Minority Report

size seems to matter

Last week I won an award in the Yorkshire region as the Outstanding Business Woman of the year and ended up doing an hour long broadcast on the local BBC…a kind of Desert Island Discs.  I say this not to show off, but because this week I seem to have gone mainstream. 

And I mean properly mainstream.  The award was not for social businesses only but was for businesses, straight forward, big, real world business and all of a sudden I feel very mainstream.  But mainstream isn’t normal for me and it makes me think.

When we were at an event in London earlier in the year, Doug Richard encouraged all the social enterprises there to aim higher.  Not to be satisfied with the Social Enterprise 100, not to celebrate only our success but also to aspire to transform all businesses into social businesses.  I clapped like everyone else there, party because I was really impressed and partly because I was sitting in the same row and it seemed impolite not to.

I always arrive at the office early each morning and while it’s quiet I get myself set for the day, often listening to Thought for the Day, not out of spiritual hunger, more routine I think.  Last week the Chief Rabbi was on talking about the problems that beset religions when they try to persuade others of their validity and point of view by getting into power.  He argued that when religions try to hold power, civic, military or political power, as a way to change to world things go badly wrong.  Oppression wrong or terrorism wrong.

When religion functions well and transforms people and societies it does so by being a creative minority.

Anyway, as I collected the award I thought about this.  Do we have greater social impact when we seek the ground where business operates or when we see ourselves as a creative dissenting minority?

I’m not sure what the answer is really, but I do know that next week we are up for the regional Employer of the Year award and we are up against Morrison’s Supermarkets.

I guess that will be a good time to try to work out the answer…

Outcomes and intentions

intention - a sliding scale

I am not always a big fan of the big smoke, but yesterday London was great.  Actually, I think London was probably the same as it always was but the day itself was great!

After two meetings with potential investors, I went along to the national Retail Skillsmart conference at the Grosvenor hotel.  There was lots of talk about retail being the fastest growing sector, about it being the largest sector employer in the UK and about its resilience to downturn and capacity for impact and growth.  After all the glowing stuff the HR Director of one of the Big Four retail employers stood up and spoke about their commitment to skills and training.  After some great slides about the 100,000 NVQs delivered to staff and the 20,000 apprenticeships completed we were coming to the big finale.  Then there it was…CREATE’s logo on the screen and an announcement of their commitment to offer 10% of the jobs they create to people coming out of the CREATE Potential pre-employment academy.

Even doing the calculations on the back of a fag packet, that seemed like the sort of impact that makes my heart race.  Then came the closing ‘sell’.  They love working with us, because the partnership delivers impact and (from a very commercial operator) reduces attrition, provides them with well trained and highly motivated staff and reduces their bottom line HR and recruitment costs.  So why (here was the sell) are you CEO’s and HR Directors of all the other major national retailers not a part of this too. Come and join us in a retail consortium designed to make a difference.  

Good sell.  Good day all round.

On the train on the way back with the aforementioned HR Director and a perfectly decent meal we did some more long journey debrief chatting.  On the back of a napkin, (I think I had lost the fag packet), we did a drawing…

We, as a social enterprise, turn over close to £1M, employ 35 staff and transition 80 trainees a year into employment.  They turn over £15.4B (that’s B) and employ 140,000 people and create around 20,000 new jobs each year.  So, if they were to take 10% of their new starters from our academy and if they could get 6 other major retailers to do they same, who then has the greatest impact, who is social, who is enterprise?

Is social enterprise about numbers, impact or intention?  Our mission statement says we exist to see people who have been homeless secure in a sustainable job and theirs says ‘good shopkeeping’ or something similar, so is it the intention or the outcome that makes the real difference.

When we won the Trailblazing Newcomer at the SE100 award this year, Doug Richard said (very nicely) “so what”.  If social enterprise only seeks to applaud itself we will be the poorer for it and so will the world.  If we use our skills in enterprising multi-sectoral networking to transform the opportunities and to change major retailers and employers is the win not bigger?

So is it about numbers, scale, impact or intention?  Well I am not sure really, but one thing of which I am very very sure: I will never ever buy a round of drinks at the Grosvener Hotel and I adjure you strongly to heed my advice on this.

1316 and all that

Networking - consultation or compromise

There seems to be massive concerns about the rapid level of environmental change and irreparable environmental damage.  Those who lend money secured against property have suffered the largest scale losses in human history.  There is a sense that the government must do something differently in order to illicit social change.  Yet still, in the face of economic cataclysm, the returns on the trading figures of the top companies evidence higher profits in this year than in the previous decade.

