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Archives for April 2008

The Role of the Enterprise Coach or Outreach Worker

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It seems to me that there are an awful lot of enterprise coaches/outreach workers/community motivators /enterprise enablers out there all of whom are tasked with the similar roles:

  • to promote an enterprise culture in the community that they work in, and
  • to help individuals to start their own businesses by providing 121 support and signposting them to specialist service providers

The roles are beset with many and varied challenges, including how to:

  • engage individuals in using the enterprise service that they offer
  • help people to move forward and to be more enterprising
  • effectively help people to access specialist support
  • recognize when progress is being made and when it is not
  • develop a service that provides a demonstrable return on investment to funders and other stakeholders
  • manage the diversity of people, ideas, interests and motivations

If you are in one of these roles what other challenges are you facing?

If you have been a customer what other challenges do these enterprise workers need to consider and work on?

I think it is true to say that no-one has yet really bottomed out all of these challenges and that we need to find a mechanism for sharing what works.

Time Management Resource

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Time Management by the Hour

A new manifesto has just been published on time management over at the Change This site.

In essence it recommends forgetting about tips, tricks and gizmos – instead building a really solid understanding of the 7 fundamental practices of time management;

  1. Capturing – making sure that all calls on your time are captured in a system – not in your brain
  2. Emptying – making sure that whatever you use to capture calls on your time (e-mail inboxes, in-trays, calendars etc) are regularly emptied – ie the calls on your time are put into a system
  3. Tossing – getting rid of as much of the demands on your time as possible – being rigorous – but not ruthless in managing your time commitments – saying no!
  4. Storing – putting useful information in a place where you can safely retrieve it as needed – this does not mean relying on your memory (‘tickler’ files work well here!)
  5. Acting Now! – doing whatever you can right now – especially if it will only take a few minutes – avoid procrastination. (Get a supply of those little sticky dots of paper and force yourself to put one on each piece of paper you have ‘in the system’ every time you pick it up – you will be amazed at how many get several dots – before you do ANYTHING with them!)
  6. Scheduling – anything that you can’t do right now must have time scheduled for it – effective scheduling – knowing how long things should take and what contingencies might be appropriate is a fine art – well worth mastering
  7. Listing – for jobs that need doing – but don’t merit a fixed appointment in the diary then use lists.  Have a list for things to do when you are:
  • in the office
  • at home
  • in the car thing (listening to audio books for example),
  • in town
  • at a clients etc

Picking up the right list at the right time can really help your efficiency.
This manifesto looks like it has been massively influence by Dave Allen’s work on Getting Things Done and will act as a useful reminder to anyone who has been on the PMN Time Management programme.
You can read the full manifesto here.

NHS Trusts Poor Management Practice

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The Healthcare Commission has published a report based on an annual survey of 155 000 NHS staff and some of the findings make interesting reading for the progressive manager.

  • Only 26% thought their trust valued their work. This figure ranged between trusts from 58% to 11%.
  • Survey responses indicate poor levels of communication between staff and senior management, with only 22% thinking it is effective.
  • The survey shows that only 53% receive clear feedback on their work.
  • Results from previous NHS surveys have shown that staff who had received an appraisal in the previous 12 months were more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to consider leaving.
  • In spite of this fact only just over 60% of staff had been given an appraisal in the previous 12 months.
  • Only 39% of staff were satisfied or very satisfied with the recognition they get for good work. Not feeling valued was the reason most often given by staff who said they were thinking about leaving their jobs.
  • Communication between staff and senior managers is poor. Only 23% said senior managers involved staff in important decisions and only 22% considered communication between staff and senior management to be effective. Thirty-one per cent said senior managers encouraged staff to suggest new ideas and 17% said different parts of the trust communicate effectively with each other.

For the Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust only 47% of staff said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months. Only 16% said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months in which they had agreed clear objectives for their work, which they had found useful in helping them improve how they do their job, and which had left them feeling that their work is valued by their employer.

Things were marginally better in the Leeds Primary Care Trust. 22% of staff at the trust said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months, in which they had agreed clear objectives for their work, which they had found useful in helping them improve how they do their job, and which had left them feeling that their work is valued by their employer. The trust’s score of 22% was below average for PCTs in England.

39% of staff at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust said that they had agreed a personal development plan as part of their appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months. The trust’s score of 39% was in the lowest 20% of acute trusts in England. The trust’s 2007 score has not changed significantly since the 2006 survey, when 39% of staff also gave this response!

What puzzles me is how any organisation can survive these appalling statistics. And I think the NHS is probably no worse than many in the public, private and third sectors.

The quality of management in the UK is generally poor. I think this shows the massive potential for performance improvement that lies in simply getting the management basics right.

Anyone for Progressive Management?

Enterprise Reports

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March and April seems to have been a busy month for the publication of a range of papers relevant to community based enterprise.

First we had the Enterprise White Paper – more spelling mistakes than original ideas – what a disapointment – or have I missed something?  Supposed highlights include:

  • Improving access to finance for SME’s (now where have I heard that before?)
  • A consultation on the introduction of regulatory budgets, which would cap the new annually recurring cost of regulation for business, including whether to pilot this approach on SME’s or a particular sector;
  • Increased focus in minimising the impact of regulation on SME’s (ditto)
  • Independent review of regulatory guidance (ditto)
  • Further development of enterprise education on secondary schools and extension of it, where possible, into primary and further education (underpinned by a £210 million funding package, as agreed at the 2007 CSR); and
  • Establishment of a National Enterprise Academy (NEA)

Then we had a report from the New Economics Foundation ‘Hitting the Target. Missing the Point: How government regeneration targets fail deprived areas.  This new research from nef, evaluates the impact of one of the government’s flagship programmes: the ‘Local Enterprise Growth Initiative’ (LEGI), suggesting that investment has not been targeted at the places where it would have the most impact because it has not been supported by robust measurement.  This one is still on my reading list!

Finally there has been an interesting publication from London Based Community Links
– Self-employed and micro-entrepreneurs: Informal trading and the journey towards formalisation which must be of relevance to anyone working in community enterprise.

Please do let me know what you make of these reports, especially if you find that any of them have a positive impact on your practice.

Alien versus Predator 2; Profit taking versus social enterprise

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“For a profit maximising company, the bottom line is how much money you make. But when you run a social business, it’s about impact.”

Mohammed Younis

For a publicly listed company there is a legal obligation on the Board of Directors to act in a way that will maximise the return on investment to shareholders i.e. profit.

For any shareholders who seek a long term return on their investment – rather than quarterly profit taking – then ‘impact’ (net ‘good done’ in the community as the result of the company’s actions) will be more or less synonymous with profit.  In a perfect world, companies that do bad things in the name of profit will only derive those profits in the short term.

Every company I have ever worked in (I have not worked in any PLCs but have worked in profit and non-profit distributing businesses) there has been a real concern both for social impact and for making a sound return on investment.

The sense of dynamic balance has been vital.  It is not profit making OR social impact but profit taking AND social impact that leads to sustained progress.

We can shun the tyranny of “OR” and embrace the genius of “AND” – there is a yin/yang dynamic; a Zen type ambiguity that can be used creatively.

In my experience it was the companies that traded profitably and used those profits transparently and accountably to ensure the sustainable development of the company and is employees that were able to do their best work in the long term.  In the ‘non profits’ too often the development of the business was entirely hi-jacked by the whims of funders and policy makers.

It is possible to find profitable ways to make the world a better place.