The School for Social Entrepreneurs

Voice 08: initial thoughts

Am out of office tomorrow, so thought I'd try and capture some initial brief thoughts on the last day and a half at Voice 08 up in Liverpool.

The reception in the evening was great networking, and was fantastic to arrive and see our Liverpool SSE cohort mingling with more familiar and established names and faces. Feedback on Young Voice, which had been happening during the day, was mixed....on the positive side, the sense of dynamism and energy was definitely there (of which more later), and several people I spoke to enjoyed the interaction and chance to engage with a younger audience. On the negative, several people said it lacked a bit of direction, and had occassional mismatches of tone (legal structures and returns on investment to 14 year-olds etc). The Liverpool SSE lot, in their inspirational igloo, were generally positive, and felt it was an innovation definitely worth pursuing.

Gossip from the reception? Two well-known chief executives in the sector asked me to work out the restaurant bill, as they were slightly tipsy (they've obviously progressed through delegation); our hotel bar was still packed at 2.30am, few of whom noticed the earthquake beneath their feet; oh and, of course, all the best conversations and deals took place.

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On the morning, there was a fairly uninspiring plenary session; standout was the video from the Scojo Foundation (genuinely amazing), and possibly Hazel Blears' revelation that she'd serviced a Volvo recently (and signed it off: government accountability and transparency in action); by the magic of video, Gordon Brown announced an extra £27 million to the existing £73 million social investment in health fund and the £10 million risk capital fund that's been bubbling under for a while. The cavernous venue seemed to slightly suck the life out of everyone, and there were also the first teething problems with sound as a squall of feedback punctuated a missive from Baroness Glenys Thornton (outgoing SEC chair).

Things improved for me with a walk around the open exhibition area, visiting the 'igloos' (more igloo-like than I suspected) and stands, and chatting to people from all around the country.  I then listened in on a debate about a social stock exchange which was entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking; having Rod Schwartz (who once stood as an MP) and Jamie Hartzell (who once came 2nd in a debating competition) involved certainly made for good arguments....

Lunch was fine, and more good conversations round the tables: SImon Taylor from Nottinghamshire, Rosemary Kay, who'd been so helpful in setting up the Liverpool SSE, Nigel Lowthrop from Hill Holt Wood and Craig Dearden-Phillips who was pushing his forthcoming book with an admirable gusto and persistence.

Having skipped the next plenary (Francis Maude, Conservative MP + Reed Paget of Belu Water, the only comment about which I heard was that they'd wished they'd heard more from the latter than the former...), I carried on my merry way round the stalls, took part in a laughter workshop at the SSE igloo (which was, as you'd hope, very funny) and avoided the fishing rod flying past my ear. I liked the open-planness of this area, although the venue is so huge, as to overwhelm slightly all the activity, which included a fashion show and musical slots. Some innovations worked particularly well: the grab a placard, call a meeting seemed to be responsible for some of the more vibrant get-togethers (and possibly also for the lower attendance in some of the agenda-d breakout sessions).

Last plenary (a q&a) which I was particularly looking forward to, was again plagued by persistent sound problems....which became incredibly frustrating, not least for the speakers involved. But there was an interesting cross-section of speakers from across the movement, and some encouraging (if beamed-in) words from Phil Hope, Minister for the Third Sector.

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More soon, and links and reaction to coverage elsewhere, but it did feel like a different event to previous years in many ways (in a good way): real efforts to innovate and promote interaction. But some of this was either hamstrung by sound problems, or overwhelmed by the hugeness of the venue: the dynamism on display at some of the stands and sessions seemed, therefore, like occasional sparks, rather than an event taking light.

Continuity and VOICE 08

Having lectured the ambassadors recently about the need for continuity in blogging, this blog has been largely dormant for a week. Mostly because this blog has been hotfooting it around (Cumbria, Belfast, Cornwall and, today, Liverpool) and is therefore succeeding only in collecting information and not filtering it into digestible form.

