realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

The Leeds LEP Summit…

September 12, 2011 by admin

Last Friday, 700 people descended on Saviles Rooms in Clarence Dock, Leeds to attend the Local Enterprise Partnership’s Summit on Realising the Potential.

I wish I could say it was a day full of surprises.  Of innovative and critical thinking.  Of real insights about how enterprise works in the region and beyond and what can be done to make it work better.  I wish I could say that we were listened to, engaged, given the chance to shape, not only ‘The Plan’ but also how it might be put into action.  But I can say none of these things.

It was the usual formula of a stage sequentially inhabited by a series of be-suited folk advocating their politics, or their research, or in some cases their business interests.  But generally, far too much politics and macro-economics, a sprinkling of economic development orthodoxy (clusters, sectors, high growth) and hardly any enterprise at all.  And where differences in ideology or strategy were clearly apparent there was no attempt at analysis or synthesis. It just came down to ‘we’re in charge now – so we’ll do it our way’.

The importance of SMEs was mentioned several times, but they were talking about 10+employee, high growth startups willing to put together funding bids and set up KTPs (knowledge transfer partnerships) with universities.  The kind of startup that allies itself with the economic development infrastucture and pursues every penny of public funding that it can.  There was little to no indication that anyone had given any thought to the potential of the regions enormous number of micro-enterprises and the fact that these are the hot bed from which the higher growth businesses will over time emerge.  We are back to what Drucker called ‘wanting the top of the mountain without the mountain’.

The implicit assumption was the regional economy would remain one based on traditional models of ’employment’, a white and blue collar region rather than a region where large numbers of self organising free agents contributed significantly.  What kind of employer skills board is going to define the skills and attitudes needed to escape employment by others but actually shape your own portfolio of work?  No, as per usual there was much discussion of what ’employers’ are looking for and the importance of that Holy Grail of employability.  As I said on the day, I don’t want the net result of 2 decades of education for my daughters for them to be merely ’employable’.  I want much more from the system than that, thank you very much.

It was also assumed that growth in the economy IS the only future.  And we seem to have the choice of whether we measure it using GVA or GDP.  No mention of the possibility, never mind the desirability, of a steady state economy.  Or perhaps measuring progress in terms other than purely financial expansion.  In fact nothing that wasn’t about mainstream economic development policy.  Nothing that we were not discussing in Mandelson’s White Papers on Building the Knowledge Economy at the fag-end of the last century.  Those of us with alternative ideas about to make the world a better place need to take a long hard look at ourselves – because our messages are just not getting through.

Somehow we were soon well behind the clock and time for questions from the floor was cut.  Not that it would have mattered.  If you really want to listen, you do not dominate proceedings from a stage and  give 700 people in the audience a couple of roaming mics.  You take the challenges of helping people to find their voice and express themselves a little more seriously than that, you build it into the process. If you really want to listen.

I had tried to encourage a few small business people to attend and others with an interest in ‘the economy’ who do not see themselves as ‘in business’, because the future of our economy should not be left to a partnership between business folk and politicians!  Sadly most had left within the first couple of hours as they heard nothing that spoke to them of their goals, the contexts they are working in, or their aspirations and they felt the dice had already been thrown, and that the strategy had been set for yet more capital investment and a preoccupation with high growth companies in high growth sectors.  All I could do was mouth my apologies as they picked their way out of the hall while speaker after speaker talked of engagement with ‘the business community’.

At least we had the back channel of twitter to contribute some different views.  Not that the screen displaying the twitter stream was legible and it took until lunchtime for the inimitable @johnpopham to explain that if they used twitterfall they would not need to keep hitting refresh……  I can’t help but think that something so apparently trivial as understanding twitter may hold the seeds of something important for the LEP in recognising that tomorrows economy will not be the same as yesterdays, only bigger.

So, we were late into our breakout groups.  The one I attended was like a fractal of the main hall.  A stage, a panel, an audience and not enough time to do the subject justice.  But this time there were some women too!  At least one of the panel members talked passionately of the LEP needing to speak the language of micro-enterprise!

Lunch was good.  Soggy sandwiches.  Fruit so cold it hurt.  But at least WE got a chance to talk…..

After lunch it was back into the main hall to listen to more clever and/or opinionated men (I would have been at home on at least one of those counts).  One of these had some thing to say about the drivers of regional growth in OECD countries and how some ‘basket case economies’ had managed to turn things around.  I can’t think why he would choose to provide data on basket case turnarounds in our region, can you?  Sadly the slides he presented were unreadable and I could not follow the plot.  I was so angry!  We jet in a researcher from lord knows where, presumably at great expense to the sponsors and then we don’t make sure that his slides will be legible to any but the front rows?  So I bailed out to the LEP Conversation Corner which was deserted to begin with, but which did eventually yield some fascinating conversations!

