was right. There was a time in my late 20s-early 30s when I set up an organisation a year for five years. But the truth is that I haven't actually set up anything new for years.
Some of this dearth is stage-of-life stuff - kids, the job, being permanently fatigued - but part of it is that I may have `done' that particular approach to changing the world and now want to find another. The nearest I seem to get these days to social entrepreneurship is helping others who are doing what I used to do back in the day.
So what do I believe in policy terms? I'd like to say I am a classic Liberal Democrat but, in truth, my beliefs are a bit more of a political alphabet soup than that. I don't, for example, remotely mind CCTV being everywhere. Nor do I spend too many sleepness nights worrying about who MI5 might be keeping an eye on. In truth, I am probably more far `right wing' than most Liberal Democrats. Indeed certain people in the party like Simon Hughes (the lefty-Christian Liberal MP) really don't do much for me at all.
However, I am very clear about a few things. I believe in a state which operates within clearly defined, written limits. Even in an era where we need a strong state to respond to global change, I think it is ever more important that we decide, formally, as a society, what government is and isn't allowed to do. A written constitution.
I also think the public sector is far too big. The corrective to 90s public squalor has swung the other way and we now have long passed the point where additional spending made any difference. We need a public sector which is smaller (25% smaller), which is managed so it can succeed and in which real-world terms and conditions are imposed, immediately, upon the people working within its organisations.
Finally, I want to see radical decentralisation of power. As anyone who has run a successful organisation knows, centralised systems tend to underperform. Britain is currently run like Shell in the 1960s. From the top down. And we wonder why nothing really works. It takes a huge leap of faith to let go of the levers, but, one day soon, Government will need to pass power down the line. Not just to local government. But to wider civil society. And, as a key part of civil society, the third sector should be a much larger shaping force in the way Britain works. Delivering services but also shaping them too, as users and local managers of resources.
This all probably sounds a bit David Cameron, I know, so I need to stress this I am not a Conservative. Unlike the Tories, I believe that it is right for politicians to seek to change the natural order by deliberate effort. I am also basically optimistic, rather than sceptical, about human nature. Given basic safety, fairness and equal-opportunity, most people tend to elevate social solidarity to a primary value very easily. Look at the trust-based societies of Northern Europe for an example of this. High trust societies are successful ones. They are also ones in which social inequality is actively challenged, not seen as `the natural order'.
Therefore Government, in my view, needs to create the conditions in which the best aspects of human nature can thrive and where the worst are actively discouraged. Yes, I guess I am talking about social engineering. But where Labour has gone wrong in my view has been to focus on settting up endless Government programmes, instead of nurturing the capacity of our society to be the one in which most people aspire to live: One that is just, safe,cohesive, trusting, regardful, optimistic.
Does this sound like the UK today after 12 years of Labour Government? No. Therefore I am, like most people, deeply worried about the future of our country and, of course, the wider world. We are, in the G20, entering a period of low growth and likely social fragmentation. The end of oil is near. I think living standards may well have peaked for a lot of people in the richer countries. For those outside the elite nations, the picture is particularly bleak. Warming is already having profound effects. You don't need to be James Lovelock to believe that its 50/50 whether half the places within the Tropics will even exist a hundred years from now.
The challenge, then, for politics domestically, is to lead and broker a new kind of settlement on the economy, to redefine the role of the state in the face of new challenges and to engineer conditions in which our society can cohere rather than fragment. It is to set a course for this country which weans us off oil within 50 years. It isn't hard to imagine. We have always been inventive. I can almost see the UK, in 50 years time, as a bit like a gigantic social enterprise: earning its living through successful products which address the challenges of others globally, but always mindful of the need to balance our financial returns with wider social returns globally. Returns without which, ultimately, we are all endangered.
Politics starts for me on the Nowton estate next Friday afternoon when I do my Residents Survey as a prelude to my campaign. I am asking people what they think about a whole raft of issues in our area from Post Offices at risk to the closure of our middle schools next year. In doing this I hope to find out who might vote for me in June.
My political career may begin,end or just be delayed on June 4th. But, whatever happens, I think I will have learned something from the experience of seeing the world through the eyes of people I otherwise would probably never see or encounter in my life at the moment, never mind talk to or listen to.
Why and why now? Its a good question. The answer, I think, is that I feel its the next stage for me. You see, I've chosen so far to express my politics almost exclusively through my work. Speaking Up has been, in a way, my way of saying to the world what I believe in: personal empowerment, self-direction, social equality and an entrepreneurial, non-statist approach to social change.
For a long time, I felt this was the only real way for me to change the world. Politics seemed slow and, at times, pointless. I wanted to focus, laser-like, on issues I cared about and make a difference, without wasting a gram of energy on the heat and light of politics. Added to this, I didn't, as a younger man, have the skill, insight or inclination to be effective beyond what I chose to do through the organisations I set up.
But that has changed. I am a bit older now. I understand the world better. My skills have broadened, my confidence grown. I also know better what I believe now, which sounds odd, but I took a long time to truly make up my mind on many things.
Coupled to all this, my days of serial entrpreneurship feel like they may be behind me now. Like a blocked songwriter, I just don't have another tune in me right now. As Paul Weller once said, `after a while, they just stop coming'. He was right. There was a time in my late 20s-early 30s when I set up an organisation a year for five years. But the truth is that I haven't actually set up anything new for years.
Some of this dearth is stage-of-life stuff - kids, the job, being permanently fatigued - but part of it is that I may have `done' that particular approach to changing the world and now want to find another. The nearest I seem to get these days to social entrepreneurship is helping others who are doing what I used to do back in the day.
So what do I believe in policy terms? I'd like to say I am a classic Liberal Democrat but, in truth, my beliefs are a bit more of a political alphabet soup than that. I don't, for example, remotely mind CCTV being everywhere. Nor do I spend too many sleepness nights worrying about who MI5 might be keeping an eye on. In truth, I am probably more far `right wing' than most Liberal Democrats. Indeed certain people in the party like Simon Hughes (the lefty-Christian Liberal MP) really don't do much for me at all.
However, I am very clear about a few things. I believe in a state which operates within clearly defined, written limits. Even in an era where we need a strong state to respond to global change, I think it is ever more important that we decide, formally, as a society, what government is and isn't allowed to do. A written constitution.
I also think the public sector is far too big. The corrective to 90s public squalor has swung the other way and we now have long passed the point where additional spending made any difference. We need a public sector which is smaller (25% smaller), which is managed so it can succeed and in which real-world terms and conditions are imposed, immediately, upon the people working within its organisations.
Finally, I want to see radical decentralisation of power. As anyone who has run a successful organisation knows, centralised systems tend to underperform. Britain is currently run like Shell in the 1960s. From the top down. And we wonder why nothing really works. It takes a huge leap of faith to let go of the levers, but, one day soon, Government will need to pass power down the line. Not just to local government. But to wider civil society. And, as a key part of civil society, the third sector should be a much larger shaping force in the way Britain works. Delivering services but also shaping them too, as users and local managers of resources.
This all probably sounds a bit David Cameron, I know, so I need to stress this I am not a Conservative. Unlike the Tories, I believe that it is right for politicians to seek to change the natural order by deliberate effort. I am also basically optimistic, rather than sceptical, about human nature. Given basic safety, fairness and equal-opportunity, most people tend to elevate social solidarity to a primary value very easily. Look at the trust-based societies of Northern Europe for an example of this. High trust societies are successful ones. They are also ones in which social inequality is actively challenged, not seen as `the natural order'.
Therefore Government, in my view, needs to create the conditions in which the best aspects of human nature can thrive and where the worst are actively discouraged. Yes, I guess I am talking about social engineering. But where Labour has gone wrong in my view has been to focus on settting up endless Government programmes, instead of nurturing the capacity of our society to be the one in which most people aspire to live: One that is just, safe,cohesive, trusting, regardful, optimistic.
Does this sound like the UK today after 12 years of Labour Government? No. Therefore I am, like most people, deeply worried about the future of our country and, of course, the wider world. We are, in the G20, entering a period of low growth and likely social fragmentation. The end of oil is near. I think living standards may well have peaked for a lot of people in the richer countries. For those outside the elite nations, the picture is particularly bleak. Warming is already having profound effects. You don't need to be James Lovelock to believe that its 50/50 whether half the places within the Tropics will even exist a hundred years from now.
The challenge, then, for politics domestically, is to lead and broker a new kind of settlement on the economy, to redefine the role of the state in the face of new challenges and to engineer conditions in which our society can cohere rather than fragment. It is to set a course for this country which weans us off oil within 50 years. It isn't hard to imagine. We have always been inventive. I can almost see the UK, in 50 years time, as a bit like a gigantic social enterprise: earning its living through successful products which address the challenges of others globally, but always mindful of the need to balance our financial returns with wider social returns globally. Returns without which, ultimately, we are all endangered.
Politics starts for me on the Nowton estate next Friday afternoon when I do my Residents Survey as a prelude to my campaign. I am asking people what they think about a whole raft of issues in our area from Post Offices at risk to the closure of our middle schools next year. In doing this I hope to find out who might vote for me in June.
My political career may begin,end or just be delayed on June 4th. But, whatever happens, I think I will have learned something from the experience of seeing the world through the eyes of people I otherwise would probably never see or encounter in my life at the moment, never mind talk to or listen to.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
The title of today's blog - and also of a fabulous book by Japan's foremost author Haruki Murakami. I bought this book as a small-time fan of Murakami but mainly because he's a runner and I am too.
`When I Am Running' is all about Murakami's development as a writer and a runner. He started both at the same time, the comparatively late age of 32. He believes that what makes a good runner also makes a good novelist. Yes, talent, but also focus, endurance and an ability to get through pain. His writing in `When I am Running' is simple, simplistic almost and, if you didn't know this was the writer of `Norwegian Wood', you'd almost believe it was produced by a lesser writer.
What I have enjoyed most so far in this book is the extent of my own identification with Murakami. He is a grafter. He has talent (far more than I) but is also aware that things dont' come easily to him. He has to really try often where things come easily to others.
Murakami also has a straightforwardness to him I can relate to. He sees life in terms of choices. No pain, no gain. Nothing good happens without insane levels of commitment, unless you're just freakishly talented or fortunate. This is a man for whom writing isn't just an intellectual outpouring, but a long, hard marathon, something for which he has to constantly push himself towards, a titanic effort requiring a backbone of steel.
Running has been a feature of my own life since I was about 18. I began using it to manage stress when I was going through a rough patch mentally. I never stopped. I have been running at least twice a week now for 20 years. My performance as a runner peaked in my early 20s, quite early for a runner when I completed the Great North Run in 1hr 24 minutes. Then I got injured and couldn't run hard for several years. I never quite got back to that level and now half-marathon in about 1hr 45 mins.
Running feels as much part of my identify as it does Murakami's. What do I think about when I am running? Not a lot. He is right, it is semi-meditative. Fragments come and go. Things do get worked out but not on a logical level, particularly. For me, like him, that happens, if it ever does, on the page.
Today's run was in the splendid frost of an early morning. I did an hour, out through our gate, past the village sign and into the fallow Suffolk pasture that surround our house. The sky is big here, the fields mostly unbroken by hedgerows, huge, subtlely undulating tablecloths with distant, splinter-fences.
Sometimes when I run I feel I am filled with water. At such times, I barely get beyond walking pace. Today though I was strong and even managed to sprint for a half-mile. I am accompanied, as always, by my terrier-dog, Stanley, who could probably run all day and then some. His natural athletic talent runs far in excess of my own.
I arrive home, pleased with myself, at 8.30am, following a fine hour to hear both children in a state. They have been ill with tummy bugs and I was up several times in the night. The volume doesn't phase me though. I am beyond stress. That is what running means to me.
