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What If Leeds was a ‘tax-take opportunity’ for Whitehall?

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John Baron over at the Guardian Leeds site recently published a quite remarkable dialogue between our new Council Chief Executive, Tom Riordan and elected councillors.  It is a tremendous piece.  It is the kind of openness and transparency that I think offers real hope for progress.  Tom, John and the Councillors involved are I think to be commended.
But it was just 2 sentences from the piece, which I recommend you read in full, that really caught my eye.
We have to convince the people in Whitehall that Leeds is a tax-take opportunity for them if all the jobs we aim to create up here come off.
If we’re going to grow the economy we need the Environment Agency’s new flood defences, we need the Leeds trolleybus scheme, we need our LEP to be the best in the country. – Tom Riordan, Leeds City Council CEO, as reported in the Guardian Leeds
2 short sentences that tell a powerful story.  An every day story of top down strategy.
We have to persuade Whitehall that we are a ‘tax-take’ opportunity to secure the investment needed to create jobs.  Because jobs depend on us getting large infrastructure projects such as trolley busses and flood defences.  And these depend on investment by Whitehall.
It also depends on us having a really smart Local Enterprise Partnership, a group of ‘the anointed‘ who will take decisions and make investments (if they have any money) that will lead to increased gross domestic product in the city.  It will be up to them to realise the city as a ‘tax-take’ opportunity for Whitehall; as an efficient driver of profits for people with the capital to invest.
A compelling story perhaps, but not the only story.  It is a story based on our deficits.  The things that we have not got.
Might there be some other stories we could explore?
What if we imagined that ‘growing the economy’ (or indeed a bolder and braver vision of developing sustainable communities; economically, culturally and socially) depended not on trolley buses, LEPS and flood defences, but on us engaging the intelligence, passion, creativity, aspirations and dreams of the people who live in the city and supporting and networking them to create real power to the create sustainable communities in which more people felt both valued and supported?
We could call this story ‘grassroots, bottom-up and responsive’.  Or ‘person centred’.  Holistic perhaps as it would integrate economy. society and culture.  This is a story that is based on our current assets, the things we already have and how we make the very best of them.  And, no less true for being a cliché, ‘people are our greatest asset’.
Both stories are valid.  Both have truth in them.  Both are necessary.  And I believe that Tom is interested in developing both, even though in this piece only the more dominant current narrative about physical infrastructure gets an airing.
Only one of these narrative receives massive investments of time and money, requires massive budgets and leaves most of us pretty much uninvolved and powerless spectators.
One receives almost no investment by comparison, requires very modest investment and would engage and develop all who wanted to be engaged in creating the future that they want for themselves and their community.
One of them has powerful interests behind it, with deep pockets and powerful connections who can manage and lead discussions in the city.  One of them has no such powerful ‘leadership’.
One of them will primarily serve the wealthy and powerful, relying on trickle down, philanthropy, social mobility, and taxation to re-distribute wealth.  One of them will promote social justice and inclusion.
Now both narratives are necessary.  Of course we need the right infrastructure.  Of course we need good strategy.  Of course we need powerful advocates who can fight our corner in Whitehall and beyond.  But this is only part of the story.  Both ‘strategic’ and ‘responsive’ narratives must be developed and resourced if the city is to move forward in a way that is sustainable, economically, culturally and socially.
‘Responsive’ and ‘strategic’ are the yin and yang of balanced progress.
And if you need any convincing that perhaps the balance is not yet properly struck in Leeds just explore this conference coming up to discuss the future of Leeds City Centre.  Look at who sponsors it?
Attendance at the conference is free.  So I would urge you to attend and make sure that your voice gets heard.  It is the only way that we can find out if anyone is REALLY listening.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
– Theodore Parker/Martin Luther King

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.

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

A Radical Idea for a LEP…

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First of all reject the temptation to be entirely strategic.

Don’t try to analyse the economy like it is a game of monopoly where you can understand the roll of the dice, seeing and preparing for an uncertain future.  Don’t pretend that people and their aspirations count for nothing as you ponder the balance between investing in ports, ring-roads, runways or fibre.

Instead learn to compliment strategic development with a responsive approach.  One that engages residents in their hopes and aspirations for a better life and gives them the power and the responsibility to pursue them.  Put your faith and confidence in people.  Provide them with hope, leadership and support.

Dare to be relevant to people and not just ‘the business community’.

A city region of around 3m people like Leeds would require a network of around 75 coaches to provide access to person centred coaching support for everyone that really wanted it.

