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Sticks, Carrots, Coercion and Coaching

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“What we did establish is that the carrots offered were far less effective than the sticks employed.”

Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts – talking about the ‘limited effect’ of Pathways to Work pilots

Sticks and carrots have a long and noble tradition in the  management of donkeys.  However even with donkeys there are times when the ‘bribe and  punish’ approach to change management fails:

  • When the donkey is not hungry enough
  • When the effort of reaching the carrot is too great (the burden is too heavy)

In these circumstances we may choose to resort to the stick.  But this too will not work if:

  • the pain of the stick is thought to be less than the pain of moving forward
  • the donkey learns to like the stick and the attention that it brings

But I think the real issue here is not about the limitations of sticks and carrots in the management of donkeys and people.

It is about the complete and utter failure to understand the nature of human motivation.  Motivation is that which energises, directs and sustains a person’s efforts.  Sustains efforts.  Sticks and carrots applied to move a donkey from one (expensive) field to another (less expensive) field do NOTHING to sustain efforts.  In fact it is likely to achieve the opposite.  The donkey returns to its passive state until more carrots and sticks appear on the scene.  And the state wants more enterprising communities?

But the major problem is not treating people like donkeys, and further dulling their enterprising souls.  It is that the state believes that this is the most effective, fair and just way of changing behaviour.  That this is such a common default setting when trying to manipulate the behaviours and choices of its citizens.

And we wonder why ‘community engagement’ is so difficult.  When you have beaten and bribed your donkeys into submission don’t expect them to engage with you, without the use of ever more sticks and carrots.

Perhaps instead of resorting to a coercive approach to change, we might try instead a coaching approach?

Helping people to recognise their long term self interest and how it may be pursued.  Helping  them to develop the power they need to make progress in their lives.  Helping them to recognise that it is possible and that they don’t need to be pushed around by a bureaucratic system of sticks and carrots.  That THEY have choices and agency in their own lives.  Vegetable wielding bureaucrats do not have to be the architects of their future.

And what if someone decides that their long-term self interest is served by staying exactly where they are?

Well, we could just leave them alone and put our time, energy and investment into those that want to explore pastures new.  Why should the squeaky wheel get all the grease?

Because perhaps people are more like sheep than donkeys.  When they see some of the flock moving forward others are sure to follow.

Aren’t they?

Engaging in the Vision for Leeds

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Warning: This post was written in a state of frustration, high dudgeon and anger.

I remember advising Chris Johnstone many months ago not to get too excited about the Vision for Leeds process.  I had my own visions of some of the city’s best activists getting drawn into bureaucratic processes that would achieve little, instead of doing what activists do best – organising campaigns, raising awareness and lobbying for change.  I was cynical about who would listen and what would change if we did choose to work with the council on their preferred methodologies of Visioning for the City.

But recently I sensed that perhaps I was wrong.

Council employees started to show interest in what we were doing.  Some expressed opinions online.   To show up at events where ‘we’, ordinary Leeds residents, were gathering to talk and plan about the future not because it was out jobs, but because it was our futures.   The tone may have been generally apologetic and defensive (on both sides) but at least we were talking.  They were no longer just inviting us into their territory to help fulfil some statutory obligations around consultation, but to step into ours.

Perhaps I should at least reciprocate?

So it was with some enthusiasm that I waited for the launch of the What If Leeds… site, which promised to be a place to share views on how Leeds can become a better place to live, work and play.  Not withstanding reservations about branding and design, the intent felt right.

The site launched on Monday.  I wrote a piece.  I was encouraged to ‘Do the Math’ to save.  I did the math.  And my post was lost into the ether.  I tried again.  Same result. I swapped browser.  Same result.

I tried to look at  another debate.  But when I clicked the link I was told the debate I was interested in ‘was not found’.  So I tried to create it.  But no luck.

A couple of us decided to set up a site that would do the job.  A simple grou.ps site and a wordpress blog that would provide all the functionality we needed for free.  It took us half an hour.

