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Why Should We Learn with the Third Sector?

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We try to attract managers to PMN events from a wide range of organisations and sectors. I am often asked by managers from ‘for profit’ organisations ‘Why should we ask our managers to learn alongside managers from the third sector?’ The implication is that it might ‘set them back’ or ‘slow them down’, or ‘develop skills and knowledge that are not relevant to ‘for profit’ managers’.

Some facts

  • The total turnover of social enterprises is estimated at £27 billion, or 1.3% of the total turnover of all businesses with employees. Their contribution to GDP is estimated to be £8.4 billion.
  • There are around 55,000 social enterprises, and numbers are rising.
  • Since 2004, the Government has invested more than £350 million in the capacity of the third sector.
  • Over £18 million has been allocated to support and develop the social enterprise sector over the next few years.
  • Total public funding (from local and central government) reported by the voluntary and community sector has doubled from less than £5 billion in 1996/97 to more than £10 billion in 2004/05.
  • It is a growing sector.
  • It has cash to spend and demands high quality professional services.
  • It will choose to work wherever possible with partners that share its values and vision. With people that it knows, likes and trusts.
  • It delivers work of great social value. The best staff  demand more than just a good pay packet. They find the sector challenging and rewarding to work with. They meet remarkable people and organisations.
  • Working effectively with the ‘third sector’ – as well as with the ‘for profit’ and ‘public sector’ should be a key part of your strategic thinking.

Jim Collins (of ‘Good to Great’ and ‘Built to Last’ fame) urged the third sector not to ape the practices of the ‘for profits’. Instead he urged the ‘for profits’ to learn lessons from the third sector – about managing people with passion for real social purpose. If you do that well, then profits follow. Both ‘first sector’ and ‘third’ then have to decide the level at which surpluses should be re-invested to pursue the aims of the business and what should be distributed to stakeholders.

Managers face similar challenges whether they are managing in the ‘for profit’, ‘not for profit’ or ‘public’ sectors. Learning alongside colleagues from other sectors enriches the experience and the increases the possibility of doing good business for all.

Set the Foundations

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The Mavericks at Work blog reminds us that all the:

co-creation

empowerment

mass collaboration

blogging

YouTubing

MySpace-ing and

Facebooking

 

in the world isn’t going to help if you don’t already have some very persuasive answers to some very basic questions:

 

  • What ideas are we fighting for?

  • What do we see that the competition doesn’t?

  • How are we rethinking our business every day?

Managing People With Passion

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My working life has been spent working with a wide variety of organisations. But they all have one thing in common. Each is trying to make the world a better place. Whether operating in the private, public or third sector they have all been about making things better.

People join these organisations because they:

  1. Want to make a positive difference in the world
  2. Develop their own potential and capacity in making this difference
  3. Want to provide food, warmth and shelter for themselves and their loved ones.

They want to belong in an organisation where they can grow, make a difference and earn a living.

They need respectful and nurturing management. The salary to them is important – but in the long run it is personal growth and making a difference that they really value. They need management that focuses on helping them to make their contribution.

Many of the organisations I have worked with have struggled in this area. People lose their sense of purpose and identity as they become consumed by delivering ‘the service’ or ‘the contract’. They become more technically proficient at what they do – but their optimism and belief slowly fades away and performance slowly degrades.

This process is driven by an orthodox approach to management that focuses on tasks and fails to engage with dreams and aspirations. The noble goals are transformed into routine. There is a famous story about the floor sweeper at NASA who proudly told visitors that he was working to help put men on the moon. Well, in many organisations this process of ennobling a job is completely reversed. People doing great work, contributing to great goals, become reduced to ‘marketing co-ordinators’, ‘database administrators’ or ‘account managers’. They get absorbed into management systems, balanced scorecards, customer service standards and the other paraphernalia of modern management and they lose sight of what they are all about.

Managing people with passion has to be done differently. It has to keep the sense of purpose ‘up front’.

It has to keep the passion burning.

Hungry for It!

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This is a great post that I think says a lot about manager/employee relations in much of UK management.

Personal Assistants and secretaries marching in the streets to demand the opportunity to

  • unleash their potential at work;
  • make progress not coffee;
  • be recognised as ‘career girls not cover girls’ and as ‘office heroes’.

It captures what the Progressive Managers Network is all about – developing managers that provide these iopportunites all of the time toevery one on the team.

All power to their elbow!

Love, Hate and Indifference

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Stope Hate UK

For a while now I have used a Honda advert in my work with clients – the one with the fluffy bunnies and the dirty diesel engine that becomes clean and environmentally friendly.    It has a wonderfully catchy tune with the lyrics  ‘Hate something, change something, make something better…’

It helps people to understand that both love and hate provide the fuel for change; the energy, inspiration and motivation required to make something happen.  The power to make things better.   ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ are full of opportunity and potential.

It is indifference that is the problem.  Indifference never made anything happen.

Often the people that hate things the most are the ones that you need to talk with to make things better.  Passion fuels progress.  That is why I love hate – and encourage managers to love it too.  Find out what people hate – and help them to change it.

Today though I met an organisation based here  in Leeds called ‘Stop Hate UK’.  Their purpose is to stop hate crime, and their unique contribution is to make reporting of hate crime easier and to provide practical and relevant help to those who suffer it.  Wow!  No problem getting up in the morning to go and work on that!

In organisational life it is usually the object of hatred (the unethical practice, the flaky printer, the fussy customer) that provides the opportunity for change.  But perhaps there are times when it is the hater that provides the real opportunity for progress rather then the hated?

If you would like to know about the work of STOP HATE UK then just click on the graphic to visit their website.  And if you are a victim of a hate crime then give them a call.