This blog - and all the previous posts - will stay here for the foreseeable future - but from now on I'll be writing on the new site.
The idea behind the move is to bring my blog, information about what I do, and my free resources - all onto one site. Up to now they've been in three different places - which doesn't make a great deal of sense.
If you subscribe to the blog in a Reader, you should be able to subscribe to the new site - it's a Wordpress-based site.
I don't want to lose you as a reader - so if you do have any trouble accessing the new site (or commenting, or whatever) please get in touch.
The much-accepted logic is that outsourcing saves money. Yet the Audit Commission has suggested that councils may be overstating the savings that come from outsourcing. More importantly, from my point of view, is this:
[The Audit Commission] said that it had found evidence of councils having difficulty with managing the complexity of contracts and assessing performance. "Some councils have relied unduly on the spirit of partnership, believing that contractors would pursue shared goals without incentives to do so," it added.
We've all seen examples (not just in the public sector) of business relationships where the language of partnership has been spoken, but the reality has been far less collaborative. You could also suggest that the belief that contractors would pursue shared goals - without explicit agreement on how that would be done - is pretty naive. And, ultimately, poor use of public money.
I think there are opportunities to do things better here - and there's a clear role for social enterprises. I'm working on a local authority project at the moment where, when we drew up the tender documents, we agreed clear social objectives that we wanted to see achieved. Then, with the people who have won the contract, we have agreed how achievement of those objectives will be monitored. Progress on achievement will form the basis of the contract-management meetings.
The alternative would have been a dry, outputs-based process which loses any sense of the real change that you wanted to achieve through tendering out the service in the first place. Instead, by making it clear that we want to achieve certain things, then working together to agree exactly how that will be done, we should have a better chance of achieving what we want to achieve (and of course, manage the relationship with the contractor).
I'm not making big promises about how much we'll achieve, because social impact reporting can be hard work, and it's the first time we've done this. This is why I go to Social Impact Camp - to try to work with other people on this issue. But for me the clever thing here is that we've integrated social impact reporting into a process that was happening anyway - the contract management process. So it's more work, but it's added on to (and could eventually replace) something that was happening anyway.
Is that an incentive to pursue shared goals? I think you could say it is. It's certainly making it explicit that we want to see certain things achieved - and it should also give clear direction to the people delivering the contract. In itself it won't make the contract a success, but it at least gives us a framework for judging success - and for trying to improve things in the future.
Busy day today. On the train home from London now. It started with us not knowing if our house sale was going ahead as planned. We also didn't know if we had somewhere to live next week. It ended with an exchange of contracts on our house and our offer accepted on a house. We've also had a few offers of places to live for the 8 weeks we'll be between houses.
I chatted with a friend about it all this morning. It's been really stressful - many of you will have been through similar house-moving difficulties. But we talked about the faith we both have in our own ability to work things out, and that with help of our friends, family and contacts, we trust things will be OK. That, amidst all the stress, kept me going.
What I don't have such faith in is the world I inhabit. What do I mean by that sweeping statement? It's not that I'm a post-Thatcherite individualist. It's more that I don't have confidence that the State will always see me right. Or that the businesses that I buy from have really got my interests at heart. Or that the people who manage the economy will manage it in a way that will ensure future prosperity. Or that our politicians will make the right long-term choices to tackle global poverty. Or that my fellow UK citizens will see beyond the short-term and begin to live more sustainable lives. I understand these are big generalisations, but that's how it feels.
I suppose the point that I'm making is that it is through networks that we will create change. Whether that's small things in our own lives (finding somewhere to live) or big things as a society (stopping runaway climate change), we will make progress with other people. It's obvious really, but sometimes forgotten.
I was at the second Social Impact Camp this evening. That's another network where I thing good things can happen. We are a group of people who want to get better at planning for, achieving, measuring and proving the social good that comes from the work that we do. Each of us on our own could try to work this out, but would probably struggle, because it can be hard work. But as a group I think we'll make good progress.
I've been enjoying witnessing the Co-operative Labour movement making it abundantly clear that they are the real co-operators over the last couple of days, since the Tory announcement of their plans to encourage co-operatives and social enterprises to deliver public services.
I sent my previous piece on this via Twitter to Phillip Blond, the architect of the Tory plans. Here's his reply:
Thanks - will read and study. But surely just a negative reaction is wrong and a misaligned reflex. This is a social good.
This is a social good. Blond clearly doesn't lack confidence.
First things first, I haven't really read any of his work in any detail, or read the detail of the Tory co-op plans. I will do as soon as I've moved house and unpacked the boxes in ten days time. But I've kept an eye on what he's been saying in the newspapers and elsewhere.
