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Unlocking the Talent

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Just re-read the Unlocking the Talent paper from HMG March 2008.

Here are some of the bits that have stuck with me.

This is a government committed to unlocking the talents, not of some of the people, but of all of the people. We want to see every region, city, town and neighbourhood do well, not just the few. Our national prosperity and competitiveness depend on our ability to tap into the creativity, energy, ingenuity and skills of the British people.

Well yes – but we have got more prosperous over the last 30 years but much less happy.  The drivers for this are not purely economic…

We need to unlock the talents of the British people, so that each of us may rise to our full potential, for the benefit of all of us.

But this is about more than individual fulfilment and success – it is about our place in the new world developing around us. Britain can no longer be a country held back by disadvantage and unfairness, but instead be a nation firing on all cylinders, and ready to embrace the future. With the rise of the economies of China and India, we need to unlock British talent so we can be competitive in this rapidly changing global economy.

Ditto comments above – this is not all about global competitiveness and ‘laggards’ holding us back.  The rationale for fulfilling potential is not about prosperity – it is about humanity, becoming, identity etc.

Government at all levels must be focused, imaginative and courageous to create opportunities for people to flourish. A key element of this is to forge more influence, control and ownership by local people of local services such as employment, health, education and transport.

To tap into the talents of all of the people, not merely the few, we need to involve people actively in:

  • improving deprived areas through regeneration and promoting work and enterprise
  • encouraging active citizenship, and reviving civic society and local democracy
  • improving local public services by involving local users and consumers; and
  • strengthening local accountability.

Community empowerment is the process of enabling people to shape and choose the services they use on a personal basis, so that they can influence the way those services are delivered. It is often used in the same context as community engagement, which refers to the practical techniques of involving local people in local decisions and especially reaching out to those who feel distanced from public decisions.

Interesting that this empowerment stuff is only targeted at ‘deprived areas’.  Strikes me that doing this in some of the more affluent communities could produce remarkable results too.  This is about fulfilling human potential – everywhere.

Promoting work and enterprise and strengthening the economic base of an area – and so connecting the supply and demand sides for labour – will be central to reversing decline.

Yawn…..This is not about providing employment fodder…..

Effective regeneration:

  • relies absolutely on the active participation and engagement of local people and communities, and not on just the articulate and organised, but on the broad majority of residents and groups traditionally excluded from consultation exercises
  • creates lasting solutions by giving local people the power to control their destinies, create enterprises, channel investment and income, and to involve local people in social enterprises, mutuals, and co-operative ventures
  • tackles the underlying causes, rather than the symptoms of decline. Regeneration strategies will need to tackle market failures that act as barriers to economic growth and employment as a means to reversing decline. Evidence shows that those in employment are happier, healthier, and less likely to be involved in crime; conversely poor health can prevent people getting into work
  • targets investment at the appropriate spatial level, with effective co-ordination between neighbourhood, local, sub-regional and regional levels, as well as between national agencies
  • takes account of the fact that successful regeneration will require private sector investment, for example in delivering new homes and in creating jobs.

Recognising the Real Problem?

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Regeneration aims to bring opportunity to areas that are in decline, and to empower people to take advantage of those opportunities. The decline of an area is often caused in the first instance by structural economic change and a reduction in employment. Parts of the UK have experienced substantial deindustrialisation and loss of jobs since the 1970s, particularly during deep recessions in the early 1980s and early 1990s. In some areas there has been a rapid turnaround in employment; in others a cycle of decline has been set off.

Unlocking the Talent of Communities – DCLG 2008

This is a fairly standard analysis of the reasons for decline.

When industries pulled out things went wrong.

I believe things went wrong when the big employers moved in.

Policy and practice focused on providing a largely compliant workforce that was fit for purpose.  Employer engagement ruled.  All parties were more or less happy with the deal.  At the time, and for many years after, it (arguably) worked reasonably well.

A bureaucratic mindset prevailed – characterised by patriarchal contracts between workers and employers which rewarded compliance.  Industrialists and managers came up with the plans.  Unions negotiated for pay and conditions and the majority just had to pick sides and choose leaders – on whom they felt they could depend.

A deep mindset of dependence set in. Dependence on employers, dependence on unions.  DEPENDENCE.  Generations learned how to successfully play the dependence game.  Many still play it.

