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What Now Leeds…?

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I spent a bit of time yesterday looking at the latest DRAFT ‘Vision for Leeds’, developed by the Leeds Initiative.  It has been under development for months now, and many of us will have contributed ideas through the ‘What If Leeds’ workshops or through the online forum that was set up for the job.  Depending on your point of view this document is either of central importance in influencing the development of the City, or just meaningless verbiage.  The amount of time I have put into this over the last year or so I really hope it is the former.

The new Vision for 2030 has been drafted, including City Priority Plans covering the work of 5 sub-boards:

  • Children and Families
  • Safer and Stronger Communities
  • Sustainable Economy and Culture
  • Regeneration
  • Health and Wellbeing

Clearly there are overlaps between these boards with much of what needs to be done needing co-ordination across several of them.

It is important to recognise that none of these sub boards have any powers. These remain with the partnership member organisations, including The Council, NHS, Police and Fire Authorities, Education, the private and third sectors. The boards simply provide a mechanism through which each organisation’s work can be co-ordinated and perhaps influenced to fit in with the over-arching development of the City.

But back to the draft Vision.

The Vision itself is incredibly bold and ambitious.  As the Vision says, the people of Leeds have spoken – and this is our Vision!

By 2030, Leeds will be locally and internationally recognised as the best city in the UK

By 2030, Leeds will be fair, open and welcoming. Leeds will be a place where everyone has an equal chance to live their life successfully and realise their potential. Leeds will embrace new ideas, involve local people, and welcome visitors and those who come here to live, work and learn.

By 2030, Leeds’ economy will be prosperous and sustainable. We will create a prosperous and sustainable economy, using our resources effectively. Leeds will be successful and well-connected offering a good standard of living.

By 2030, All Leeds’ communities will be successful. Leeds’ communities will thrive and people will be confident, skilled, enterprising, active and involved.

Nothing if not ambitious.

Each of these headline aims are expanded into a number of bullet points, such as:

  • people are treated with dignity and respect at all stages of their lives – (which I love because of the sheer scale of its ambition)
  • we all behave responsibly (which I love because of its sheer idiocy and unwillingness to accept human nature for what it is! Imagine the focus groups defining ‘responsible behaviour’, and the fun that might be had with enforcement!  And we all behave responsibly when?  All of the time?  Some of the time?  Once in a while?  In public places? We might need some kind of ‘responsibility licence’ where we get ‘points’ for irresponsible behaviour.  Too many points and your banned.  Perhaps each community can shape its own definitions of ‘responsible’ allowing us to develop communities with distinct cultures.
  • local people have the power to make decisions that affect us – (I am guessing that in this case the ‘Us’ is the council and its partners – just imagine that, a city where citizens had the power to make decisions that affect the state!  We could call it ….democracy….)
  • a strong local economy driving sustainable economic growth (a local economy! Not a regional, national or global one.  Just imagine that.)
  • work for everyone with secure, flexible employment and good wages – a city of full employment and good (above average?) wages
  • high-quality, accessible, affordable and reliable public transport
  • successfully achieved a 40% reduction in carbon emissions (by 2020)
  • people have the opportunity to get out of poverty (now I would like to think that we could strengthen this to say everyone that wants support to get out of poverty is able to access it and use it to make progress, or some such)
  • community-led businesses meet local needs (look out private ownership – the Peoples Republic of Leeds is after you.  You can go and meet the needs of non locals – but here, we look after our own.  Community led banks, utilities…everything! By 2030.)
Now I love a big hairy audacious goal as much as anyone.  They require great leadership, tremendous commitment, phenomenal communication, a willingness to fail in their pursuit and, usually a lot of time and money.  And if you are going to engage me in the pursuit of a BHAG, you had better be serious about it.  Any hint that this is hot air or political posturing without the commitment and resources to have a real crack…..
The draft vision then starts to move towards implementation in the form of a series of City Priority Plans, one for each of the 5 sub boards.  And here I have some real concerns – because some of our BHAGs get diluted,  BIG TIME.
City Priority Plans
So the Vision (or BHAG) of Leeds being a ‘healthy and caring city’, becomes a 4 Year Priority to ensure that ‘More People Make Healthy Lifestyle Choices’ which gets translated into a Headline Indicator that tracks the number of adults smoking.  A vision that could be something to rally people around becomes a simple quantitative goal that the NHS and Government taxation will ensure happens anyway.
And this is not a one off.
The City Priority Plan for regeneration has a Four Year Priority to ‘Support the recovery of the Leeds Economy’.  And the Headline Indicator for this?  Development of an as yet unspecified number of hectares of brownfield land!
If we are not careful we will end up with a bureaucratic response to the ‘Vision for Leeds’ that will enable the various strategic partners to get on with what they were doing anyway.
At least some of the people of Leeds spoke their minds when it comes to setting the vision for the City.  I think that we now need to speak our minds again when it comes to developing the City Priority Plans.
You can download the full document in pdf format here.  Just click the link for ‘Tuesday 15 March 2011’.  The Vision for Leeds starts on page 37.

