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Enterprising Communities: The Big Conversation

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‘Enterprising Communities: The Big Conversation‘ will bring together policy makers and practitioners to explore the challenges of developing and sustaining enterprising communities.

Using ‘Open Space’ methodologies The Big Conversation will give you the chance to say what you need to say, exchange ideas with others and build your networks from across the UK.

Topics for exploration might include:

  1. Enterprise – more than just business: enterprise for well being and community
  2. The competent community: the role of peers in supporting enterprise
  3. Fresh approaches to enterprise development: what could innovation in our industry look like?
  4. Opportunities and threats to enterprising communities: what are they and how can we respond?
  5. Enterprising communities: Do we know them when we see them?
  6. Connecting communities: the role of enterprise in building bridges between and within communities
  7. Enterprise and the economy: from enterprise to wealth creation.
  8. Sharing interesting practice: a showcase for innovative approaches.
  9. The Enterprising Campus: lessons for, and from, education
  10. The Coaching Community: can a coaching culture drive community?
  11. Is Capital still King?: the role of knowledge, social capital and finance in creating enterprising communities
  12. Nurturing enterprise: the impact of social media

But this is your conference.  Bring your own ideas for discussion.  Perhaps even a short presentation.

Who Should Attend?

If you want to discuss and explore the challenges involved in creating and sustaining enterprising communities with your peers in a participative and creative environment then this event will be right for you.

Enterprising Communities: The Big Conversation is being organised by Mike Chitty with support from Leeds City Council.

Interested?

Find out and book your place here http://bigconversation.eventbrite.com

The Future of Your City…?

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All the debate about the kind of city we want to be and how we get there is, on one hand, just a lot of hot air, but on the other hand is a series of conversations where people develop and test ideas and possibilities. Meaningful action starts with a conversation – not a plan. Or a vision.

However it really is a tiny minority who are interested in ‘co-designing our city’. The vast majority of us are just trying to get through our own lives, the best way we know how. And while the professional place shapers and planners will continue to do their darndest (more retail opportunities on the way), and try to ‘engage us’ along the way, it is the decisions and actions of the vast majority who have a much more personal interest in Leeds life that will really shape the future of the city.

The development of a city can be supported in 2 broad ways, which are not mutually exclusive.

Firstly we can shape the city to make it attractive to certain groups and types of people. We can build a compelling cultural offer and a good commercial base to attract the wealth creators. This is deficit based development. We do things to attract people who have skills and know how that we do not.  Or we turn ourselves into a theme park and rely on wealth being created elsewhere but spent in ‘our’ economy.

Secondly we can shape the city to make it more attractive and supportive for people that are already here. We can base the development of the city on the development of its people and communities. It is an approach to development that honours who we are, where we have come from, how we can change in order to shape our lives and, as a corollary, the city in pursuit of progress.  It values education and the emergence of identity rather than its imposition.

I have been arguing for many years that in Leeds, as in most UK cities we favour the former approach excessively over the latter. It is placemaking orthodoxy. It involves big ticket ribbon cutting projects, international exchange trips, hob-nobbing with money men and women and the trappings that come with it. It ticks the boxes for the politicians and allows ‘investors’ to have a sporting chance to make a good return. At its best it makes things better for everyone. But it also widens the gaps between the rich and poor.

The second approach involves sitting and listening to people talk about their hopes and fears for the future and slowly building their power to create change. Starting from where they are at, working with what they have got. Forging relationships, shaping projects. No glamour, little money and progress that is organic, potentially transformational and sustainable but that seldom offers the opportunities to cut a big ribbon. At least not quickly.  This is the work of the community coach.

But I hope that the future of Leeds features more of this kind of development – We are all Jim, Cultural Conversations, Progress School, Leeds Salon, Bettakultcha all shaping the present and the future – starting from where we are, working with what we have got.

NB: This piece started of as a comment to a piece by Leeds Salon Organiser Paul Thomas over on the Culture Vulture blog

Communities with Ooomph…

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One of the things that some people find hard about my person centred and responsive approach to developing ‘Communities with Ooomph’ is the emphasis that I place, initially at least, on working with individuals to help them clarify and pursue their self interest and to build the power that they need to pursue it effectively.  Actually there are three things that ruffle feathers in there:

  1. the emphasis on working with individuals as the starting point for community development – surely we need to work with groups in order to foster ‘neighbourliness’ and ‘cooperation’ on mutual projects?
  2. the importance of helping individuals to clarify and pursue self interest – surely it is shared interests that build community?  And what if their self interest does not relate to our hopes and goals?
  3. and, the emphasis placed on developing power – power is still seen by many as some kind of dark force leading to corruption and inevitable decay

In Support for Working with Individuals

It is nigh on impossible for most people to talk honestly and openly about what is really happening in their lives, what they really need to work on, in a group setting.  It is just too painful, and the risks to confidentiality are just too great.  And when we start working with groups to explore what they collectively want, we usually end up discussing a ‘lowest common denominator’ project.  Something that everyone agrees is a good thing to do, but that will not directly address the specific inhibitors of progress for any of them.  So we end up planting a piece of waste land or campaigning for a children’s playground, getting the graffiti cleaned up.  Now these are good, worthwhile projects, and I am not saying that they don’t have a place.  They help build relationships, common cause and improve skills.  But to what end?  Unless individuals are helped to really explore and understand their self interest and to act on it, many of these projects simply leave communities treading water with people moving from one community project to the next with little or no progress.