Entrepreneurial qualities were lost.  Autonomy was devalued.

The genesis of the problem was not when the industries left, it was when they arrived.

For nearly 30 years now I think policy has largely neglected this deep change of identity, personality and self image that swept through many of these communities.

If we are serious about unlocking talent, then as well as providing skills training, CV clinics, classes in self employment, business planning and entrepreneurship we have also to tackle these issues of identity, personality and self image.  And this is best done through conversation – not classes.

Challenging, caring, compassionate but powerful conversations.  Conversations that accept, catalyse and confront.  Conversations that are characterised by high trust and strong relationships.  Conversations that are genuinely focused on helping to unlock potential and to enable potential to develop.  Conversations that start from where people are at – and follow them where they need to go.  Not the usual conversations that steer people towards opportunities predefined by the planners.

Instead we breeze into these communities and ask naive questions;

  • Have you got a great business idea?
  • Ever thought of starting a social enterprise?

Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Community Inspired Regeneration: BURA Awards

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The Chair of the Judging Panel Dan Sequerra was clear that “real regeneration comes through people living in communities” and that “people, not buildings, should be recognised”. Whilst there is no guarantee that any specific community project will succeed in the long term, supporting innovative community projects is what will make a difference; “…we should risk investing in our communities,” he said.

Read more here .

Please don’t build with bricks and mortar or steel and glass.

Invest in people.

Social Capital Works!

“…we should risk investing in our communities,”

Fascinating and Frightening in Equal Measures?

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Kanya King is a remarkable woman.  More precisely she is a very unremarkable woman with a remarkable story.  We all have the potential to do remarkable things.  She is best known for re-mortgaging her house to see her dream – The MOBO Awards – become a reality.

She is passionate about giving young people the opportunity to experience enterprise.   To inspire a new generation of business entrepreneurs.

To further this passion she has teamed up with Thomson Local – the database people – to challenge school children (16+) to develop business ideas that will benefit their local community.

The best will secure a  bursary of £100 and mentoring from a ‘business hero’.

Thomson will also build them a web site – apparently whether their business idea demands one – or not.  It might have been more interesting if Thomson helped them to develop a strategy to get to market.  The default position of ‘I need a website’ is not always the best one.

The overall competition winners will win a ‘money can’t buy prize’.  VIP experience at the next MOBOs perhaps?

I love the fact that this kind of stuff happens.  That people care about enterprise.

But I worry too;

  • I worry that they cite research (unreferenced) suggesting that 81% of British children want to run their own business – can this be true?  On what basis has this want developed?
  • I worry that combining the forces of a for profit like Thomson with a business planning competition will further distort what educationalists percieve enterprise education to be all about.
  • I worry that the emphasis on ‘pitching your ideas’ – letting others attach their valuation to your business dream – will emphasise an external locus of control that is unhelpful to the entrepreneur.
  • I worry that asking young people to focus on making things better in their community – perhaps before they have learned how to make things better for themselves might inculcate lessons of selflessness that could be unhelpful.
  • I worry that this type of scheme will attract those who are already destined for an enterprising future and turn off those who think that school based competitions are uncool and that business is for geeks.
  • I worry about the language of supplying ‘business hero’ mentors.
  • I worry about the volume of work that such projects place on students and their teachers at a really busy time in the their school life.
  • I worry about further strengthening the perception that enterprise = business and more teachers resisting the enterprise agenda as a capitalist plot to brainwash young people.
  • I worry about the fact that the website that is the home of the competition appears to have no RSS feed.  I am invited to ‘check back’ for updates!  As if web 2.0 had not happened!!

So I have signed up to offer to be a business hero – notwithstanding considerable reservations.

Let’s see where this takes us!

Year 10 – Industry Day

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My 15 year old daughter brought home a letter yesterday telling me about Industry Day:

In conjunction with our Work Related Learning programme, we have organised Enterprise Days in which all year 10 pupils will participate.

Hidden curriculum lesson 1: Enterprise is not about freedom of expression and choice – it is about complying with the policy dictats of bureaucrats. You’d better get used to following orders.

Teams of personnel from Industry will be coming into school to help run the days which aim to introduce pupils (to) aspects of Enterprise education.

