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Enterprise Development Needs a Very Different Response

January 14, 2010 by admin

If we are serious about developing more enterprising individuals and communities, rather than managing the outputs that most enterprise funders are looking for (start ups and VAT registrations), we need to concern ourselves with the development of self-interest and the accrual of power through organisation, association, collaboration and the acquisition of ‘knowhow’. We are in the realms of person centred facilitation, community development and education. Not business planning. This requires an enormous shift both in what we do, and how we do it.

Helping people to clarify their self-interest and find the power to pursue it requires very different structures and processes to those that we currently use to develop enterprise. It is not about setting up a business. It is not about experiencing ‘Industry Days’ at school or attending ‘Enterprise’ Conferences with (not so) secret millionaires, dragons and ministers. It is not about Catalyst Centres and managed workspaces (although these might be useful for the small percentage of people who choose entrepreneurship as the most appropriate way to express their enterprising souls).

It is about engaging in a dynamic and continuous reflection on who we are and what we want to become, and managing processes that will help us move in that direction in a complex and rapidly changing world.

The Davies Review defined enterprise as the capacity to:

handle uncertainty and respond positively to change – Resilience
create and implement new ideas and ways of doing things – Creativity and change
make reasonable risk/reward assessments and act upon them in one’s personal and working life – The Pursuit of Progress

No mention of employment, entrepreneurship or business. Instead it is about resilience, change making and progress. Enterprise development needs to find a new home where this broader conception can flourish without the distorting, primarily economic calculus of entrepreneurs and The Treasury. They will have much to offer to the development of entrepreneurship – but that is only ever likely to be relevant to a minority. Enterprise needs to escape, what for many is, the deadening hand of business.

The art and science of enterprise is relevant to all and we need to build communities and relationships that understand how to nurture it.

One of my big regrets is that so little LEGI funding has been used to drive this sort of innovation. Instead it has been used, often wastefully, in the short term pursuit of business startups and in placing cuckoos in the heart of some of our poorest communities.

Anyone up for some innovation in Local Enterprise?

Precautions for All Governments – John McKnight

January 6, 2010 by admin

In John McKnight’s ‘Building Communities from the Inside Out’ is a chapter on ‘Providing support for asset based development: Policies and Guidelines’. John may not be the greatest crafter of a punchy headline on the planet, but he does understand the process of community development – and the content of this section is right on the money.

In a section called ‘Precautions for all Governments’ he points out the problems that governments and other institutions of the state have in working with what are often small, simple and informal community development groups. He suggests that often, in trying to play its role, government ends up ‘dominating, distorting and demeaning’ the work of local people. McKnight offers a few principles that can help government officials (council officers, RDA employees etc) to avoid this ‘overbearing propensity’.

To paraphrase:

Remember that government workers and programmes are public servants. A servant supports and does not control. A servant never suggests that an employee might ‘participate’ in the servants’ work. The servant finds how best to serve the employer.
Understand the limits to government. If it replaces the work of citizens and their associations it will not create a healthy society – but a dependent one. The community will look to government to solve local problems and government will be unable to fulfil this role. Local problems will worsen. ‘Secure, wise and just communities are created by citizens and their associations and enterprises, supported by governments making useful investments in local assets’.
Let local people who do the work take the credit. Don’t send the mayor to ‘cut the ribbon’. Let those that did the work have the glory. Send the mayor to thank them.
Don’t replace local associations and institutions with new systems and agencies. ‘One of the most significant causes of weakened local citizen initiatives, associational work and institutional capacity has been the introduction of new government sponsored structures and organisations. As new organisations appear in the neighbourhood with impressive buildings or offices, lots of money and well paid outside professionals (sounds familiar?) they unintentionally but necessarily replace some of the power, authority and legitimacy of local groups. Although they assert that they are there to strengthen community, they are likely to replace community initiatives.’
Government representatives should ask “What do you local people think we should do to support you?” rather than “We have this new programme we are bringing to your community.”
Ones size does not fit all. Characteristics of local projects are diversity, proliferation and informality. Government and bureaucracy however is more often characterised by uniformity, standardisation and formality. They usually seek to develop processes and systems that will ‘fit all’. This approach is structurally and culturally ‘at odds’ with creative local initiatives that are vital to community regeneration.

