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Precautions for All Governments – John McKnight

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In John McKnight’s ‘Building Communities from the Inside Out’ is a chapter on ‘Providing support for asset based development: Policies and Guidelines’.  John may not be the greatest crafter of a punchy headline on the planet, but he does understand the process of community development – and the content of this section is right on the money.

In a section called ‘Precautions for all Governments’ he points out the problems that governments and other institutions of the state have in working with what are often small, simple and informal community development groups.  He suggests that often, in trying to play its role, government ends up ‘dominating, distorting and demeaning’ the work of local people.  McKnight offers a few principles that can help government officials (council officers, RDA employees etc) to avoid this ‘overbearing propensity’.

To paraphrase:

  • Remember that government workers and programmes are public servants.  A servant supports and does not control.  A servant never suggests that an employee might ‘participate’ in the servants’ work.  The servant finds how best to serve the employer.
  • Understand the limits to government.  If it replaces the work of citizens and their associations it will not create a healthy society –  but a dependent one.  The community will look to government to solve local problems and government will be unable to fulfil this role.  Local problems will worsen. ‘Secure, wise and just communities are created by citizens and their associations and enterprises, supported by governments making useful investments in local assets’.
  • Let local people who do the work take the credit.  Don’t send the mayor to ‘cut the ribbon’.  Let those that did the work have the glory.  Send the mayor to thank them.
  • Don’t replace local associations and institutions with new systems and agencies.  ‘One of the most significant causes of weakened local citizen initiatives, associational work and institutional capacity has been the introduction of new government sponsored structures and organisations.  As new organisations appear in the neighbourhood with impressive buildings or offices, lots of money and well paid outside professionals (sounds familiar?) they unintentionally but necessarily replace some of the power, authority and legitimacy of local groups.  Although they assert that they are there to strengthen community, they are likely to replace community initiatives.’
  • Government representatives should ask “What do you local people think we should do to support you?” rather than “We have this new programme we are bringing to your community.”
  • Ones size does not fit all.  Characteristics of local projects are diversity, proliferation and informality.  Government and bureaucracy however is more often characterised by uniformity, standardisation and formality.  They usually seek to develop processes and systems that will ‘fit all’.  This approach is structurally and culturally ‘at odds’ with creative local initiatives that are vital to community regeneration.

One of the challenges that I believe government (local, regional and national) and its agencies has to address is how best do we make our expertise and professional ‘knowhow’ available to community groups?  Instead they appear to be have succeeded in co-opting the expertise and knowhow of community groups to deliver governments’ policies programmes and targets on dependent and disempowered communities.

Time for a change methinks.

Some thoughts on the Front Line

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  • Front liners are capable of taking on far more responsibility than the boxes the system puts them in.
  • Front liners are very modest about their own abilities and skills.
  • Front liners want to do a great job for patients.
  • Managers must learn to let go of more of the power they have thus allowing front liners to get on with the job.
  • Managers must be there for support when front liners need it – they are well capable of judging when they need help.

Sensible reflections from Trevor Gay’s Simplicity blog

I am sure that you will agree with much of it.
But do you ACT on it?
Or do you let ‘the system’ get in the way?

Managing for Autonomy

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If we want engagement, and the mediocrity busting results it produces, we have to make sure people have autonomy over the four most important aspects of their work:
  1. Task – What they do
  2. Time – When they do it
  3. Technique – How they do it
  4. Team – Whom they do it with.
After a decade of truly spectacular underachievement, what we need now is less management and more freedom – fewer individual automatons and more autonomous individuals.
Daniel H. Pink
Want to learn how to manage for autonomy?  Get in touch.

Enterprise, Community and Complexity

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Enterprise, community and complexity.  Slippery words.  So slippery that I wonder what can be meaningfully written about them.  But I will have a go.

Having worked on these ideas for many years I hold my beliefs tentatively.  But they offer the possibility of a very different direction for both promoting enterprise and building ‘harmonious and cohesive’ communities.  And few would argue that we don’t need a fresh approach.  That more of the same will get the job done.

It won’t.  We need to innovate and experiment.

Lets start with ‘enterprise’.  First, empty your mind of all those misconceptions that I must be talking about ‘business start’s, ‘cash flow forecasts’, ‘profits’ and ‘Dragons’.

I am not.

I am talking about enterprise as a measure of ‘agency’ in one’s own life.  The extent to which an individual is able to recognise what ‘progress’ (another slippery word) means and to take action its pursuit.  This is what I mean by enterprise.  It is the product of clear self-interest (I know what I want) and power (I have the confidence, skills and knowledge to take organised action in its pursuit).  An enterprising person is one who is clear on what they want from their life and actively pursues it.  An enterprising community is one which has many such people – because they are valued and supported.

If self-interest is ‘enlightened’ then it is likely that the product of enterprise will be a positive contribution to society.  If on the other hand self-interest is poorly understood then the product of enterprise may be damaging.  Enterprise in itself is not an inherently good thing. If we are going to pursue this route then we need to have faith in the essential positive nature of human beings.

If we are serious about developing ‘enterprise’, rather than managing the outputs that most enterprise funders are looking for, we need to concern ourselves with the development of self-interest and the accrual of power.   We are in the realms of person centred facilitation and education.  Not business planning.  This is an enormous shift both in what we do, and how we do it.   Helping people to clarify their self-interest and find the power to pursue it requires very different structures and processes.

