Demos, Orange and Working Progress

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DemosIt’s not often I find myself at the same event as Digby Jones, Director General of the CBI, but such was the case this morning at the launch of the Orange-sponsored Demos report, Working Progress, part of their Organisational Literacy programme. The research focuses on how young people and organisations (workplaces) can be reconnected, arguing that, currently, there is a significant and damaging disconnect between them.

While some of the findings might not seem revelatory to those working in learning and people development, there are some interesting findings and recommendations that are relevant to both the support and training for social entrepreneurs (who are often future employers and/or employees) and to the importance of values-led business in the 21st century.

– 88% of British employees think it is important that the organisation they work for is committed to living its values; only 45% believe that their employer does

– creativity and innovation are the skills that most business people think will be most important in 2010, followed by flexibility/multitasking, communication (of ideas), and problem-solving

– in 1983, 35% of people judged an organisation primarily by the quality of its products, while 15% judged it by its honesty and integrity; in 2006, the respective figures were 19% (quality product) and 21% (honesty/integrity) [NB – worth noting that profitability rose from 11% to 18% in the same period]

– organisations should recognise work-life balance as a skill (or set of skills) to be taught, and performance against that skill to be monitored as with other areas

– that peer-to-peer support and networks are increasingly important for current and future employees

– the Government should introduce a "skills portfolio" to help capture some of the learning, skills and aptitudes that are often not reflected in traditional qualifications

In social entrepreneurship terms, for example, we can point to our focus on making a practical project the focus/vehicle for learning (achieving those skills that employers want), on our emphasis on peer support and peer-learning networks, on our measurement of work-life balance as a skill that people need, and on the relevance and timeliness of values-led, more-than-profit organisations. The SSE, indeed, features as a case study in the research for its pioneering work with peer-led action learning and mentoring.

Demos/Orange were looking at this very much in terms of young people but, as was pointed out in the discussion, learning now takes place at all ages and in all areas, many of which are outside traditional educational institutions. So there are interesting lessons, perhaps, for learning providers considering how well we are supporting/training people not only to deliver on their own goals and establish their own initiatives, but also how well we are preparing them for the wider world at work.

Judging from this report, and our own experience, the answer would seem to be "pretty well". When one considers that employers will be seeking values-led, flexible, innovative, problem-solving, multitasking individuals, social entrepreneurs should have a rosy future, be they within or without larger organisations.

As for the event, Digby Jones inevitably caused a stir by banging on about numeracy and literacy, the need for efficiency in the public sector, and what the private sector can bring to the public and voluntary sector (without recognising the vice versa); his unanswered question was, with reference to work-life balance, "can we have it all?" The other speakers, including Kevin Steele, chief exec of Enterprise Insight [who had some big, hairy questions as well: What is education for? (discuss the elephant in the room!) and Does education take too long?] and Wes Streeting (VP of NUS), were inevitably somewhat overshadowed but the whole report made for valuable discussion and, at least on one table, pretty heated debate.

Social Innovation Conversations

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Sititlelefttagline
For the MP3-friendly amongst you: Social Innovation Conversations,
a collaboration between the Center for Social Innovation at the
Stanford Graduate
School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of
Business, and the Pittsburgh Social Innovation Accelerator. They’ve
launched with a re-broadcast of some Globeshakers conversations hosted
by Tim Zak, including David Bornstein and Jed Emerson.

It’s a podcasting channel for what they call
"cross-sector and multidisciplinary learning for social change", which you might call "conversations with social entrepreneurs". You
can read their full mission on the site, but it’s basically about dissemination and promotion of social innovations, knowledge, skills and models employed by social entrepreneurs etc. All of which is to be encouraged.

Sign up as suits you, and join the conversation.

Entrepreneurs are born, not made? Second born maybe

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According to US-UK research, our genes determine whether we are more likely to be entrepreneurial / likely to become self-employed. About half of an individual’s propensity to become self-employed is apparently from genetic factors, with the other half being made up of chance events or random meetings (though presumably there are people more likely to seize opportunities and take those chances?).

