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Archives for March 2011

Cultural Hunting and Cultural Gardening in Leeds

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It seems that the dust is settling after the extravaganza that was Frankenstein’s Wedding came to Leeds.  Broadcast live on BBC3, with clips filmed in advance across the city and a live audience of 12000 at Kirkstall Abbey the event was nothing if not ambitious.

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It strikes me that the production was a lovely example of what can be achieved through a strategy of ‘cultural hunting’.  We attract BIG culture to the city and participate avidly in its consumption.  ‘Cultural hunting’ is about attracting outsiders, usually on a temporary or short-term basis to provide an experience that we could not put on ourselves.

In contrast to a strategy of ‘cultural hunting’ is one of ‘cultural gardening’.  This would be characterised by nurturing the competence and capacity of cultural producers that are already in the city, enabling them to explore the edges of their potential and develop their talents and vision.  It is a strategy that ‘starts from where we are, and works with what we have got’.

Getting the balance right between attracting talent from elsewhere and investing in growing your own is always tricky.   There are parallels in how you develop football clubs (do you buy your team or bring them through an academy) and how you grow an economy through attracting inward investment or growing your own.

Is Frankenstein’s Wedding and its ilk really what Leeds is looking for?  Or is it a more stable platform from which we can develop and showcase more of our indigenous talent?

Community – The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block

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Community – The Structure of Belonging – Peter Block

Peter Block has long been a ‘go to’ writer people who think carefully about the process of change and how best to help positive change happen.  For me, he IS the Consultants’ Consultant.  As the author of Flawless Consulting – A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used; The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook:- Understanding Your Expertise; Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest and The Empowered Manager he has a 30 year track record of wisdom and knowledge in how to help managers, leaders and consultants create positive change.  So it was with some excitement that I first read Community –  The Structure of Belonging.

It did not disappoint.

Block distils his practical knowledge of change and describes his experiences in applying it to helping communities tackle fragmentation, conflict and disconnection.  He provides practical guidance on how community can be built, how transformation maybe nurtured and how healthy communities can be built.  But he offers few solutions; just questions and processes that help us to tackle our own problems and pursue our own aspirations.

This is Block at his person centred best.  At its essence he describes how to move from preoccupations with deficiencies, narrow interests and entitlements to possibility, generosity and ‘gifts’ through the art of convening:  bringing the right people to the right conversations to tackle the right questions.  By reframing leadership as the art of convening Block lays down an important challenge that many will choose to ignore.

The book will help anyone who cares about the wellbeing of their community – whether that is an organisation, a neighbourhood, a city or a parish.  However it is neither an easy nor a comfortable read.  As Block says the ‘sole purpose [of the book] is to provide a path toward creating a future very different from what we now have.

So, if you are comfortable with the status quo, steer clear.

The Abundant Community – Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

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The Abundant Community – Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods – John McKnight, Peter Block

McKnight and Block are, for me at least, a development ‘dream team’.  John McKnight is a pioneer of the asset based development movement and Peter Block is widely regarded as the consultant’s consultant; one of the very best facilitators of transformation and change.

“There is a growing movement of people with a different vision for their local communities”.

On this side of the Atlantic we might be forgiven for thinking that those with the vision are Cameron, Wei et al, the would be architects of Big Society.  But McKnight and Block recognise that the people with the power to make the transformation happen are not the politicians and the civil servants, but the people that live in community and want it to be a place that they can love.

Central to this transformation is a rebalancing of community away from consumption towards a paradigm of production.  A paradigm where we spend less time earning to pay specialists to provide products and services that we could choose to make ourselves.

There is little or no talk of place-making, regeneration and ribbon cutting projects.  Just people, relationships, skills, interests, passions, associations and what it means to be a competent community.  A place where people learn to support each other and make good thing happen. Of their own volition. Not that of their elected representatives.

The Abundant Community provides powerful and practical insights into how the work of building a competent community can be sustained – even without generous handouts from a benevolent state.

Stylistically the Americanese can be off-putting,  but get past it and you will be generously rewarded.  For me this is one of the most important books of recent years.  Unless of course you make your money from the glass, steel and concrete approach to place-making.

What would a real Enterprise Zone be like?

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So much for innovation in enterprise policy.

The best we seem to be able to do at the moment is rehash 1980s style enterprise zones to distort the market in favour of some places over others through a combination of tax breaks and more relaxed approaches to planning.  An enterprise zone becomes little more than a place where we encourage entrepreneurs to put their businesses because of a few breaks that the state can afford offer.  They are often little more than a business park with flexible planning requirements.  It looks like there will be 20 of them, funded to the tune of £1.25m each per year.  And at that level of funding any tax breaks are likely to be tiny.

But what would a real ‘enterprise zone’ look like?  Not some policy makers confection but a community that really knows how to support enterprise?  A community that does not try to pick winners in the pursuit of GDP but really supports individuals and groups in pursuit of whatever matters most to them?