Secondly, I think it is a fairly negative piece so I take his point. And that's a fault of mine - I try hard to write positive stories, and to be constructive, but I know that I can dwell on the negative sometimes. But show me a writer who doesn't. It's easy writing. And there are downsides to be told in a social enterprise sector which sometimes only tells the good stories. And I enjoy having a go at George Osborne.
Yet I'm interested in Blond and his Red Tory ideas. I'm also intrigued by his background. Like me, he grew up in 1980s Liverpool and he says the impact of Thatcherism on the city has been a big influence on his life and work. I'd say the same. I can see how to this day Thatcher's policies - and the Militant response - did a lot of damage to my home city, and that legacy is still with us.
But I can't help but question the claim: this is a social good. Says who? Who's to say that opening up the market for public services to social enterprises won't create a massive amount of damage to a fragile, skint society? Or that the real impact of opening up to social enterprises will be to create a market in which the private sector will eventually dominate, thus (potentially) further alienating local communities? Or that the undoubted social good that will come from the many great social enterprises that will deliver services will be counterbalanced by the regular bailouts of the ones that fail?
Let me finish on a positive. I, like many other people, see the damage that poor public services do to individuals and communities. I also believe that we need socially enterprising approaches to changing society - and some of those will come in the form of social enterprises. So, I'm going to try hard to be constructive, as well as critical, in the debate about mutuality and public services. I hope the people who seem to only see the upside of these proposals - who see them as a clear social good, might also peer over at the slightly less green grass on my side of the fence.
Two big words, which can often lose their power through over-use. But being accountable for what your social business does is important. Planning to have positive social impacts - then keeping an eye on them - then telling people about them - is vital too.
I'm hoping that once the Social Enterprise Mark settles into its stride that it will make a positive contribution to all of this. I'm intrigued to find out more about their criteria around impact. On their site it says:
Can you provide externally verified evidence that you are achieving your social or environmental aims?
In practice, social enterprises tend to do this by producing a social audit. I've written before about how I think that we need fresh approaches to accounting for our impacts. It's the second Social Impact Camp tomorrow (please come along if you're interested in all of this) - and I'm going to talk about the ideas I've had, and the work I've done, around trying to find ways to plan and record impacts that aren't as onerous as some social audit systems.
At Voice a couple of weeks ago I asked a question in the plenary about whether the Panel felt that current social accounting systems were fit for purpose for the majority of small to medium sized social enterprises. There were some interesting responses - with the consensus being that the current approaches have significant limitations. Third Sector magazine have reported the discussion here.
What will be the approach of the Social Enterprise Mark Company to this issue? Will there be a working towards clause which allows businesses which are in the process of producing social accounts to get the Mark? Or will it be a straight no to any social enterprise without externally verified evidence? I'd be worried about my targets if the latter were the case.
Hopefully they can help to stimulate discussion and fresh approaches to this. Much of the noise around the Mark so far has its roots, in my opinion, in the gut feeling that a lot of us have that profit distribution issues are of far less importance than the stuff around effectively planning for, and proving, your impacts. It may help to move debate on if they start talking more about this in the months ahead.
George Osborne was on the Today programme this morning talking about Tory plans to open up the delivery of public services to social enterprises - in particular, it seems, to co-operatives. I assume Steve Hilton has decided that we're not awake enough to understand what a social enterprise is at 7.10am (he's probably not wrong), so he instructed him to just keep saying the word co-operative as often as he could in three minutes. It is a lovely word after all.
I have written a lot about how public services need to improve. I am also an enthusiast for socially enterprising approaches to delivering services. But I'm suspicious of political enthusiasm for social enterprise. In this case I'm picking on the Tories, because I find them (and Osborne in particular) unconvincing, but I'm pretty sceptical about Labour's motives in this field too.
There's something of the four legs good, two legs bad dogma about politicians embracing social enterprise. They are so desperate (as they should be) to work out ways to make the UK a better place to live that they can end up believing that transferring services to social enterprises will magically make things better. They can definitely make a big difference if the social enterprise is good at what it does. But they are not inherently better at doing things than other organisations or businesses.
I also have a question about the likely capacity for social enterprises to deliver services. I know all the stats about how the sector is expanding, but I'm also aware that not everyone is cut out to be an active member of an employee-owned business, of the kind Osborne is proposing. I'd be a rich man if I had a pound for every public sector employee who's told me that they're hatching plans to set up in business, to break free from the dead hand of bureacracy. I'd have about £3 if I had a pound for every one that's done it. Osborne said this morning that services will only be transferred to co-operatives if that's what staff want. I think that, sadly perhaps, is a big if.