Today we're off to Voice - will try and blog whilst there, or afterwards.....looks like it could be good. What with our Liverpool SSE in an inspirational igloo and all.

Nonprofit blog exchange: King Jason

Sporadically, I take part in the Nonprofit Blog Exchange Virtual Event, which basically involves nonprofit / third sector blogs writing about each other to create networks and promote the movement more generally. This time I've been allocated King Jason's blog. No, not a little-known monarch operating as a trustee, but a web designer and IT specialist working in the nonprofit sector over in Australia. Called Jason King.

It appears that Jason used to be in London, not unlike myself, and given that SSE is also looking Australia-wards currently, this seemed all too appropriate. Having overseen the redevelopment of SSE's website last year, these types of resources can be invaluable...particularly when there is little resource / capacity / knowledge within a (relatively) small organisation. It's amazing how important IT is to an organisation these days and yet, how often little attention (and money) is given to it. Jason has a good example on his blog of an organisation whose website went down overnight: Quick decisions when a charity's website went walkabout. I've seen even large organisations in our sector be undone by things as simple as domain name renewal, never mind the complications of DNS, MX records and the rest (which I seem to spend half my time sorting out).

But there are some great resources out there, if people get to know about them. Primarily, I'd mention the ICT Knowledgebase in the UK, and Idealware and TechSoup in the US. But it's useful to get a more grassroots-y, personal view of things, which is where blogs like Jason's can come in. Particularly as the format lends itself more to interaction and asking questions. If you're working on a third sector website, or on a redesign, then checking out Jason's post on Give your website a health check is a good start to ensuring accessibility and its status for search engines, for example. And commenters have left some extra tips as well.

Certainly I'd recommend it to anyone with responsibility for their charity or social enterprise's website, especially if they are in Australia, as he'll inevitably be more connected to events and resources in that location. Keeping informed and keeping connected are what it's all about in this sphere, and anything that helps you do that has got to be valuable.

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):

Eco-friendly office printing

Inspired by Greenpeace's new EfficienCity, I have been trying to cut down on my printing in the office; although we do all the stuff you'd expect (double -sided, re-use of one-sided, recycling cartridges), my big problem was with widows and orphans...the unwanted few lines + images which cause you to print another page.

Delightfully, I can recommend GreenPrint World, a free bit of software (endorsed by a whole range of US eco non-profits) which you select as your default printer. It basically introduces on extra stage between pressing Print and the printer starting to whirr; at this stage it offers you the option of cutting off extraneous pages, removing images (great for website ads) and removing unnecessary text. Best of all, it keeps a running total of how many pages you've saved, and how much money this has saved you/your organisation. You can use it in your office if it's not for 'commercial' purposes, and use it at home as well.

Takes a bit of getting used to, but very useable once you get going. Their special font, on the other hand, I'm not quite as sold on....but you can't have everything.

(Un)reason and exuberance: social entrepreneurs

Heading down to Cornwall today, I was aware I had the chance to do a fair bit of reading and listening, so had stocked up on papers, research and podcasts. Flicking through Society Guardian, it was interesting to read about how an area I was heading straight towards (Pool near Redruth) was facing a challenging dilemma about its regeneration. Flicking further on brought me to a piece by John Elkington on his (and Pamela Hartigan's) new book, The Power of Unreasonable People, which I'd commend to you. The title for the book comes from the George Bernard Shaw observation that "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world...[whereas]...the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man". Elkington says that, by this definition, most social entrepreneurs are unreasonable and, indeed, many have been dubbed 'crazy'. Certainly, they tend to challenge held norms and the status quo, be that on a local, regional, national or international level, and can be viewed as mavericks.

