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Archives for September 2010

How to Destroy an Enterprise Culture

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This is the title of a workshop I am submitting to the International Conference on Enterprise Promotion, taking place in Harrogate next month.  Don’t know yet if it will be accepted as it bends the ‘submission guidelines’ a little.

Workshop Aims

  • To illustrate how and why most contemporary interventions designed to promote enterprise usually have precisely the opposite effect;
  • To demonstrate how narrow conceptions of enterprise serve to undermine the value of enterprise development for both funders and citizens and sells our profession short;
  • To outline ‘in which direction progress lies’ if we really want to develop more enterprising behaviours in the community;
Conclusions
  • We (policy makers, professionals and community leaders) need to re-conceive what we mean by ‘enterprise’ and ‘enterprise development’ and understand more fully its relationship to ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘business development’ and ‘community’.
  • We need to adopt much more ambivalent approaches to ‘entrepreneurship’, of all kinds, if we really wish to engage ‘community’.
  • We need to take seriously the principles of person centred development in our work to teach people how to live a ‘becoming existence’ and pay serious attention to a credo that says above all ‘Do No Harm’.

Sounds interesting?  See you in Harrogate.  Or get in touch.

Greed, Anger and Development

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Greed and anger have always been powerful forces for change.

Greed is given more or less free rein in our society. It is incentivised.  It creates wealth and jobs, it provides products and services.  Greed is good.  To those that have, more shall be given.

Unlike greed, anger  is usually discouraged (‘just play nicely’, ‘stop moaning’) and dulled through engagement in bureaucratic process. Anyone who has tried to make anything better by engaging in a committee of some description will recognise that dynamic.  Vision Building process anyone? Participatory budgeting? Citizen’s Panel?

As a society it feels like we TEACH helplessness when it comes to social change.

We design systems and structures that sap energy and will from the angry: that neutralise those who are driven by love or hate.

If we want to see our communities develop then we must

  • raise levels of love and hate about the issues that really matter,  and then
  • provide meaningful and rewarding avenues through which ‘what matters’ can be pursued with power, creativity and compassion.

For me, this means helping people to understand and feel their anger and their love, before building careful associations with like-minded folk.

It is not a question of how we change people, but how we provide a context in which they choose to change themselves.

For me, the most promising answer lies in the provision of effective community coaching using mechanisms such as Local Community Enterprise Accelerators (ELSIEs), supplemented by group learning processes such as Progress School, Innovation Lab and Results Factory.

Community, Council and Commerce in Leeds

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The three big Cs in our city.

Each is diverse and varied in itself.  Each embodies different values, visions, beliefs, goals and aspirations.  Each labours away in its’ own context with opportunities and threats, restrictions and obligations.  Each has its own processes, rituals and structures for getting things done which make it hard for effective partnerships to be built and to last.  We might manage to find an accommodation, but to find real synergies?

It easy for each to see the other as the enemy, or difficult, or greedy.  I know this is a trap that I fall into MUCH too easily.

How good a job do we actually do at bring all three constituencies to the Party?

Getting them to listen to each other.  To understand each other.  To help each other as much as they possibly can. To learn to really associate.

We need much more than Victorian Philanthropy models and trickle down.  We need genuine partnerships.

How well do we design our processes as a city that ensures that not only do we get the job done, but that we also improve the relationship between these three constituencies?

I suspect we worry much more about the task than the process and the relationships.  I may be wrong.

Time for some innovation anyone?