social enterprise

Stating the Bleedin’ Obvious…(unless you are policy wonk or their lackey…)

July 5, 2011 by admin

Not every small business or micro-enterprise owner needs a mentor.
Mentoring is NOT the only helping relationship.
Good mentors are rarely trained in ‘mentoring’, nor are they picked from a register.
Successful mentors are usually selected from within the pre-existing network of the mentee. They are spotted and developed as someone from whom the mentee really wants to learn.
Mentoring is an intermittent rather than a continuous relationship.
Access to good mentors is usually restricted and respectful rather than a tradeable commodity.
The success of the mentorship is usually down to the mentee rather than the mentor. Good mentees know how to choose a mentor and manage the relationship with them to get the learning and the introductions that they need.
The commoditisation of mentoring is not a good thing.
Mentors are not coaches, advisers, consultants, counsellors or facilitators. People looking to learn and develop themselves and/or their organisations should think carefully about the kind of ‘help’ they need.
We should help people explore what they want to learn and how they are going to learn it – rather than prescribe yet another ‘cure-all’ that happens to be ‘affordable’.
We should focus our efforts on building social learning contexts and helping people manage their learning processes rather than setting up registers and schemes.
If the national association of image consultants got their lobbying act together I am sure we might all end up being encouraged to use a national register of image consultants in pursuit of GDP.

If you are interested in implementing ill thought through policy and exploiting it as way to make a few bob please do not get in touch. If on the other you are serious about building a context in which people can really learn then I would love to hear from you.

Just leave a comment below.

Social Enterprise and Good Work…Provoked by Craig Dearden-Phillips

September 23, 2010 by admin

Craig Dearden-Phillips wrote an excellent piece on the need to financially incentivise social entrepreneurs.

When I read it I was not sure whether I agreed violently or disagreed violently. Let’s just say I ‘felt’ strongly about it. It troubled me. I was provoked. As I am sure Craig was when he wrote the piece.

Schumacher (Fritz, not Michael) helped me to explore the basis of my feelings.

He pointed out that from the perspective of the employer, work is a bad thing. It represents a cost. It is to be minimised. If possible eradicated – handed over to a robot. This truth always makes me smile when the government talks of the private sector ‘creating jobs’.

From the perspective of the worker too it is often a bad thing. What Schumacher called a ‘disutility‘. A temporary but significant sacrifice of ‘leisure and comfort’ for which compensation is earned.

Schumacher pointed toward a Buddhist perspective where work serves three purposes:

to provide an opportunity to use and develop potential
to join with others in the achievement of a shared task – to provide opportunities for meaningful association
to produce the goods and services that are necessary for what he called a ‘becoming existence’

He then went on to say

to organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence

What can we do to make sure that more of our work is ‘good work’ and not merely a disutility for which we are compensated?

What products and services do we really need for a ‘becoming existence’.

This for me is the true role of the ‘Social Enterprise’ sector in our economy. The development of good work. The enhancement of association and compassion. To provide a real alternative to the mainstream work as profitable disutility philosophy of much (but not all) of the private sector.

And there is no good reason why we should not take sufficient value from our business to lead a ‘becoming existence’ is there? So I agree with Craig’s thesis, but not with the line of argument that took him there. Are the risks really any greater? Can a business be anything other than directly social?

I’m trying to learn just to die with pride,

Like the birds and the trees and the earth in time

But I’ve got this complex and it makes me fear,

That I’ll die knowing nothing and feeling less.

Hope and Social

Now, anyone for some truly social enterprise?

Harvey Nichols as a Force for Good?

February 25, 2010 by admin

This morning, the very wonderful, Simon on the Streets had bit of a shindig with its supporters in the Fourth Floor Cafe of Harvey Nichols in Leeds.

Now Simon on the Streets is a magical organisation for many reasons. Not only does it do great work with homeless people in Leeds (with bold plans to expand) but it does it with a philosophy of person centredness and respect for service users that is quite beautiful to see.

But this post is not about Simon on The Streets.

It is about Harvey Nichols. And me!

I am firmly in the camp that says the economic and social development of Leeds has been far too heavily dependent on the retail and financial sectors. So when Harvey Nicks came to town I was not one of the first through the door. I saw it as yet another step in the grand brand invasion of the city I call home.

