Sirolli and responsiveness

I went to see Ernesto Sirolli this morning in Leeds.  He has an approach to working with entrepreneurs which he calls enterprise facilitation, which is explored further in his book.

I really enjoyed it, he's an engaging speaker and what he says makes a lot of sense to me.  I like where he's coming from - and how a lot of what he does is inspired by early experiences of "international development" in Africa. 

I had similar experiences in Latin America.  For a year I worked in Ecuador with a youth development organisation which was inspired by the teaching of Paulo Freire - the Brazilian educationalist and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, who was an inspiration for Ernesto too.  I also worked on a UK Government funded project in Peru, teaching local engineers how to run mini hydro-electric power stations which had recently been built with UK aid.

One of Ernesto's key messages is the need for responsiveness in working with entrepreneurs.  He says that we need strategy too - but too much support (and too much regeneration in general) is incredibly heavy on strategy - this is what we have decided will be achieved over the next five years, whether other people like it or not - and very light on responsiveness - what do people actually need now?

In Ecuador, Senda Juvenil, inspired by Freire, were a model of responsiveness.  Working with young people, as individuals, to help them to realise their dreams for themselves and their communities. 

On the other hand, the ODA project in Peru looked great on paper - bringing recent technological advances to the rural poor of Peru.  But the technology was completely inappropriate.  No-one from the UK Government had thought to check on the seismic activity in that area of Peru.  They have regular earth tremors - which damage the pipelines from the mountains to the hydro-plants on a regular basis.  If they'd just listened to local people they might have found that out.

I'm inspired by Ernesto, but I don't underestimate the power which the people who are charged with "regeneration strategy" have in Leeds.  We're going to need to do a lot of persuading to encourage them that a bit of responsiveness isn't necessarily a threat to their strategies - but could actually be the thing that makes them work. 

Comments

[Mike Chitty]

Rob

The strategists do have a lot of power and money. We need to find a way of encouraging them to consider channelling just a small fraction of it towards the responsive agenda.
My concern is that the funding that is made available is packaged in ways that does not support responsive approaches. It encourages the promotion of enterprise on target communities that are often not ready and not interested in the enterprise agenda. There is no invitation from the community - only imposition by the funder.

[Rob Greenland]

Good point Mike. It strikes me that's what's missing here is the voice of the communities themselves - at the moment it's one set of people who work in regeneration saying one thing, and another group saying something else. When local people do say something, they tend to be dismissed as obstacles who can be bypassed. So as Ernesto would say, let's shut up and listen.

[Sue Talbot]

It strikes me that both of you have valid points, but that the picture is bigger. I don't doubt the motives of the people who work in regeneration. My bugbear is that, like other professionals, they often don't live in the areas in which they work, or in similar communities. It means they don't have organically rooted and transferable knowledge and skills, that they are forever outsiders coming in with ideas about "best practice". I'd argue that people like Bob Holman (Glasgow) and Al Garthwaite (Beeston - recently awarded an honorary doctorate by Leeds Uni) are exemplars for regeneration, enterprise, social work, medicine- you name it. The issue isn't speaking for communities, but being in and with them

[Iain Scott]

You know I have read the above postings and really do despair.
You have turned this issue into a them and us and that is simply not the case.
Enterprise is a massively complex issue very few organisations have spent time on addressing how and why people learn to be entrepreneurial.
There are a number od issues that need to be addressed and clarified and blogging is not the best way to do that.
I discussed starting and Enterprise Riot with Ernesto-any one up for that?
Iain Scott

[Rob Greenland]

Sue and Iain, thanks for your comments. Sue I partly agree with you, but as someone who doesn't live in Beeston, do I have nothing to offer you? Your model with Tiger 11 is great - you're driving it - but surely there's room for others to get involved too?

Iain, I'm sorry you despair. I agree that adopting a them and us approach won't get us far, but, inspired by Freire, I think it's fair to reflect and reach a level of what he'd call critical consciousness about a lot of what's going on in regeneration - and there is a lot of "them and us" going on.

As you said in New Start recently "We know the situation where agency people gather in a room and plot the futures of communities."

You went on to say, as Ernesto does too, that we need them and their strategies, as well as responsiveness - which I was agreeing with in the original post. But there's still room for questioning those strategies - like I have done with LEGI.

I've got to disagree with you on blogging. You now have the ear of regeneration strategists. I'm a few years behind you in my career path and most of the time I don't have their ear. So blogging is a way to get ideas out there and to discuss them with other people. Like we have done today. And hey, I'm an entrepreneur and this is how I develop my business, so give me a break!

