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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.

Green Grows the Economy – O

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Is ‘sustainable green infrastructure that supports our economic development’ an achievable goal?

Sustainable economic growth on a finite planet?

Sustainable economic growth in a finite city?

Some say ‘Yes’ – Carbon capture and storage creating thousands of jobs, hydrogen powered buses and carbon emissions reductions

Other say ‘No’ – It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

How will this play out in the Vision for Leeds?

It’s NOT all about the economy, STUPID!

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So the coalition has major plans to re-balance the economy.

It seems that as far as the UK is concerned this re-balancing means shifting from being paid to move money around (financial services) to the production of wealth through the creation of value by manufacturing and value adding services.  It also seems to imply shifting the economic engine away from the South East…getting the rest of us to pull our weight.

Local Economic Partnerships and a £500bn regional growth fund (a fraction of the budgets available to the Regional Development Agencies when they led this work) are being set up to make it happen.

This sort of re-structuring of the quangos in pursuit of the holy grail of economic growth has been going on for decades.  And I am sceptical about what it achieves.

It configures largely the same people, sitting around largely the same tables having largely the same conversations (skill needs, infrastructure development, investment readiness etc), pulling on the same ‘economic’ levers (vocational training schemes, growth investment funds, business support, enterprise zones, ever diluted ‘apprenticeships’ in pursuit over more skilled jobs) and getting pretty much the same, generally disappointing, results – just under a different brand.

The majority of people are not engaged, leadership is weak and one dimensional (economic growth is king) and the whole shooting match leaves most of us as passive recipients of whatever the private sector led quangos decide to do.  Perhaps invest in the waterfront, build an Arena, a new relief road, or a large mixed use development, you know, flats and shops and workspaces and all….

Why?

Well I believe at the root of the problem is the misguided believe that it is all about the economy.  That the economy is a puzzle to be solved that is disconnected from other aspects of how we choose to live.  If we can just get the economy right – then the rest will surely fall into place.  I think that even if we did ‘just get the economy right’ we would be in no danger of approaching utopia any time soon.    A growing economy seems at least as much progress trap as progress.   Even if we could run ‘the economy’ in a way that delivered ‘no more boom and bust’ I really don’t believe that it alone help us to achieve the ‘better’ communities that we crave.  We have been throwing cash at our most deprived communities for decades and progress remains slow.

When we treat the economy as a closed system, as some kind of sacred cow two inter-related problems occur.

Firstly we start to treat human beings as ‘factors of production’ that we can manipulate and influence for the good of the economy.  The anointed can encourage us onto our bikes, into big society, or to look at ‘opportunities’ in construction, retail, call centres etc, all in the name of ‘the economy’.  Volition, aspiration and enterprise are dulled at the service of the economy.  Just keep your heads down, do as your told, and we will deliver stable economic growth is the message.  Hardly the recipe for an enterprise culture.

The second thing that happens by treating ‘the economy’ as a sacred cow is that the creative tension that lies at the heart of truly inspiring innovation is lost.  The one-dimensional focus on GVA stops us from pondering the really big questions such as:

  • How do we create sustainable economic growth and build communities in which we are proud to live?
  • How do we design work so that it is productive and promotes well-being and happiness?
  • How do we create wealth and manage the transition to a sustainable steady state economy?
  • How do we build an economy that includes all of those who want to find meaningful work?

Instead by making the economy the holy grail we get a society that on the one hand pursues economic growth (anyone for Going Up a League) while on the other hand provides crumbs from the table to ameliorate the negative social impacts that presumably are seen as just the price that we have to pay for a great economy (How about we Narrow the Gap too).  Cultural and creative activities are judged merely by their impact on the economy rather than the soul.

One of the real pleasures, and lessons I learned, from working with Danone at their social innovation lab was the way that they knew that it was these creative tensions that held the key to breakthrough innovation.  By choosing to split out the economy from wider questions of community, sustainability and well-being I believe we trap ourselves in the same old sterile debates amongst the same old business voices.

It is not just Local Enterprise Partnerships and their various fore-runners that do this.  Councils do it too (Leeds Council is based on four directorates, Adult Social Services, Children’s Services, City Development and Neighbourhoods and Environment).