`When I Am Running' is all about Murakami's development as a writer and a runner. He started both at the same time, the comparatively late age of 32. He believes that what makes a good runner also makes a good novelist. Yes, talent, but also focus, endurance and an ability to get through pain. His writing in `When I am Running' is simple, simplistic almost and, if you didn't know this was the writer of `Norwegian Wood', you'd almost believe it was produced by a lesser writer.
What I have enjoyed most so far in this book is the extent of my own identification with Murakami. He is a grafter. He has talent (far more than I) but is also aware that things dont' come easily to him. He has to really try often where things come easily to others.
Murakami also has a straightforwardness to him I can relate to. He sees life in terms of choices. No pain, no gain. Nothing good happens without insane levels of commitment, unless you're just freakishly talented or fortunate. This is a man for whom writing isn't just an intellectual outpouring, but a long, hard marathon, something for which he has to constantly push himself towards, a titanic effort requiring a backbone of steel.
Running has been a feature of my own life since I was about 18. I began using it to manage stress when I was going through a rough patch mentally. I never stopped. I have been running at least twice a week now for 20 years. My performance as a runner peaked in my early 20s, quite early for a runner when I completed the Great North Run in 1hr 24 minutes. Then I got injured and couldn't run hard for several years. I never quite got back to that level and now half-marathon in about 1hr 45 mins.
Running feels as much part of my identify as it does Murakami's. What do I think about when I am running? Not a lot. He is right, it is semi-meditative. Fragments come and go. Things do get worked out but not on a logical level, particularly. For me, like him, that happens, if it ever does, on the page.
Today's run was in the splendid frost of an early morning. I did an hour, out through our gate, past the village sign and into the fallow Suffolk pasture that surround our house. The sky is big here, the fields mostly unbroken by hedgerows, huge, subtlely undulating tablecloths with distant, splinter-fences.
Sometimes when I run I feel I am filled with water. At such times, I barely get beyond walking pace. Today though I was strong and even managed to sprint for a half-mile. I am accompanied, as always, by my terrier-dog, Stanley, who could probably run all day and then some. His natural athletic talent runs far in excess of my own.
I arrive home, pleased with myself, at 8.30am, following a fine hour to hear both children in a state. They have been ill with tummy bugs and I was up several times in the night. The volume doesn't phase me though. I am beyond stress. That is what running means to me.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Drying Up
My blogging is feeling a little dry right now. I am, alas, one of the doom mongers – see next week’s Third Sector piece - for whom these times seem designed to leave in a state of both affirmation and low-level angst. Partly linked to my own future anxiety - something that has been gnawing at the back of my head since I created a future for myself in which earning a lot of money becomes a necessity rather than a by-product of whatever I freely choose to do.
Isn’t it odd, though - this capacity we have for not appreciating what we have and letting some future abstraction bog us down, take the edge off things. Even when looking at my beautiful, perfect, healthy children or looking out of my window at the amazing Tripods-like cedars that seem to stomp across the park, I can’t quite appreciate what I’ve got or achieved. My own health is good, my marriage is very good, I do mostly what I like, with caveats.
So why worry? But I do. The state of the world is part of it, I know but part of it almost feels wired in. Is it this which gives me the hunger for climbing the next hill? That same dissatisfaction that allowed Roy Keane only an hour of happiness following Man Utd’s 1999 Treble before he became edgy enough to want to do it all again. I don't know. Perhaps I just need to relax, to listen to the wonderful Bryn in `Gavin and Stacey' and "Take a Chill Pill". Life is good. I know it and I don't.
Isn’t it odd, though - this capacity we have for not appreciating what we have and letting some future abstraction bog us down, take the edge off things. Even when looking at my beautiful, perfect, healthy children or looking out of my window at the amazing Tripods-like cedars that seem to stomp across the park, I can’t quite appreciate what I’ve got or achieved. My own health is good, my marriage is very good, I do mostly what I like, with caveats.
So why worry? But I do. The state of the world is part of it, I know but part of it almost feels wired in. Is it this which gives me the hunger for climbing the next hill? That same dissatisfaction that allowed Roy Keane only an hour of happiness following Man Utd’s 1999 Treble before he became edgy enough to want to do it all again. I don't know. Perhaps I just need to relax, to listen to the wonderful Bryn in `Gavin and Stacey' and "Take a Chill Pill". Life is good. I know it and I don't.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Friday's Endings
Sometimes I get to Friday evenings feeling full of energy and achievement, still wanting more. Other times, I limp past the finish line like a cramped marathon runner, all achy and tired. This was one of those Fridays. It hasn't been a bad week, on the whole. Quite the opposite in fact. A good meeting with my excellent senior team. A successful trip to London and, today, the launch of Speaking Up's Youth Parliament, comprising young people from Cambs, Suffolk and Peterborough. Seeing our excellent teams in action and the enthusiasm of all the Mums and Dad's was lovely.
Spoke to Jim Paice, our local Conservative MP who, unlike Lib Dem David Howarth, fulfilled his commitment to come along. We mused about the £60 billion annual budget deficit facing the next Government and say we're glad that the newly rebuilt school we're standing in will be completed by then. Paice thinks its a lot more than £60 billion, which, if true would mean we're trying to plug a 12-15% gap between known income and planned expenditure in just 2 years time.
Earlier in the week I had been on an ACEVO Working Group looking at how CEOs can better engage staff in their organisations. Although this is considered to be a strength of third sector organisations, the truth is we get more tribunals than any other sector. The group was actually quite good with a range of people from all kinds and sizes of organisation. It was chaired by the genial and super-bright Jon Sparkes, CEO of Scope and also, I am delighted to say, Trustee of Speaking Up. Unlike some clever people who wear their intelligence like bling, Jon is under-stated and keeps it all simple. This makes his gift something to admire rather than grimace at, or feel envy for.
The problem we all face, we discovered, was the disjunction between attempts to de-machine our organisational cultures (more personal appearances, a clearer, more human organisation voice) and the clunking machinery of the Employment Law and personnel rules which many of our organsiations contain. And no time is this clanking louder than in a downturn when the `At Risk' letter go out, formal `consultation' has to take place with about 5000 people who might be affected by 20 job losses and the secrecy about restructure has to be absolute in order to prevent the odd rascal suing you for some breach of employment law.
The solutions are not to be defeated by the machine. To continue to be human. To use your HR people to formalise informality and to keep beating away at the message that there is no conspiracy. Many of us too are seeking to involve staff in strategy and create an organisational conversation. We, for example, use a fortnightly e-bullet called `Heads Up' which I use to flag up where I see things, a sort of CEO blog, but not one that has been put through the internal PR mincer. Just a fairly straight-up account of the issues. Unsurprisingly to me, I know people read it and, to a point, appreciate its tone and content.
My final stop in London is at a well-known social investment company which I love very much (and its not that one) which was doing some market-research on its own positioning in the sector. One of the exercises was when the names of all the agences were thrown on the table on cards and we were asked to group them. There were commercial banks, `charity banks, social lenders, equity-investors grant-givers. Interestingly this organisation did bits of all, with the possible exception of grant-giving. Their positioning was as a boutique social finance agnency which, if they didn't do it, could find you a man or woman that could.
A necessary force, I thought. But what is still missing from this market in my view is a social investment agency that goes much further down the risk pathway than loans, or performance-dependent returnable grants (or quasi-equity). Its the Angel investor market. Those people, like David Gold of Glimmer (he's the only one and he's very small) who say, `I like this idea, this person, this acorn, and I'm going to take a flyer on it'. Very few people do that. The organisations getting social investment tend to be those that have three or more years track-record. This is a blockage on social innovation, one which a Social Investment Bank would not, I believe solve, due to the degree of risk. One in ten successes, while the norm in venture capital, would not, I suspect, impress the Treasury.
The week ends as the week began, in the bedroom upstairs, trying, against tiredness to negotiate clothing on and off the body of my lovely one year old son, Wilf. He's laughing tonight, particularly when I make parping noises on his belly. He loves play, the rougher the better. This boy goes to sleep the second you lay him down and shut the door. I then go read to Ruby, two stories (she always insists on two). Fortunately, tonight's are mercifully short and she's practically asleep by the end. As always, I rub her back, and we run through all the people who love her, something he joins in after a while. She is an adorable child. I think, briefly of David Cameron who lost a child this week. I struggled to contain myself when I heard that news, as I think a lot of people did who have children. You know what it means for the rest of your life, the sense of loss that never goes, that shadow on your heart. I feel a huge sense of sorrow for Cameron and his wife. And, then, predictably perhaps, relief that it was not my child that died on Wednesday morning.
Spoke to Jim Paice, our local Conservative MP who, unlike Lib Dem David Howarth, fulfilled his commitment to come along. We mused about the £60 billion annual budget deficit facing the next Government and say we're glad that the newly rebuilt school we're standing in will be completed by then. Paice thinks its a lot more than £60 billion, which, if true would mean we're trying to plug a 12-15% gap between known income and planned expenditure in just 2 years time.
Earlier in the week I had been on an ACEVO Working Group looking at how CEOs can better engage staff in their organisations. Although this is considered to be a strength of third sector organisations, the truth is we get more tribunals than any other sector. The group was actually quite good with a range of people from all kinds and sizes of organisation. It was chaired by the genial and super-bright Jon Sparkes, CEO of Scope and also, I am delighted to say, Trustee of Speaking Up. Unlike some clever people who wear their intelligence like bling, Jon is under-stated and keeps it all simple. This makes his gift something to admire rather than grimace at, or feel envy for.
The problem we all face, we discovered, was the disjunction between attempts to de-machine our organisational cultures (more personal appearances, a clearer, more human organisation voice) and the clunking machinery of the Employment Law and personnel rules which many of our organsiations contain. And no time is this clanking louder than in a downturn when the `At Risk' letter go out, formal `consultation' has to take place with about 5000 people who might be affected by 20 job losses and the secrecy about restructure has to be absolute in order to prevent the odd rascal suing you for some breach of employment law.
The solutions are not to be defeated by the machine. To continue to be human. To use your HR people to formalise informality and to keep beating away at the message that there is no conspiracy. Many of us too are seeking to involve staff in strategy and create an organisational conversation. We, for example, use a fortnightly e-bullet called `Heads Up' which I use to flag up where I see things, a sort of CEO blog, but not one that has been put through the internal PR mincer. Just a fairly straight-up account of the issues. Unsurprisingly to me, I know people read it and, to a point, appreciate its tone and content.
My final stop in London is at a well-known social investment company which I love very much (and its not that one) which was doing some market-research on its own positioning in the sector. One of the exercises was when the names of all the agences were thrown on the table on cards and we were asked to group them. There were commercial banks, `charity banks, social lenders, equity-investors grant-givers. Interestingly this organisation did bits of all, with the possible exception of grant-giving. Their positioning was as a boutique social finance agnency which, if they didn't do it, could find you a man or woman that could.
A necessary force, I thought. But what is still missing from this market in my view is a social investment agency that goes much further down the risk pathway than loans, or performance-dependent returnable grants (or quasi-equity). Its the Angel investor market. Those people, like David Gold of Glimmer (he's the only one and he's very small) who say, `I like this idea, this person, this acorn, and I'm going to take a flyer on it'. Very few people do that. The organisations getting social investment tend to be those that have three or more years track-record. This is a blockage on social innovation, one which a Social Investment Bank would not, I believe solve, due to the degree of risk. One in ten successes, while the norm in venture capital, would not, I suspect, impress the Treasury.
