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The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’

March 18, 2014 by admin

Leaders for LeedsI attended Leaders for Leeds this morning – a breakfast meeting that connects a group of people who are trying to work on achieving ‘best city’ outcomes, aka make Leeds a better place to live.  I jotted down a few notes, some taken from our conversations and some capturing thoughts that I didn’t have time to express, and these form the basis of what I have written here.

The theme of the session was ‘Engaging Community Leaders’ exploring the premise that Leaders for Leeds needs to get more and different people and perspectives into its network.  We were invited to explore what might need to happen for more community leaders to show up.  This raised a number of interesting issues in our conversation and the thoughts it prompted in me:

What do we mean by community?  Geography? Interest group? Ethnic group? Faith based group? Age group?  Community is a weasel word.  We can utter it with gravity and credibility while conferring on it no specific meaning.  It is a broad signaller of intent, with no specific commitment or rationale attached.  I reckon what we actually mean by ‘community’ is often ‘target population’.  Except Leaders for Leeds has no ‘targets’.  We are not clear on whose voice we want in the room and why.  We don’t know whose voices are missing.  If ‘they’ were present what would they say and do?  How would that help?  Who would that help?

‘Community Leader’ is an equally difficult term.  Often it is little more than a media label applied to someone who expresses an opinion about a community issue.  They may lead a project, or an organisation, but do they lead a community?  Leadership is usually contested.  They might lead some but not others in ‘the community’!  We also discussed how bestowing the title of community leader can be damaging to the individual concerned and their relationships in the community.  Few are prepared to put themselves forward as community leaders.  The label does not fit.  They don’t recognise it.  Call yourself a community leader, or be called it by someone else, and you risk getting a backlash.

We also talked about ‘community leaders’ who are appointed or recruited, either from the community or into the community, to do a specific job for a particular sponsor in ‘the community’ and how seldom they seem to become effective catalysts for lasting change.

So why the interest in ‘community leaders’?  Is it because it is a convenient idea?  If we can find them they provide a short cut to ‘engage with community’?  Are we looking for individuals who have respect and influence in communities that we don’t?  Are we looking to extend our power and reach through them?

Or is it because we believe in the ‘law of requisite variety‘ that says the more diverse our membership the greater the diversity of the issues that we can respond to effectively?  That we recognise deeply that unless we get more diverse membership our capacity to act as change agents is limited.

We also heard how for one participant how attendance at Leaders for Leeds was largely symbolic. They got little from it themselves, but their attendance served as a reminder that black and minority ethnic people are here.

Conversation then turned away from leadership and towards the  issue of power.  Are we seeking to give those that ‘organise’ in our communities more power to work on what matters to them?  Can we do that? How?  Or are we seeking power for ourselves to influence and create change in those communities by finding individuals to act as bridgeheads for us and our projects?

We then talked about Leaders for Leeds providing access to those in power and also about providing a broader perspective of the city as public, private and third sector gather together.  The issue of access to those in power was interesting to me. Do we believe that if we can relate to them and influence them we can secure different outcomes?  Is that the game plan?  That what we need to do is persuade those in power?  Do we believe that power is essentially wielded from the top down?  Or could we conceive of Leaders for Leeds as a mechanism that serves the voices and needs of ordinary citizens – giving them power to shape their own futures and recognising how we might often need to get out of the way?  A city of 750 000 voices rather than ONE?

For me the key challenges facing Leaders for Leeds are:

  • How do we enable small groups of people that care to have conversations that lead to action?
  • How can we encourage them and amplify their power to transform lives for those that most need change?

(As I was pondering these thoughts and jotting them down in my notebook I then heard one young woman say “In my community many young people believe that they have to be bad or pregnant to get attention!  How could Leaders for Leeds challenge that believe, in that community?  Probably not by inviting folk to meetings – but by going there, by listening and responding, respectfully.)

So I guess it comes down to one big question for me:  Is Leaders for Leeds there to help existing power structures to cope with change?  Or is it there to help them change?  Perhaps radically?