Well, the first pre-requisite for such an enterprise zone would be that a high percentage of the population really were clear on what mattered most to them.  They would be aware of the current situation (politically, environmentally, financially culturally and socially) what they love about it, what they hate, and what they want to change as a result.  They would be helped and challenged to clarify their self interest.

They would have some kind of idea of what progress looks like to them.  They would have some idea about the direction in which progress lies.  They would be encouraged to reflect on the nature of ‘better’ to produce a creative tension between how things are and how they might be.  This creative tension would drive enterprise.

And they would have some kind of game plan about how they were going to make progress.  They would accept that the responsibility for progress is theirs.  They would know how to deal with both set backs and success and have what psychologists call a high internal locus of control.  In short they would believe that they can influence their future. That it is not essentially down to fate, luck or others.

They would be living and working in a community that recognised enterprising people (NB these may or may not be looking to start a business.  Enterprise in human endeavour comes in many more forms than just entrepreneurship) and individuals and groups in that community would know how to help.  In short a real enterprise zone would be packed full of people who know how to help and are themselves ‘help able’.  In such an enterprise zones we would indeed ‘all be Jim’.

People would feel a sense of belonging because they were part of community that wanted them to succeed and likewise provided opportunities to help others succeed as well.  Success would not be down to fiscal policy but to social policy.  We would succeed in our enterprise because of the people in our community not because of planning or taxation perks.

In short an enterprise zone would be little more than a competent community.  And this has more to do with regeneration ‘between the ears’ than with planning regimes, taxation policy or property development.

A Complete Lack of Ambivalence…about Goldman Sachs

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Should we be enthusiastic about Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most powerful investment bank in the world, coming into Leeds and helping to train the next generation of Leeds entrepreneurs?

Should we find the idea abhorrent?

Or perhaps we should practice a little ambivalence?

It seem to me we have plenty who are enthusiastic about the idea.  The City Council and Leeds Ahead, who have been instrumental in attracting the Goldman Sachs programme believe it to be a good thing.  And ‘Yorkshire Icon‘ Lord Graham Kirkham, founder of DFS, Conservative Party Funder and one of Yorkshire’s most successful entrepreneurs, has described Goldman Sachs’ support as ‘heaven sent‘.

And it is easy to find those who instinctively reel against the involvement of a major investment bank in such a programme. Never mind one that has been characterised as ‘A Giant Vampire Squid‘

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As well as generic banker bashing they will cite Goldman Sachs apparently significant influence in the US Government, their alleged involvement in an alleged fraud that led to the RBS losing £545m and several other controversies as reasons why we should consider their role in our city less than ‘heaven sent’.   They may also express concern that one of the partners in the programme, Said Business School, was founded by Wafic Said, friend to the Saudi Royal family, Margaret Thatcher and a key player in helping the UK Govt to win the Al Yamamah Arms deal which has had interesting consequences in the Middle East and for our oil security.

What it seems much harder to find is any ambivalence to the project.

Any sense of a cautious but pragmatic engagement with a strategic partner whose real long term interests in working with 25 of our local businesses, carefully selected for their high growth potential, may not yet be completely clear.  In Goldman Sachs’ own words

‘The Goldman Sachs Foundation works with outstanding organizations to prepare and support the development of the next generation of leaders around the world.  Drawing from the core expertise of Goldman Sachs, our programs in Promoting Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Business Education are designed to give participants practical skills and the broad world view they need to become decision makers and visionaries in the global economy.

Which does not sound entirely like philanthropy to me.  For a bank.  And I wonder what the key elements of the broad world view that they ‘give participants’ really entails.  A sustainable economy?  One where wealth is measured in terms other than cash? Perhaps….Or maybe the core expertise in this piece called the Great American Bubble Machine?

There seems no real understanding that what we may actually have in Goldman Sachs is more of a ‘bedfellow’ than an ‘ally’.   It is this apparent lack of any sense of practical and pragmatic engagement that worries me.

But there are 25 or so successful businesses who are benefiting from the programme, and I have heard lots of good feedback from several independent sources.  And it is keeping much needed revenues rolling into the coffers at Shine so that it can continue its work in the regeneration of the local community.

So perhaps we really shouldn’t worry about whose money we take?

Perhaps it really is ‘All about the economy, stupid’.  And we should not think too deeply about what is really going on.  Just let those who already share the ‘broad world view’ of ‘decision makers and visionaries in the global economy’ get on with it. After all, they have made a pretty good fist of things up to now…

Haven’t they?

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There are things about the programme that I really admire.  Let’s forget the chequered history that even investment bankers have in ‘picking winners’.  The programme is aimed at ‘mid-stage’ businesses with the aspiration and potential to grow, and this has been an area that has not received as much attention as it should.  And it resists the false dichotomy between social business and ‘for profit’ which should make for a much more interesting and powerful mix.

And the programme is a pilot that they hope to roll out across the UK.  So perhaps Goldman Sachs really will be instrumental in developing the next generation of business leaders across the country.