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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?

When the bureaucrats show up in Leeds….

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‘Bureaucrat’ to me is not a dirty word.  I happen to think we need people to organise policies and procedures to bring some sense of organisation and pattern.  To enforce the rules when they need enforcing.  Government and governance can be good.  As long as they remember certain things.

Bureaucrats have been turning up at meetings organised by people who do not work in the official bureaucracies of the city.  They are not employed by the Council, or Business Link, or the Regional Development Agency, or the Arts Council.  But they recognise gaps that these agencies leave and they fill them.  There are enormous gaps left in the online world (anyone tell me of a bureaucracy that does a good job of engagement online?) and the world of the independent and the creative.

These ‘worlds of ones’ are difficult to service for bureaucracies who prefer to batch process large groups of similar types as this offers a much more cost efficient way to ‘achieve’ the outputs that they are contracted to achieve.   At least on the surface.

For me the presence of the bureaucrats is a very welcome one.  The more diverse the group the more potential for something interesting to happen!  They bring skills, resources, political insights and a certain knowledge about how things actually get done in the city that few of us can match.

It is interesting to watch the way in which some of the bureaucrats engage.  For some there is much  note-taking and reporting back, but very little interaction or contribution.  For others the contributions are mainly defensive and explanatory, providing the background to a particular campaign or decision that the ‘world of ones’  has been less than impressed by.  And some perhaps offer personal opinions, thoughts and beliefs, fearlessly, recognising that they attend these conversations as people and not primarily as bureaucrats.  And some, perhaps most yo an feel are torn between keeping their heads down and ‘managing’ risk or just diving in and facing the consequences, whatever they may be, later on.

Leeds Council and its agencies are beginning to wake up to the ‘online community’ (I hate that label as most of my life is not lived online).   What is interesting for me know is to see what happens now.

Are we (The Twitterati, the Web 2.0 Evangelists, the ‘people that slag us off’ as we were recently described) simply a new addition to the list of ‘stakeholders’ to be ‘managed’? Or is there an understanding that perhaps things have changed.  That hyperlinks subvert hierarchy and bureacracy.  That we may be impossible to manage but might respond well to engagement and facilitation. That we are not interested in justification and defence but in relevance, identity and soul.  That co-creation might offer a way forward?

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.  I wonder if we will be able to develop a way of working in the city that blends the best of chaos and order.

Who is up for Chaordic Leeds?

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

We’re both inside corporations and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down. – Cluetrain Manifesto

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?

‘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’?

Learn the Skills of Community Organising in Leeds

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…or if it is good enough for Barack Obama it is good enough for me!

Community organising seems to be all the rage at the moment.

Leeds Community Organising and Bradford Changemakers are jointly hosting  a Community Organiser training weekend in September.

The training is taking place over two days on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th September 2010 at Leeds Church Institute in Leeds city centre (20 New Market Street, LS1 6DG), and will run from 9.30am to 4.30pm each day.

This is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the principles and practice of community organising, extend your own leadership skills, and grow relationships with others involved in the development of Community Organising in Leeds and Bradford.

The full weekend costs £30 per person and includes lunch and refreshments. Further information and booking details are included on the attached flyer – please do tell others in your organisations and communities who may be interested!

I certainly hope to be there!

Download this flyer (pdf) for further details Sept 2010 flyer-1