But it rather depends on one's view of being unreasonable. The cartoon accompanying the article has a helmeted motorcyclist running over a cat and sticking his fingers up at two passing (and suitably open-mouthed) locals; he has "Hell's Social Entrepreneurs" written on the back of his jacket. Now, that made me chuckle, and is obviously an extreme take on the article, to say the least, but it does demonstrate one side of being 'unreasonable'. What's interesting to me is that many of the successful social entrepreneurs we work with and meet tend to be eminently reasonable: fair, persuasive, equitable, just, sensible and wise. They are backed with evidence of need, proof of impact and make the case for support / investment well. Indeed, to achieve success, they have to bring the community with them and build relationships: stroking the cat, rather than killing it.

I think what Elkington and Hartigan are getting at (I know, I should read the book...and will) is the combination of persistence and passion that makes these people do-ers. As he writes in the article, "A can-do attitude is much more likely to succeed than "don't do", "won't do" or "can't do" mindsets". Whilst on one side of the line, a combination of pragmatism and realism, or what might be called over-reasoning, can lead to caution, status quo and a cynical "won't change" attitude, being the other side of the line, which combines strong motivation, passion and belief with a persistent pragmatism, is what being a social entrepreneur is all about.

As an aside, Rob Greenland has recently posted on his blog about how social entrepreneurship seems to be getting more corporate, blinged up and glam (particularly in London); what he calls "irrational exuberance". I mention this, not only because it connects to the debate on reason (note 'irrational') but also because Rob and several of his commenters remind us how broad this movement is: whilst the Guardian article talks of Davos, Clinton, Gordon Brown and multinationals' interest, Rob reminds us of the grassroots social entrepreneurs battling for social justice and to change their (local) world. There are unreasonable reasonable people in the long tail as well.

Why SMART goals are MT

No matter what type of organisation you work for or lead, the acronym SMART will most likely have crossed your path several times by now. For me, it’s popped up in government tenders (“demonstrate how your deliverables are SMART for your programme of work”), funding applications (“your project outcomes should be SMART”) and several times within SSE, be that operationally or strategically.

So what does it stand for? Well, this is where the problems start, as there are a few variations. The most widely accepted seems to be:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-based

But the A can also be for Attainable, the R can be Relevant or Results-oriented, and the T can also be Tangible, depending on which management bible or “how to act SMART” guide you read.

While investigating effective goal-setting in one-to-ones, I ran across the Manager Tools podcast, and these posts about goal-setting and why SMART is anything but. This made much sense to me, and chimed with some stuff I’d previously thought about this widely-used tool. Their objections include:

1)  You don’t need Specific, because if your goal/target is measurable, it must be specific (enough) anyway. Let’s get rid of the S.

2) Achievable and Realistic are virtually the same. If you make the R Results-oriented, that’s pretty much there in Measurable. And who’s going to set, or be allowed to set by their line manager/colleague, a goal that isn’t Relevant? That’s the R gone.

3) The same applies to Achievable / Attainable. If someone is setting a Measurable goal or objective, and they’re putting a deadline on it (Time-bound), then why would they make it unachievable? It’s in no-one’s interests to do so, either the person who has to achieve the goal, or the line manager who wants the organisation to achieve the goal. And so, A is gone.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us MT, people. And full of clarity and focus. As long as we use Time-based (or Time-bound, which I prefer). Tangible makes little sense to me: a) because how can you touch your goal / achievement and b) because how can you have a goal that isn’t Time-based (i.e. without a deadline)?

So it’s Measurable and Time-based. And if you select a Measurable and Time-based goal, you’ll find it is pretty SMART as well. That’s because MT is the heart of SMART.

Intern-ment

Whilst reading about Derek Conway and the other MPs paying their own family for internships and work experience (even the Third Sector got briefly drawn in), I got thinking about how this related to the use of interns by third sector organisations, particularly in the fields of policy and research. As regular readers of this blog will know, SSE recently had an intern over from St Olaf College in Minnesota, which was pretty much an unqualified success. Using volunteers in this way can clearly make a substantial difference to an organisation like SSE whose capacity is still relatively small, if growing. And (I think) it can be a genuine win-win, with significant personal development, learning and contacts/networks for the intern in question.