Community – The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block

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Community – The Structure of Belonging – Peter Block

Peter Block has long been a ‘go to’ writer people who think carefully about the process of change and how best to help positive change happen.  For me, he IS the Consultants’ Consultant.  As the author of Flawless Consulting – A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used; The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook:- Understanding Your Expertise; Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest and The Empowered Manager he has a 30 year track record of wisdom and knowledge in how to help managers, leaders and consultants create positive change.  So it was with some excitement that I first read Community –  The Structure of Belonging.

It did not disappoint.

Block distils his practical knowledge of change and describes his experiences in applying it to helping communities tackle fragmentation, conflict and disconnection.  He provides practical guidance on how community can be built, how transformation maybe nurtured and how healthy communities can be built.  But he offers few solutions; just questions and processes that help us to tackle our own problems and pursue our own aspirations.

This is Block at his person centred best.  At its essence he describes how to move from preoccupations with deficiencies, narrow interests and entitlements to possibility, generosity and ‘gifts’ through the art of convening:  bringing the right people to the right conversations to tackle the right questions.  By reframing leadership as the art of convening Block lays down an important challenge that many will choose to ignore.

The book will help anyone who cares about the wellbeing of their community – whether that is an organisation, a neighbourhood, a city or a parish.  However it is neither an easy nor a comfortable read.  As Block says the ‘sole purpose [of the book] is to provide a path toward creating a future very different from what we now have.

So, if you are comfortable with the status quo, steer clear.

The Abundant Community – Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

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The Abundant Community – Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods – John McKnight, Peter Block

McKnight and Block are, for me at least, a development ‘dream team’.  John McKnight is a pioneer of the asset based development movement and Peter Block is widely regarded as the consultant’s consultant; one of the very best facilitators of transformation and change.

“There is a growing movement of people with a different vision for their local communities”.

On this side of the Atlantic we might be forgiven for thinking that those with the vision are Cameron, Wei et al, the would be architects of Big Society.  But McKnight and Block recognise that the people with the power to make the transformation happen are not the politicians and the civil servants, but the people that live in community and want it to be a place that they can love.

Central to this transformation is a rebalancing of community away from consumption towards a paradigm of production.  A paradigm where we spend less time earning to pay specialists to provide products and services that we could choose to make ourselves.

There is little or no talk of place-making, regeneration and ribbon cutting projects.  Just people, relationships, skills, interests, passions, associations and what it means to be a competent community.  A place where people learn to support each other and make good thing happen. Of their own volition. Not that of their elected representatives.

The Abundant Community provides powerful and practical insights into how the work of building a competent community can be sustained – even without generous handouts from a benevolent state.

Stylistically the Americanese can be off-putting,  but get past it and you will be generously rewarded.  For me this is one of the most important books of recent years.  Unless of course you make your money from the glass, steel and concrete approach to place-making.

