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What is the true value of creativity to organisations?
Just read this post!
And then reflect on what you do to suppress or promote creativity.
Remember that your team is a perfectly evolved repsonse to YOUR management style.
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First let’s look at some definitions of community empowerment:
‘Community Empowerment’ is the giving of confidence, skills and power to communities to shape and influence what public bodies do for or with them.
An Action Plan for Community Empowerment: Building on Success – October 2007
Community Empowerment is about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to.
The idea is that government can’t solve everything by itself, and nor can the community: it’s better when we work together.
The Scarman Trust Forum Lecture by David Blunkett – December 2004
Helping citizens and communities to acquire the confidence, skills and power to enable them to shape and influence their local place and services, alongside providing support to national and local government agencies to develop, promote and deliver effective engagement and empowerment opportunities.
David Rossington, Director, Local Democracy and Empowerment Directorate, Department for Communities and Local Government
Community empowerment is the process of enabling people to shape and choose the services they use on a personal basis, so that they can influence the way those services are delivered. It is often used in the same context as community engagement, which refers to the practical techniques of involving local people in local decisions and especially reaching out to those who feel distanced from public decisions.
Communities and Local Government Website – August 2008
So it is about giving individuals and communities confidence, skills and power. But to do what?
…to shape and influence what public bodies do for or with them…
…to influence decisions about their communities…
…taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to…
…to shape and influence their local place and services…
…providing support to national and local government agencies to develop, promote and deliver effective engagement and empowerment opportunities…
…to shape and choose the services they use on a personal basis, so that they can influence the way those services are delivered…
One of the first lessons that we have to learn is that if we can empower people it is follow their own agenda – to pursue their own self interest.
Not to engage in the government’s agenda or the reform of public services, or local decision making.
I don’t know too many people who are champing at the bit to ‘shape public services’ and to ‘influence local decisions’. Self interest, if defined at all, is rarely defined in these terms.
If we really want to empower communities (rather than just tap into them for ideas to save a few quid) then we have to start from a very different premise. And I would argue that it is a premise that puts the individual first. We have to use informal education processes to make the pursuit of self interest and power both legitimate and effective.
‘Community’ is a by-product of individuals actively pursuing their own self interest with power and confidence. Such ‘enterprising’ people quickly realise that there is power in association. That negotiation matters. That learning how to help and be helped are critical to making progress. That shaping infrastructure and the environment matter – because they influence the extent to which any of us can pursue our self interest. Without good schools, transport and housing how are we to pursue our interests?
So the starting point needs to be not ’empowering communities’ but empowering individuals. And this is done by helping them to clarify and refine what is in their best self interest – not the community’s or the government’s or anyone else’s. Self interest needs to be properly negotiated with the self interests of others. It should not be confused with selfishness.
And in parallel to the development of self interest there have to be systems to help people to develop their power to pursue it. Processes to build confidence, skills and the ability to organise people and resources to make real progress.
So let’s worry less about empowering communities and more about helping individuals to clarify and pursue their own self interest with power and vigour.
Let’s invest time and money in helping individuals learn how to negotiate their self interest in the modern world.
Let’s invest in person centred processes of informal education.
Let’s re-shape formal education to focus more on helping people to become effective negotiators of their own self interest – rather than passive consumers of a curriculum.
And as a by-product we will develop much healthier, more harmonious and politically engaged communities.
Why not….
Hat tip to Julian Dobson’s post ‘The Great Community Empowerment Heist‘
which planted the seeds….
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This is the title of a great post over at mynameisscott.
What do you mean by launch?
He ends,
if by launch you mean figure out what I am doing – well I am still working on that one!
Interestingly Scott starts his exploration of ‘launch’ with ‘idea generation’. But we could trace the origins of his enterprise journey way back before that.
I think that these are the questions that we need to explore if we are to really understand how to develop more enterprising communities.
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Todd Hannula has blogged about the possibility of an open source information platform for social entrepreneurs. He posits that such a platform might help more social entrepreneurs get the information that they need at the right time. Sounds like the kind of idea that the public purse might get interested in investing in.
But does it stack up?
I think that the answer to the information question lies in an exploration of the ‘demand side’ for information rather than thinking about how we can develop the information ‘supply side’.
If entrepreneurs REALLY want to succeed (rather than look and feel good for a while) they should get the right team in place before they start. A team that is as obsessed about financial management and marketing and sales as it is about saving the world. With a balanced team seeking information and ‘better practice’ in each of these domains they are much less likely to fail as a business and the demand side of the information market place will be more robust.
So let’s have less encouragement to individual entrepreneurs to change the world single handed and more encouragement to them to build powerful and balanced teams.
Todd suggests that the realisation for most social entrepreneurs that they are ‘not very good’ at business comes ‘just too late’. This is an unpalatable (and therefore largely unspoken) truth for nearly all entrepreneurs – social or otherwise.