The problem, which we have debated a fair bit internally, is how to ensure that this doesn’t run counter to our other principles: namely, the need for diversity in the third sector, the need for entrants and new leaders to come up from the grassroots as well as from the 'grad-routes'. For, inevitably, for someone to take a full-time three-month position at an organisation in (usually) London, unpaid with (possibly) some expenses, they have to have support from elsewhere. This is usually parental, either in the form of direct monetary support, or in the form of free rent & board. Or they are in university full-time and can afford not to work during some of their holidays. Generally (and this is a generalisation), these means of support skew the potential intake to those with a more privileged or well-off background.

So how can we ensure internships go to a real cross-section, to the best people regardless of background? Clearly, bursaries and sponsorship is one way: some universities arrange placements and support expenses, such as identifying cheaper accommodation or directly paying expenses. In Thor’s case, this meant that he could afford to not do his restaurant manager job for a month in the holidays, and come to SSE.

But how to also extend these opportunities further out? Our neighbours Operation Black Vote recently won an award for an interesting shadowing scheme which focuses on political internships / work experience, precisely to avoid the old-boy networks we see continuing in those establishments;  these might provide a useful model; or something along the lines of this scheme, Leaders Together. Maybe there is a case for something similar in the third sector: funded internships that take the burden off the organisation and the individual to find the money to make it possible, and allow for a broader, more diverse intern network. Happy to hear of any such initiatives or ideas: there could be a social enterprise in this....

Podcasts and Pendolinos

For some reason, no matter the amount of forethought and planning, my travel around the UK (to support existing SSEs or to develop new ones) tends to come in batches. So this week was Manchester and Liverpool back-to-back, and next week is Belfast and Cornwall back-to-back. Apart from taking the outstanding pile of reading with me, and the ubiquitous laptop, I tend to load up on relevant podcasts for some (hopefully) interesting listening to pass the time.

Over the last couple of days, whilst leaning with the Virgin Pendolino round corners, I’ve listened to the following:

- Evan Davis’ The Bottom Line: simple, but effective: talking to 3 CEOs each week about their business, and business in general. Recommended

- A few episodes from HBR’s IdeaCast, which varies for me, both in terms of sound quality (phone call interviews are tough to hear) and becoming overwhelmed by its own jargon (“so what we’re talking about here are ways of hedging companythink?”) but there are good bits, including one professor on the CEO within and succession planning (mp3).

- The Times’ Twelve Business Ideas that are Changing the World, which this week featured Stuart Rose of Marks & Spencer talking about their Plan A CSR strategy. OK-ish.

- A couple of episodes from Grassroots Channel from Podnosh, which were both great and put the others largely to shame, considering (I assume) the budget and support is that much smaller.

I listened to the Grassroots episode on lobbying advice in preparation for my workshop on the same subject with social entrepreneurs in Manchester (see my powerpoint here), and it was well produced and structured. Loved the subtitle: “the dark arts demystified” (I got an image of Dumbledore telling Harry Potter, “Right. Now we’ve done spells and broomstick technique, it’s time for the hard stuff: lobbying”). I ended up incorporating elements of it in my session, particularly around calling lobbying another form of persuasion, just planned persuasion of those in (or with) power.

I also enjoyed the session from the launch of the Big Green Challenge, because it didn’t just act as glorified PR (or greenwash) for the event, but questioned it and reflected some dissenting voices. It made for an interesting dialogue and conversation between those involved. The same couldn’t be said, for example, of Stuart Rose’s quasi-lecture which, whilst informative about some of the numbers to do with M&S’s Plan A, suffered from having no challenges to it. It sounded over-prepared and scripted, and I learned little that I didn’t know already; demonstrates how the medium is suited to dialogue and conversation. I was longing for Podnosh’s Nick Booth to chip in with some questions about his private jet, continued overpackaging, shareholder reaction and so forth, but longed in vain. The campaign for the interview, or a better conversation, starts here.