The week ends as the week began, in the bedroom upstairs, trying, against tiredness to negotiate clothing on and off the body of my lovely one year old son, Wilf. He's laughing tonight, particularly when I make parping noises on his belly. He loves play, the rougher the better. This boy goes to sleep the second you lay him down and shut the door. I then go read to Ruby, two stories (she always insists on two). Fortunately, tonight's are mercifully short and she's practically asleep by the end. As always, I rub her back, and we run through all the people who love her, something he joins in after a while. She is an adorable child. I think, briefly of David Cameron who lost a child this week. I struggled to contain myself when I heard that news, as I think a lot of people did who have children. You know what it means for the rest of your life, the sense of loss that never goes, that shadow on your heart. I feel a huge sense of sorrow for Cameron and his wife. And, then, predictably perhaps, relief that it was not my child that died on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Getting up Close with Personal Budgets
Yesterday I spoke at an event put on by third sector CEOs body ACEVO about the challenges and opportunities presented by personal budgets (PBs) for social care.
The line up was intereting. First up was David Challis of the University of Manchester who was one of the leaders of the IBSEN government sponsored research into PBs.
In essence his research showed that, over the whole sample, having a PB had a very small impact on personal well-being, compared to those in the control group.
However, there were differences within the sample. Young people, for example, fared a lot better, as did people with learning disabilities and mental health problems. But for older people - the vast bulk of potential PB users, outcomes were actuallý overall marginally poorer.
Now this could have been an 'old versus new' effect which would erode over time but the big take out from David's work was that it cannot be proven yet that PBs improve outcomes as a matter of course.
What he did say, however, was that the changes that did happen for people who
altered their provision slightly were often reported very positively. The meal you pay the pub to deliver rather than having meals on wheels. Being put to bed by your neighbour rather than a paid carer who might appear long beforeor after your preferred bedtime.
David's message to the third sectorwas that this policy could be a massive opportunity to increase their role, ashe has seen happen in Australia and Japan, where TSOs now do many of the roles currently delivered by local authorities such as assessment of needs and allocation of resources. In parts of Australia, for example, it is quite normal for a charity to be assigned the whole responsibility for social care needs within a particular geographic area.To this end they set up brokerage services, as well as provision.
My worry, and one shared with many of the audience is that in most parts of the UK,local authorities are defending this role and ensuring that, long term, it is they, not TSOs or anybody else have this central role. It is they who have the funded brokerage services running already and so forth. In essence, yet another uncontested service delivery contract won to the only candidate allowed into the process.
Next up was Caroline Glendinning, another of the IBSEN researchers. Her presentation focused moreon the logistics and challenges to the social care provider market when you disaggregate demand in the way PBs do. There are unintended outcomes, losses of efficiency in contracting and all sorts of tricksy problems around who ensures carers are checked-out,trained and doing what they should be doing etc. Hers was aless compelling presentation thn Challis' but the take away, for me, is that every major policy shift has unintended consequences that can actually challenge the whole model.
I spoke about our experience of attempting to get a new support service to people using PBs off the ground in Cambridgeshire, something which we started thinking about in 2007.
For me the experience has been frustrating. The LA seem to be investing most of the Social Care Reform Grant into their own initiatives and , so far, there has been little tangible support. I am not actually convinced that LAs want to see TSOs in this space. As providers yes, they ok with that. But working closely with users to shape their budgets, no I remain unconvinced of their will to fund this happening outside of the LA. I hope I am proven wrong.
Final speaker was Stephen Rose of Choices Support, a 35 million pound charity which he has grown from an acorn. Stephen is the opposite of the self-centred, bucaeering social entrepreneur. His low key, modest approach seems almost unbeting of a person of such achievement. His key point was that TSOs themselves can, as providers of services, get involved in helping to broker change for individuals they support. Choices has, he told us, broken its 35 million budget into 6000 individual accounts and they now offer brokerage for free.
Did the session change my views of PBs? I think I now appreciate more fully the role that service providers will play in acting as brokers, despite a degre of conflict of interest. I also now think that any solution we develop may need to have a provision-option built into it. The session also brought to mind that in order to really get momentum into what we are doing - and our process has been relatively slow - we need to obtain development capital quite soon. One way to do this is to partner with a large provider and this is something to which I think we now need to give proper consideration.
Overall I believe that by 2019, PBs will be the norm for most people whether these are held as a cash payment or, at the other end of the scale, within the Local authority. The third sector will be providing more than it does now though I somhow doubt we will see an Australian-style handing over of responsibility from LAs. Nice though that is to envisage, I suspect that is to hope for too much.
The line up was intereting. First up was David Challis of the University of Manchester who was one of the leaders of the IBSEN government sponsored research into PBs.
In essence his research showed that, over the whole sample, having a PB had a very small impact on personal well-being, compared to those in the control group.
However, there were differences within the sample. Young people, for example, fared a lot better, as did people with learning disabilities and mental health problems. But for older people - the vast bulk of potential PB users, outcomes were actuallý overall marginally poorer.
Now this could have been an 'old versus new' effect which would erode over time but the big take out from David's work was that it cannot be proven yet that PBs improve outcomes as a matter of course.
What he did say, however, was that the changes that did happen for people who
altered their provision slightly were often reported very positively. The meal you pay the pub to deliver rather than having meals on wheels. Being put to bed by your neighbour rather than a paid carer who might appear long beforeor after your preferred bedtime.
David's message to the third sectorwas that this policy could be a massive opportunity to increase their role, ashe has seen happen in Australia and Japan, where TSOs now do many of the roles currently delivered by local authorities such as assessment of needs and allocation of resources. In parts of Australia, for example, it is quite normal for a charity to be assigned the whole responsibility for social care needs within a particular geographic area.To this end they set up brokerage services, as well as provision.
My worry, and one shared with many of the audience is that in most parts of the UK,local authorities are defending this role and ensuring that, long term, it is they, not TSOs or anybody else have this central role. It is they who have the funded brokerage services running already and so forth. In essence, yet another uncontested service delivery contract won to the only candidate allowed into the process.
Next up was Caroline Glendinning, another of the IBSEN researchers. Her presentation focused moreon the logistics and challenges to the social care provider market when you disaggregate demand in the way PBs do. There are unintended outcomes, losses of efficiency in contracting and all sorts of tricksy problems around who ensures carers are checked-out,trained and doing what they should be doing etc. Hers was aless compelling presentation thn Challis' but the take away, for me, is that every major policy shift has unintended consequences that can actually challenge the whole model.
I spoke about our experience of attempting to get a new support service to people using PBs off the ground in Cambridgeshire, something which we started thinking about in 2007.
For me the experience has been frustrating. The LA seem to be investing most of the Social Care Reform Grant into their own initiatives and , so far, there has been little tangible support. I am not actually convinced that LAs want to see TSOs in this space. As providers yes, they ok with that. But working closely with users to shape their budgets, no I remain unconvinced of their will to fund this happening outside of the LA. I hope I am proven wrong.
Final speaker was Stephen Rose of Choices Support, a 35 million pound charity which he has grown from an acorn. Stephen is the opposite of the self-centred, bucaeering social entrepreneur. His low key, modest approach seems almost unbeting of a person of such achievement. His key point was that TSOs themselves can, as providers of services, get involved in helping to broker change for individuals they support. Choices has, he told us, broken its 35 million budget into 6000 individual accounts and they now offer brokerage for free.
Did the session change my views of PBs? I think I now appreciate more fully the role that service providers will play in acting as brokers, despite a degre of conflict of interest. I also now think that any solution we develop may need to have a provision-option built into it. The session also brought to mind that in order to really get momentum into what we are doing - and our process has been relatively slow - we need to obtain development capital quite soon. One way to do this is to partner with a large provider and this is something to which I think we now need to give proper consideration.
Overall I believe that by 2019, PBs will be the norm for most people whether these are held as a cash payment or, at the other end of the scale, within the Local authority. The third sector will be providing more than it does now though I somhow doubt we will see an Australian-style handing over of responsibility from LAs. Nice though that is to envisage, I suspect that is to hope for too much.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
30 Hours in Town
This week I am spending two days in London, trying to pack a month's worth of networking into 30 action-packed hours.
Wednesday starts sedately as I read the Guardian's excellent Social Enterprise supplement. Great pieces by my friend Martin Clark, author of `The Social Enterpreneur Revolution', Andrew Mawson, Patrick Butler and superb Vox Pop from Rob Greenland of The Social Business, Kresse Wessing of EAKO and Rod Schwartz of Catalyst. It feels that we're finally on the front-foot as a sector now, confident and clear in what we are saying. And people are now listening as the world-as-they-knew it collapses around them.
First up I meet Peter Mason of Secure Healthcare at the Commonwealth Club. Peter is a public innovator, one of those genuine social entrepreneurs who thinks and acts big - and has the skill to let others come in behind him quickly. His passion is offender health care and his business will, he hopes, soon win enough major contracts in UK prisons to be a key player. Peter does a lot of consulting, something I notice a lot of the more established people now doing. For him, consulting is low-input, high-impact activity, something that his profile and personal brand enables him to do. Impressive.
Next up it is Futurebuilders Investment Committee. These meetings are all incredibly interesting, particular in the current economic situation and the resulting Government action-plan for the Third Sector.
Then on to meet the excellent Clare Gilhooley and her development director from Cambridge House in Southwark who are a major advocacy provider as well as providing a range of community services in Southwark. Cambridge House is a `community anchor' type organisation that, strategically, has to balance being dependent on its local focus with a need to develop diverse income streams from places a little further afield.
The day ends with dinner with Craig Morley who is now CEO of the newly constituted (last week) Challenge Network. Set up with funding from venture-philanthopists, the Challenge Network will be piloting full-time volunteering as part of a `national service' experiment which at least two of the man parties are interested in. So it could all get very big very quickly.
I first met Craig in August last year. He was working for Rio Tinto, the mining group, in a strategy role, having spent a good part of his career with Proctor and Gamble. He was looking at a new career in the entrepreneurial third sector and had, by chance, seen a piece on my book in the FT. So he got in touch. That led to him doing a big piece of probono work for us, then a review of structure and then, at the end of the year he went to work for Challenge Network.
Craig is, I think, the type of person who we, as a sector, need to be more skilled in bringing into our organisations. The training he has had from the likes of P & G, brings skills we just don't have the money to nurture in our own people. And the commitment of somebody who has given up a larger income to work for causes they believe in is, in my experience, often higher than many people who are `lifers' in the sector. It is great to see Craig succeeding in leading a dynamic third sector organisation and good to know Speaking Up played a small part in him getting there.
After six hours of sleep I get up, cross Russell Square and meet David Gold for breakfast. David is CEO of Prospect-Us, but more importantly, he is what I term an `angel' for emerging social entrepreneurs. His support for people and projects through Glimmer of Hope is one of the biggest untouted stories in the sector. David is fabulous at picking winners, backing them with his own money and, perhaps more crucially, his time and networks, and seeing them right through to independence. He is also a lovely man who makes you immediately feel like you matter. In a tough world, people like David are islands of warmth and authenticity. A superstar.
Next I am going to the Office of the Third Sector to meet Tamsyn Roberts who is one of the civil servants working on the social enterprise side there. I am keen to get a deeper sense of how the OTS works and how, overall she sees it all going from a Government perspective.
And finally I am popping in at the offices of Permira to see Paul Armstrong and Jane Gilbert who are helping us write a consultancy brief. They are frighteningly efficient people who always add value to any discussion.
Then its home by six to see the kids and Katy. I miss them so much and even a day away feels too long.
Wednesday starts sedately as I read the Guardian's excellent Social Enterprise supplement. Great pieces by my friend Martin Clark, author of `The Social Enterpreneur Revolution', Andrew Mawson, Patrick Butler and superb Vox Pop from Rob Greenland of The Social Business, Kresse Wessing of EAKO and Rod Schwartz of Catalyst. It feels that we're finally on the front-foot as a sector now, confident and clear in what we are saying. And people are now listening as the world-as-they-knew it collapses around them.
