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Never Discourage Anyone…But Don’t Motivate Them Either

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Never discourage anyone … who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. – Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

Never.  NEVER!  NEVER!

I wish the judges of enterprise competitions would understand the importance of this.

At the grand finals of a recent dragon’s den type event (which included the usual cocktail of local business people, ‘would have been’ apprentices and celebrity millionaires on the judging panel) 6 finalists were asked to pitch their ideas.

The setting was the enormous stage in the Main Hall of a local University.  Powerpoint, radio mics, lapel mics, comperes.  It had the lot.

The audience?  A couple of hundred family and friends, enterprise professionals and housing types.  Some of the finalists took to this platform like a duck to water.  For others it was more like lambs to the slaughter.  I suspect for none of them was this a situation that could REALLY be justified as a legitimate and essential part of their ‘enterprise education’.  For most it was certainly not timely.

The task?  Deliver a 6 minute pitch about your business/start up idea and then face 6 minutes of questionning, while dealing with problems with both sound and AV systems of farcical proportions.  These were so acute I began to think they were deliberatley staged to test participants’ ability to think on their feet.  I am still not sure if the computer maintenance business sabotaged their own powerpoint to make some sort of point?

And the judges seemed to have available to them one of two responses.  The first were variations of  ‘You have something’, ‘You will make this work’, ‘Whatever you try you will find a way’.  At least one of the judges seemed to be able form this response based on just what people looked like!

The second was ‘You have got a problem’, ‘You have got nothing’, ‘It is terribly confused’, ‘Your name doesn’t work’.

It is hard to know which of these is responses is more dangerous.

I am sure the event and the competition that led upto it was a great success for funders.  Lots of PR, a big dinner etc.  But can we really say this is community engagement in enterprise?

I suspect that some of the competitors found the whole process deeply discouraging.

Interestingly the winner and runner up were both graduates.  Another wonderful example of enterprise skimming?

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Community Anchors: Regeneration Cause or Effect?

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Community Anchors are independent, community-led organisations. They are at the heart of their communities, physically and psychologically.  They are able to respond in a holistic way to local problems and challenges, by giving local people support to act.

Community Anchors come in many different shapes, forms and structures but they all share this basic purpose of animating and co-ordinating progress.  You can read more about them here and here.

It seems that there is a high correlation between communities that experience successful regeneration and the development of effective Anchor Organisations.

This has led many regeneration funders to seek to establish Anchor Organisations in ‘failing’ communities in the belief that they can weave their magic and turn things around.  And perhaps they can.

But I have a slight concern.  I would hypothesise that Anchor Organisations emerge from communities that are already working actively at their own regeneration.  They are a natural evolution as independent people and community organisations begin to reach out to each other in the realisation that only through association can they become more effective in their work.

Their success depends to a very large extent on the timing being right and incumbent diverse and fragmented community groups recognising that the development of a successful Anchor Organisation is in their best interest.  This realisation and consensus can take many years to accrue.

If this hypothesis is correct then we should expect Anchor Organisations that have been artificially seeded by external funders to find it tough going.   The local incumbents may not yet have reached the limits of their own development.  They may not yet see the need for the anchor.  They may see it as yet another project foisted on them by funders by more money with sense.

Instead of acting as midwifes to the birth of a wonderful new baby, regeneration professionals then end up putting a premature and often unwanted delivery into some very expensive intensive care – if the baby gets born at all.

I have had the privilege of working with some highly successful Anchor Organisations – which emerged from local people and groups in response to local circumstances and opportunities.  I have also witnessed Anchor Organisations struggle to get off the ground – and most of these seem to have been primarily ‘funding’ and ‘policy’ driven, conceived by outsiders as an appropriate ‘strategic’ response to the needs of local communities.

If my hypothesis is right then Anchor Organisations are a naturally emergent property of communities that are already on the up.  They are an effect of regeneration rather than a cause.

And instead of trying to seed them in communities where they perceive there is a need, funders should focus on facilitating local groups until such time as they decide that the time is right for an Anchor Organisation to emerge.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists,

when his work is done,

his aim fulfilled,

they will say: we did it ourselves.

Lao Tzu

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My Favourite Enterprise Podcast…ever

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While many businesses pay lip service to the idea of environmentally responsible practices, Patagonia has defined itself by “inspiring and implementing solutions to the environmental crisis,” says Chouinard.