So, if I'm right, and the public sector won't be transformed by hordes of public sector workers all desperate to set up co-operatives, how will we find different ways to deliver services? Enter the private sector - particularly if the Tories get into power. I suggest that politicians will keep talking about the opportunities for social enterprises, pointing us to that lovely social enterprise which collects bulky waste in Liverpool, whilst plenty of the opportunities will actually be gobbled up by the private sector, who will soon speak the language of social responsibility with more fluency than your average social entrepreneur.
I do think that will happen more quickly if the Tories get in. Read for example this account of a recent Politics Show about Michael Gove's Free School plans. They interviewed Tory MP Tim Yeo, who made it clear that he thought that the Free School plans were flawed - not because schools should not be independent, but because the organisations that will run them won't be allowed to make a profit. One rogue Tory does not a party make, but I very much doubt that Yeo is alone.
Gove wouldn't dare allow idea of private-sector-run Free Schools to get in front of voters. But two years into a Tory government, with restless right-wing backbenchers giving Cameron grief, you can well imagine that things might change. Co-operatives' real value to Osborne and his colleagues may be to clear the way for further privatisation of public services.
It's election time at Leeds University Union - one of the biggest social businesses in Leeds.
I think student unions are fascinating organisations. Every year a group of seven or eight fresh-faced young people with various agendas and little experience of what those of us in work may call the real world take responsibility for a multi-million pound, multi-stakeholder business. And then twelve months later they all move on.
Let's hope our country's politicians find ways to connect with us once the election campaign begins. I doubt they'll do anything quite as effective as this.
I've just put Frank to bed - far past his normal bedtime. He came with me this evening to a talk by business author and social entrepreneur Robert Ashton. I like Robert - he's a human-scale entrepreneur on a talk-circuit dominated by supposedly super-human entrepreneurs who most of us find it hard to relate to. He talks a lot of sense.
He also had a picture of Frank in his presentation, much to his delight. I'd seen Robert at Voice10, and I'd told him that I was bringing him along - and his photo turned up by the power of Facebook, to illustrate a point about what the world may look like in 2100.
Robert was talking about social enterprise as tomorrow's enterprise. Someone asked a question at the end, which I've summarised here:
"When we tell people that we run a social enterprise, they don't understand. They just say, "Why don't you just run your own business?" We say it's because we care, but that doesn't seem like a good enough answer. What's a snappy way to tell people why we run a social enterprise?"
I'm sure it's a question that many people ask - why don't you just set up your own business? I think it's a valid one, and it's one that I ask people when they come to me, asking me to help them to set up a social enterprise. It isn't for everyone. It also isn't the only business model for creating social change.
I imagine there are value judgments in the statement "it's because we care". The assumption is that people who don't set up social enterprises don't care - they're just fat cats out to make a fast buck at the expense of everyone else. Those people exist - but there are also plenty of people who run businesses which aren't structured as social enterprises (as we tend to define them in the UK) and who are doing good. And I think there are plenty of others who are coming round to the idea that they could do more good in their business, but aren't wholly sure where to start.
This is one of the things that concerns me about the Social Enterprise Mark. The world's in a right mess. And the social enterprise movement seems to be setting itself up as THE vehicle to get us out of this mess. The Mark will, in their words, represent businesses working for social and environmental aims.
Except it doesn't. It represents businesses working for social and environmental aims which spend at least half of their profits on socially beneficial purposes. So there's a value judgment there about profit, which rules a lot of us out.
I think in many cases profit-distribution and ownership are red herrings. Often they make sod-all difference to how much change is created, and, at times, can get in the way. At other times they magnify the change created by the business. So, for example, I will soon set up a business as a social enterprise - because I think that particular business will achieve more good structured that way. But social enterprises aren't (as I think the questioner above is suggesting) inherently good - or necessarily better at doing good than other businesses.
I'd be right behind a Social Business Mark which was awarded to businesses which have clear social aims, and which provide externally verified evidence of their impacts. I'd even be happy if the businesses which had certain "social enterprise" structures got a further tick in the box. But given that my interest is in social change, and is not ideologically driven by a dislike of profit distribution, I am finding it hard to get enthusiastic about the Social Enterprise Mark.
We arrived in Cardiff this afternoon. I've come with Antonia and Francis pre-Voice, and we've been blessed with sunshine so far.