First up I meet Peter Mason of Secure Healthcare at the Commonwealth Club. Peter is a public innovator, one of those genuine social entrepreneurs who thinks and acts big - and has the skill to let others come in behind him quickly. His passion is offender health care and his business will, he hopes, soon win enough major contracts in UK prisons to be a key player. Peter does a lot of consulting, something I notice a lot of the more established people now doing. For him, consulting is low-input, high-impact activity, something that his profile and personal brand enables him to do. Impressive.
Next up it is Futurebuilders Investment Committee. These meetings are all incredibly interesting, particular in the current economic situation and the resulting Government action-plan for the Third Sector.
Then on to meet the excellent Clare Gilhooley and her development director from Cambridge House in Southwark who are a major advocacy provider as well as providing a range of community services in Southwark. Cambridge House is a `community anchor' type organisation that, strategically, has to balance being dependent on its local focus with a need to develop diverse income streams from places a little further afield.
The day ends with dinner with Craig Morley who is now CEO of the newly constituted (last week) Challenge Network. Set up with funding from venture-philanthopists, the Challenge Network will be piloting full-time volunteering as part of a `national service' experiment which at least two of the man parties are interested in. So it could all get very big very quickly.
I first met Craig in August last year. He was working for Rio Tinto, the mining group, in a strategy role, having spent a good part of his career with Proctor and Gamble. He was looking at a new career in the entrepreneurial third sector and had, by chance, seen a piece on my book in the FT. So he got in touch. That led to him doing a big piece of probono work for us, then a review of structure and then, at the end of the year he went to work for Challenge Network.
Craig is, I think, the type of person who we, as a sector, need to be more skilled in bringing into our organisations. The training he has had from the likes of P & G, brings skills we just don't have the money to nurture in our own people. And the commitment of somebody who has given up a larger income to work for causes they believe in is, in my experience, often higher than many people who are `lifers' in the sector. It is great to see Craig succeeding in leading a dynamic third sector organisation and good to know Speaking Up played a small part in him getting there.
After six hours of sleep I get up, cross Russell Square and meet David Gold for breakfast. David is CEO of Prospect-Us, but more importantly, he is what I term an `angel' for emerging social entrepreneurs. His support for people and projects through Glimmer of Hope is one of the biggest untouted stories in the sector. David is fabulous at picking winners, backing them with his own money and, perhaps more crucially, his time and networks, and seeing them right through to independence. He is also a lovely man who makes you immediately feel like you matter. In a tough world, people like David are islands of warmth and authenticity. A superstar.
Next I am going to the Office of the Third Sector to meet Tamsyn Roberts who is one of the civil servants working on the social enterprise side there. I am keen to get a deeper sense of how the OTS works and how, overall she sees it all going from a Government perspective.
And finally I am popping in at the offices of Permira to see Paul Armstrong and Jane Gilbert who are helping us write a consultancy brief. They are frighteningly efficient people who always add value to any discussion.
Then its home by six to see the kids and Katy. I miss them so much and even a day away feels too long.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Is Employment Law fair to Anybody?
Sir Digby Jones recently called for a `bonfire' of red tape in relation to small business regulation. He reserved most of his fire for the `Health and Safety' at work industry which has grown amid the welter of EU directives.
My particular ire is the red tape attached to the regulations around employment. Now before I start, I do not think the balance between employers and employees is particularly out of kilter. A touch perhaps, but this isn't my point.
My contention is that the way the regulations operate, say, around redundancy, redeployment and so on don't actually help either employer or employee. That `fairness' in its legal sense, doesn't really translate into fairness on the ground for real people, or indeed, fairness to the employer who, amid trying to stick by the rules is taking a lot of time and resource out of the operation.
I can't use specific examples for obvious reasons but I wonder if I am alone in this observation?
My particular ire is the red tape attached to the regulations around employment. Now before I start, I do not think the balance between employers and employees is particularly out of kilter. A touch perhaps, but this isn't my point.
My contention is that the way the regulations operate, say, around redundancy, redeployment and so on don't actually help either employer or employee. That `fairness' in its legal sense, doesn't really translate into fairness on the ground for real people, or indeed, fairness to the employer who, amid trying to stick by the rules is taking a lot of time and resource out of the operation.
I can't use specific examples for obvious reasons but I wonder if I am alone in this observation?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Bankrupt Britain
Reading the Sundays used to be so much fun. Now they just make me anxious. The Sunday Times profiled `Bankrupt Britain' a report by Malcolm Offord, a respected city economist, which states, essentially, that getting the Government's books under control will mean real cuts in annual public spending of 60 billion by 2014 and 100 billion by 2020 plus, probably a top rate of tax of 50%. On a similar note, both the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Capital Economics point to annual shortfalls of 60 billion on the Chancellor's numbers.
Using today's level of spending as a start-point, this would mean a cut of of ten percent by 2014 and fifteen percent by 2020. This means a very different decade for the public sector. While the 2000s were years of massive growth, particularly in health and education, the 2010s will probably see not slow-growth but real cuts. Not just freezes in recruitment but redundancies in schools, hospitals, social work departments. It will also mean the end for gold-plated pensions.
It will also herald a new era of public sector reform. This never really got going in the 2000s, partly because there was enough cash coming in to conceal low productivity and reduce urgency but also because, politically, the Government was divided on the issue. But the blazing platform of the recession and its aftermath will change all that. The `social contract' between taxpayers and the public sector is already changing. People will not accept a decline in the quality of public services and will expect reform to bridge the financial gap.
And what will this era mean for the third sector and social enterprise. For many, it will not be pretty. The first instinct of public sector managers is to cut external contractors, particularly smaller, weaker ones, to the bone. Blood-ties to colleagues in public services will see that it is external partners' budgets which are first in the queue for a kicking from commissioners.
But, for those, that survive that kicking (which I believe, anecdotally is already starting) there may be opportunity in adversity. Because of this recession, we will, I believe, find out just what `bad businesses', in truth, many public sector agencies actually are. We will see just how shockingly wasteful and ineffective councils and the NHS can be. Indeed, Sir Digby Jones forthocoming programme, which features Jobcentre Plus, will, I believe, be the first of many. And, on a deeper level, the truth about large parts of the the public sector will come out: that it is inherently prone to inefficiency and, in many cases, unjustifiably protected from competition.
Once the cat is out of the bag (and it will come out, I am sure) the search will really be on for new solutions. Because the truth, and it is something that many of us working close to public services have known as self-evident for years, is that even with less money, a lot more could be achieve than is being achieved with public money right now. The next Government will follow the intimations of Liam Byrne and spin out large numbers of staff into new entities which have three years to thrive or be taken over. Contestibility will reach into places previously considered `inner sanctums' of state dominance - schools, health, welfare.
There will be blood on the tracks, sure. Unions will be very upset. So too will those silly people at the Association for Public Services Excellence. We will see a lot of good people, for the first time, thrown out of work. But, it could also herald a step-change and an opportunity for fantastic providers from the third and private sectors to introduce delivery models that give the public the services they have deserved for a long time.
Will our sector be up for this challenge? Parts of it will not. Indeed, it is not for all organisations to be leading public service reform. There are others whose cultures and practices are so similar to the public sector that they too will be burnt up when the crisis hits. But, there are many who can and do deliver, and which will further improve once the opportunities open up. My experience of public sector tendering tells me there will be no shortage of organisations seeking to take up the challenge once things properly open up.
So, if you're in the public sector, it may be time to don your hard hat and get your business into shape. For your recession is only a few months away.
Using today's level of spending as a start-point, this would mean a cut of of ten percent by 2014 and fifteen percent by 2020. This means a very different decade for the public sector. While the 2000s were years of massive growth, particularly in health and education, the 2010s will probably see not slow-growth but real cuts. Not just freezes in recruitment but redundancies in schools, hospitals, social work departments. It will also mean the end for gold-plated pensions.
It will also herald a new era of public sector reform. This never really got going in the 2000s, partly because there was enough cash coming in to conceal low productivity and reduce urgency but also because, politically, the Government was divided on the issue. But the blazing platform of the recession and its aftermath will change all that. The `social contract' between taxpayers and the public sector is already changing. People will not accept a decline in the quality of public services and will expect reform to bridge the financial gap.
And what will this era mean for the third sector and social enterprise. For many, it will not be pretty. The first instinct of public sector managers is to cut external contractors, particularly smaller, weaker ones, to the bone. Blood-ties to colleagues in public services will see that it is external partners' budgets which are first in the queue for a kicking from commissioners.
But, for those, that survive that kicking (which I believe, anecdotally is already starting) there may be opportunity in adversity. Because of this recession, we will, I believe, find out just what `bad businesses', in truth, many public sector agencies actually are. We will see just how shockingly wasteful and ineffective councils and the NHS can be. Indeed, Sir Digby Jones forthocoming programme, which features Jobcentre Plus, will, I believe, be the first of many. And, on a deeper level, the truth about large parts of the the public sector will come out: that it is inherently prone to inefficiency and, in many cases, unjustifiably protected from competition.
Once the cat is out of the bag (and it will come out, I am sure) the search will really be on for new solutions. Because the truth, and it is something that many of us working close to public services have known as self-evident for years, is that even with less money, a lot more could be achieve than is being achieved with public money right now. The next Government will follow the intimations of Liam Byrne and spin out large numbers of staff into new entities which have three years to thrive or be taken over. Contestibility will reach into places previously considered `inner sanctums' of state dominance - schools, health, welfare.
There will be blood on the tracks, sure. Unions will be very upset. So too will those silly people at the Association for Public Services Excellence. We will see a lot of good people, for the first time, thrown out of work. But, it could also herald a step-change and an opportunity for fantastic providers from the third and private sectors to introduce delivery models that give the public the services they have deserved for a long time.
Will our sector be up for this challenge? Parts of it will not. Indeed, it is not for all organisations to be leading public service reform. There are others whose cultures and practices are so similar to the public sector that they too will be burnt up when the crisis hits. But, there are many who can and do deliver, and which will further improve once the opportunities open up. My experience of public sector tendering tells me there will be no shortage of organisations seeking to take up the challenge once things properly open up.
So, if you're in the public sector, it may be time to don your hard hat and get your business into shape. For your recession is only a few months away.
Friday, February 13, 2009
At the Heart of the Matter
What is the "right" way for chief executives and managers of third sector organisations to respond to a downturn? Are organisations that are based on "values" obliged to behave "better" than others when faced with challenges such as large drops in their income? And, if so, what does "better" look like?
Like many chief executives, I am struggling to make sense of these questions. My organisation, like many others that grew in the boom years, now faces a less certain future. There's no immediate threat; unlike a lot of public limited companies, we don't have any debt, we have committed "owners" in the shape of our trustees, and a lot of our income comes, for now, from the state.
But, like any medium-sized national charity, we will face huge challenges in a year or two, when public spending is dramatically cut by the next (probably Conservative) government. And this will happen at precisely the time when things will be getting harder for the people we are here to help.
Talking to people across the third sector, a variety of views emerges about how best to approach the downturn. Some senior chief executives take a fairly standard corporate line - that their primary duty is to do what is necessary to protect the "business" and its long-term mission. If this means rapid and large-scale job losses and reductions in service, so be it.
This sounds brutal, but isn't necessarily so when we remember that the third sector has its own versions of MFI and Woolies - time-warp businesses that were found out once the good times were over. For the chief executives of such organisations, the recession is the "blazing platform" needed to accelerate much-needed change.
But they are the exception. Most chief executives believe firmly that third sector organisations should have a different approach. One leader pointed to the more complex, "emotionally laden" relationship that exists between charities and their staff - quite different from those in other sectors. It's a powerful psychological contract, which results in staff often giving a commitment to their job well beyond what they are contracted to work, and it's a massive invisible asset on the balance sheet of most third sector bodies. Strip this out and most charities would buckle.
