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Would Social Enterprise Deliver a Better World?

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Just imagine a world where every business is a social enterprise.

There was nowhere to spend your money that was not taking a portion of it to reinvest in social change, to alleviate hardship and increase social justice.

You eat at a restaurant that uses part of the price of your ham hock to help the homeless find a job.  You pay a premium on your office space so that your landlord can re-invest some of your cash into supporting entrepreneurs amongst the local poor folk.  You buy your petrol from an oil company that takes a slice of your cash to improve marine conservation and invest in promoting democracy in the oilfields of the planet.

Every time you buy something someone puts a smile on the face of the world.

The more we consume the better things get!

Growth is genuinely good! Isn’t it?

Well perhaps, because all of these social enterprises are also genuinely sustainable in a one planet economy, all paying a fair wage for a days work, and are well capitalised as investors recognise that social change is in their ‘self interest’ too.  The return they get on their capital is worth much more than just money.  It is a planet fit for the grandchildren.

How would the market for ‘social change’ play out in our new socially enterprising economy?

Life for us consumers might get a little more complicated as we factor in not just cost, quality and decency of the corporate that we buy our goods from – but also whether they are investing effectively in the causes that we want to support.

A post capitalist economy where entrepreneurs and markets set the agenda and provide the fuel for social change.  And perhaps just a quango or two checking the veracity of their claims for ‘re-investing profits’.  We could call it SEQC – the Social Enterprise Quality Commission.

What could possibly go wrong?

Observations on Regeneration

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When we base ‘regeneration’ on realising rent values in areas where the poor currently live, but the rich want to, we push poor people out. We don’t solve any problems we just re-locate them to areas where escape from those problems is likely to be made even more difficult.

My best efforts to ‘make a business of improving people through enterprise and effort’ have resulted in endeavours like Progress School, Elsie, Innovation Lab, Community Conversations, Enterprise Coaching and so on. All of these are designed to be accessible to anyone who is looking to make progress for themselves.

The sad truth is that we have wasted millions on telling people that their future lies in self employment and entrepreneurship without ever taking the time to listen respectfully to who they are and what they want.

I have yet to see a regeneration programme that is centred on a respectful engagement of, and response to, individuals who are seeking to make progress without making prior assumptions about means.

I have yet to see a programme that takes seriously the need to help individuals build networks to make lasting changes in how they operate (these networks provide the bedrock for that holy grail we call community).

I have yet to see a programme that recognises that the poor are in every neighbourhood.

I have yet to see a programme that accepts this is long term work. I do remember an RDA director saying that we should not expect too much from an £80m public investment in a Leeds regen project because we are only 15 years into the project….but this is not a defence that is generally accepted!

Our communities are full of ‘outsiders intervening’ and I see this as a major problem. Professional ‘experts’ shipped in to sort out the locals. If people don’t want to be helped we should leave them alone.  And we should only work where we are invited; where individuals really want us to help, because they have seen the value of our work. And how many of the mainstream providers offer services that are valued by those they are purporting to help? Very few in my experience.

We do know how to make progress on this stuff and the approaches are affordable and replicable. The key barrier to their development is that the beneficiaries of these approaches have little power, financially or politically, to compete effectively with the mainstream regeneration lobby. Those that influence investment in regeneration are those that control landbanks and their professional service firm partners. Just look at the sponsors of any regeneration conference or local enterprise partnership ‘summit’ and you will see who can afford to invest now to profit later. And they wont be talking about person centred approaches to change. They will be talking about building infrastructure and moulding people to meet the needs of employers (they call this ‘the skills agenda’).

And they wonder why our communities are not more enterprising!

Is it possible to reap a dividend from the success of others? I have much sympathy for the idea. However the journey to ‘break-even’ is often a long one, certainly months if not years. More likely decades before any consistent ‘dividend’ is generated. Few of us doing this work can afford to defer our payments for that long!  If you want a quick return on your investment you work with those that already have money and have the shortest journey to break even. Peter Jones and Doug Richards and their ilk are not daft in who they pitch their enterprise products to.

In the current system it is almost impossible to realise any value from working on the enterprise agenda with those that most need our support.

The Great Regeneration Resurgence…?

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One impact of ‘austerity’ is that the government is investing less in ‘regeneration’, that mysterious process that brings uPVC windows and doors and new kitchens and bathrooms to some of our most deprived communities and/or takes neighbourhoods where only the poor and desperate choose to remain and turns them into ‘aspirational addresses’.

It seems to me that the former is usually led by a local authority in order to avoid the embarrassment and penalties that come with failing to provide ‘decent’ homes (better to provide no homes at all than homes that don’t meet the official standards).  The latter is usually led by the private sector and rests on the belief that we can smarten the neighbourhood up, displace the incumbent residents and replace them with brighter, shinier people.  With people who earn more money and pay more tax.  Who can afford larger mortgages and higher rents.   All sorts of ‘indicators’ move in the right direction (the neighbourhood is healthier, wealthier, greener, more beautiful) and we can claim progress as ‘jobs are created’ in the construction phase and the ‘community is regenerated’.  Profits are generated as houses are transferred from the poor to the rich with house prices and rents rising as we go.

Except of course the community has not been regenerated, but displaced.  The area may have been developed – but the community has been, in whole or in part, displaced and broken up.

Look around and you will see these processes happening near you.

As public investment in regeneration declines the pressure remains on local authorities to maintain momentum in the regeneration game – to ‘create jobs in construction’ to ‘stimulate economic development’ and to ‘provide new housing’.  And with less cash to put in the game they use other levers – more flexible approaches to planning (pdf – gaudy ‘enterprise friendly’ Planning Charter) and trying harder to attract inward investment so that we can keep ‘creating jobs’.  And there is talk of a ‘resurgence in regeneration’ as the private sector rides in to save the regeneration day, increasing profits and winning gongs and awards for ‘services to regeneration’.

This activity looks like regeneration and smells like regeneration but to my eye it looks like displacement and economic cleansing.  Most of the regeneration industry is driven by this economic development imperative which provides the dominant narrative at conferences, in development feasibility reports and in election manifestos.  You would think that there is no other game in town.

But there is.

There is a form of economic and community development that starts where people are at, works with what they have got, and helps make progress on what matters to them – much to the chagrin of policy makers this is rarely losing weight, giving up the fags and sharpening up the CV through a ‘work programme’.  This approach, which is often described as ‘bottom up’ or responsive provides no quick fixes but rather steady progress based on:

  • the development of aspiration, skills and knowledge
  • association, cooperation and organisation around common causes, reciprocity, generosity and mutuality
  • thinking  creatively and collectively to act in pursuit of progress

For me, ‘Bottom Up is the New Black’.

But this is a different approach to regeneration. One in which the current incumbents make little or no profit.  One that does not provide quick fixes based on electoral cycles and 15 year visions. One that makes new demands on local authority staff, elected officers and their partners.  It is a very different game with very different rules and very different tactics based on a different set of values.  One that puts the economy in the hands of people, rather than people in the hands of the economy.

But perhaps we should give it a go?