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Of Sheds and Shedmen…

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My pal Iain Scott has just written a swingeing piece on the problems of the ‘inward investment, picking winners and cosying up to large companies’ approach that has underwritten governmental approaches to economic development not just here in the UK, but across most of the west, at national, regional and local levels.  An approach that he characterises as being about ‘sheds and shedmen’.
So how have the ‘sheds and shedmen’ got such a tight grip on our economic policy and associated investments?
  1. Large well organised bodies of professionals make a lot of money from it – architects, planners, developers – they spend fortunes on organised lobbying – just look at the sponsorship of most of the big regeneration conferences – nearly all ‘sheds and shedmen’.  Look at MIPIM.  They will not easily give up their market share.
  2. Politicians like ‘sheds and shedmen’ because they give them something to open and point at.  ‘Look at the lovely building we have delivered, see how it shines, my lovely….’
  3. Politicians also like ‘sheds and shedmen’ because they provide interventions that can fit within an electoral cycle…“when you elected me this was  a wasteland…now it has a ‘shed'”.  More person centred approaches to tackling, often generational, problems in the local economy and community are likely to take longer and may not provide the short term ‘electoral’ benefits that our democratic leaders require
  4. Much of the electorate fall for the seductive line of ‘attracting employers who will bring us jobs and a bright and shiny future’. We have failed to provide them with a different, more compelling and honest narrative.  We have also failed to expose the nature of the ‘deals’ that are often required to attract such investment.
I am sure there are other reasons, but these strike me as the big ones!
So I propose a mission: to influence investment away from steel, concrete & glass and into people, their aspirations and progress.

Who is up for that?
Get in touch and we will organise….

Greed, Anger and Development

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Greed and anger have always been powerful forces for change.

Greed is given more or less free rein in our society. It is incentivised.  It creates wealth and jobs, it provides products and services.  Greed is good.  To those that have, more shall be given.

Unlike greed, anger  is usually discouraged (‘just play nicely’, ‘stop moaning’) and dulled through engagement in bureaucratic process. Anyone who has tried to make anything better by engaging in a committee of some description will recognise that dynamic.  Vision Building process anyone? Participatory budgeting? Citizen’s Panel?

As a society it feels like we TEACH helplessness when it comes to social change.

We design systems and structures that sap energy and will from the angry: that neutralise those who are driven by love or hate.

If we want to see our communities develop then we must

  • raise levels of love and hate about the issues that really matter,  and then
  • provide meaningful and rewarding avenues through which ‘what matters’ can be pursued with power, creativity and compassion.

For me, this means helping people to understand and feel their anger and their love, before building careful associations with like-minded folk.

It is not a question of how we change people, but how we provide a context in which they choose to change themselves.

For me, the most promising answer lies in the provision of effective community coaching using mechanisms such as Local Community Enterprise Accelerators (ELSIEs), supplemented by group learning processes such as Progress School, Innovation Lab and Results Factory.

Community, Council and Commerce in Leeds

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The three big Cs in our city.

Each is diverse and varied in itself.  Each embodies different values, visions, beliefs, goals and aspirations.  Each labours away in its’ own context with opportunities and threats, restrictions and obligations.  Each has its own processes, rituals and structures for getting things done which make it hard for effective partnerships to be built and to last.  We might manage to find an accommodation, but to find real synergies?

It easy for each to see the other as the enemy, or difficult, or greedy.  I know this is a trap that I fall into MUCH too easily.

How good a job do we actually do at bring all three constituencies to the Party?

Getting them to listen to each other.  To understand each other.  To help each other as much as they possibly can. To learn to really associate.

We need much more than Victorian Philanthropy models and trickle down.  We need genuine partnerships.

How well do we design our processes as a city that ensures that not only do we get the job done, but that we also improve the relationship between these three constituencies?

I suspect we worry much more about the task than the process and the relationships.  I may be wrong.

Time for some innovation anyone?

What if Leeds carried on as it is..?

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Leeds Architecture

This is an interesting question asked on the What If Leeds.…website (registration required before you can contribute)

The underlying sense is that perhaps Leeds is fine.  We can just keep on keeping on.  Now I am sure that the sustainability crew would have a thing or two to say about that.  Interestingly they haven’t, yet.  As might those who don’t get to share in the benefits of living in the city, the poor and marginalised.

But, change is inevitable, progress is not.  Leeds’ own Max McKeown taught me that.  The art of strategy is about increasing the chances of progress being achieved, because change takes care of itself….
The real problem here is in the methodology that we use to try to think about change and ensure that it is progressive.
The current vision and plan methodology is, how can I put this, a little clunky.  A touch slow.  Impractical.
However if we write it off and do nothing then the usual suspects will maintain power so that they and their friends can order the city as they would like – some would say as  a big investment opportunity to suck disposable income from a city region while providing the promise of good work and jobs for all.
We need a process for influencing strategy in the city that is a)continuous and b) gives everyone a voice and power in the process.
We need a market place of visions where we can choose to work towards as many or as few as each of us personally prefer.  We need to use visions to enable self-organisation, conversation and action.  Not to produce statutory documents.  We need personal visions of what progress means – not just a ‘city’ vision.
We should be thinking about how we continually facilitate a process of ’emergent change’ rather than a vision session every 5 years followed by decades of bureaucratic management in its pursuit.  No-one does strategy like this anymore, do they?
But what is this process really about?
  • Are we giving a steer to the city fathers so that they can benevolently chart our progress to a better place?
  • Or are the city fathers really trying to engage us in creating our own future?
  • Or is this just a necessary/statutory piece of ‘consultation’?
Time will tell.
But Leeds has to change.  The only questions are how, and who will benefit?
I think it is time for Leeds to have a complete rethink about how it organises itself to be a truly innovative city.  And innovation (the prodigal child of strategy) is not an elite sport.
It is very much for all of us.