How did they find this out? By using identical twins as a means of research:

“researchers looked at whether one twin being an entrepreneur increased the chance of their co-twin becoming an entrepreneur.By comparing the difference in similarity rates between
identical and non-identical twins they are able to establish the
importance of genetic and environmental factors. The similarity rate within the identical twins group was
greater than for the non-identical twin group which suggests that genes
are important.”

The professor behind the research, Tim Spector, said that “”The research is important for business schools and
employers who in the future could identify ways of selecting those who
were most likely to succeed.” The SSE already recruits on the basis of entrepreneurial characteristics, personal qualities, life experience and ‘knowing the market’ (aka being engaged with/understanding the community they are golden goose falsas aiming to serve), so perhaps we are heading this way already. DNA testing probably a little way off, though….

Oh, and lest we forget, if you are a second-born, you might be more likely to be a better entrepreneur: check out this article which interviews Ben Dattner, who has a doctorate in organisational and industrial  psychology. Snippet:

“Second-borns have a lot of the classic entrepreneur personality traits: they’re creative, risk-taking, flexible, and more likely to embrace new paradigms than first-borns are. They’re also more relationship-focused, more concerned about fairness and justice, less academic and more interested in the international scene than their older siblings”

Scottish social enterprise news

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The world of social enterprise and entrepreneurship in Scotland is covered so authoritatively, and with such panache, by Laurence DiMarco of Senscot (his Friday e-mail bulletin is often  a refreshing, personal update), that it hardly seems worth treading on the same ground. But, nevertheless, a couple of interesting pieces of news:

– Kibble Care have released a DVD training tool, entitled "Social Enterprise – Working Across Scotland" which is being delivered free, no less, to Scottish social enterprises and entrepreneurs

– [c/o Senscot] Gordon Brown is going to launch the Social Enterprises in Fife Directory at Brag Enterprises on June 23rd 2006, hosted by the Fife Social Enterprise Network. The SSE in Fife is also based at Brag, along with several Fellows, so I’m sure they will be in attendance too.

And news from further afield: the poster boy of Phillipine social enterprise, Illac Diaz

Can big business still be ethical?

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Interesting piece in the Guardian about whether ethical businesses can maintain their values and ethos when taken over by a large multinational (i.e. BodyShop and Loreal, Green & Blacks and Cadbury’s). The article, called When big business bites uses Ethical Consumer‘s ratings to argue that ethical credentials can be lost in a global behemoth that encompasses so many different strands, investments, stakeholders and so on. So Body Shop gets a low ‘ethiscore’ not only because it is part of a massive multinational and so forth, but also because Nestle own 26% of it (with all the baggage that brings).

The true test must be in the longer term: can these smaller businesses wield influence and clout from within that can change the culture of the organisations they find themselves in? Probably too early to say. And there should be questions that aren’t framed in simplistic ways: is it better for Green & Blacks to remain small (and beautiful?) or to expand to the point where new organic cocoa and fairtrade plantations are being demanded….already, their Maya Gold bar (the only one in their range that is fairtrade) is struggling to find enough organic/fairtrade beans, at least according to the Cadbury’s guy on Radio 5’s Business programme last weekend.

What is interesting is the convergence that the article ignores. It sees the world in terms of multinational corporates (big, bad and unethical) and small ethical businesses (small, lovely and social). But that is a world that is becoming increasingly blurred, as those more forward thinking organisations are not approaching CSR from a hand-outs/green-wash point of view, but from an "integral to our future" point of view. Unilever, for example, have done work with the Marine Stewardship Council, the recent You Buy U Give scheme for Sport Relief, and Ben & Jerry UK‘s impressive range of social/environmental activities. Not enough for them to be called a social enterprise, but more substantial than the ‘charity of the year’ stuff one sees elsewhere.

And can there ever be a multinational ethical business or social enterprise? Or will scale always end up compromising (or diluting) values, approach and ethical credentials? At least it seems that in the future we will get the chance to find out.