But we were counselled to be patient.  Let the council fix the site.  Don’t set up competing sites. (In our mind it was not so much about ‘competing’ but ‘working’.  We thought we might actually be helping…).

The Council site was taken down because of ‘technical difficulties’.

Today, Wednesday it came back online.  I wrote a post and guess what…Groundhog Day.  Deja Vu! More wasted time….

I was angry and frustrated.  I still am.

Not primarily because my time had been wasted and my words lost.  Some will think that no bad thing.  But because:

  • the potential for an interesting use of social media to inform policy in the city, and through which ideas could be developed has been damaged
  • an opportunity to build social capital through online conversations about topics that matter to us has been lost
  • a platform that may allow fresh voices to be heard has so far failed to deliver
  • we have given petrol to the cynics who would make a bonfire of our attempts at online engagement and dialogue.

And the cynics lie both inside and outside of the council.

I know of at least four influential bloggers and tweeters who have attempted to work with the site and would have happily promoted it to their extensive networks, had it done what it said on the tin.

But I also know people who say to me ‘Mike, why do you bother? Even if the site was well designed and worked, do you really think they would listen?’  People who dispense the advice to me that I had dispensed to Chris all those months ago.

And as my daughter said to me this morning. ‘The Council?  What have they got to do with us?’.  And for me this says everything about the work that needs to be done to build the partnership between council and residents.

You can access the What If Leeds site here

If you have something to say, but that site won’t work for you, then you can access the site we built here.

NB This is not an attempt at ‘council bashing’.  I know and respect many in the council.  Good people, doing good work.  They get much very right.  I was an employee myself for a couple for years.  It is just a report of my experience and feelings in relation to this one piece of activity.

And hallelujah that the web makes it easy for me to do so!

The Cluetrain Manifesto for Councils

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The Cluetrain Manifesto knocked me sideways when I read it in the late 1990s.

It still knocks me sideways now.

I have spent some time thinking about how it might shape up if we were to apply it to conversations between councils and communities rather than between ‘corporations’ and ‘markets’.  In most cases it holds up pretty well.

The only place it doesn’t hold up quite so well is that in the private sector most companies that don’t get web 2.0 are likely to go to the wall.  There is no such survival imperative for councils.   There are no competitors waiting in the wings to take our council tax away.  But then again…perhaps there are… Perhaps this cuts to the heart of council as smart commissioner and clever facilitator of ‘community services’.

If you have not read the Cluetrain Manifesto, I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Just try replacing ‘corporation/company’ with ‘council’ and ‘market’ with ‘community’.  Customers may also become residents…

Here are a few highlights from my experiment:

  • Communities are conversations.
  • Communities consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  • Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  • Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  • Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
  • Communities are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked community changes people fundamentally.
  • People in networked communities have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from agencies.
  • There are no secrets. The networked community knows more than councils do about their own products and services. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
  • What’s happening to communities is also happening among employees.
  • Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, councils sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
  • In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements, visions and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
  • Already, councils that speak in the language of ‘the pitch’ are no longer speaking to anyone.

Some of these may be trivial.  Others perhaps profound.  If peers really do provide a better job than agencies in professionals in delivering the support that we need the implications could be massive.

When the bureaucrats show up in Leeds….

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‘Bureaucrat’ to me is not a dirty word.  I happen to think we need people to organise policies and procedures to bring some sense of organisation and pattern.  To enforce the rules when they need enforcing.  Government and governance can be good.  As long as they remember certain things.

Bureaucrats have been turning up at meetings organised by people who do not work in the official bureaucracies of the city.  They are not employed by the Council, or Business Link, or the Regional Development Agency, or the Arts Council.  But they recognise gaps that these agencies leave and they fill them.  There are enormous gaps left in the online world (anyone tell me of a bureaucracy that does a good job of engagement online?) and the world of the independent and the creative.

These ‘worlds of ones’ are difficult to service for bureaucracies who prefer to batch process large groups of similar types as this offers a much more cost efficient way to ‘achieve’ the outputs that they are contracted to achieve.   At least on the surface.