These were the lessons I learned reading a very interesting article about Britain in 1316.  Perhaps it is true that there is nothing new under the sun.

On or about this year one of the most important texts in medieval England was published.  Piers Ploughman continues to be one of the most significant and challenging of the canon of English literature.  The text is shot through with reflections on the meaning of life and was sewing the seeds of uprising against the powers of the church and of the state.  It is used by John Ball, a revolutionary priest, only a few years later as part of his inspiration for the Peasant Revolt.

What the heck has all this to do with leading a growing social enterprise?  Well probably because I think it is sometimes important to keep thinking and learning because when we stop doing that, we stop inspiring other people to do it, and there is only so much inspiration in Leadership and Management training with wafer thin wisdom!  Also I think that it touches on the agenda that is always present underneath our working days.

I have commented often on the idea that effective social entrepreneurs are fundamentally those with the skills of muti-sectoral networking.  In the last couple of weeks I have been to Big Society consultations, sat in the Boardroom of international investment banks and had a cup of tea with the north east’s most notorious reformed gangster.

Sometimes networking is really good, sometimes to makes things happen; sometimes it transforms the perspectives of those involved in the network.  I think as social entrepreneurs we always need to be conscious of when networking becomes sucking up, when challenge and not co-operation is appropriate.  For Piers Ploughman and John Bull the realities of 1316 were not about consultation but challenge.

Both are appropriate, it is just sensing the when and the how…

words, words, words

words, words, words

There has been a leak. Well not a very important one I think in the cosmic scheme of things, not compared to a wiki-leaks-list-of-people-we-hate-and-want-to-kill-and-directions-to-find-them face book type of leak.

On Monday, quite quietly, the government had a leak. A leak of their internal advice on the language we uses to describe ourselves and our policies (I get the sneaking suspicion it was one that was meant to be leaked).

It gives advice on the language the government use to talk about things. As I said, in the cosmic scheme of things, not that important but interesting to us in the social business world.

There I go again, language, the words we use to talk about things. I talk about social business and sometimes social enterprise. I know there are technical differences (and we fit into both descriptions by the way so don’t panic) but business often sounds more mature and stable than enterprise, but depending on the audience will depend on the word I plump for.

So after that little deviation I think I have made my point. Language is totally unimportant and all important.

Sometimes it is important to precisely and technically describe the concept or context we are referring to, sometimes it is important to paint a broad brush stroke to create an emotion or an impression.

So the government’s leak talks about ‘outcomes’ not ‘targets’ about ‘volunteers, professionals, people’ not ‘stakeholders’.

Those of us who work in this cross sectoral network with business, government and the voluntary sector need to understand the rules of the language game and play that game well, but it is more important than that.

A century ago we would have given charity to ‘paupers, imbeciles and inadequates’ three decades ago we would have ‘cared for and supported down and outs and alkies’ ten years ago we would have ‘empowered service users’…

Now we just employ people.

That feels a lot better and language is important.

a game of monopoly

get out of jail free

I have been going to a lot of meetings recently.  With partners, with investors, with Big Society ministers-kind-of-thing and I have started to think more recently…

What should I take?  Should it be the top hat or the jaguar, leaving the old boot behind? Sometimes we seem to play monopoly, sometimes win, sometimes loose.

Why do I think this?  Well it was most notably driven home for me at a recent third sector consultation event where we had some tea and biscuits, a little light posturing and then a jolly good two hours together.  In those two hours we set up a ring and then proceeded to wrestle our agendas and then  glamorously parade our scores in public.

After establishing that we were more unique than anyone else and had more vision and passion and were all round generally good eggs we calmed ourselves down with a gentle chorus of Home on the Range and went home.

I jest obviously, but not completely.

One of the joys of heading a multi-local expanding social enterprise is that you get to meet lots of people and in doing so you get to network across different sectors.  From the third sector to government, from Local Authorities to large corporates, from our staff to high net worth individuals – we learn to speak the language of each sector and, as T S Elliot put it, ‘to make a face to meet the faces that we meet’.

One of the things that constantly amazes me is the fantastic ‘can do attitude’ that I am presented with in the businesses driven by money and owned by individuals.  One mantra from one of my business partners in a FTSE 30 company is always “this IS going to happen, so what needs to be true to make that a reality”.

So often sadly, that same attitude is not present in the traditional voluntary and statutory services sector.

Do you know what?  We are unique in our vision, hopes and aspiration for the world, but we’re not the only ones who can deliver social transformation and (shhhhh! Don’t tell anyone this bit… Shhhhhh) we are not always the best or most efficient.