We've never been to Cardiff before so we thought we'd all come down. It's also all part of the vaguely-green-plan to stay in places longer when we travel. It seems a shame to come all this way for 24 hours.
We ate this evening at Jamie's Italian, Jamie Oliver's new chain of restaurants. We'd been walking through town earlier in the day and Francis had spotted a guy in the window, making pasta. Great theatre, great marketing, and as a result there was no chance of us going anywhere else.
One thing's for sure, if you've spent the last ten years going on about the importance of top quality ingredients, then you'd best make sure that your restaurant is up to scratch.
I have to say we were well impressed, and we clearly weren't alone; people were queuing around the proverbial block. The food was great, the service spot-on, and it was the most child-friendly restaurant I've ever been to. And not in a crayons and party hats way. More in a this-place-is-for-kids-too way.
If you watch Jamie on the telly he often says that the best way to judge a restaurant is to order a green salad. You can tell a lot about a place by its green salad. It might be iceberg, browning at the edges. Or it could be pseudo-posh lambs lettuce, straight out of a bag.
Or it might be juicy, tasty, artisan leaves, simply dressed. The point is there's no scope for adding false value, it's either top quality or it ain't.
So we ordered his green salad. He passed his test, with a bit of room for improvement (leave the daft yoghurt dressings to Pizza Express). But these leaves were clearly in a field til not too long ago, and hadn't come to us via a packing plant.
If you promise, you must deliver. Jamie taught me a lesson this evening, and it's one all social entrepreneurs could take note of too. We're going to spend the next few days banging the social enterprise drum. The Social Enterprise Mark will be launched, with big promises about how it will help social enterprise to break through into mainstream British life.
But will we pass the green salad test and live up to our hype?
It's always interesting to confront people with their worst nightmare early on a Saturday morning.
I ran a marketing workshop on Saturday on behalf of the Soil Association, for a group of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects. I'm a big fan of the CSA approach - the main idea being that local people share some of the risk with the grower by paying up front, in return for a regular share of the harvest over that year. I was a member of a CSA at Swillington Farm - and they've also recently set up a CSA arrangement (to rear a pig) with Salvo's - a local Italian restaurant which you may recently have seen on Gordon Ramsey's F Word. There are plenty more businesses which have adopted the model - including a Community Supported Bakery which I wrote about here.
The marketing workshop was themed around the title - Grow it - and they might not come. This in turn was inspired by the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams - in which rookie farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice which tells him to build a baseball pitch in his field. The voice tells him "If you build it, he will come" - and sure enough the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players turn up to play on his field.
As you can imagine people thought Ray was nuts. People who want to set up CSAs sometimes meet with a similar response. Getting people to pay up front to buy veg from you - when all that currently exists is a sketch of your planting plan and a seed catalogue - can be a challenge. That's where an effective marketing plan can help.
I talk about marketing as building relationships with customers. This concept sits well with CSAs. You need to build relationships if people are to trust that you will grow food for them. I take people through my step-by-step plan - which requires you to think carefully about your business - and in particular your customers - but doesn't require you to have any formal marketing background.
During the workshop we split into groups and each group creates a plan - using an innovation which, even if I say so myself, I'm very proud of - upcycled wallpaper - used in place of flipchart paper. £2 spent in Oxfam has to be better than £10 spent in Staples, surely?
Aside from the eco-benefits (which won me early greenie points with my organic audience), I'm a big believer in thinking sideways along a page, rather than down a page. There is something about a portrait flipchart which makes you anxious - you get to the bottom of a page and you start losing the will to live - because the stuff at the bottom feels weighed down by what's gone before (and you're now kneeling on the floor, writing like a four year old). You're also wondering whether to squeeze a few more words on - or start a new page. Whereas, with a roll of Upcycled Wallpaper Flipchart TM you can keep on writing - and keep referring back, drawing lines where there are connections, etc etc.
The risk I take with this workshop is that I spend very little time talking about the things that some people expect me to talk about. Some people want clear guidance - a top ten of the best ways to market your business - that kind of thing. I don't believe in that stuff. As my Iced Tea slide suggests, what works in one place doesn't necessarily work in another. That's why I talk people through what they need to think about - so that they can then make their best judgement about what it's best to do. That way, you also start thinking about ways to market your business which don't cost a great deal of money.
My four year old son was a bit confused on Saturday morning, given that I was going to work. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was running a workshop.
"Is it like Santa's workshop?" he asked.
"Son", I said, "Today I will give people a gift greater than any that Santa could give. A do-able marketing plan." He looked at me a bit confused, and carried on eating his breakfast.
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