They nearly all get a massive shock at some point.
The question is how to respond?
How do ‘support agencies’ make sure that they are ready to face these traumas when they almost inevitably come?
Because the painful traumas of business start-up might discourage some people from starting, they are often swept under the carpet.
We might use some euphemism, like ‘You need to do a little more work on your business plan’, but we rarely help the client to explore the unvarnished truth; No matter how much planning they do they will never be ready. There will be nasty and uncomfortable surprises. It is the ability to deal with these shocks and their ramifications that will separate the entrepreneurs from the wannabes.
I choose to consistently focus clients on the possible downsides of their business as much as on the upsides. I usually beg them to find some less risky way of following their dream other than starting their own business. I make them explore the things that might go wrong – and of the devastating impact that they could have on finances, relationships and reputations.
People say to me ‘Mike, they will never start a business if you keep pointing out all of the downsides…’
Well I make no apologies.
If someone is put off starting a business by a good exploration of the possible downsides then they are probably making exactly the right decision.
It is not more businesses that we need, but better businesses. Businesses that have a pragmatic understanding of the risks that they face (bankruptcy, debt, damaged relationships etc) – and are still prepared to take them. Businesses whose antennae are tuned to both problems and opportunities. You can’t stop a business like this from avidly consuming information. They seek it out. They devour it. Even if it is hard to find or ambiguous.
Instead we often find ourselves trying to resource dozens of ‘wannabe’ hopefuls buoyed up by a raft of interventions to promote enterprise on a sea of support agencies whose criteria for success is based on counting start-ups rather than survival rates. And then we have to find ways to spoon feed them information like medicine that might keep their business off the rocks – and we wonder if there is not some better way of shaping the information supply side.
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Carmine Coyote has written a provocative post which explores the fundamental dishonesty of motivation.
But I think Carmine has given motivation a bum rap!
What has been called ‘motivation’ is really ‘manipulation’. Manipulation to get people to do something that the manager wants them to do.
Now I don’t think any manager can ‘motivate’ anyone beyond the short term fix of the pep talk. (I think that we should set trading standards onto speakers who claim to be ‘motivational’. The good ones might educate about motivation – but in my experience the motivational, as opposed to the educational, impact of their presentations tails off within a few hours of their closing remarks.)
What managers can do is to help each employee to get really clear on their (the employees) self interest and how working towards organisational objectives serves it. Once this is done motivation will follow as sure as night follows day. Or the employee will leave to find a place where they can pursue their self interest more effectively. And this really forces employers to look at the value proposition that offer to their employees. Why should good, compassionate, competent people choose to spend their working hours with us? If it is just for the money then “Houston, we have problem!”
Self interest, rightly understood, properly negotiated with others and then pursued with vigour and power leads to remarkable results and one of its many by-products is ‘motivation’. Others are inspiration, creativity, innovation, passion, energy, vigour, strength. But the proper negotiation with others is critical. Blending self interests, weaving them together, ensuring that they reinforce rather than undermine each other, lies at the root of all high performing teams. And this is the real craft of the progressive manager.
The trouble is most of us feel uncomfortable about pursuing self interest. We are uncomfortable talking about it. We don’t even like to give ourselves the time to think about it. We have been socialised to suppress our self interest and look for opportunities to serve others. And VERY few managers build the kind of relationships where self interest (of all parties) can be clarified and negotiated fully to the benefit of all.
Carmine’s point about the fundamental dishonesty of motivation, that it is about getting people to ‘do more work for less reward’ is, I believe, a misrepresentation. Employees who create value deserve a proportionate share of that value and this depends on the proper negotiation of self interest. If the negotiation is not proper, but unfair, then self interest is not fully served and as a result motivation erodes.
Increasingly the nature of the reward is more than simply financial. Employees are looking for a diverse and intensely personal cocktail of rewards with ingredients that include fulfilment, challenge, flexibility, creativity and personal and professional development. These are essential components of self interest for most of us and help to keep people motivated at least as much as money, which is just a hygiene factor.
Appreciation also needs to be part of the mix. It absolutely is part of the package of ‘rewards’ that most of us look for at work. And it is a part of the job that many managers struggle with as they tend to leave things alone until they go wrong.
And perhaps we (professional management educators) need to do more with managers on ‘motivation’ as an emergent property – the preconditions for which require a full and proper negotiation of self interest(s) and the development of the employees power to pursue it with vigour.
And while I don’t think that people are any different in the third sector, I do think that the cocktail of self interest often needs to be much more carefully balanced. And many third sector managers forget this at their peril. Few of us join social enterprises to be overt vehicles for the delivery of government policy. We join social enterprises to promote social justice. And the ‘self interests’ of politicians and the promotion of social justice are rarely properly negotiated.
Your thoughts….
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