In fact as I queued to get in I commented to a friend that I had NEVER set foot in Harvey Nicks before, and that I wasgobsmacked that it was my relationship with Simon on the Streets that had finally lured me in. I was certainly a ‘fish out of water’. A one man boycott.

The event itself was wonderfully managed. Simon on the Streets message as ever gave me goosebumps and bought a tear to my eye. But I noticed something else. The quality of the service in the cafe bar was also a thing of beauty. They must have served 60 or so hot breakfasts while speeches were being made with barely any intrusion. No dropped cutlery. No clanking of china. Skilled and efficient waiting staff who knew their work. Not always the case!

After the event the General Manager of Harvey Nichols, Brian Handley introduced himself to me. He had heard me mention that I had never been in before and asked me why. So I told him about my one man, informal boycott of ‘up market cathedrals of consumption’!

I then listened to Brian tell me about many pieces of work that Harvey Nicks do to raise money for social enterprise in the city, but perhaps more importantly how they use their purchasing power to support Yorkshire based business, their venues to provide showcases for Leeds based charities and artists and their partnership work with 11 mills still making cloth in Yorkshire to help keep them in business. He told me about the local sourcing of produce in the Cafe Bar. And he told me about the pride and effort that they put into training retail as almost a craft occupation. He also told me that Prada are a real supporter of Yorkshire textiles. Some of my prejudices were well and truly put to the test, and exposed for what they were – prejudices.

Now I doubt that everything is the Harvey Nicks garden is rosy. I expect there are chinks, perhaps vast gaping holes, in their CSR agenda. There must be issues around carbon footprints and food miles. I am sure there will be people thatwill tell me about their bad practices. But here was a man who clearly was proud that he and his employer were doing what they could to make sure that not only does Harvey Nicks provide a great return to shareholders and a wonderful retail experience to customers, but doing it in away that creates as much good as possible and does as little harm as practicable.

I have written before about my cynicism about the self congratulatory nature of some of the social enterprise sector and their demonisation of ‘for profits’, about how there are simply good businesses, bad businesses and a whole lot that fit somewhere in the middle. ‘For profit’ does not mean ‘bad’. And being a social enterprise is by no means a guarantee of ‘goodness’.

Here was a partnership working for both Simon on the Street and Harvey Nichols. And here was a ‘for profit’ ‘cathedral of consumption’ doing great work to keep local businesses going and support the third sector.

It was a useful reminder of my own message that there are just good businesses and bad businesses and sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.

And to beware my own prejudices!

It’s not just about raising aspirations…

February 19, 2010 by admin

This was one of the key points from the Enterprising Places Network event run by Enterprise UK in West Yorkshire yesterday:

It’s not just about raising aspirations but about raising realistic aspirations.
Projects and initiatives need to adopt a sustainable approach and offer support in long-term engagement.
Partnership working presents a great deal of opportunity.
Enterprise is often about taking risks.

And, yes, bears do sometimes go to the toilet in the woods.

Contrary to the blog and tweeting from the workshop (done in real time by a rep from the Enterprise UK PR company) for me at least the Enterprising Places Network event was ultimately a disappointment.

Our hosts at the Cottingley Cornerstone Centre were friendly and and the lunch was substantial – but the acoustics in the room were terrible. I hate to think what it is like when the centre is full of children.

But the problems for me were the ‘case studies’.

After introductions and context setting, Wakefield District Housing kicked us off with Chief Executive Kevin Dodd talking about the importance of carrots and sticks (I think he called them incentives) to encourage people to be more enterprising. And by more enterprising it seemed he meant mainly getting back into the labour market. Indeed this theme about job creation and routes into employment kept recurring. There is more to an enterprise culture than tackling worklessness. If someone’s behaviour is motivated primarily by the way that bureaucrats arrange carrots and sticks it cannot be described as enterprising. Compliant, yes. Enterprising, no. So think long and hard. Do we want our tenants to be compliant fodder for employers or enterprising?

