Death, sex and doughnuts (learning from experience)

Posted on by

One of the best things about travelling overseas for work (and there are plenty of downsides too) is the people you end up meeting. Often, strangely, this is not the people in the country you are visiting, but the people coming out from the UK for the same event. Indeed, some of my best UK networking has happened overseas.

The same was true on the recent trip to China, where I was part of a delegation including people from the Young Foundation, NCVO's Compact Team, the Office of the Third Sector (including Anne McGuire, the new government adviser on third sector innovation), the British Council, and the Welsh Assembly. It was fascinating to learn over dinner (and the odd drink) about their various experiences which had led them to this point, which ranged from conducting research on doughnuts (and why they are big sellers in Colombia and Saudi Arabia), reading articles on the sex lives of armadillos, and seeing behind the scenes at crematoria. Not hugely relevant to social entrepreneurship, you might think (and indeed, you might be right) but there is something about freeing up your brain and getting outside experience that brings you back to the organisation with fresh eyes and ideas. And about other people (with equally fresh eyes) asking questions about your work and your organisation from different fields and sectors that challenges and causes you to think anew about your work.

And about death, sex and doughnuts, of course.

Social entrepreneurship in China: lessons from Beijing

Posted on by

I've been in Beijing all this week working on a couple of practical projects and, yesterday, speaking at a Social Innovation and Third Sector conference organised by the British Council and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (or BC and MoCA as I'm learning to call them). There was some really interesting background statistics and information, not least the enormous rise in the registration of non-governmental organisations across the country: hundreds of thousands each year. The discussion of regulation was also fascinating, as new legal structures / processes have come into play, allowing for the creation of private foundations and also for very small local (primarily voluntary) groups to operate without the need for the full regulatory procedure.

Of course, small and local is all relative in this field: one conversation we were having about the importance of a social entrepreneur being connected / engaged with / from the community they are aiming to serve led one government-official to note that some of his neighbourhood leaders might come under that definition….and the neighbourhood they worked with and served? 125,000 people. Whatever one thinks of the Chinese government, they are practically the only route to scaling or replicating any sort of solution across this vast country.

But what inspired me most, given that we are in development with the Fuping Development Institute and the British Council about potentially bringing the SSE methodology to China, was the similarities between the social entrepreneurs and their voicing of the various barriers and challenges they face. There were some great examples and practitioners there: like the entrepreneurs who established Shining Stone Community Action and the 1+1 blind / radio project. In our breakout session (when I was still trying to gauge response to my presentation: always tricky to see how something has been received in translation / with a 10-15 second delay), such practitioners mixed with support agencies, government officials (some of whom were also extraordinarily entrepreneurial: overseeing pilot subsidies / exemptions for NGOs, increasing procurement from the third sector by 300% etc) and business leaders in heated and pretty open discussion.

And the key issues / barriers / challenges? Funding + earned income, personal/business support, government regulation / legal structures (on which people were split between they need to be heavily involved…and they need to get out of the way), connecting with each other to share information…and so on. Sound familiar? Absoutely. And while the UK is further along the line in many of these areas, and has learning and knowledge to transfer (including what hasn't worked), and while the constraints and challenges are different here, there is a huge amount of common ground. And what shone through, as ever, was the passion, dynamism and purpose of these social entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary country.

Catch 22: when big charities trample smaller ones

Posted on by

The third sector, in all its rich variety, needs big organisations and small ones addressing different needs in different ways to improve people's lives. And, as I've often said, I'm not anti-scaling, just anti- the fetishization of scale so that people feel compelled to, rather than choose to / do it when it's appropriate and in line with their personal goals.

But there are times when big charities appear simply not to bother. Rainer and Crime Concern were looking for a new brand when they merged….and they decided on Catch 22. And rewarded their branding agency no doubt handsomely for it. It's already drawn flak for what some feel is a puzzling name to represent their work.