The Leeds MPs, who I am delighted to see have pledged to overcome party differences to advocate for the benefit of the City in their Team Leeds endeavours, have agreed that each MP will have an individual policy portfolio.  This is sure once again to separate ‘the economy’ from other aspects of community development.  In the competition for resources that is bound to ensue I am sure it will be the ‘all about the economy’ mantra that will carry the day.  No surprise too that  Leeds Chamber of Commerce played a key part in the Team Leeds initiative.

Now of course we have to organise somehow.

Specialisation and the division of labour make sense.  But let’s make sure that the way to choose to slice things up does not ignore vital interconnections and does not allow us to consistently put the cart before the horse.  To allow one part of the whole system to dominate the conversation and allow the benefits of development to accrue to the few.  For the business interests to accrue too much power.

  • Anyone for a whole systems perspective?
  • Understanding the city as a complex adaptive system rather than as a reducible puzzle to be solved?
  • Time for innovation?

A Radical Idea for a LEP…

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First of all reject the temptation to be entirely strategic.

Don’t try to analyse the economy like it is a game of monopoly where you can understand the roll of the dice, seeing and preparing for an uncertain future.  Don’t pretend that people and their aspirations count for nothing as you ponder the balance between investing in ports, ring-roads, runways or fibre.

Instead learn to compliment strategic development with a responsive approach.  One that engages residents in their hopes and aspirations for a better life and gives them the power and the responsibility to pursue them.  Put your faith and confidence in people.  Provide them with hope, leadership and support.

Dare to be relevant to people and not just ‘the business community’.

A city region of around 3m people like Leeds would require a network of around 75 coaches to provide access to person centred coaching support for everyone that really wanted it.

  • It would engage about 45 000 people in the process of providing direct hands on assistance to their peers.
  • It would provide direct assistance to about 16500 beneficiaries a year, the vast majority of whom would make significant progress in their personal journeys as a result of benefiting from a coaching rather than a coercive approach.
  • I would anticipate at least 750 sustainable business starts from this cohort every year.  I would envisage business survival rates around the 90% rate after 3 years.
  • It would make a very real difference to the perceptions of some 20 000 people a year about the extent to which they feel that they ‘belong to’ and ‘feel supported’ in their community.
  • In addition to traditional ‘enterprise’ outputs I would expect substantial impacts on health and well-being as well as increases in volunteering, cultural productivity, mental health, fitness and so forth.
  • It would help to integrate the dual priorities of economy and community rather than treating them as separate and often incompatible determinants.
  • Within 3-7 years I would expect it to have made a sustained and measurable difference to the enterprise culture in the city region.

And it would cost about £3.75 million a year.

The price of a very rich wo/man’s house.

NB this piece was prompted by reading ‘The Economic Opportunities and Challenges for the emerging Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in Yorkshire and Humber – Briefing Paper‘.

As far as it goes this is an ok piece of work. Unremittingly strategic, focussing on communications, infrastructure development and targeting support at key industries – all tried, tested and largely at best partially successful ideas for economic development.  One of the ideas challenges it identified is to develop sufficient ‘low skill jobs’ for our low skill economies.   It talks about the structures required to ensure integration of LEP structures across the region.  One can almost here the creaking of bureaucracy…

‘Making sure people are in control’

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So says our new PM.

Some questions:

  1. Which people?
  2. In control of what?
  3. Is ‘control’ possible, desirable?

What do you mean by control…

  • power to direct or determine; “under control”
  • a relation of constraint of one entity (thing or person or group) by another; “measures for the control of disease”; “they instituted controls over drinking on campus”
  • exercise authoritative control or power over; “control the budget”; “Command the military forces”
  • lessen the intensity of; temper; hold in restraint; hold or keep within limits; “moderate your alcohol intake”; “hold your tongue”; “hold your temper”; “control your anger”
  • the activity of managing or exerting control over something; “the control of the mob by the police was admirable”
  • operate: handle and cause to function;
  • dominance: the state that exists when one person or group has power over another;
  • manipulate: control (others or oneself) or influence skillfully, usually to one’s advantage;
  • restraint: discipline in personal and social activities; “he was a model of polite restraint”; “she never lost control of herself”

I wonder what exactly Mr Cameron means by ‘Making sure that people are in control’?