As a result, "engagement" is the watchword for most third sector leaders in this recession. Engagement sounds nice and is almost always "right", but how easy is it truly to engage in the face of impending threats? As I work on my own organisation's response to the downturn, I can see that the urgency of the situation may potentially require some difficult decisions to be made in this sector, long before problems become visible. We will probably need new, leaner business models that take out manual processes; we may need to give up long-held professional practices; serious wage restraint may be needed, as well as more home working and far greater use of IT. There may be more mergers and alliances.
These are all decisions that need to be made sooner rather than later, and should be unsullied by short-termism or the special interests of particular sectors. They require a highly informed appreciation of the medium and long-term challenges. Engagement on all of these is possible, if you're willing to take the time over it.
But, faced with an imminent cliff edge and little quality time available, these are not discussions it's easy to impose on hard-pressed staff, with huge workloads. I can't put my hand on my heart and say I will be able to engage with staff in the way I would like.
What "engagement" for most managers in larger charities adds up to is a heartfelt commitment to communicate change in a sensitive way: to hear people's views; to explain the reasoning behind decisions; to give people as much advance warning as possible; and to seek input from affected groups, where this is possible. In short, to treat people not only with respect as employees, but also as people who have invested a lot of themselves in the organisation.
This emotionally intelligent approach to the consequences of the downturn must be an absolute minimum requirement of any third sector organisation. To ape the private sector, in which the average employee lives in complete darkness, challenges the very idea of a third sector based not on the making of money, but on living values.
To engage fully in the challenges of the downturn will be laudable, but I predict it will remain the exception rather than the rule, particularly in larger charities. For most, engagement will remain fundamentally about communication, rather than about consultation.
Like many chief executives, I am struggling to make sense of these questions. My organisation, like many others that grew in the boom years, now faces a less certain future. There's no immediate threat; unlike a lot of public limited companies, we don't have any debt, we have committed "owners" in the shape of our trustees, and a lot of our income comes, for now, from the state.
But, like any medium-sized national charity, we will face huge challenges in a year or two, when public spending is dramatically cut by the next (probably Conservative) government. And this will happen at precisely the time when things will be getting harder for the people we are here to help.
Talking to people across the third sector, a variety of views emerges about how best to approach the downturn. Some senior chief executives take a fairly standard corporate line - that their primary duty is to do what is necessary to protect the "business" and its long-term mission. If this means rapid and large-scale job losses and reductions in service, so be it.
This sounds brutal, but isn't necessarily so when we remember that the third sector has its own versions of MFI and Woolies - time-warp businesses that were found out once the good times were over. For the chief executives of such organisations, the recession is the "blazing platform" needed to accelerate much-needed change.
But they are the exception. Most chief executives believe firmly that third sector organisations should have a different approach. One leader pointed to the more complex, "emotionally laden" relationship that exists between charities and their staff - quite different from those in other sectors. It's a powerful psychological contract, which results in staff often giving a commitment to their job well beyond what they are contracted to work, and it's a massive invisible asset on the balance sheet of most third sector bodies. Strip this out and most charities would buckle.
As a result, "engagement" is the watchword for most third sector leaders in this recession. Engagement sounds nice and is almost always "right", but how easy is it truly to engage in the face of impending threats? As I work on my own organisation's response to the downturn, I can see that the urgency of the situation may potentially require some difficult decisions to be made in this sector, long before problems become visible. We will probably need new, leaner business models that take out manual processes; we may need to give up long-held professional practices; serious wage restraint may be needed, as well as more home working and far greater use of IT. There may be more mergers and alliances.
These are all decisions that need to be made sooner rather than later, and should be unsullied by short-termism or the special interests of particular sectors. They require a highly informed appreciation of the medium and long-term challenges. Engagement on all of these is possible, if you're willing to take the time over it.
But, faced with an imminent cliff edge and little quality time available, these are not discussions it's easy to impose on hard-pressed staff, with huge workloads. I can't put my hand on my heart and say I will be able to engage with staff in the way I would like.
What "engagement" for most managers in larger charities adds up to is a heartfelt commitment to communicate change in a sensitive way: to hear people's views; to explain the reasoning behind decisions; to give people as much advance warning as possible; and to seek input from affected groups, where this is possible. In short, to treat people not only with respect as employees, but also as people who have invested a lot of themselves in the organisation.
This emotionally intelligent approach to the consequences of the downturn must be an absolute minimum requirement of any third sector organisation. To ape the private sector, in which the average employee lives in complete darkness, challenges the very idea of a third sector based not on the making of money, but on living values.
To engage fully in the challenges of the downturn will be laudable, but I predict it will remain the exception rather than the rule, particularly in larger charities. For most, engagement will remain fundamentally about communication, rather than about consultation.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Voice 09 Birmingham
It is common to hear these days how Birmingham has changed but what an understatement. This feels like a city reborn, paying homage to the human being in the way that it formerly seemed only to serve the motor-car. This is a city to walk around, where you are never far from great art and where superb modern architecture is offset by Victoriana and, of course, the sixties stuff which now, in its own way, is becoming `heritage'.
Anyway, VOICE 09. Well, I am happy to say I enjoyed myself a lot more this year than I have in previous times. There was definitely a feelgood factor, particularly on the second day, once everyone had arrived.
Highlights. Liam Byrne was, I have to say, very good indeed. Byrne is Cabinet Office Minister, ex Accenture and the kind of politician I wish we had more of: intelligent, pragmatic, nontribal and strategic.
The contrast with last year's Cabinet headliner, Hazel Blears, could not have been sharper. Byrne really understands the potential of social enterprise not just to deal with sharp-end problems but also to become a larger regenerative force. The guy has a `framework', which I really like, and a strong sense of what Britain needs to do if it is emerge from all of this change as a leading country.
David Egger was probably the best individual speaker. He runs DC Kitchen which he founded in order to push the 25% of food which Americans ordinarily chuck away back out to people who might actually want to eat it.
He spoke with passion about the new era he feels we are entering in which the Baby Boomers are turning to public-service to fill the hole in their soul left by the unfulfilled promise of the consumer-society.
This group, twinned with Generation Y(the 18-30 year olds who want a more balanced, less materially driven existence) have the power to push a real change, a change embodied by Obama. A hopeful message, delivered with American polish and professionalism.
Low-lights.
David Cameron. Unlike, Bynre, Cameron produced a stump-speech focusing on training and skills, obviously part of the `grid' of party communication. While Cameron's overall message was consistent (Social Investment bank, Social Enterprise Zones, more involvement in public services) I didn't get any sense that the thinking had moved forward that much and his tone was somehow less clearly enthusiastic than it had once seemed.
Also he failed to connect with the audience. He used an autocue and he felt as distant as he would do were I watching on TV. And I was in the front-row. Given that is our likely future Prime Minister, I hoped for better. I really wish he had the team around him to run the country well but I fear he doesn't. A few stars: Gove, Grayling but, collectively, they don't convince. This, I think, is Labour's best - only - chance: `We may have made mistakes but are this lot really up to it?"
Had a very pleasant dinner (the company not the food) with Patrick Butler of the Guardian, Martin Kinsella of P3, Kate Welch of Acumen Trust and Nick Temple of the newly-minted School for Social Entrepreneurs. Of all the goodies announced by the OTS this week, their 500k was the one thing that made me smile ear-to-ear. The School deserve this. They deliver. They do their own thing and they have a brilliant team. I wish them the very best.
Anyway, VOICE 09. Well, I am happy to say I enjoyed myself a lot more this year than I have in previous times. There was definitely a feelgood factor, particularly on the second day, once everyone had arrived.
Highlights. Liam Byrne was, I have to say, very good indeed. Byrne is Cabinet Office Minister, ex Accenture and the kind of politician I wish we had more of: intelligent, pragmatic, nontribal and strategic.
The contrast with last year's Cabinet headliner, Hazel Blears, could not have been sharper. Byrne really understands the potential of social enterprise not just to deal with sharp-end problems but also to become a larger regenerative force. The guy has a `framework', which I really like, and a strong sense of what Britain needs to do if it is emerge from all of this change as a leading country.
David Egger was probably the best individual speaker. He runs DC Kitchen which he founded in order to push the 25% of food which Americans ordinarily chuck away back out to people who might actually want to eat it.
He spoke with passion about the new era he feels we are entering in which the Baby Boomers are turning to public-service to fill the hole in their soul left by the unfulfilled promise of the consumer-society.
This group, twinned with Generation Y(the 18-30 year olds who want a more balanced, less materially driven existence) have the power to push a real change, a change embodied by Obama. A hopeful message, delivered with American polish and professionalism.
Low-lights.
David Cameron. Unlike, Bynre, Cameron produced a stump-speech focusing on training and skills, obviously part of the `grid' of party communication. While Cameron's overall message was consistent (Social Investment bank, Social Enterprise Zones, more involvement in public services) I didn't get any sense that the thinking had moved forward that much and his tone was somehow less clearly enthusiastic than it had once seemed.
Also he failed to connect with the audience. He used an autocue and he felt as distant as he would do were I watching on TV. And I was in the front-row. Given that is our likely future Prime Minister, I hoped for better. I really wish he had the team around him to run the country well but I fear he doesn't. A few stars: Gove, Grayling but, collectively, they don't convince. This, I think, is Labour's best - only - chance: `We may have made mistakes but are this lot really up to it?"
Had a very pleasant dinner (the company not the food) with Patrick Butler of the Guardian, Martin Kinsella of P3, Kate Welch of Acumen Trust and Nick Temple of the newly-minted School for Social Entrepreneurs. Of all the goodies announced by the OTS this week, their 500k was the one thing that made me smile ear-to-ear. The School deserve this. They deliver. They do their own thing and they have a brilliant team. I wish them the very best.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Till Death Do Us Pay
Breathless day in London...and its still not over.
Sat in the Library of the RSA where its blissfully quiet and welcomingly warm. A pocket of snug civility in the brusque pace of the London rush hour.
Opened the day at the Third Sector Taskforce (of which I was a member)presentation on Welfare to Work (W2W), . It was held in the glass towers of RBS, of which I now own a very small part.
Our key recommendation was that the sector needs a Social Investment Bank if we are to realise our potentia on W2W. Finance for under-capitalised organisations would bring down a major barrier to entry to charities and social businesses.
On top of this we recommended that strong `nudges' (positive incentives to good behaviour) be built into the contracts held by large, mainly private sector `prime' contractors, from whom charities and social businesses will mainly subcontract.
James Purnell, the Secretary of State, welcomed the report while being very clear that the social investment bank was above his paygrade. However, the word on the wire (gossip, essentially) is that the bank will get something but well short of the billions its supporters want.
The bogey around all of this, of course, is mounting unemployment. Those jobs down the supermarket, retail parks and building sites are now being taken by the freshly unemployed. Indeed, the real worry now is of a new generation of workless people to add to the one W2W was set up to catch. Speaking Up is not a W2W provder and, at the moment, I can't see us becoming one very quickly.
As usual, I blame this mainly on Gordon Brown and his bit of the Labour Party. Had they just let Frank Field do this in 1998 (rather than destroy his Ministerial career) when there were jobs aplenty then the problem would be long-solved. Another case of Gordon's political objectives (dissing Tony, becoming PM quickly) coming ahead of doing what is clearly in national interest. Bit of a theme now, one I am surprised the opposition don't make more of.
I slip out early to meet Damien Hatton, founder and CEO of Street League. Damien started his career as a doctor and noticed how bad the health was of homeless people he saw on A and E. So he set up Street League - a soccer initiative - in his spare time. Several years later he's working with several Premier and League Clubs in England and Scotland and being supported by Impetus Trust to take his model national.