For me the presence of the bureaucrats is a very welcome one.  The more diverse the group the more potential for something interesting to happen!  They bring skills, resources, political insights and a certain knowledge about how things actually get done in the city that few of us can match.

It is interesting to watch the way in which some of the bureaucrats engage.  For some there is much  note-taking and reporting back, but very little interaction or contribution.  For others the contributions are mainly defensive and explanatory, providing the background to a particular campaign or decision that the ‘world of ones’  has been less than impressed by.  And some perhaps offer personal opinions, thoughts and beliefs, fearlessly, recognising that they attend these conversations as people and not primarily as bureaucrats.  And some, perhaps most yo an feel are torn between keeping their heads down and ‘managing’ risk or just diving in and facing the consequences, whatever they may be, later on.

Leeds Council and its agencies are beginning to wake up to the ‘online community’ (I hate that label as most of my life is not lived online).   What is interesting for me know is to see what happens now.

Are we (The Twitterati, the Web 2.0 Evangelists, the ‘people that slag us off’ as we were recently described) simply a new addition to the list of ‘stakeholders’ to be ‘managed’? Or is there an understanding that perhaps things have changed.  That hyperlinks subvert hierarchy and bureacracy.  That we may be impossible to manage but might respond well to engagement and facilitation. That we are not interested in justification and defence but in relevance, identity and soul.  That co-creation might offer a way forward?

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.  I wonder if we will be able to develop a way of working in the city that blends the best of chaos and order.

Who is up for Chaordic Leeds?

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

We’re both inside corporations and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down. – Cluetrain Manifesto

Leeds – ‘Knightsbridge of the North?’

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John Baron over at Guardian Leeds is running an interesting poll at the moment, asking about whether Leeds City centre is sanitised and sterile, whether we should welcome the development of yet more retail space in the city and whether Leeds should aspire to be the Knightsbridge of the North.
And I am genuinely surprised that the majority of pollsters seem to think that the ‘Knightsbridge Strategy’ makes sense….(NB the poll is still open so perhaps things will change).
As one who remembers when the Merrion Centre was new, and has seen several new developments ‘revolutionise’ the retail experience in Leeds, I am far from certain that they have helped to achieve any real progress for the city.
I can think of worse fates than to be the ‘Knightsbridge of the North’ – but not many.
It will commit us to a long term strategy based on retail infrastructure development and we will witness the ‘old’ centres going to the wall as newer, bigger more glamorous centres come to take their place.  The centre of retail gravity will shift around the city as too much capacity fights for too little footfall.
Developers, planners and builders will be happy.  So too will the politicians as they can keep announcing the ‘creation of new jobs in construction and retail’.  And those of us that can afford to buy our way to consumption fuelled temporary contentment may enjoy it for a while, before the more or less inevitable existential crisis, or whatever we use to keep it at bay, eventually gets us.
When I am working with people on their personal and professional development I ask them three questions:
  1. What do you want to have?
  2. What will you do in order to have it?
  3. If you do that what will you become?

In the case of Leeds the answers seem to be:

  1. We want to have – A prosperous economy based on tourism and retail (finance may still be crucial but is no longer flavour of the month), creating lots of low paid jobs and providing a great playground for those with disposable income
  2. What are going to do so that we may have it – Pursue ever greater retail and leisure development projects.  Allow our city to become a giant retail hoover to suck up capital from across the north and put it in the pockets of retailers and developers who can afford to play the game.
  3. What will we become if we do this – The ‘Knightsbridge of the North’. A northern simulacrum of a London suburb where the ‘haves’ can flaunt their wealth while the ‘have much lesses’ work the tills and warehouses and the ‘have nots’ are pushed out of sight. A city where the gaps between the rich and poor continue to rise, but GVA, like exam results, continues a relentless rise.  Where we rely on trickle down and Victorian philanthropy to retain an air of decency.

Often with personal and professional development the secret to getting a better future is to start the process with question 3.

Then, ‘what we do’ and ‘what we have’ might just serve our dreams rather than sabotage them.

That is why it is so important that we get a Vision for Leeds that works for all of us in the city.