What did surprise me was the number of attendees who seemed to think that the gig was OK.  That it had ‘gone well’.  That any dissenting or challenging perspectives on twitter were just negativity rather than the result of any critical thinking, or different perspectives that may be worth exploring.

I found it genuinely puzzling until I realised that this was the congregation of the church of orthodox economic development – at prayer.  Where GDP is all that matters, and green/culture/tech/creative is only good IF it will create yet more economic growth.  This was the economic development supply chain in the room.  Hardly likely to be open to the possibility of radical innovation when they have so much vested in the status quo.

Filed Under: enterprise Tagged With: economy, Economy, employment, enterprise, entrepreneurship, LEP, micro-enterprise, skills

Employment and Skills in the Alternative LEP

February 17, 2011 by admin

  • How do we develop a workforce that is Fit for the Future?
  • How do we tackle the problems of ‘worklessness’?

Important questions that we have sought solutions to for most of my working life.

Broadly speaking we have two possible approaches.  We can  set up a committee of the great and the good, employers, politicians and civil servants and we can task them with collating evidence on labour markets, forecasting the future and identifying practical and affordable opportunities to intervene in the systems of education and worklessness that will make sure we develop the workforce that we need, when we need it.  This centralised approach puts power and resources in the hands of an Employment and Skills Board and sets them an impossible task.  It is the Soviet approach to planning tractor production.  It didn’t work for them.  And it hasn’t worked for us.

This approach results in a relatively small number of experiments (pilots) that are later rolled out.  It relies on a committee to accurately ‘read’ the future – to spot opportunities for job creation and then to exert an influence on the ‘production system’ quickly enough to make a positive difference.  This is usually done by setting targets, shifting resources and waiting to see how things unfold.  Strategies are typically set for perhaps half a decade and ‘refreshed’ annually – single-handedly tackling the worklessness agenda by employing a small army of civil servant and academics to collect data and produce reports.

Such boards end up being an ‘interesting’ balance between the voice of the private sector and democratic accountability.  In fact they usually become a stylized ‘war zones’ from which the private sector often retreats beaten into submission by public sector working practices.  Certainly the voice of the small business sector is rarely effectively heard.

Board strategies usually find a few ‘keys’ (NVQs, Diplomas, accredited in-house training, apprenticeships) to a few kingdoms (construction, health and beauty, tourism, call centres, and anything prefixed with ‘creative’, ‘digital’, ‘bio’, ‘high tech’ or ‘high growth’).  Aspirations and strengths of people are subordinated to the Board’s ideas about future skills needs and ‘opportunities’.  Conformity is valued over originality.  Learning ‘off piste’ becomes tricky.

Alternatively we could radically de-centralise and localise the process of thinking and planning about ‘fitness for the future’.  Instead of relying on an Employer Skills Boards to ‘make things right’ we could lay down a challenge to people to develop the skills and passions that they need to secure an economically viable future for themselves, to find what, for them, is ‘good work‘.  To  find their own contribution.   We could develop enterprising people supported in enterprising communities.  This would need schools and colleges to focus on the learner and their vision for their future rather than on the curriculum or qualification structures.

Such a decentralised, enterprising approach might:

  • enable many more informed brains to be brought to bear on the problem of fitness for the future – academics, industrialists and civil servants do not have a great track record in ‘workforce development’
  • enable people to explore ways of doing what they can do best – and not sub-optimising to conform with the ‘few keys to the few kingdoms’ identified by ‘The Board’
  • encourage the local community to support people in acquiring the skills, experience and work opportunities that they need to flourish economically and socially
  • support people to find learning experiences that help them to become the person that they want to be – rather than to conform with the ideal established by a fallible and distant Board
  • significantly increase the volume of learning experiments in the labour market and enable word of mouth to make sure that we develop a dynamic, flexible, responsive and self-reliant workforce

Perhaps these are not alternatives.  Perhaps we need to develop both strategic and responsive approaches to employment, skills and worklessness in the 21st century.

One thing I am sure of… establishing yet another Employment and  Skills Board (this time for the Leeds City Region) is unlikely to give us a major step forward.

 

Filed Under: enterprise Tagged With: employment, enterprise, LEP, skills

Recent Posts

  • Hello world!
  • The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Are rich people less honest?
  • 121s – The single most effective tool for improving performance at work?
  • Wendell Berry’s Plan to Save the World

Recent Comments

  • A WordPress Commenter on Hello world!
  • charles hapazari on Top Down: Bottom Up
  • Marvina Babs-Apata on The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Steve Hoey on The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Philippa on An imaginary open letter: To those who would ‘engage’ us…

Archives

  • November 2018
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007

Categories

  • Community
  • Development
  • enterprise
  • entrepreneurship
  • Leadership
  • management
  • Progress School
  • Results Factory
  • Training
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in