What do you do when the table collapses?

Here's a piece I wrote for today's Social Business supplement in The Guardian:

We spend years trying to get a seat at the table, and then just as we’re about to sit down and make ourselves comfortable, the table collapses.  What's a social entrepreneur supposed to do now?

On a philosophical level, 2009 has to be tipping-point time for social business.  Casino capitalism has destroyed the legitimacy of the established way to do business, whilst even the most mainstream of commentators agree that business has to be about more than making money.

But on a practical level what will it be like to do social business in a recession?  Those public sector contracts that we’ve all been encouraged to chase are starting to look very attractive to private sector firms scrabbling round for cash.  And as the public finances worsen, it will be a brave Procurement Officer who favours the maverick social business ahead of the bigger, cheaper corporate with the track record.

So how can social enterprises stay alive?  I think it’s time for more boring old delivery and less tub-thumping about how wonderful we all are.  Even I don’t believe what social entrepreneurs claim half the time – so I don’t see why anyone else should believe us.  It’s time to do more – and then prove what we’ve done.    

Update 11pm:  You can read Mike Chitty's response to this post here.  (You can also read my comment in response.)

You can read the full Social Business supplement here:

Download Guardian Social Business supplement 

Comments

[Nick Temple]

Amen etc.

[Mike Chitty]

Rob
We have to get back to what makes social enterprise different.
People join a SE for a sense of purpose, mission, fulfillment and contribution. Good social enteprises learn how to harness this sense of purpose to drive excellence. This can be a real differentiator in terms of performance and productivity as discretionary effort is much more likely to be given in such a mission led business.

Most SEs do the opposite and quickly drive any sense of mission/fulfillment out of most of their employees as they talk more about KPIs, funding and evaluation than they do about purpose, mission and values. This is because they tend to get much closer to funders and government's needs and desires rather than what the service users are really looking for. The Bubbian World tends to leave most of us cold. If we wanted to be delivery agents for the state we would be civil servants. The SE sector MUST be different.

My work with the Progressive Managers' Network is all about teaching managers (from 1st, 2nd or 3rd sectors)to lead and manage in a way that is most likely to use this sense of purpose to drive excellence.

[Geof Cox]

Social enterprise developers actually engaged with the NHS will have
found some irony in last week's Guardian Social Business Supplement, funded by
the Department of Health.

As Rob put it. there is a lot of 'tub-thumping' on the
advantages of social enterprise. In all of it's published guidance on
social enterprise the DoH makes much of how it will support social
enterprise. In a number of places, such as the Darzi follow-up Guide to
the Right to Request, it lays out clearly the many contracting routes
open to social enterprise, including the so-called 'PMS' contract forms
that can provide NHS pension scheme membership. Except that – you
guessed it – when you actually come to the contract negotiation you find
that those forms of contract are no longer really available.

The fact is that it is now almost impossible to set up a social
enterprise within the NHS pension scheme (although existing staff
already in the pension scheme will probably be able to remain in it).

The NHS has two absolutely conflicting agendas in this: it wants the
effective service delivery that social enterprise can bring, but it also
wants to get people out of the NHS pension scheme (or at least prevent
new people getting in). The latter is of course driven by the Treasury.
Depressing, isn't it, that the government lacks the courage to openly
confront the real problem directly – that the NHS pension scheme is so
cumbersome it might sink – and instead is trying to quietly pack as many
people as possible off into social enterprise lifeboats? Depressing too that many involved in social enterprise are happy to go along with the hype, rather than interested in the reality.

I am currently engaged in negotiating a contract between a new social
enterprise and a PCT. The service that the social enterprise is
developing has already won the Improvement Foundation's Guy Rotherham
Award. It can save the PCT - any PCT - £½million every year. It is a
primary care service run entirely by GPwSIs and Physios. Everyone in the
local area, including the PCT, wants to see it succeed, and acknowledges
that pension scheme membership is probably vital to its success. It
may stumble, unfortunately, on the DoH's centralised, cynical and secret
determination to curtail NHS pension scheme membership.

GEOF COX
www.geofcox.info

[Rob Greenland]

Interesting stuff Geof - as well as pretty depressing. Thanks for pointing us to it.

[Geof Cox]

I now see that a survey of PCTs has revealed - surprise surprise - 'some major stumbling blocks' for frontline staff exercising their ‘right to request' to set up a social enterprise - 'the biggest of which is uncertainty over NHS pension rights and benefits' - and that the DoH is expected to launch new guidance towards the end of this month on how staff can maintain comparable pension benefits on joining social enterprises, with a guidance document to follow in July.
Just to be clear - I'm absolutely certain that properly set up social enterprise can be THE best way to organise health service delivery (not of course commissioning) - but social enterprise is NOT one business model - it's many different models and organisational structures - and there is a potentially disasterous lack of quality advice available on exactly how to set up.
Social enterprise umbrella bodies (with the notable and noble exception of the under-resourced Social Firms UK) are as guilty as the DoH of promoting the idea of social enterprise without either fully appreciating the practical difficulties or building an adequate support infrastructure to help people do it properly themselves.
GEOF