  • It would engage about 45 000 people in the process of providing direct hands on assistance to their peers.
  • It would provide direct assistance to about 16500 beneficiaries a year, the vast majority of whom would make significant progress in their personal journeys as a result of benefiting from a coaching rather than a coercive approach.
  • I would anticipate at least 750 sustainable business starts from this cohort every year.  I would envisage business survival rates around the 90% rate after 3 years.
  • It would make a very real difference to the perceptions of some 20 000 people a year about the extent to which they feel that they ‘belong to’ and ‘feel supported’ in their community.
  • In addition to traditional ‘enterprise’ outputs I would expect substantial impacts on health and well-being as well as increases in volunteering, cultural productivity, mental health, fitness and so forth.
  • It would help to integrate the dual priorities of economy and community rather than treating them as separate and often incompatible determinants.
  • Within 3-7 years I would expect it to have made a sustained and measurable difference to the enterprise culture in the city region.

And it would cost about £3.75 million a year.

The price of a very rich wo/man’s house.

NB this piece was prompted by reading ‘The Economic Opportunities and Challenges for the emerging Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in Yorkshire and Humber – Briefing Paper‘.

As far as it goes this is an ok piece of work. Unremittingly strategic, focussing on communications, infrastructure development and targeting support at key industries – all tried, tested and largely at best partially successful ideas for economic development.  One of the ideas challenges it identified is to develop sufficient ‘low skill jobs’ for our low skill economies.   It talks about the structures required to ensure integration of LEP structures across the region.  One can almost here the creaking of bureaucracy…

Who Are the Innovators?

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Recently I have been reflecting with Imran Ali about the nature of innovation in the city (of Leeds in this case) and how it might be developed.  The assumption being that more and better innovation will be an unalloyed good in a fast changing, dynamic, complex yet very finite environment.

Most of the discussion has focussed on some obvious innovation levers that we believe could yield some relatively quick and easy wins, such as:

  • encouraging more innovation across traditional boundaries of department or role
  • seeking applications of technology for social innovation
  • thinking as idealists rather than realists – exploring the art of the possible not just the pragmatic
  • providing ‘investment ready’ development programmes
  • engaging non traditional sources of funding in the innovation process and so on.

But the implicit assumption all of these approaches to innovation is of an innovative elite.  A creative class with the brains, the money (or access to it) and the networks to figure out how to make things significantly better for the rest of us.  Scientists, technologists, financiers, policy makers, politicians, environmentalists, campaigners, entrepreneurs (social and not so social) and academics are all encouraged, incentivised and trained to ‘unleash’ their creativity and innovation.

But how many in the city form part of that elite?  The hallowed few from whom progress is expected to emanate or who feel it is their duty to change the workings of the world. A few thousand perhaps in a city of 800 000.  I suspect it is less than 1% of those living in the city.

I believe that innovation, creativity and change in pursuit of progress, are essential human qualities that will find means of expression.  Regardless.

  • How does the potential of ‘innovation’ play out for the rest?
  • How do the processes of creativity and change in search of progress manifest for them?

Well, I suspect there is another slug of the population who are deeply engaged in creativity and change in relation to developing their  practice, in the more or less explicit hope, that they may be able to join the elite.  Training, learning, networking and thinking of ways to get their hands on the innovation levers.  Would-be entrepreneurs, politicians, students, scientists and bureaucrats who are working their way upwards and onwards.  Some, of course will join the elite. But most, by definition, will not.  And they will join another group of potential innovators.

These are the ones who do not wish to change the world/city/community.  Perhaps they have given up on the challenge. Perhaps they never engaged with it.  But the essential creative drive remains and will be expressed.  It may play out through personal lifestyle choices.  Living the environmental life perhaps, gardening,  reducing the golf handicap, pursuing cultural enlightenment, renovating houses/cars etc.  Progress is defined in more or less personal terms.  It is perhaps the pursuit of happiness rather social change.   Work becomes a job rather than a way to make a mark on the world.  Creative courage is reserved primarily for ‘out of hours’ activities.

And then there is another group who never really established a foothold in ‘the system’.  Those for whom a steady salary providing some level of ‘disposable’ income was never really ‘on the cards’.  Vocational and professional routes for creative expression never opened up for them.   From this group I suspect the systems demands not innovation and creativity but just passive compliance.  Do as your told, smarten up tour appearance, brush up your CV and look for a job.  Or at least pretend you are looking for a job.  But the drive to innovation will out.  Creativity will be expressed.

So when we are looking to support innovation in the city where is the great untapped potential?

  • Does it lie in providing more and better support and training to the elite?
  • Or should we try to mobilise middle England, Big Society style, to rally tot he cause?
  • Or should we perhaps change the terms of engagement with those at the margins of the system?  To shift from a coercive approach to a coaching one?

Anyone for ‘Innovation Coaches’ in Leeds?