[mike chitty]

Sirolli is absolutely clear that the only condition on which any 'outsider' can work effectively in a community is 'upon invitation'. Develop a track record 'in your own back yard' and then others may want to learn from you about how you achieved your results. Local people have to want to understand how the idea or methodology will work for them and then invite in outsiders - if required - to bring knowledge and good practice in to the community.
I think the real problems occur when outsiders blame the 'failure' of communities on a set of inherent deficiencies (lack of literacy/numeracy/loss of work ethic/criminality etc). They then set up projects to tackle these deficiencies which exacerbate and highlight the issues - further stigmatising the community concerned.

The Sirolli approach starts with the assumption that everything necessary for effective regeneration is already in the community. It just might need a little external experience, advice and facilitation to help it to blossom.

[in a personal capacity ... Simon Brereton]

As one of the Leeds "regeneration strategists", and another member of the audience at the Sirolli-athon, I feel I must stick up for what was recognised by Ernesto himself as a vital part of the picture. Without initiatives, funding, and strategies, there would be no possibility of regeneration programmes. We would be stuck in the pre-interventionalist world of the 1920s and 30s.

There is no point in the bottom-up if there is no top-down to meet. And that is the point - you have to meet it half way. My job, as the programme manager for Leeds LEGI, is to commission projects that will contribute to the targets we are set by government. If I can do more and commission projects that are also in keeping with an ethos which respects local communities and their organisations, that is a real bonus.

To date, we have been invited to come and work in local communities by organisations and consultants, rather than by the communities themselves. We are beginning to see some more rooted interest, and when I feel that I can honestly say that a community from our target areas wishes to try enterprise facilitation, I will make the case as strongly as I can to my Board that we should support the initiative.

In the mean time, we will continue with the top down initiatives, building a community base through our work with the local third sector. The challenge to you, Rob Iain Mike & Sue, is to recognise where you can add most value, and sell that to the strategy people. Remember, you need to be invited in to work with any community, and that includes the community of regeneration strategists!

[mike chitty]

Thanks for the challenge Simon. I would love the opportunity to talk with more of the strategists in the city. You are absolutely right about the central importance of the 'first (strategic) leg'. The worrying thing is the almost complete absence of the 'second (responsive)leg' and relatively little investment to develop it.

Finding a community that makes an informed decision to learn the Enterprise Facilitation methodology is the key. When the community requests the strategists to fund a project (that is not in the strategy!) it is always interesting to see the response.

Strategists loving the methodology and then rolling it out in target communities generates real (but not insurmountable) problems in implementation as local people feel that they are being 'done to' yet again.

I am intrigued by your comment about contributing to targets set by government. My understanding was that any targets attached to LEGI investments were proposed by the bidders themselves during the bidding process for funding.

Is this an urban myth?

[Rob Greenland]

All interesting stuff. I too will take up the challenge of working more on what I've got to offer to the strategy people.

I know we've got to work together and that "us and them" will get us nowhere. But I still can't get away from the fact that too often I'm alienated by the strategies. I take my bit of responsibility to work harder to engage with the strategists, but I'm not letting them off the hook either. Please understand why I'm alienated by a regeneration strategy called "Sharing the Success". It might as well be called "Noblesse Oblige".

By chance I was reminded today of Frantz Fanon - the great anti-colonialist thinker. When writing about people in the colonies learning French, he said "Speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French." You may think it's an absurd jump to go from regenerating Leeds to the colonial struggle in Martinique. But it got me thinking about my relationship to the strategies. I don't like them - but I'm told I must engage. But deep down I don't want to engage - because I don't like the strategies.

Yes, us and them will get us nowhere, but to progress "they" need to understand why some of "us" aren't happy with things.

[GraemeTiffany]

Whenever “both of you have valid points” we might look to the dialectic and dialogue. Is this the key to unlocking the tensions between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’, the reactive and the responsive, youth or adult, state and civic society, ‘real’ and popular knowledge, powerful and powerless, ‘by invitation’ and through encouragement, and so on. So where are the paradigms in which these ways of working exist? Perhaps not in all ‘education’ but at least in some; typically community education, with its commitment to dialogue and negotiation. No coincidence then that Freire rears his head (although we should remember he worked in Portuguese…). Nonetheless, when all parties conceive of themselves as learners many of the concerns posted melt away. I’ve had a crack at Towards a synchronicity of democracy, education and endogenous development, which argues that this holy trinity needs to be seen as in the same space. Only then does the spectre of an all-powerful Strategos, the Army Leader, with their model soldiers and plans for this … and that recede. Might not the ‘strategy’ be one of nourishing and learning from grass roots [in the anticipation that some mutuality will occur]? So, democracy, at least in terms of ‘how do we decide?’ becomes integral to education, to regeneration, to economic development and perhaps also to politics in general. And having read John Pilger’s piece in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2229166,00.html, I suspect valuing our own, and others’ agency is all-important. As I said to Ernesto, at the end (when feeling a little ‘time-shared’): where’s the values in all this; how do we decide what is important and what needs to be challenged? There are emerging examples of organisations and communities using ‘practical philosophy’ to explore these issues. This work should remind us all of the importance of ethics and the intellectual virtues as foundational to the achievement of the aims that, when our prejudices are stripped bare, we all share.