We got on well. His story is very similar to my own, except perhaps I am at a slightly different point on the curve. His next stage is to build a high performing team so he has some options himself for the long term.
My advice, as always, is to recruit people you like and enjoy, who share the fundamentals of your vision and who are good enough to replace you if you ever go. Three massive boxes to tick but essential in any senior team. Left Damien feeling I wanted more, he has a great energy.
Next I go the launch of the Social Care Constitution by Demos at Westminster Hall. The logic of the Constitution idea is that we need, as citizens, to know what is meant by `social care', what we're entitled to, how it can be obtained and, in turn, what our obligations are as recipients. On the stand were Phil Hope MP, Minister for Social Care Greg Mulholland from the Lib Dems and Stephen Jackson from the Tories.
There is surprising consensus on the analysis of this problem (demographics etc) and solutions (need for reallocation of resources towards primary social/health care, personal budgets etc) but very little real agreement about what to do next.
The main challenge is to find a solution that is `fair', giving people people choice and individualised solutions but is also `equitable' and socially affordable. Unlike in health-care, co-payments (personal top-ups) are considered to be key to the future funding of social care, with a means-tested `basic' package provided by the state for those without the means to pay.
The limitations of the debate, pointed out by Simon Duffy, of InControl, are that the `costs' of social care are calculated without full account of how resources could be used differently across a range of areas that, together, contribute to a person's social welfare.
At its most simplest, when I become old, to remain active and independent I may well combine a range of resources to make that happen and in which traditional`social care services' (home-helps, nursing homes etc) actually play little or no part, even at the very end (when I will probably, in reality, spend my personal budget on a trip to Switzerland to die at a time of my own choosing, along, I suspect, with many others).
The theme of today, I guess, has been about how we, as a society, cope with the pressure of being just that - a society. How we square the collective obligations to face up to, and possibly reframe, big social issues with a the willingness of the wider society to act in in a timely and appropriate way. And how we use the state and civil society, together, to `bend' the way resources are conceptualised and used.
Dinner in Islington awaits me with my friend Owen Jarvis of Aspire Foundation before an early morning meeting with the CEO of Advocacy Partners, Jonathan Senker.
Sat in the Library of the RSA where its blissfully quiet and welcomingly warm. A pocket of snug civility in the brusque pace of the London rush hour.
Opened the day at the Third Sector Taskforce (of which I was a member)presentation on Welfare to Work (W2W), . It was held in the glass towers of RBS, of which I now own a very small part.
Our key recommendation was that the sector needs a Social Investment Bank if we are to realise our potentia on W2W. Finance for under-capitalised organisations would bring down a major barrier to entry to charities and social businesses.
On top of this we recommended that strong `nudges' (positive incentives to good behaviour) be built into the contracts held by large, mainly private sector `prime' contractors, from whom charities and social businesses will mainly subcontract.
James Purnell, the Secretary of State, welcomed the report while being very clear that the social investment bank was above his paygrade. However, the word on the wire (gossip, essentially) is that the bank will get something but well short of the billions its supporters want.
The bogey around all of this, of course, is mounting unemployment. Those jobs down the supermarket, retail parks and building sites are now being taken by the freshly unemployed. Indeed, the real worry now is of a new generation of workless people to add to the one W2W was set up to catch. Speaking Up is not a W2W provder and, at the moment, I can't see us becoming one very quickly.
As usual, I blame this mainly on Gordon Brown and his bit of the Labour Party. Had they just let Frank Field do this in 1998 (rather than destroy his Ministerial career) when there were jobs aplenty then the problem would be long-solved. Another case of Gordon's political objectives (dissing Tony, becoming PM quickly) coming ahead of doing what is clearly in national interest. Bit of a theme now, one I am surprised the opposition don't make more of.
I slip out early to meet Damien Hatton, founder and CEO of Street League. Damien started his career as a doctor and noticed how bad the health was of homeless people he saw on A and E. So he set up Street League - a soccer initiative - in his spare time. Several years later he's working with several Premier and League Clubs in England and Scotland and being supported by Impetus Trust to take his model national.
We got on well. His story is very similar to my own, except perhaps I am at a slightly different point on the curve. His next stage is to build a high performing team so he has some options himself for the long term.
My advice, as always, is to recruit people you like and enjoy, who share the fundamentals of your vision and who are good enough to replace you if you ever go. Three massive boxes to tick but essential in any senior team. Left Damien feeling I wanted more, he has a great energy.
Next I go the launch of the Social Care Constitution by Demos at Westminster Hall. The logic of the Constitution idea is that we need, as citizens, to know what is meant by `social care', what we're entitled to, how it can be obtained and, in turn, what our obligations are as recipients. On the stand were Phil Hope MP, Minister for Social Care Greg Mulholland from the Lib Dems and Stephen Jackson from the Tories.
There is surprising consensus on the analysis of this problem (demographics etc) and solutions (need for reallocation of resources towards primary social/health care, personal budgets etc) but very little real agreement about what to do next.
The main challenge is to find a solution that is `fair', giving people people choice and individualised solutions but is also `equitable' and socially affordable. Unlike in health-care, co-payments (personal top-ups) are considered to be key to the future funding of social care, with a means-tested `basic' package provided by the state for those without the means to pay.
The limitations of the debate, pointed out by Simon Duffy, of InControl, are that the `costs' of social care are calculated without full account of how resources could be used differently across a range of areas that, together, contribute to a person's social welfare.
At its most simplest, when I become old, to remain active and independent I may well combine a range of resources to make that happen and in which traditional`social care services' (home-helps, nursing homes etc) actually play little or no part, even at the very end (when I will probably, in reality, spend my personal budget on a trip to Switzerland to die at a time of my own choosing, along, I suspect, with many others).
The theme of today, I guess, has been about how we, as a society, cope with the pressure of being just that - a society. How we square the collective obligations to face up to, and possibly reframe, big social issues with a the willingness of the wider society to act in in a timely and appropriate way. And how we use the state and civil society, together, to `bend' the way resources are conceptualised and used.
Dinner in Islington awaits me with my friend Owen Jarvis of Aspire Foundation before an early morning meeting with the CEO of Advocacy Partners, Jonathan Senker.
Monday, February 2, 2009
What Makes a Good Childhood?
Today saw the release of `A Good Childhood', produced by the Children's Society following a three year study and 30 odd thousand submissions examined by a panel of international experts.
Its conclusions are, as these studies often seem to be, totally depressing. In short, children now are more anxious, depressed and stressed than ever due, in the main, to the corrupting influence of a hypercompetitive society which places self-seeking materialism above all others. It then goes on to list a wide range of measures ranging from the banning of sats to the end of advertising targeting kids.
As a parent I often feel mixed about these studies. For part of me feels sure that the the lives of many of our young people is a lot better than it was in my day. I went to a school where kids were regularly `slippered' (hit with a trainer), bullying was rife and mostly unchallenged and the concept of `self-esteem' was had not yet entered the vocabulary. This seems Dickensian today.
I am not one of these people who thinks it was better back then. Quite the opposite. It was bloody miserable. Especially when I compare it to the lengths gone to these days to ensure schools, particularly, to instil and ethos into their pupils.
Even now, I am often taken aback by how gentle many 15 and 16 year old boys are compared to their peers twenty five years ago. Likewise, when I go visiting schools to send my daughter to, the sheer quality of state schools, and the care taken over everything around child welfare, I find very impressive.
All of this, of course, has to compete with the reality that, yes, society is now more obsessed with looks, celebrity and instant gratification. Being fat or ugly has never been fun, but I am sure it is worse today than it was in my day. Cyber bullying has replaced having your head flushed down the bogs and designer phones have replaced a pair of Farrah's as status symbols.
Do I fear for my kids? Yes I do a bit. The early sexualisation of young people cannot be good news. The web and mobiles are just terrifying for a long list of reasons. Body fetishism scares me. The fact that my daughter is quite likely to feel fat and ugly at 8 is grotesque.
But also, I am not that worried. Awareness of how children actually feel is now there is a way it wasn't in the past. As a society, we now know what a good childhood looks like. There are millions of parents out there, like me, willing to strain every fibre in their being to create that good childhood. The effort being made, which exceeds that made in the past, I believe, will surely count for something?
The truth is, I suspect, that we will see, as with all of these things, an increasingly stratified picture. On the one hand, lots of kids with parents willing and able to create a great childhood. On the other, a great many whose parents are too busy working, or with themselves - or not there at all - who emerge into adulthood insecure, ineffective and unhappy.
My belief is that childhood has always been tough for some people. Each generation has its challenges. My own parents grew up in post-war austerity. Their own parents in absolute poverty and neglect. I grew up in relative prospertity but in a society in which it was still seen as OK to hit children. My own kids are growing up in a high consumption, high pressure society in which status is seen as everything.
It will always be tough. This report can be viewed in historical terms as a report which captures the perils of childhood in the 21st century.
Its conclusions are, as these studies often seem to be, totally depressing. In short, children now are more anxious, depressed and stressed than ever due, in the main, to the corrupting influence of a hypercompetitive society which places self-seeking materialism above all others. It then goes on to list a wide range of measures ranging from the banning of sats to the end of advertising targeting kids.
As a parent I often feel mixed about these studies. For part of me feels sure that the the lives of many of our young people is a lot better than it was in my day. I went to a school where kids were regularly `slippered' (hit with a trainer), bullying was rife and mostly unchallenged and the concept of `self-esteem' was had not yet entered the vocabulary. This seems Dickensian today.
I am not one of these people who thinks it was better back then. Quite the opposite. It was bloody miserable. Especially when I compare it to the lengths gone to these days to ensure schools, particularly, to instil and ethos into their pupils.
Even now, I am often taken aback by how gentle many 15 and 16 year old boys are compared to their peers twenty five years ago. Likewise, when I go visiting schools to send my daughter to, the sheer quality of state schools, and the care taken over everything around child welfare, I find very impressive.
All of this, of course, has to compete with the reality that, yes, society is now more obsessed with looks, celebrity and instant gratification. Being fat or ugly has never been fun, but I am sure it is worse today than it was in my day. Cyber bullying has replaced having your head flushed down the bogs and designer phones have replaced a pair of Farrah's as status symbols.
Do I fear for my kids? Yes I do a bit. The early sexualisation of young people cannot be good news. The web and mobiles are just terrifying for a long list of reasons. Body fetishism scares me. The fact that my daughter is quite likely to feel fat and ugly at 8 is grotesque.
But also, I am not that worried. Awareness of how children actually feel is now there is a way it wasn't in the past. As a society, we now know what a good childhood looks like. There are millions of parents out there, like me, willing to strain every fibre in their being to create that good childhood. The effort being made, which exceeds that made in the past, I believe, will surely count for something?
The truth is, I suspect, that we will see, as with all of these things, an increasingly stratified picture. On the one hand, lots of kids with parents willing and able to create a great childhood. On the other, a great many whose parents are too busy working, or with themselves - or not there at all - who emerge into adulthood insecure, ineffective and unhappy.
My belief is that childhood has always been tough for some people. Each generation has its challenges. My own parents grew up in post-war austerity. Their own parents in absolute poverty and neglect. I grew up in relative prospertity but in a society in which it was still seen as OK to hit children. My own kids are growing up in a high consumption, high pressure society in which status is seen as everything.
It will always be tough. This report can be viewed in historical terms as a report which captures the perils of childhood in the 21st century.
Friday, January 30, 2009
`Insourcing' - and why it is bad for you
Amid all the bad news for the third sector, here's some more.
Last week,a body I hadn't heard of before called the Association for Public Service Excellence released `Insourcing: A Guide To Bringing Local Auhority Services Back In-house claiming a "strategic and operational case for bringing services back in-house from the private and third sectors".
