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City of Dreams

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASakZcC0w8Q

I’m a street sweeper in your city of dreams
Yeah, I’m a street sweeper in your city of dreams
Sweepin up the paper cups between the limousines
Street sweeper in your city of dreams
Thousands of windows, I’m scared of what I see
Thousands of windows, I’m so scared of what I see
People wired up to telephones, plugged into tv screens
Thousands of windows, I’m so scared of what I see
Lookin at the sky above, higher than these neon names
I’m lookin at the sky above, higher than these neon names
You can’t buy and sell the clouds, they aint among the commodities we trade
Lookin at the sky above, higher than these neon names
I’m waitin for the city of god
Yeah, I’m waitin for the city of god
When what is will be what was
Waitin for the city of god
I’m a street sweeper in your city of dreams
Yeah, I’m a street sweeper in your city of dreams
Sweepin up the paper cups between the limousines
Street sweeper in your city of dreams

Enterprise, community and complexity….

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Enterprise, community and complexity.  Slippery words.  But behind the slippery words are concepts that offer the possibility of progress.

Lets start with ‘enterprise‘.  First, empty your mind of all those misconceptions that I must be talking about ‘business starts’, ‘cash flow forecasts’, ‘profits’ and ‘Dragons’.

I am not.

I am talking about enterprise as a measure of ‘agency’ in one’s own life.  The extent to which an individual is able to recognise what ‘progress’ (another slippery word) means for them and to take action in its pursuit.  This is what I mean by enterprise.  It is the product of clear self-interest (I know what I want) and power (I have the confidence, skills and knowledge to take organised action in its pursuit).  An enterprising person is one who is clear on what they want from their life and actively pursues it.  An enterprising community is one which has many such people – because they are valued and supported.

Being enterprising does not make you a good person.  It just makes you someone who is acting in, what you believe to be, your own self-interest.  If self-interest is ‘enlightened’ then it is likely that the resulting ‘enterprise’ will make a positive contribution to community.

If we are serious about developing ‘enterprise’, rather than managing the outputs that most enterprise funders are looking for, we need to concern ourselves with the development of self-interest and power.   We are in the realms of person centred facilitation and education.  Not business planning.  This is 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 a typical business start-up programme.

It is worth noting that if you have money, there is a fair chance that at some time you will have hired a coach to help you with the difficult and personal work of clarifying self-interest and gaining the power you need to pursue it. And if they were a good coach they would not have manipulated you towards their preferred outputs – but would let you work on your own personal agenda.  If you have little or no money the chances of you ever having access to such a potentially transformational relationship are slim to none.  The relationship that you have with various ‘helpers’ is likely to be one where they try to manipulate you ‘back to work’, towards a ‘healthy diet’  or some such policy goal of funded output.

Over the last few years I have spoken with many enterprise educators, policy makers and practitioners and they have all accepted that this conception of enterprise has merit.  Not only will it help us to get more business start-ups, but it will also help us to get large numbers of people acting in pursuit of their own wellbeing – however they define it.  But, this is not the work that gets commissioned, at least not by enterprise funders.

How does this concept of enterprise  fit with ‘community’?

I choose to think of ‘community’ as a property that emerges when people and groups learn to negotiate their self-interest with the self-interests of others.  Community is what the world of complexity science would call an emergent property.  If this is correct then it raises serious questions about approaches which attempt to offer short cuts to community (building community centres and one stop shops for example) without addressing the preconditions necessary in a complex adaptive system (such as society) for its emergence, namely, lots of folk whose self-interest is properly understood and who have the knowledge and skill to use networks, associations, mutuality, reciprocity and generosity to pursue it.

Community emerges when people learn how to associate and collaborate in pursuit of mutual self-interest.  When they recognise that the best way to achieve their own self-interest is to help others to achieve theirs.

A beautiful by-product of this is a raised awareness of the importance of difference.

If I learn how to associate and collaborate with someone who has different skills and knowledge, or a different cultural heritage to my own I am likely to gain more opportunities than if I associate with people who are pretty much the same as me.  Associations across race, gender, age and so on often provide the key to opportunity and are a precondition that will allow strong communities to emerge.

With difference comes both opportunity and resilience.

Some thoughts on Collaboration and Innovation

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Don’t do it unless you have to!

If you know what it is that you want to achieve, and you have the power to do it without collaborating then JFDI.  Collaboration is a tool best left in toolbox. unless you have the right job for it.

What are you collaborating for?

Be really clear on what you want the collaboration to achieve, both for you, your preferred, chosen collaborator (more on this later) and your service users or customers.  What impact do you want the collaboration to make?

Develop the vision and rationale for the collaboration – but leave the detailed planning till later

Finding the right collaborators depends on having a vision that is credible, compelling and achievable.  But leave plenty of room for your collaborators to get on board with you in refining the vision and getting down and dirty with shaping goals, projects and plans.  You want them to be collaborators remember – not just hired hands…

Choose your collaborators with care

Make sure that your collaborators being resources, abilities, skills, something to the party that you don’t have but that you need to achieve what it is that matters most to you.  Collaborations that bring to the game more of what you already have tend not to be very exciting – unless your challenge is simply to ‘do more’ rather than ‘do different’ or ‘do better’.

Surviving or thriving?

