Friday round-up: Newman, NCVO, NVQs and Neuroscience

Swift Friday round-up of all things socially entrepreneurial and enteprising:

- Hot on the heels of Liam Black leaving Fifteen (see previous post / here), another leading CEO of the sector, Penny Newman, has announced she is leaving CafeDirect and is, 'open to offers'. Form an orderly queue. We're yet to hear whether her leaving do will feature as many Brazilian dancers as Mr Black's....

- OTS launches its Grassroots Grants programme, being administered by the Community Development Foundation, who are now seeking local partners. It's an interesting scheme (matching philanthropist money to create endowments etc) and badly needed given the dearth of early-stage, grassroots funding; read Phil Hope speaking about it here

- More on John Elkington and Pamel Hartigan's book, The Power of Unreasonable People, on Social Edge

- The piece above talks a fair bit about failure in this context, and this is a good article in the New York Times about failure and its relationship to (successful) entrepreneurship of all types.  Why is failure not (always) a bad thing? "Failure underscores the need to take chances...Success can breed complacency...and Failure can force you to rethink every assumption".

- NCVO have launched a new third sector jobs site: NCVO JobShop 

- I love a bargain, and I love buy one get one free (the BOGOF staple), but I never thought it would apply to laptops. And now to houses. Is this some sort of embedded giving? CSR? Philanthropy? Something else entirely? Do we care as long as it works?

- Muhammad Yunus has a new book out, called "Creating A World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism", promoting his concept of social business, a kind of reasoned, philanthropic, patient investment model.

- 75 tips on becoming a better networker. Particularly enjoyed no. 12: "Walk like you know where you're going". True in life as well as networking...

- Enjoyed this post by Mike Chitty about  learning / development. He quotes a manager he's working with, who said "All of our managers have been through the NVQ level 3 in Management - but they are still unable or unwilling to recognise and manage under-performers" Mike goes on to add comment that seems spot-on to me:

"This shows the dangers of pursuing qualifications - rather than pursuing performance. We seem to be trapped in a public policy for vocational education and training that puts qualifications above practice. We are getting a more qualified workforce - but not necessarily a more able one."

- A bit of light relief (ok, not) in the form of this article, the Neuroscience of Leadership, which is more interesting than it sounds: basically discussing how our growing understanding of the brain and cognitive functions can help us manage and lead organisations better.

- An international database of eco-labels to help the consumer navigate their way through the chaos...

- Harvard Business School on "Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector" which is very good, methinks.

- For those in the health sector, Entreprenurses is likely to become a good and useful resource, if a terrible neologism. Dave Dawes speaks sense on this stuff.

- And finally, in honour of yesterday, a cartoon from Hugh at Gaping Void (click to open up):