One of the challenges that I believe government (local, regional and national) and its agencies has to address is how best do we make our expertise and professional ‘knowhow’ available to community groups? Instead they appear to be have succeeded in co-opting the expertise and knowhow of community groups to deliver governments’ policies programmes and targets on dependent and disempowered communities.

Time for a change methinks.

Good Work….

January 5, 2010 by admin

Just reading Schumacher’s Good Work again. Although the original lectures on which the book was based were first given in the 1970s it seems that we have made little progress in helping people with the challenge of finding good work.

From the Foreword…

At the heart of our system of work lies our system of values, and more precisely, our view of the individual and his relationships with others. By way of illustration, consider one of the current pseudo-intellectual clichés, that work is part of the Protestant ethic and that a more enlightened view of it is (presumably) that the less work you can get away with, the better.

This is a cynical and degraded view of human nature (certainly not subscribed to by any religion that I know of) because it assumes that money is the sole reason for working. Set this view against Schumacher’s opening remarks in this book, in which he identifies three purposes of human work:

to produce necessary and useful goods and services;

to enable us to use and perfect our gifts and skills; and

to serve, and collaborate with, other people, so as to “liberate ourselves from our inborn egocentricity.”

…

From the Preface….

A recent article in the London Times began with these words:

“Dante, when composing his visions of hell, might well have included the mindless, repetitive boredom of working on a factory assembly line. It destroys initiative and rots brains, yet millions of British workers are committed to it for most of their lives.”

The remarkable thing is that this statement, like countless similar ones made before it, aroused no interest: there were no hot denials or anguished agreements; no reactions at all. The strong and terrible words “visions of hell,” “destroys initiative and rots brains,” and so on–attracted no reprimand that they were misstatements or overstatements, that they were irresponsible or hysterical exaggerations or subversive propaganda; no, people read them, sighed and nodded, I suppose, and moved on.

Not even the ecologists, conservationists, and doom watchers are interested in this matter. If someone had asserted that certain man-made arrangements destroyed the initiative and rotted the brains of millions of birds or seals or wild animals in the game reserve of Africa, such an assertion would have been either refuted or accepted as a serious challenge. If someone had asserted that not the minds and brains of millions of workers were being rotted but their bodies, again there would have been considerable interest.

After all, there are safety regulations, inspectors, claims for damages, and so forth. No management is unaware of its duty to avoid accidents or physical conditions which impair workers’ health. But workers’ brains, minds, and souls are a different matter.

Value our People More or Social Enterprise will be Lost

January 5, 2010 by admin

This is the title of an interesting post by Adrian Ashton over at Social Enterprise.

Adrian cites major problems with both pay and prospects with 60% of those working in the sector expecting to leave it within the next 5 years.

there are various strategies and policies around how social enterprise is going to save the world, but in all the hype and excitement we must be careful to remember that it can only do so if our people feel valued in doing so and we can retain them for the journey.

So social enterprises must join the ‘War for Talent‘.

At the heart of talent acquisition and retention is a single, simple question. What is our winning Employee Value Proposition (EVP)? What value can we offer employees that means they will join us, stay and develop their impact?

And this is where the social enterprise sector has a potential significant advantage over many for profits. But an advantage that many social enterprises squander.

A social enterprise can offer meaning, purpose, authenticity (the chance to do what I am ‘meant’ to be doing, to express who I really am through my contribution – to do ‘good’ work) and impact. It is not about pursuing profits but pursuing social justice. About building a better world. Make sure that you build this into your EVP and there will be no problem retaining top people – even if you are not paying top dollar.

But I see many social enterprises lose sight of their purpose. They become more interested in writing finding applications than in the pursuit of social justice. They will do whatever the funders ask them to – even if this makes them dependent and compliant. Working in the best interests of the funder rather than in the best interests of those whom they are meant to serve.

If social enterprise is to have a future then managers and leaders in the sector must learn how to:

put the mission above managerialism
establish a balance between the demands of funders and the best interests of those whom they serve
give EVERY employee the chance to talk openly, honestly and regularly about what matters to them and how their role can be made more fulfilling

They need to become Progressive Managers.