In Support of Self Interest

For us to make common cause, I must be clear on my self interest.  So must you.  We can agree to work on an interesting project without this clarity, but if we are to really collaborate with commitment, vigour, creativity and enterprise then it must be in both our self interests if there is to be a reasonable chance of significant purposeful progress.  Otherwise our collaboration may be partial and weak.

So why the resistance to really exploring self interest?  I think because it is confused with selfishness and individualism. Self interest is neither of these things.  It is about a proper and effective negotiation of ‘self’ amongst others (interest is from the latin ‘inter este’ which means ‘to be amongst’, so I am reliably informed).  So the pursuit of self interest is the pursuit of ‘self’ negotiated amongst others.  It is about developing identity in the community.

Exploring self interest, and understanding it, is not easy work, but it is worthwhile.  Self interest is a powerful source of Ooomph.

Self interest is easily misunderstood leading to poor decision making.  Take as an example the relationship between self interest, reciprocity and generosity.

Reciprocity is the act of giving only if there is a reasonable expectation of some reward in exchange.  Generosity is the act of giving with no immediate expectation of return.  But which is most likely to be in my self interest?

An initial glance would suggest that reciprocity would be best.  I scratch your back, you scratch mine.  But for reciprocal relationships to work we have to find an exchange partner who has something that we want and who wants something that we can give.  And finding such relationships can be hard.  This is why we invented money to ensure that reciprocal arrangements could always be made.  Which is fine, as long as you have money, or people with money want what you can offer.  Reciprocity is the language of transaction.

Generosity on the other hand is the act of giving when we are able, without expectation of return.  We may be giving time, money, advice, support.  Opportunities for generosity are plentiful.  If we live in a community where individuals choose to be generous, rather than reciprocal, in their giving it is likely that much more will be both given and received by each member.  Help will be more free flowing in the community.  Generosity, giving with no expectation of return, is actually more in the self interest of each community member than reciprocity.  This is just one aspect of what I mean by fully understanding self interest and how it works in community.  Generosity is a better tactic for each of us in the proper negotiation of our self interest.

In Support of Power

There is a lot of talk in Big Society circles of ‘pushing power down’ to communities.  Of giving them power.  As if power is something that can be gift wrapped and handed over.  Authority may be given.  Even responsibility. But power?  That has to be grown from within, surely. It is strange that policy makers seem to see no irony in their endeavours.

Power is the ability to get things done.

It is correlated with the ability to organise people, money and other resources in pursuit of a goal.  Power itself, exercised wisely and with compassion is a good thing.  It should be nurtured and grown.  Yet many of us are taught that to seek power, to be power hungry are unbecoming, almost pathological behaviours.  Which is perhaps why so many good people are disinterested in the pursuit of power.

Once individuals are clear on their self interest and start to think about the power to pursue it they nearly always have to make common cause with others.  They have to associate and cooperate.

What emerges will be, to paraphrase Mr Cameron, a community with oomph.

So if you want to be a part of one of these start working with individuals, their power and self interest.  Soon enough you will find yourself working with associations and communities with real power.

A Great Big Fundamental Mistake?

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Many community groups feel the need to do something.  Preferably quickly.

To develop some kind of ‘project that the community can rally around’.  That will ‘inspire people and show them we are doing something’.

But I think this is a mistake.  A great big fundamental mistake.  For several reasons:

  • it lets many people in the community off the hook – they can, and will, wait for YOU to sort things out.  This does nothing except to create a new more local group of the anointed – they may lend a hand – but they will expect you to lead.
  • it further disempowers members of the community who see the power lying with you and your group, or as the latest in a long line of well meaning but powerless do-gooders.
  • it is disrespectful of the community – it implies that you know what is needed to sort things out.
  • it ties up resources – before you know it your are running a couple of projects and everyone is too busy to take on any more.  You start to burn out while achieving little and skeptics in the community start to say ‘I told you so’…
  • you alienate people – whatever project you choose you will make friends and enemies, while others will remain indifferent.  You choose to work on ‘the environment’ and some will think it about ‘jobs’.  You work on ‘jobs’ and others will think it is about ‘childcare’. As soon as you nail your colours to a mast, some will think they are the wrong colours on the wrong mast and just back away.

So what should we do instead?

Listen, wait, educate and facilitate.

  • Listen to what community members want to do, and then help THEM to do it.
  • Wait and wait and wait, until you find someone who REALLY wants to do something and invites you and your group to help. You might want to think about what you would need to be like to deserve such an invitation.
  • Educate.  Help local people to understand about what is happening to them and their community and why. Help them to explore the opportunities created as political, economic, social and technological change sweeps their community.
  • Facilitate. Help people to do their work.  Help them to associate and organise.  Help them to build their power and to work on what matters most to them.  Build extensive networks of people who know how to help.  The Zen of facilitation means that you can maintain many projects without burning out.