[mike chitty]

Wow! Where are the values in all this? In essence the values are driven by the end user of the service - the individual who wants to act to make things better for themselves, their family and or their community. Now sometimes there might be personal gain but harm to family/community or vice versa. Effective facilitation helps the individual to explore this and make their own judgements about what is right.

[ernesto sirolli]

What a great debate! I learned long time ago that when you give a talk you have to give 100% of yourself because you never know who is in the audience! Obviously Leeds was no exception and the quality of the debate is testimony to it. I would like to add one thing to the debade; the concept of "respect". Unless you truly respect people you cannot help them. People sense why it is that you work with them and if you are patronasing or paternalistic you will be, maybe, used for the goods that you bring to the community but then you will be forgotten as it is the case,that I witnessed, with many NGO working in Africa and in other developing countries.

[GraemeTiffany]

I have had a chew on this one also: I met a guy recently who went by the job title 'Facilitator'. I asked him what this meant. He said: "helping people to do what they want to do." In a round about way, I asked Ernesto the same question: what if that was arms dealing, or contract killing, or prostitution etc. Helping people 'explore' is fine, but is it the end of the matter?

[Rob Greenland]

Good point Graeme. I suppose that's where values come into it all. I imagine that's slightly easier to do when working with social entrepreneurs - because it can be easier to tackle those questions head on - but it's not necessarily as easy if you've got a wider remit.

[mike chitty]

The first role of the facilitator is to help the individual to think through their aspiration and the consequences that are likely to follow if they act to pursue it.

Have they really considered the implications of their proposals? Is this what they really want for themselves?

A good facilitator will also help them to explore the goals behind their aspiration. What is it that they actually want to achieve? (Wealth, fame, respect, freedom from violence, home ownership, escape from debt are likely to be the routine for a facilitator rather than 'I want to be a 'contract killer'.)

Helping people to think through the consequences of acting on their dreams (legal or otherwise) and making informed decisions is the legitimate role of the facilitator. Providing them with practical help to act illegally would not be. Learning to manage these boundaries and to work effectively at them is a key skill.

A skilled facilitator helps the individual turn a dream into an informed decision about whether to act on their dream or not.

[ernesto sirolli]

Sorry to come back to the discussion so late... the debate about what is good for you and me is as old as the world. For a glimpse at it I suggest "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mantainance" by Pirsig.He writes about Phaedro " And what is right and what is wrong...should we ask anybody to tell us?" This is Socrates speaking at a time when there were no priests to tell people what was right and whas was wrong. In all presocratic Greek literature you will never find a single question about ethics...people without priests KNOW what is good and what is bad. As an Enterprise Facilitator and as a trainer of them for 25 years I have never had a single client who wanted help to do something immoral or unethical. People who want to become prostitutes KNOW that it is wrong and don't go to a community association and a Facilitator for help!
We should be carefull about "PRIESTS" of every descriptions who make the assumption that they are BETTER that their clients and that they should therefore "guide" them so that they will make better choices. This reminds me of all the GOOD people who , to save aboriginal children, took them from their parents. The GOOD people were religious people, educators, bureaucrats and politicians. The best that the society of the time had to offer. And they collectively committed a crime against humanity.
According to Maslow, Rogers, Fromm, Adler and the positive psychology movement PEOPLE ARE INTRINSICALLY GOOD AND THEY THRIVE TO BECOME THE BEST THEY CAN BECOME. It is when they cannot become what they can that personal and society' problems occur.
WE Enterprise Facilitators only work with HEALTHY people who know what they want to become and are proud of it. The issue is never WHAT they want to do, the issue is wheather we are good enough to help them become the beautiful people that they so desperatly want to be.

[Alanagh Recreant]

Thank you very much for this conversation. In our work in communities in Southern Africa, we also work on invitation only. It is the perception of development work in Africa, and not only the ideas of Africa as such, that need to change in peoples' minds and their approach.

Our organisation received volunteers before from some of the best universities abroad, and yet, it is the volunteers and facilitators from ordinary educational background but the right attitude that have a greater impact on enterprise programmes. The reason is simply that they are willing to focus on the process of sharing experiences - instead of delivering content and knowledge that are often inappropriate. A healthy respect for communities start with valuing social capital at the same level as intellectual property and financial assets.

We have the greatest admiration for the approach advocated by the Sirolli Institute and have experienced it first hand. Our enterprise model is build on the premise of community intelligence and engagement, and there simply is no other way to work WITH Africa for mutual benefit. Social enterprises and entrepreneurs hold the key to the future of African development if they are able to adopt this approach and integrate it into their business practices....