Hidden curriculum lesson 2: Forget being a living, breathing person full passion, aspiration and imagination. Once you are in Industry (why the capital – Orwellian reference perhaps?) you are just personnel in teams. This way you don’t have to exercise any autonomy – you just have to follow orders. Enterprise is a bit like a strange cult – we will introduce you to some aspects. But others had best remain a mystery….

Hidden curriculum lesson 3: Understand the power of language to obfuscate and confuse. I am a professional in enterprise education and I have no idea what ‘aspects of Enterprise education’ are.

Activities will focus on developing skills such as team building and communication and will be an excellent preparation towards work experience and the world of work.

Hidden curriculum lesson 4: There is a thing called the ‘world of work’. It has laws, practices and ways of being that are different to the rest of society. You had better know how to conform.

Hidden curriculum lesson 5: If you struggle with team work and communication then the world of work/enterprise/Industry is not for you. You had better develop your potential to survive in other worlds. See Hidden curriculum lesson 14 below

Pupils will be working in teams and your child will take part in the Industry Day on one of the following days…

(and yes the first one is on April 1st – perhaps the whole thing is a spoof!)

Hidden curriculum lesson 6: There is little room for the individual in Industry. They had better learn how to smooth of the sharp edges and get along with people. We wouldn’t want too many ‘rugged individualists’ in Industry. Forget what George Bernard Shaw said about all progress depending on the unreasonable man. In industry we are polite, formulaic team players.

It is intended that pupils will not follow normal timings for the school day. The day will be as follows:

08:45am – Sign in at Reception

9.00am – Industry conference starts

10.50am – Break

11.10am – Conference resumes

1.00pm – Conference ends – pupils involved in the Industry Day should go home

Hidden curriculum lesson 7: The world of work is dominated by the bosses clock. You will do as you are told – when you are told. Because employers are benevolent you will get a break.

Hidden curriculum lesson 8: If we do not have enough for you to do you will be laid off early.

Hidden curriculum lesson 9: You had better get used to confernces in Industry. They are a lot like lessons – but longer.

In order to give the pupils a chance to experience some aspects of the world of work the pupils will be required to:

  • wear appropriate clothing for business; for the boys this could be simply school trousers, white shirt and a different tie (The David Brent school of office dress then). For girls, an appropriate example would be their normal trousers or skirts and a plain top (as opposed to the haute couture that they usually wear to school). This should not, therefore involve extra expense and I would stress that this is definitely not a ‘non uniform’ day.

Hidden curriculum lesson 10: In the world of work you will be one of many clones – similarly dressed and equipped to deal with the challenges of the stationery cupboard. In the world of work we will continue to discriminate by gender.

  • sign in at Reception by 9.00am. This will mean that for this day the pupils will enter through the main entrance.

Hidden curriculum lesson 11: We will confuse you by our ambiguity over timings. Although earlier we said that you could sign in at Reception at 08.45am – you must be signed in by no later than 09.00. Got it? Any non-compliance in the first instance will be dealt with by sarcasm. You should be clear that in the world of work though time-keeping is a tool of power and any difficulty you have with it could lead to severe disciplinary consequences

Hidden curriculum lesson 12: The world of work is obsessed with clocking in and clocking off on time – get used to it. Again forget autonomy, initiative and flexibility.

  • behave in an appropriate, business-like manner and follow all instructions from the personnel running the Industry Days

Hidden curriculum lesson 13: Learn to moderate your behaviour when in the world of work. Understanding the mysteries of what constitutes ‘business-like’ could hold the keys to the kingdom of the corner office on the third floor.

Hidden curriculum lesson 14: There are alternatives to the ‘world of work’. These include the worlds of:

  • warcraft
  • benefits
  • crime

If the ‘world of work’ as experienced on Industry does not set your heart racing and your soul singing then perhaps one of these is right for you?

It is no wonder that so many highly committed educationalists who take the development of young people seriously are less than supportive when it comes to ’embedding enterprise in the curriculum’.

If Enterprise champions are pedalling such ill-conceived and poorly thought through programmes they deserve to be left to their own devices.

My eldest daughter went through a similar programme last year. The highlight for her was the ‘Enterprise Wordsearch’. You have to love those teachers for their great sense of irony!