A Complete Lack of Ambivalence…about Goldman Sachs

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Should we be enthusiastic about Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most powerful investment bank in the world, coming into Leeds and helping to train the next generation of Leeds entrepreneurs?

Should we find the idea abhorrent?

Or perhaps we should practice a little ambivalence?

It seem to me we have plenty who are enthusiastic about the idea.  The City Council and Leeds Ahead, who have been instrumental in attracting the Goldman Sachs programme believe it to be a good thing.  And ‘Yorkshire Icon‘ Lord Graham Kirkham, founder of DFS, Conservative Party Funder and one of Yorkshire’s most successful entrepreneurs, has described Goldman Sachs’ support as ‘heaven sent‘.

And it is easy to find those who instinctively reel against the involvement of a major investment bank in such a programme. Never mind one that has been characterised as ‘A Giant Vampire Squid‘

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoUWgI-c9g4&]

As well as generic banker bashing they will cite Goldman Sachs apparently significant influence in the US Government, their alleged involvement in an alleged fraud that led to the RBS losing £545m and several other controversies as reasons why we should consider their role in our city less than ‘heaven sent’.   They may also express concern that one of the partners in the programme, Said Business School, was founded by Wafic Said, friend to the Saudi Royal family, Margaret Thatcher and a key player in helping the UK Govt to win the Al Yamamah Arms deal which has had interesting consequences in the Middle East and for our oil security.

What it seems much harder to find is any ambivalence to the project.

Any sense of a cautious but pragmatic engagement with a strategic partner whose real long term interests in working with 25 of our local businesses, carefully selected for their high growth potential, may not yet be completely clear.  In Goldman Sachs’ own words

‘The Goldman Sachs Foundation works with outstanding organizations to prepare and support the development of the next generation of leaders around the world.  Drawing from the core expertise of Goldman Sachs, our programs in Promoting Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Business Education are designed to give participants practical skills and the broad world view they need to become decision makers and visionaries in the global economy.

Which does not sound entirely like philanthropy to me.  For a bank.  And I wonder what the key elements of the broad world view that they ‘give participants’ really entails.  A sustainable economy?  One where wealth is measured in terms other than cash? Perhaps….Or maybe the core expertise in this piece called the Great American Bubble Machine?

There seems no real understanding that what we may actually have in Goldman Sachs is more of a ‘bedfellow’ than an ‘ally’.   It is this apparent lack of any sense of practical and pragmatic engagement that worries me.

But there are 25 or so successful businesses who are benefiting from the programme, and I have heard lots of good feedback from several independent sources.  And it is keeping much needed revenues rolling into the coffers at Shine so that it can continue its work in the regeneration of the local community.

So perhaps we really shouldn’t worry about whose money we take?

Perhaps it really is ‘All about the economy, stupid’.  And we should not think too deeply about what is really going on.  Just let those who already share the ‘broad world view’ of ‘decision makers and visionaries in the global economy’ get on with it. After all, they have made a pretty good fist of things up to now…

Haven’t they?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2DRm5ES-uA]

There are things about the programme that I really admire.  Let’s forget the chequered history that even investment bankers have in ‘picking winners’.  The programme is aimed at ‘mid-stage’ businesses with the aspiration and potential to grow, and this has been an area that has not received as much attention as it should.  And it resists the false dichotomy between social business and ‘for profit’ which should make for a much more interesting and powerful mix.

And the programme is a pilot that they hope to roll out across the UK.  So perhaps Goldman Sachs really will be instrumental in developing the next generation of business leaders across the country.

Making Successful Cities – the Apeldoorn Video

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On 6-8 March over a hundred delegates gathered on the 37th floor of the ING building for this year’s edition of the Apeldoorn: British Dutch Dialogue, the main bilateral Conference between the UK and the Netherlands.

I was privileged to be able to contribute…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZUFY4Glzwg]