I guess what I’m thinking is that VCFS, corporates, high worth individuals, investors in the city, local community groups, the government, and local authorities… none of them (or we) have a monopoly on the good stuff.  On offering hope and transformation.  We are all operating on the same monopoly board and before we shout about other people working in silos we have to ask if, at least attitudinally, we are innocent of all charges.

Is that not what the Big Society is kind of all about…?

deal or no deal

who's the banker

Let’s be honest Endemol are the gods of car crash TV.  Love it or hate it they have the format cracked and they very very rarely get it wrong.  Some of their formats work better in some countries and some contexts than in others but on the whole failure of the format is rare.

And the best of all…

The banker knows the location of the booty and all you have to ask yourself is – is it a deal or no deal?

Rodney Schwartz is right, I think, to be optimistic about the Big Society Bank (http://www.clearlyso.com/sbblog) and I think the Big Society in general.  In the big question of Deal or No Deal it is not the bank you have to trust but the Banker.  The Banker knows the location of the prize fund, the amount in the fund and fundamentally pulls the strings as to who gets the booty.

I guess there has been a lot of asking of the question “deal no deal?” recently mostly from people who are a little scared that The Banker can’t be trusted because his motives are not completely clear.  But in the real world peoples’ motives are often unclear, or at least complex.  Investors, stakeholders and partners of social enterprises have a complex range of agendas and motives for engaging with a particular social enterprise.  Genuine altruism to mercenary PR spin is the spectrum along which many of us engage with those who want to be aligned with the outcomes we are able to deliver.  Do I care?

Probably not is the answer.  As a social entrepreneur, first and foremost I am a business woman and, as such, used to negotiating the complex agendas of staff, customers, stakeholders and investors.  Do I care about the motivation of the people I am working with.  Probably not.  With 20 years experience in the world of business I sometimes wish I had the luxury of the comfort of the moral high ground of some of my voluntary sector partners.  I do not.  As a pragmatist I am really interested in the question – does it deliver?

The Big Society has been worked and reworked in different contexts.  From the 1500’s through to the present day there have been a plethora of expression of this same social ideal.  In context as diverse as Africa, Latin American and Europe there have been many different expressions of the same ideals.

The question Endemol asks of the latest incarnation of Big Brother or Deal or No Deal is – in this context at this time, does it work and will it make money.

I am interested in the same question.  In this context and at this time will the Big Society work and will it delivery outcomes.  Again as a business woman and pragmatist I want to say, let’s give it a go.  Let’s throw some investment and time into it and see what flourishes.

So whilst we are thinking and debating the concept and context of the BS and the BSB lets just do something eh?  Let’s invest in robust multi-local cross sectoral partnerships that deliver profit and strong social returns and then let’s see if it works. Not in principle but in the concrete realities that we wrestle with each day.

the beating heart

 

the beating heart

When I mentioned last time about riding the waves I didn’t realise how wet I was going to get!  The last week has been filled with meeting with investors and partners and government ministers who are all fascinated with social enterprise and the possibilities it holds.  The challenge is always right in front of me, social enterprise is different.  It is different from the way that the government delivers services, different from the way the voluntary sector pursues a vision for change and different in the way the business generates growth and profit.  One of the most important things I think is to recognise that Social Enterprise is different but that it defines itself not as what it isn’t (as defining itself over and against other mechanism for social change) but what it is.

As a model social enterprise, particularly those like ours which has an operation that is intentionally driven and business focussed, is unique.  That unique combination of business focus and social impact is what offers our unique selling point.  And there in lies the rub.  How do we scale social business and not loose the heart of the operation. How do we scale the quirky environment of a café that our customers love, with staff fully bought into the vision of the business to a scale of operating eighty businesses in 20 cities in the next three years?  How do we scale to that level of delivering 2,500 homeless people back into work and not loose the integrity of the business model or ethos?

This is a tricky one because organisations have a life of their own.  That doesn’t mean that they can’t be managed but that as organisation grow and scale the complexities of interpersonal and organisational dynamics are magnified and more than anything the heart of the businesses needs to keep beating.  The ethos of why we do what we do needs to be maintained.

The story is told of how President John Kennedy once visited NASA.  He came across a cleaner and asked him what his job was.  The cleaner replied: ‘My job is to help to put a man on the moon.’  There is some discussion of whether this story is true or not, but what it illustrates is the cleaner’s complete alignment with the aims of NASA, and the collective mission and strategy.

The organisational dynamic of a social enterprise that chooses to employ homeless people to deliver employment solutions for homeless people is a complex one.  That is because complex social problems require multi faceted solutions.  In a world where the elevator pitch is everything we shouldn’t be afraid to say – ‘it is not quite as easy as that’.

As we scale the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.