Its funny, but although very little makes my head hurt these days, this did.
So why the hot collar? The report, based on case studies of about 55 local authorities, said the benefits to councils of bringing services back under their control included improved cost-efficiency, better-performing and higher-quality services, as well as enhanced community wellbeing.
In a piece for the Guardian, while being careful not to call for renationalisation of any out-sourced services "without serious consideration", its CEO, Paul O'Brien seems to seriously believe, on the basis of his case-studies, that the public sector generally offers better efficiency, performance, quality and value. And that the tide has turned, historically and ideologically, for the sector which he champions.
Indeed his piece was also tinged with that a kind of `told-you-so', leftish schaudenfraude about the problems being faced in the private sector. The same sector, of course, that directly provides 20 odd percent of the tax to pay for public services.
On finishing his piece, I had to wonder where Paul had spent his life this last twenty or so years. If, like me, he has spent it dealing daily with the human consequences of inefficient, underperforming, low quality, expensive public services, then I am fairly confident he would not be able to write about the public sector the way he does.
Indeed, my life-experience tells me that uncontested in-house services provided by people who never had to account to anybody, whose performance was seldom measured and whose interests, as producers of services, were always put well before those of the end user, tend to be grossly inferior, by and large, pound for pound, to those I have seen provided externally. And definitely worse than those found in the third sector.
You see, Paul, and many like him who champion big government just don't understand three very important things: The first is that is services don't have to be run by the public sector in order to be publicly accountable.
Indeed, in my experience, being `in-house' actually doesn't help accountability because those doing the accounting (Councillors) are put in a conflicted position. They `own' the problem and, in my experience, are less likely to be tough on it.
It is much harder, therefore, to take a hard, detached view about the effectiveness of a public service when you also employ the people who deliver them. Accountability is improved by distance, not proximity.
Secondly, Paul and Co don't understand that most of the improvement that we have seen in public services in the last 20 years has been down to the fact that we have done away with monopoly.
Even when `in house' wins, as occasionally happens, it has to do so against competition. This means transparency on cost and outcomes, insofar as councils can be completely impartial to their own in-house bidders.
Look at my own sector, learning disabilities and mental health. It was actually Thatcher who decreed that 80% of community services had to be procured out of house. I am totally confident that had that not happened, provision for these groups would still be in 1985 (as it is in much of the residual 20% remaining `in-house'.
Thirdly, there is a great big misapprehension about the value for money argument. Yes, there will be cases when the public sector looks cheaper. But how often is the full cost of that public provision actually made clear?
The truth is hardly-ever. Indeed, I have never once in 20 years encountered a single public service where anyone involved, even at senior level could answer the question of what it truly costed to provide that service in-house.
And that's before you include the cost of pensions. This is often excluded from the calculations of public sector costs because its equivalence in other sectors would be so costly as to render the public sector hopelessly uncompetitive.
My heat subsided, however, after a good chat with a friend of mine from the private equity world (who has helped us a lot more than any council ever did).
He pointed out that although there is a bit of froth right now about the new age for public services, the truth is that the country can't afford them and that, very soon, the economics of having to provide modern public services that don't cost the earth, will revert to the long-term trend: outsourcing.
I think he's right. After the election, whoever wins will have to put up taxes and reduce public spending in order to keep international lenders willing to lend. To keep the British public on-side, there will need to be proper reform of public services and continues, massive outsourcing.
Enjoy your moment in the sun, Paul. It won't last very long.
Last week,a body I hadn't heard of before called the Association for Public Service Excellence released `Insourcing: A Guide To Bringing Local Auhority Services Back In-house claiming a "strategic and operational case for bringing services back in-house from the private and third sectors".
Its funny, but although very little makes my head hurt these days, this did.
So why the hot collar? The report, based on case studies of about 55 local authorities, said the benefits to councils of bringing services back under their control included improved cost-efficiency, better-performing and higher-quality services, as well as enhanced community wellbeing.
In a piece for the Guardian, while being careful not to call for renationalisation of any out-sourced services "without serious consideration", its CEO, Paul O'Brien seems to seriously believe, on the basis of his case-studies, that the public sector generally offers better efficiency, performance, quality and value. And that the tide has turned, historically and ideologically, for the sector which he champions.
Indeed his piece was also tinged with that a kind of `told-you-so', leftish schaudenfraude about the problems being faced in the private sector. The same sector, of course, that directly provides 20 odd percent of the tax to pay for public services.
On finishing his piece, I had to wonder where Paul had spent his life this last twenty or so years. If, like me, he has spent it dealing daily with the human consequences of inefficient, underperforming, low quality, expensive public services, then I am fairly confident he would not be able to write about the public sector the way he does.
Indeed, my life-experience tells me that uncontested in-house services provided by people who never had to account to anybody, whose performance was seldom measured and whose interests, as producers of services, were always put well before those of the end user, tend to be grossly inferior, by and large, pound for pound, to those I have seen provided externally. And definitely worse than those found in the third sector.
You see, Paul, and many like him who champion big government just don't understand three very important things: The first is that is services don't have to be run by the public sector in order to be publicly accountable.
Indeed, in my experience, being `in-house' actually doesn't help accountability because those doing the accounting (Councillors) are put in a conflicted position. They `own' the problem and, in my experience, are less likely to be tough on it.
It is much harder, therefore, to take a hard, detached view about the effectiveness of a public service when you also employ the people who deliver them. Accountability is improved by distance, not proximity.
Secondly, Paul and Co don't understand that most of the improvement that we have seen in public services in the last 20 years has been down to the fact that we have done away with monopoly.
Even when `in house' wins, as occasionally happens, it has to do so against competition. This means transparency on cost and outcomes, insofar as councils can be completely impartial to their own in-house bidders.
Look at my own sector, learning disabilities and mental health. It was actually Thatcher who decreed that 80% of community services had to be procured out of house. I am totally confident that had that not happened, provision for these groups would still be in 1985 (as it is in much of the residual 20% remaining `in-house'.
Thirdly, there is a great big misapprehension about the value for money argument. Yes, there will be cases when the public sector looks cheaper. But how often is the full cost of that public provision actually made clear?
The truth is hardly-ever. Indeed, I have never once in 20 years encountered a single public service where anyone involved, even at senior level could answer the question of what it truly costed to provide that service in-house.
And that's before you include the cost of pensions. This is often excluded from the calculations of public sector costs because its equivalence in other sectors would be so costly as to render the public sector hopelessly uncompetitive.
My heat subsided, however, after a good chat with a friend of mine from the private equity world (who has helped us a lot more than any council ever did).
He pointed out that although there is a bit of froth right now about the new age for public services, the truth is that the country can't afford them and that, very soon, the economics of having to provide modern public services that don't cost the earth, will revert to the long-term trend: outsourcing.
I think he's right. After the election, whoever wins will have to put up taxes and reduce public spending in order to keep international lenders willing to lend. To keep the British public on-side, there will need to be proper reform of public services and continues, massive outsourcing.
Enjoy your moment in the sun, Paul. It won't last very long.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Don't Just Do It....
On Friday, several major companies closed their final salary pension schemes. Not to new staff - that happened ages ago - but to their existing people.
From now on then, I presume, those guys are on their own, bar what they've already accrued.
Contrast this with the position of most people working in the public sector, including, as it happens, my wife and my brother.
My wife is 33 and, if she pays in 7 percent of her salary from now on, the council will make sure she retires on about fifteen grand a year.
This is a `defined benefit' based on a percentage of her final earnings.
Likewise, my youngest brother (28) has just joined a council as an Environmental Health Officer. Of course, he's just joined their final salary pension scheme which offers a similar deal to my wife's.
About two thirds of final salary.
These kinds of deals were withdrawn by most employers a few years ago now on the basis that they had the potential to send them bankrupt.
Now just compare Katy and my brother's position to my own.
Speaking Up pays 5% of my salary (which is more than both of theirs combined) into a scheme which, I am told in jolly-sounding letters from my pension-provider, will pay me just over £3000 in current value when I retire.
This is because my pension, like most, depends on the performance of stocks and shares.
So the deal for me is this: I put in more money (lots more) than them. This money is all at risk (I could lose the lot, they have `defined benefits'). And that get a heck of a lot less in absolute terms at the end.
Scarily unfair. Indeed, I am sure even the likes of Dave Prentice or Mark Serwotka (heads of Unison and CPSA unions) can see that from a social justice point of view, things just don't tally.
Because what we are all heading for very quickly, therefore, is Pensions Apartheid. Fantastic lifestyles beyond 65 for those in the public sector. B & Q for the rest of us.
Hopefully, Katy's pension will insulate me from the fate of stacking loft-insulation, but what about everyone else?
The serious point I am making here is that it can't be healthy of have yet another major social cleavage opening up in an already deeply fragmented society.
Resentment, already being heard on the phone-ins, will turn into bitter anger.
The point being made on Five Live etc, quite understandably, is the people in the private sector tend to lose their jobs quicker and often have inferior terms and conditions of service(hours, flexibilities etc) than found in the public sector.
Urgent Government action is needed to address this. Indeed, the financial crisis may even force their hand.
This isn't impossible. For if big international lenders come to think that the UK Government might not be able to pay them back, we might, as a nation, simply not have the funds we need to pay for TODAY'S schools and hospitals, never mind the people who used to work in them!
The case then is very clear for a new deal on pensions. Firstly, make sure everyone is paying something in to a scheme on a compulsory basis. No arguments, we all put in.
And, secondly, the end of all defined benefit schemes in the public sector. Today. For ever. You get what you've put in so far, sure, but that's it. After that, it depends on how investments perform.
I am sorry to say this - because it will hurt my household too (Katy and I can work together on B&Q, on neighbouring aisles, perhaps) - but I sincerely believe that the country cannot afford this, either financially or socially.
The figures, you see, are truly frightening.
Did you know, for example, that there are more retired coppers now who recieve a pension than there are police officers in service?
This is because police officers, like fire-fighters and countless other groups, can quit after 30 years service on a good portion of final salary.
But what's really going to pile on the pressure are the retiring Baby Boomers. People born between 1945 and 1951.
This massive cohort are all coming up to in 2010. As a social group, they outnumber the generations after quite considerably.
And we are the ones charged with funding their retirements.
Unfortunately, the public sector in particular is packed with them.
Teachers, social workers, nurses and doctors, all of whom began careers in the sixties and seventies, all now clocking off at the same time.
It just can't be done. And our current politicians will make sure it isn't done, yet.
Gordon Brown will simply not take on the unions this side of an election, especially if he's going to try for a pay-freeze in the public sector (necessary in my view).
The Tories might promise reform but won't want to alienate the public sector vote by being explicit (though they will be ones who eventually do it). The Lib Dems will, as ever, call it as it is, but neither will they win.
So, for a couple of years at least, this will go untouched. But watch 2010-2015. The clamour for change will become irresistable.
And this week's news of the end of final salary pensions in the private sector will be seen as the Beginning of the End for Pensions Apartheid.
I might as well buy my orange overalls now.
From now on then, I presume, those guys are on their own, bar what they've already accrued.
Contrast this with the position of most people working in the public sector, including, as it happens, my wife and my brother.
My wife is 33 and, if she pays in 7 percent of her salary from now on, the council will make sure she retires on about fifteen grand a year.
This is a `defined benefit' based on a percentage of her final earnings.
Likewise, my youngest brother (28) has just joined a council as an Environmental Health Officer. Of course, he's just joined their final salary pension scheme which offers a similar deal to my wife's.
About two thirds of final salary.
These kinds of deals were withdrawn by most employers a few years ago now on the basis that they had the potential to send them bankrupt.
Now just compare Katy and my brother's position to my own.