We then heard a little about what Wakefield District Housing is actually doing to promote enterprise. This consisted mainly of sending young people on Outward Bound Courses and providing mentoring in Wakefield secondary schools. I worked for Outward Bound for a couple of years and have much time for them. They develop many things, teamwork, leadership, followership – but I am not certain about enterprise. I would need to be convinced.

And I am not clear how mentoring programmes help individuals to become more enterprising. Especially when mentors encourage young people to take their eye off of their dreams and start to think seriously about Plan B. ‘I know you want to be bassist in a rock band but really, don’t you think you should apply to study plumbing at the local FE college?’ ‘We need to be realistic with our aspirations’. I personally think this shows a weak understanding of how people hold and transform their dreams and ideals without being told what is realistic by ‘authority’ figures. It is not our job to decide what is possible….

The main reason schools welcome Mentors is because they can provide a little bit of additional 121 support to help pupils at school. It is not about making them more enterprising. It is about improving school performance. Too often enterprise is snuck in on the back of ‘improving educational attainment’ or ‘improving attendance’ ie providing incremental support to the mainstream pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, when in fact it offers radically ‘different keys’ to ‘different kingdoms’ for an increasingly large group of pupils that mainstream education fails to serve well.

But what was most puzzling to me was why a social landlord in particular would engage in such activities. In what way does this build on the relationship between landlord and tenant? Mentoring in schools is a fine way of delivering corporate social responsibility. Personal development too is extremely worthwhile. But neither of these builds on the unique relationship between landlord and tenant that I had hoped the workshop might explore.

Next up it was Connaught with a re-hash of last years Strictly Come Business competition. Now I have problems with most types of ‘Enterprise’ competition and especially with those that base themselves on the Dragon’s Den format. Dragon’s Den is not a competition. If investors believe a business offers a return, they invest. You don’t have to ‘win’. You just have to be investment ready. In my opinion most winners of Dragon’s Den style enteprise competitions are not yet investment ready. The journey to investment readiness can take years.

Does this competition format provide a serious and sustained methodology for creating an enterprise culture? Or is it an easily costed and managed process that ticks the enterprise boxes?

If we put a leaflet through a door that says ‘Do You Have A Big Community Idea?’ most people will say ‘No!’. The leaflet goes in the bin and those that might benefit most from our help to think in more enterprising ways are lost. At best we find a small minority who are already thinking ‘enterprise’ and give them a leg up. This kind of enterprise skimming provides the sweet illusion of instant results but in reality changes little. Indeed I think this kind of approach makes many of the 10 Commonest Mistakes in Encouraging an Enterprise Culture.

Networking over lunch, provided by local social enterprise Daisies, was fine and the presentations after lunch were good. I especially enjoyed finding out more about CREATE and how they operated. Competing on the basis of quality products and services rather than on the moral high grounds of SE seems like a winning and novel concept!

And a final talk through the development of Cottingley Cornerstone by our hostess for the day just re-affirmed how bloody hard this social enterprise game can be. On a shoe string and continually seeking funding – but only that which fits with their mission and objectives. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

My only problem with the afternoon sessions was that they seemed only loosely, if at all, connected to the theme of enterprise and social landlords.

So my main take aways from the day:

Social Landlords are coming under pressure from policy makers in Whitehall and the Housing and Communities Agency to do more to get their tenants to be enterprising. The interest in enterprise is primarily policy led rather than informed by any real insights into how it might help to provide a better housing service and better places to live.
Landlords are not well placed to respond to this pressure because of their ‘unique’ relationship with tenants and also their relative lack of knowledge and understanding about developing an enterprise culture. It is not about ‘incentives’. It is about power and self interest.
Just to be clear, I don’t think being a landlord helps if you are trying to promote behavioural change. The tenants will always be looking for the ulterior motive. For some housing cooperatives this maybe less of an issue. But when did you last have a landlord who you could really trust to be working in your best interest rather than theirs?
There is an apparent willingness to adopt what has not worked in the past rather than to explore innovative approaches to building an enterprise culture.
There seems to be a conflation of enterprise with entrepreneurial. A belief that more enterprising means more business-like.

So, as I said on my evaluation, the day was good in parts – although I think we failed as a group to really get under the skin of the role of the social landlord in supporting an enterprise culture.