The company has pledged that by 2010, it will to make all of its clothing from recycled and recyclable materials. Chouinard says that he would exit the clothing business altogether rather than compromise his standards.

Patagonia takes many steps to control its growth, such as drastically limiting its catalog distribution and not taking the company public in an IPO.

Chouinard even encourages his customers to buy less and focus on their needs rather than their wants. He insists that every time Patagonia invests in the environment, he sees an increase in the company’s bottom line.

Check out the full podcast here it is well worth the effort.

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Surrealism is Alive and Well and Living in Leeds

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I had an eventful afternoon yesterday.  In order to vote I had to pop into electoral services in the Town Hall as my postal vote had failed to materialise.  A polite, efficient, helpful and very professional service. Well done to the electoral services team at the council.

Vote registered I then visited a fantastic project in Hunslet called Involve led by Kris Clayden.  Based in the old Salvation Army building – which is a bit of a 1970s concrete carbuncle – Kris and his team provide a service to young people from South Leeds who have been permanently excluded from school.

Delivered on a shoe string, through a cocktail of short term funding, working with some of the most challenging young people in Leeds, based in a building that is far from fit for purpose but doing an important job with passion and vigour.  It took me back to my time of working with children in residential care.  You learn a lot in these environments.

My next engagement was for the launch of the Leeds City Workshop.  This is the product of a collaboration between Leeds City Council and one of the major property developers in the city to provide a physical space where planners can engage with communities and developers to discuss plans for the physical regeneration of the city.

The Leeds City Workshop occupies a part of the Wellington Street Marketing Centre where the city developers promote their latest residential, retail and industrial plans to well-heeled entrepreneurs and investors.

On arrival we were served with wine and lime and lemongrass cordial while a string quartet played Bach.  The canapes reflected the tough times in the city – mini shepherds pies, chicken kebabs, crab cakes and and bruschetta.  The patio was hardly sun drenched, but the re-assuring crunch of astroturf underfoot and the views across the city were sublime.

One of the proerty developers who had kindly provided the workshop space, in their Marketing Suite, (three enormous shipping containers sliced, diced and welded together) opened the speeches.  He talked of tough times, but work on physical development of the city goes on.  He  told us how they work all over the country – but no-where else is doing city place shaping work quite as well as Leeds.  Then a council official talking about the significant progress that has been made on the physical development of the city.  How, where development projects are put on hold, they are working hard with developers to put interesting temporary projects in place – seeding lawns, marking out football pitches etc.  How work on the arena will start soon and be completed in 2012.  There si only one small problem – we ‘just’ need a planning permission.  Luckily the head of planning  permissions in the city was in the room – so I am sure that will not be a major problem.

All very impressive.

Then downstairs to see the actual workshop where the planning conversations are taking place.  Without doubt they have created an impressive space.  A square table for 22 people surrounded by high walls draped with impressive and colourful plans of the city.  Acoustics professionally engineered and a state of the art audio visual system showing a film of the future Leeds with the city’s golden owl acting as winged guide from one planning triumph to the next.

This workshop is to be the base for John Thorp, the City Architect and his team to provide them with a more conducive environment for planning than the mundane facilities provided by the council.   Leeds city planners  co-located with and, in part, resourced by the developers – it reminded me of Our Friends in the North.

John seemed much taken by some ‘new’ technology that he heard about.  Some kind of graphics tablets that meant he could draw images directly onto the audio visual system.  No more climbing up ladders balancing felt tip pens and tippex!  Try the Wacom Cintiq John I think you might love it.

The contrast between these two experiences was surreal.  Kris in his 1970s carbuncle in Hunslet and John and the developers in their architect designed and styled acoustically engineered palace in the city with Bach and canapes.

One couldn’t help but feel that somewhere we had not quite the balance right between investing in local people and investing in physical infrastructure.

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Challenging hearts, minds and communities through enterprise

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Challenging hearts, minds and communities through enterprise

Challenging Hearts, Minds and Communities
Yorkshire and Humber LEGI conference
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Shine, Harehills Road, Leeds LS8 5HS
£25 plus VAT per person

Two years into the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) the Leeds programme, Sharing the Success, plays host to the first and only UK conference in 2009 to showcase the successes, issues and challenges faced by those delivering regeneration and enterprise programmes in some of the most deprived communities across Yorkshire.

I think it is especially important that the voices of service users are heard too!

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