It is worth noting that if you have money, there is a fair chance that at some time you will have hired a coach to help you with the difficult and personal work of clarifying self-interest and gaining the power you need to pursue it. And if they were a good coach they would not have manipulated you towards their preferred outputs – but would let you work on your own personal agenda.  If you have little or no money the chances of you ever having access to such a potentially transformational relationship are slim to none.  The relationship that you have with various ‘helpers’ is likely to be one where they try to manipulate you ‘back to work’, towards a ‘healthy diet’  or some such policy goal of funded output.

Over the last few years I have spoken with many enterprise educators, bureaucrats and practitioners and they have all accepted that this conception of enterprise has merit.  Not only will it help us to get more business start ups, but it will also help us to get large numbers of people acting in pursuit of their own wellbeing – however they define it.  It will also help us to make significant and real progress towards PSA 21 – Building More Cohesive, Active and Empowered Communities.

Which brings us to the question of how does this conception of enterprise  fit with ‘community’?

Community is a property that emerges when individuals and groups learn to negotiate their self-interest with the self-interests of others.  Community is an emergent property.  If this contention is right then it raises serious questions about approaches which attempt to provide short cuts to community (building community centres and one stop shops for example) without addressing the preconditions necessary in a complex adaptive system (such as society) for its emergence.

Community emerges when individuals learn how to associate and collaborate in pursuit of mutual self-interest.  When they recognise that the best way to achieve their own self-interest is to help others to achieve theirs.   When they understand the nature of reciprocity.  Or to borrow the words a well known Business Networking group that ‘givers gain’.

A beautiful by product of this is a raised awareness of the importance of difference.

If I learn how to associate and collaborate with someone who has different skills and knowledge, or a different cultural heritage to my own I am likely to gain more opportunities than if I associate with people who are pretty much the same as me.  Association across race, gender, age and so on provides the key to opportunity and provides a precondition that will allow harmonious communities to emerge.

With difference comes both opportunity and resilience.

Ripples Out – Reflections

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First of all congratulations to everyone involved (Lippy Films, Yorkshire Forward, Together for Peace and local residents) in creating a powerful, provocative  film.

I sincerely hope that it helps disturb the comfortable equilibrium in Leeds (and beyond) that exists between the controllers of the public purse and the developers.  There maybe a brief window for reflection while development is ‘put on pause’ by recession – but I am sure that we will soon see business resumed as usual – if only temporarily.  At the moment, conveniently, there is no other game in town.

The likelihood of this will be increased if we focus our time and energies in trying to ‘influence’ the processes of planners and developers.  This will be playing their game – on their terms.  And I have a sneaking hunch about who might win – no matter how articulate and informed those that advocate the voice of the community are.  We also run the risk of further contributing to the dilution of our personal power as now, instead of relying on planners, we learn to rely on ‘our representatives’ to create a better future for us.  Developers and communities can become bedfellows – trading favours, but they are unlikely to become allies – they are seeking different and mutually exclusive goals.

The ‘Planners Analysis’ that says ‘give us time to finish‘, ‘forgive us a few mistakes‘ and ‘we just need to complete our investments‘ essentially says that ‘Planning’ works.  Visions, blueprints, plans and ‘investments’ will lead us to a better world.  ‘You ‘the people’ will be well looked after once we have engineered things fully – but we need more than 10 years – much more‘.

Can I be the only one that doubts this promise?

Am I the only one that thinks they, the planners, don’t really believe this themselves?

But it keeps the Porsches and the Mercedes on the road.  This is an unsustainable and unjust paradigm for progress that we engage with at our peril.  Our best endeavours are perhaps focussed on the search for a new paradigm for progress.

Perhaps the root of the problem is a perception that it is the decisions and actions of ‘others’ that largely determine the course and quality of our lives.  That the quality of our lives depend on decisions about where money is spent and what infrastructure is built.  If ‘others’ make the wrong decision or do their jobs badly our communities will be broken.  This is a dangerous and pernicious myth made even more dangerous and pernicious by an obvious ‘face validity’.  But we have learned that it takes more than PVC windows and doors to ‘renew’ communities.  Physical infrastructure creates profits (on a good day).  It rarely creates sustainable progress.

If we believe that others have ‘the power’ then we are relinquishing ours.

Finance and infrastructure accrue as a by-product of community.  As by-products of people (diverse tribes including inventors, creatives, workers, financiers, developers, mothers, carers, young and old, healthy and sick, bureaucrats and anarchists – you get the picture?) collaborating to make ‘good’ lives and ‘good’ work.  They are seldom the preconditions for it.

And now, more than ever before, what we need to produce is not profit or GDP – but ‘wealth’; that stuff which remains when the money has run out – wellbeing.

Learning to collaborate to do ‘good work’, understanding what ‘good work’ is – learning to use our talents to create (private and common) wealth (not just profits) for our communities offers us a more robust framework for progress.  These are the challenges that require our time and our attention.  Thankfully they are much less expensive than buildings and ‘walkways in the sky’.

If this analysis offers hope we need to allow a new cast to take to the stage.  Architects, planners and bureaucrats must become the servants of community rather than its masters.  Community development workers (not outreach workers paid for by the state to deliver outcomes), and educators (not teachers paid to deliver ’employer’ requirements) perhaps hold the keys to this kingdom.

Perhaps this is a crude analysis.  I do not believe that planners, architects and developers are bad people.  Nor that there is any planned assault on community.  This is cock-up – not conspiracy.  Nor do I believe that vibrant communities can develop without an effective dialogue with planners.

It is just that this is not the place to start.