Not a bad bit of brain tickling from a 20 minute conversation!

Filed Under: Community, Development, Leadership

Wendell Berry’s Plan to Save the World

October 12, 2013 by admin

Filed Under: Community

Strengthening Bottom Up

January 27, 2013 by admin

Whether it is more ‘civic enterprise’, community engagement or ‘Big Society’, people with power, but increasingly little money, are looking for new ways to get things done.

The large capital infrastructure projects have not given us more inclusive communities and now we can’t afford them any way, so in some quarters at least interest is shifting from old school top down strategy to a more emergent process of bottom up development.  To processes where large numbers of people can shape their own futures and as a result the futures of the communities that they live in.

But making the shift from top down to bottom up is far from easy….

Over the last few years I have been developing low and no cost approaches to economic, personal and community development leading to new projects such as:

  • Progress Schools
  • Community Conversations
  • Local Community Enterprise Accelerators (‘Elsies’)
  • Innovation Labs and
  • Results Factories

These are my best efforts to provide an infrastructure that allows the private, public, third sector and those of ‘no sector’ to give and get the help that they need to develop enterprising projects and people, and for the development of ‘community’ by building relationships and networks around local activists.

To bring ‘bottom up’ development to life.

Filed Under: Community, Development, enterprise

Top Down: Bottom Up

January 27, 2013 by admin

Top Down Development

Top down development is characterised by usually a small number of people recruited or elected to develop a ‘strategy’ that will lead to progress.

The ‘strategy’ is usually accompanied by a ‘plan’, where costed elements are prioritised and scheduled for delivery in the full expectation that things will, as a result, get better.

The strategy and its associated plans are usually supported with evidence and feasibility studies showing just why this is the right course of action and how benefits will accrue and to whom.  In recent years it seems we have stopped worrying about ‘to whom the benefits will accrue’ and accepting that the trickle down fairy will ensure that any wealth and wellbeing created by the plan will be enjoyed by all.

Top down development is also characterised by:

  • delegation down a chain of command to manage implementation – this is not always well managed
  • fierce discussions about the correct allocation of scarce resources – this can divert us from real issues and burn millions
  • disputes about chosen methodologies and the viability of alternatives – as everyone tries to get a piece of the planning budget
  • piloting and subsequent rolling out of schemes and plans – a belief that what worked elsewhere can also work here, and there….
  • attempts, with varying degrees of honesty and legitimacy, to encourage participation in the top down planning process – phrases like consultation, co-production and engagement are used liberally.
Top Down Development is really the only way to manage large infrastructure development projects.  It is a characteristic of electoral democracies where we vote in a small group to develop our strategies. It is also a characteristic of feudal and despotic states.

Bottom Up Development

Bottom Up Development is characterised by people using their power to develop their self interest. Remember self interest is not selfishness but means ‘self amongst others’. One of the important lessons from top down development is that often the best way to develop ones own self interest is to look after the self interests of others.

Sometimes bottom up development is also characterised by groups of people coming together when they have shared self interests.  In bottom up development this coming together around common cause requires little engineering. It sometimes just happens.  But it can be supported and encouraged. It is often discouraged.

Bottom up development is characterised by:

  • Individuals working in their own self interests in the way that they see fit
  • Individuals looking for  the resources that they need to make progress
  • Individuals pondering their options
  • Individuals coming together around common causes – forming associations and organising in order to increase their power
Bottom up is the only way to really get large numbers of people engaged in their own development and developing agency in their own lives and communities. Bottom up is about life in a participative democracy.

Bottom Up AND Top Down

Both bottom up and top down processes of development are necessary in a modern society.  Top down to plan and provide the infrastructure required and bottom up to allow individuals and groups to use it effectively.  Nearly all development work is done in a top down way.  It is my contention that we need to invest significantly in bottom up development and its relationship to top down, if we are to build communities full of active citizens.  If we are to encourage civic enterprise.

Filed Under: Community, Leadership, management

City of Dreams

January 26, 2013 by admin

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

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: Leeds

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