For some at the moment the need to collaborate is driven by the scissors of doom, the falling levels of investment and the rising demands on services.  ‘Collaboration’ is seen as a way to get more done at lower costs and can be a euphemism for, or a preamble to, merger where back office costs can be cut and we get to live another day.  Nothing wrong with living to fight another day, but using collaboration to innovate might mean that you get to thrive rather than merely survive.

Collaboration, like innovation, is an acquired competence

Innovation and collaboration are both complex processes that require certain skills and cultures to enable them to develop and thrive.  You can’t just expect individuals or organisations to be innovative and collaborative, any more than you can expect them to walk a high wire or speak Latin.  These things have to be learned, and learning takes time.

Get used to failure

Both collaboration and innovation are risky endeavours.  They cannot be ‘evidence based’ and guaranteed to succeed.  The more you innovate and collaborate the more you will fail.  But also the greater the chances that you will succeed.  And as long as your successes create more value than your failures destroy then you are winning.

Ponder the ‘non suicidal acts of courage’

Collaboration and innovation both demand courage.  For us to leave our comfort zones.  To risk failing, looking stupid, provoking disapproval, even anger.  There are risks we could take that, if they went wrong, would put us out of the game. These are potentially suicidal acts of courage – and sometimes they may have to be taken.  But what are the non-suicidal acts of courage that you might be able to commit to?

Visions of the Anointed or Civic Enterprise?

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Vision of the Anointed is the title of a book by Thomas Sowell, an American historian, economist and social commentator.   The anointed are usually a small group of ‘professionals’ and ‘political leaders’, or ‘campaigners’ and their work frequently follows a well trodden path:

  1. They identify a crisis – a situation that, if not addressed, will lead to disaster
  2. They propose policies and interventions to ‘solve’ the crisis that they believe will lead to a positive set of results
  3. The policies are implemented and the results are usually (always) mixed.  There will be both benefits and detriments associated with the implementation of policy
  4. The anointed defend the success of their vision and the policies and impacts that sprung from it.

We can see this dynamic playing out now with climate change, peak oil, low carbon economics, the benefits culture, anti social behaviour, drug misuse and so on.

This archetype for social change is based on an assumption that the problems of society can be identified by the anointed and can be resolved by their vision.  Where does this leave the ‘unanointed’.  Those of us who aren’t involved in the process of identification of problems and development of vision?  Well we can adopt several positions. We can:

  • support the vision and plans of the anointed – become their followers
  • attempt to influence the anointed so that their visions and plans take some account of our vision and values
  • oppose their vision and plans – become their critics – point out their detrimental effects – and seek the anointment of a different group
  • blame the anointed for the ongoing existence and, in many cases, worsening of problems

In each of these cases we are giving power to the anointed.  Even if we oppose their plans, we will argue for the ‘anointment’ of a different group of leaders with different values and different visions.  Power remains with the anointed – whether they are on our side or not.  Their social policies too will have benefits and detriments.  We are relying on an anointed group to take responsibility for our success as individuals and as a society.  We can then sit back and hurl either brickbats or bouquets – depending on our values and beliefs.  WE are off the hook. We call this politics.

In my work I accept that their will always be an anointed and they will always be developing and implementing policies.   Some of which may work for us.  Some against.  With the dominance of the current economic growth paradigm you are more likely to benefit if you are economically active – especially at higher levels.  If you have money to invest you are likely to benefit even more.  Of course we can vote and we can take part in the processes that shape their visions.  The strategic plans of the anointed may be necessary – but they are not sufficient.

We should not rely on them to make our lives better.  They do not hold the keys to progress for us.  We hold them, if we have the courage and confidence to recognise it.  Often though we collude with the anointed as they unwittingly ‘put the leash’ on our enterprise, creativity and civic participation as they envelop us in their plans.

An approach to social policy and change that relies on the ‘vision of the anointed’ is like an ‘old school’ business that says to its employees – come to work, do as your told, work hard on implementing our cunning plans and policies and we will see you alright.  Just comply.  Don’t think.  Just do.  We have clever people in the boardroom who put us on course.  Compliance and order are the key organising values…

Many modern organisations have recognised that in fact with ‘every pair of hands a brain comes free’.  The organisation is turned upside down.  It is employees in the frontline who are asked to be enterprising and innovative in making things better.  The brains in the boardroom find ways to keeping this innovation and enterprise ‘on mission’.  Their job is to facilitate the emergence of strategy from a social process involving many brains.  They don’t have an elite planning ‘cathedrals of the future’ developing blueprints for others to implement.   They instead manage a messy bazaar of ideas and innovation helping all the market traders to promote their ideas and  form allegiances for progress.  They value a culture of enterprise over compliance.  They build chaordic systems.

Person centred and responsive work helps people to recognise the limitations of the anointed and helps them to recognise that the best hope for making things better, in ways that they value, lies less in engaging with the anointed and more in engaging with their own sense of purpose and practical association, collaboration and organisation with their peers.  It lies in their own enterprise and endeavour.  From a collection of enterprising and creative individuals emerges a diverse and sustainable community.

When we talk about encouraging civic enterprise, I think we are talking about shifting the balance of power from implementing the visions of the anointed to empowering the ambitions of the citizen.

If this analysis has any truth to it then the implications for leadership and its development are enormous.