Speaking Up pays 5% of my salary (which is more than both of theirs combined) into a scheme which, I am told in jolly-sounding letters from my pension-provider, will pay me just over £3000 in current value when I retire.
This is because my pension, like most, depends on the performance of stocks and shares.
So the deal for me is this: I put in more money (lots more) than them. This money is all at risk (I could lose the lot, they have `defined benefits'). And that get a heck of a lot less in absolute terms at the end.
Scarily unfair. Indeed, I am sure even the likes of Dave Prentice or Mark Serwotka (heads of Unison and CPSA unions) can see that from a social justice point of view, things just don't tally.
Because what we are all heading for very quickly, therefore, is Pensions Apartheid. Fantastic lifestyles beyond 65 for those in the public sector. B & Q for the rest of us.
Hopefully, Katy's pension will insulate me from the fate of stacking loft-insulation, but what about everyone else?
The serious point I am making here is that it can't be healthy of have yet another major social cleavage opening up in an already deeply fragmented society.
Resentment, already being heard on the phone-ins, will turn into bitter anger.
The point being made on Five Live etc, quite understandably, is the people in the private sector tend to lose their jobs quicker and often have inferior terms and conditions of service(hours, flexibilities etc) than found in the public sector.
Urgent Government action is needed to address this. Indeed, the financial crisis may even force their hand.
This isn't impossible. For if big international lenders come to think that the UK Government might not be able to pay them back, we might, as a nation, simply not have the funds we need to pay for TODAY'S schools and hospitals, never mind the people who used to work in them!
The case then is very clear for a new deal on pensions. Firstly, make sure everyone is paying something in to a scheme on a compulsory basis. No arguments, we all put in.
And, secondly, the end of all defined benefit schemes in the public sector. Today. For ever. You get what you've put in so far, sure, but that's it. After that, it depends on how investments perform.
I am sorry to say this - because it will hurt my household too (Katy and I can work together on B&Q, on neighbouring aisles, perhaps) - but I sincerely believe that the country cannot afford this, either financially or socially.
The figures, you see, are truly frightening.
Did you know, for example, that there are more retired coppers now who recieve a pension than there are police officers in service?
This is because police officers, like fire-fighters and countless other groups, can quit after 30 years service on a good portion of final salary.
But what's really going to pile on the pressure are the retiring Baby Boomers. People born between 1945 and 1951.
This massive cohort are all coming up to in 2010. As a social group, they outnumber the generations after quite considerably.
And we are the ones charged with funding their retirements.
Unfortunately, the public sector in particular is packed with them.
Teachers, social workers, nurses and doctors, all of whom began careers in the sixties and seventies, all now clocking off at the same time.
It just can't be done. And our current politicians will make sure it isn't done, yet.
Gordon Brown will simply not take on the unions this side of an election, especially if he's going to try for a pay-freeze in the public sector (necessary in my view).
The Tories might promise reform but won't want to alienate the public sector vote by being explicit (though they will be ones who eventually do it). The Lib Dems will, as ever, call it as it is, but neither will they win.
So, for a couple of years at least, this will go untouched. But watch 2010-2015. The clamour for change will become irresistable.
And this week's news of the end of final salary pensions in the private sector will be seen as the Beginning of the End for Pensions Apartheid.
I might as well buy my orange overalls now.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
One for the Road
One of the things I like most about my job is trying to win new work. Four of us spent two days this week traversing the country to pitch for new contracts.
Our journey together actually began on Sunday evening. My new Director of Business Development, Paul Morrish, had, using his immense personal charm, got us all into our dark office late on Sunday evening to rehearse and perfect our presentations.
That done we headed down to Essex on Monday and, thanks to our late-night efforts, delivered a polished and professional pitch to the panel. I have attended many of these in my time and it was one of the strongest I have witnessed.
Then off we went, up the M11 and across the A14 and M6 to Birmingham. We were on first thing so, quite sensibly, we stayed over and spent the morning rehearsing rather than stressing whether we would get there.
Again, a bravura performance. Paul's orchestration of us all was excellent and, in Sue Lee, I probably have one of best people in the UK in terms of the specialism needed to win this work.
So, did we win?
We don't know yet. We should win at least one. The vibes were good in both cases. I saw a clear desire on the part of commissioners to get it right.
What could, however, stand in our way, are two things. Firstly, we are a dearer, higher quality option than most in our sector.
In the years of milk-and-honey, this hasn't hurt us but, going forward into recession/depression, I worry that "value" will now seen increasingly seen in pure pounds and pence, bang-for-buck terms.
Put simply, if our great presentations and willingness to discount don't win it for us this time, I will be very worried indeed about what the future holds.
Failure will, I think, mean we will have to reinvent our offer completely. A lot cheaper. Possibly not quite as good.
Conversely, if we do win, I will feel assured that there is a place in this market for our kind of propostition. Our high-quality, upper-quartile price model will be intact.
The second thing that could stand in our way, depending on how the land lies locally is that the incumbents are both local organisations that will, quite possibly, be imperilled if they lose these contracts.
I have known commissioners in the past to take no heed of this and procure the best service regardless.
But I have also known them to feel obliged to `shop local', particularly when an organisation is at risk, even when the proposition is weak.
This is something I don't like but it sometimes happens. These particular commissioners, however, seemed, to me, to be pretty sensible.
I just wish that telephone would ring.
Our journey together actually began on Sunday evening. My new Director of Business Development, Paul Morrish, had, using his immense personal charm, got us all into our dark office late on Sunday evening to rehearse and perfect our presentations.
That done we headed down to Essex on Monday and, thanks to our late-night efforts, delivered a polished and professional pitch to the panel. I have attended many of these in my time and it was one of the strongest I have witnessed.
Then off we went, up the M11 and across the A14 and M6 to Birmingham. We were on first thing so, quite sensibly, we stayed over and spent the morning rehearsing rather than stressing whether we would get there.
Again, a bravura performance. Paul's orchestration of us all was excellent and, in Sue Lee, I probably have one of best people in the UK in terms of the specialism needed to win this work.
So, did we win?
We don't know yet. We should win at least one. The vibes were good in both cases. I saw a clear desire on the part of commissioners to get it right.
What could, however, stand in our way, are two things. Firstly, we are a dearer, higher quality option than most in our sector.
In the years of milk-and-honey, this hasn't hurt us but, going forward into recession/depression, I worry that "value" will now seen increasingly seen in pure pounds and pence, bang-for-buck terms.
Put simply, if our great presentations and willingness to discount don't win it for us this time, I will be very worried indeed about what the future holds.
Failure will, I think, mean we will have to reinvent our offer completely. A lot cheaper. Possibly not quite as good.
Conversely, if we do win, I will feel assured that there is a place in this market for our kind of propostition. Our high-quality, upper-quartile price model will be intact.
The second thing that could stand in our way, depending on how the land lies locally is that the incumbents are both local organisations that will, quite possibly, be imperilled if they lose these contracts.
I have known commissioners in the past to take no heed of this and procure the best service regardless.
But I have also known them to feel obliged to `shop local', particularly when an organisation is at risk, even when the proposition is weak.
This is something I don't like but it sometimes happens. These particular commissioners, however, seemed, to me, to be pretty sensible.
I just wish that telephone would ring.
Rest in Peace, Neil Sears
Yesterday I heard about the suicide of Neil Sears, head teacher of a special school in Cambridgeshire where, five years ago, we began our work in schools.
Neil was one of Young People Speaking Up's earliest backers and was instrumental in bringing other heads and senior teachers on board throughout the county. He was found dead on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the end of the school day.
When I heard about Neil's death (he was 52), I was, of course totally stunned. He was an inspriational, likeable figure, just the right kind of personality for the head of a school which was in the process of transforming itself into becoming mainstream.
I was last at the school in the second half of last year on a `Back to the Floor' visit to see our Young People's project in action. Afterwards, I spent most of the lunch hour with Neil, talking about the school, how well it was developing.
He was one of these people I always felt glad to see. He always made me welcome, pumped my hand, told me how delighted he was with our work in the school, what a big difference it made to the kids.
He also talked very openly about things. Over the lunch-hour it became clear that although big stides had been made in getting the integration going with the mainstream school down the road, it had been hard-going. He was, though, overwhelmingly positive.
All the children were eating dinner while we stood talking. Laughing, chatting occasionally being brought to order, strictly, but kindly by Neil.
His devotion to the young people in his care was recognised and reciprocated by the clear affection, even adulation, he inspired in pupils, parents and staff. I remember leaving thinking how glad I was he was in charge there.
I am seldom impressed when I go into our schools. So many of the staff seem tired and disengaged. But even after 13 years at Meadowgate, Neil showed none of that, publicly at least. He came to our AGMs, brought the kids to events, always willing to go beyond what would be expected. He was probably our biggest single supporter in all the schools in which we now work.
About three years ago I think, he took the Headship of the school after a long stint as Deputy. I spoke to him at the time, a few months before his appointment, encouraging him to go for it. Neil wasn't a massively confident man, but he went for it and got it, to the delight of many us, myself included.
I don't know how the job sat with him in his own mind but I get the sense, somehow that he struggled with parts of it. Whether the job played a part in all of this I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised, somehow, if it did.
When somebody this good takes their life, it just feels terrible. His pain must have been profound and his loneliness unbearable.
The world has lost a great teacher and a brilliant leader this week. Not one that was ever celebrated or known beyond his own town but someone who has left a mark on many lives.
Including mine and those of my staff who saw him twice a week for the last five years. Their sense of loss is, of course, intense and all the more powerful for their close acquaintance with him.
Today is a truly day for everyone who knew Neil Sears.
Neil was one of Young People Speaking Up's earliest backers and was instrumental in bringing other heads and senior teachers on board throughout the county. He was found dead on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the end of the school day.
When I heard about Neil's death (he was 52), I was, of course totally stunned. He was an inspriational, likeable figure, just the right kind of personality for the head of a school which was in the process of transforming itself into becoming mainstream.
I was last at the school in the second half of last year on a `Back to the Floor' visit to see our Young People's project in action. Afterwards, I spent most of the lunch hour with Neil, talking about the school, how well it was developing.
He was one of these people I always felt glad to see. He always made me welcome, pumped my hand, told me how delighted he was with our work in the school, what a big difference it made to the kids.
He also talked very openly about things. Over the lunch-hour it became clear that although big stides had been made in getting the integration going with the mainstream school down the road, it had been hard-going. He was, though, overwhelmingly positive.
All the children were eating dinner while we stood talking. Laughing, chatting occasionally being brought to order, strictly, but kindly by Neil.
His devotion to the young people in his care was recognised and reciprocated by the clear affection, even adulation, he inspired in pupils, parents and staff. I remember leaving thinking how glad I was he was in charge there.
I am seldom impressed when I go into our schools. So many of the staff seem tired and disengaged. But even after 13 years at Meadowgate, Neil showed none of that, publicly at least. He came to our AGMs, brought the kids to events, always willing to go beyond what would be expected. He was probably our biggest single supporter in all the schools in which we now work.
About three years ago I think, he took the Headship of the school after a long stint as Deputy. I spoke to him at the time, a few months before his appointment, encouraging him to go for it. Neil wasn't a massively confident man, but he went for it and got it, to the delight of many us, myself included.
I don't know how the job sat with him in his own mind but I get the sense, somehow that he struggled with parts of it. Whether the job played a part in all of this I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised, somehow, if it did.
When somebody this good takes their life, it just feels terrible. His pain must have been profound and his loneliness unbearable.
The world has lost a great teacher and a brilliant leader this week. Not one that was ever celebrated or known beyond his own town but someone who has left a mark on many lives.
Including mine and those of my staff who saw him twice a week for the last five years. Their sense of loss is, of course, intense and all the more powerful for their close acquaintance with him.
Today is a truly day for everyone who knew Neil Sears.
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