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Greed, Anger and Development

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Greed and anger have always been powerful forces for change.

Greed is given more or less free rein in our society. It is incentivised.  It creates wealth and jobs, it provides products and services.  Greed is good.  To those that have, more shall be given.

Unlike greed, anger  is usually discouraged (‘just play nicely’, ‘stop moaning’) and dulled through engagement in bureaucratic process. Anyone who has tried to make anything better by engaging in a committee of some description will recognise that dynamic.  Vision Building process anyone? Participatory budgeting? Citizen’s Panel?

As a society it feels like we TEACH helplessness when it comes to social change.

We design systems and structures that sap energy and will from the angry: that neutralise those who are driven by love or hate.

If we want to see our communities develop then we must

  • raise levels of love and hate about the issues that really matter,  and then
  • provide meaningful and rewarding avenues through which ‘what matters’ can be pursued with power, creativity and compassion.

For me, this means helping people to understand and feel their anger and their love, before building careful associations with like-minded folk.

It is not a question of how we change people, but how we provide a context in which they choose to change themselves.

For me, the most promising answer lies in the provision of effective community coaching using mechanisms such as Local Community Enterprise Accelerators (ELSIEs), supplemented by group learning processes such as Progress School, Innovation Lab and Results Factory.

TEDxLeeds, Ted Turner, Anti-war, MDGs, and Development

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I spent a fairly surreal afternoon in a lecture theatre in the Leeds Met. Rosebowl yesterday afternoon.

We had been invited to ‘take part in’ (actually watch) a live simulcast from the TEDx team in New York, working with the Gates Foundation to look at progress on the UNs Millenium Development Goals (halving poverty, reducing infant mortality, improving maternal care etc).

Surreal because the entire front row was filled with bagels, muffins, cookies and fruit, the lecture theatre was half empty, and we sat gawping at a large screen while some people in a foreign land berated and congratulated themselves in roughly equal measure on their progress.

As the afternoon went by I got increasingly uncomfortable.  A feeling not assuaged by copious bagels and cupcakes, as we witnessed a theatre full of rich folks in New York clapping along to Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew.

But the source of my discomfort was more than just the cultural dissonances.  It was that for me some of the central tenets for good development work appeared to have been overlooked.

Instead of being invited in by communities to work on the issues that mattered to them it felt like we (the great and the good of the west) had dropped into their world to work on the issues that mattered to us, as judged by our moral compass and our self interest.  Not theirs.  And we could do it because we were rich.  We could hustle our way into the game because we had a whole stash of cash.

So we celebrated the fact that through increased access to contraception ‘we’ had succeeded in reducing family size in just about the whole world.  And as we all know reducing the planets population growth is essential.  No mention of the fact that small families in the West use a gazillion times more of the earths resources than even a large African family compound for example.

We celebrated the fact that Coca Cola had a distribution network to flood the 3rd world with diabetes inducing corn syrup based products and that we could use the same channels to flood the same communities with our ideologies of entrepreneurship and ‘progress’.  In my experience the tobacco companies have been even more successful in setting up networks of distribution and influence throughout the planet – but I guess they are just too clearly part of the dark side for happy, shiny people to embrace.  Good old Coca Cola on the other hand….

One of the first principles of good development should be R.E.S.P.E.CT.

Respect for the culture on the ground.  Respect for what local people value and find important.  Respect for how they are trying to shape their futures, whether or not they fit neatly with our ideologies and ideals.   A certain humility and a refusal to believe that ‘our superiority’ means that we have the solutions to their problems.

Good development work should be less about turning the developing world into entrepreneurs who can, and do, control their own fecundity than about helping people find the power to act in their own interests, rather than ours.

Ted Turner said recently “War is obsolete. You end up bombing your customers.”

And at times yesterday I felt as if the whole Millennium Development Goal thing was a kind of ‘anti-war’, the objective of which is to make everyone healthy and rich enough to consume.

A massive exercise in expanding viable territories.  Rather than an exercise in compassionate facilitation of self determination.

As Ted Turner went on to say….’why do you think I gave the UN $1bn? I could have bought a couple of really big yachts with that money.’

Big thanks to @imranali and @herbkim for setting this gig up.  One of only 2 in the UK.  It certainly engaged the heart and mind of this leeds citizen of the world.

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?

Problems and Aspirations in South Yorkshire and Beyond

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I picked up this tweet from the inimitable and award winning Tom Bloxham MBE, Uber Prize Winning Guru of UK regeneration

Urban Splash’s refurb is turning one of the republic of Sth Yorkshire’s biggest problems into an aspirational address

Now ain’t that regeneration as it plays out here in the UK?

  1. Find a ‘problem community’ in an area with easy access to the city centre
  2. Refurb it to take it from a place where only the poor would live to an ‘aspirational address’.
  3. Replace a problem community with one that already has ‘aspirations’ .

The same recipe plays out all over the place.

Drive the poor people out, tart the place up.  Increase the property values and encourage the creative classes to move in.  Secure an immediate GVA increase, eliminate a whole bunch of costs, attract a community of shiny happy people and another award wining development is completed.

Everyone is a winner.  Developers, politicians, treasury.

Everyone except the displaced, who can no longer afford to live close to the city that is their home.  Who are driven out.  Who are economically excluded from the city.  Whose communities are broken up.

Regeneration is not economic cleansing.  It should be a process of inclusive community building.

Surely its time we awarded prizes for some other kind of ‘development’?