What's angered many in the social enterprise world though (not least at SSE), is that social enterprise ambassador / SSE Fellow / all-round good guy Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa's early stage CIC is called Catch 22. I can't speak for the legal ins and outs, as I don't know enough detail (though it's interesting that this article says that the name cannot be trademarked because it is the name of a book, while the charity's new website has "The names Catch22, Rainer and Crime Concern and their respective logos are trademarks" in its terms and conditions).

What I have heard on the grapevine though is that, when Tokunbo brought his organisation to the attention of the CEO of the new Catch 22, they apparently said that they had known about his organisation but steamed ahead as he was small fry in this world. Appropriately the CEO is also a trustee of the Who Cares? Trust….

Good to see that the values of the organisation are so well represented by their action, hey? Particularly as Tokunbo's organisation also focuses on giving disadvantaged young people a break: who knows what sort of interesting partnership or collaborative deal they might have been able to do with a more thoughtful approach.

Global Entrepreneurship Extravaganza Type Thing

Posted on by

Gew_main
The more observant readers will have noticed that the blog has been relatively quiet the last couple of weeks, for which sincere apologies. It feels like I've barely sat still for a fortnight, as a result of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Social Enterprise Day and all the associated events, travel and 'catching-up-on-work-you-were-meant-to-be-doing-when-at-events-or-travelling'…….

So, a retrospective look at Global Entrepreneurship Week is my first step along the way to clearing an enormous back(b)log:

– Probably the biggest event in the UK was Chain Reaction on the Monday and Tuesday. Check out the site for all the videos, pre- and post- gumph, and ongoing info. I wasn't there, but heard mixed reports: certainly the big name speakers were a coup (two Dragons: the very tall Peter Jones and the very chin-stroky James Caan; Richard Branson, Tim Smit, and Gordon Brown + Peter Mandelson), and I heard that the networking was good. Indeed our CEO found himself between several of the above big names over lunch. Others didn't like the dark nightclub vibe, though, and felt that some of the practical sessions suffered from scheduling. Add your comments below.

– At the same time, I was in Toronto at the Social Entrepreneurship Summit and the Social Finance Forum. I'll blog about it more fully in a day or so, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting the Canadian perspective on this world, and meeting some great people out there pushing the social entrepreneurship agenda.

– on Social Enterprise Day itself, there was a whole host of events and announcements; without being preferential, I'll start with the Social Entrepreneurship Forum in Cardiff, which I also spoke at…and where this support package was announced

– later that evening, I was on the panel for a discussion hosted by Westminster Children's Services in the House of Commons with Andrew Mawson, Chrisanthi Giotis (Social Enterprise Magazine) and Mark Sesnan (Greenwich Leisure), which was interesting; WCS were launching their new Enterprising Childcare Network on the day: check their news page

– Meanwhile, SSE CEO was at the Office of the Third Sector's event in central London, along with several SSE Fellows who are either a) young or b) work with young people. The Minister, Kevin Brennan, hosted the event, and Hazel Blears was also in attendance. OTS were also launching a new SROI project, which us evaluation geeks look forward to, and a range of different action research projects with different departments. Check it all out….

– Elsewhere, UnLtd had a big Social which answered two burning questions: how much taller IS Peter Jones than the whole UnLtd team and, most of all, how many UnLtd staff members does it take to put up a marquee? Answers: a lot and 6 (for an hour and a half). More seriously, I heard the social caused a real stir and had several high profile figures attending during the day…

– CAN launched their new Mezzanine, with funding from Triodos and Charity Bank. Big congrats to Andrew Croft and the whole team for doing this in the current climate: a real success.

– Changemakers, UnLtd et al launched the Big Challenge for young people….looks interesting, and something we'll hear more about as the year goes on, I'm sure, as they build on the success of Big Boost.

– And a couple of health-related things: the Department of Health (with Social Enterprise Coalition) published their guidance on "Right to Request" (that NHS staff can request to run services as a social enterprise). That led me to be sitting opposite the Chief Exec of the NHS on Wednesday morning and I had the simultaneous pleasure of sitting next to Victor Adebowale of Turning Point who made much sense all morning. So I'm sure their handbook, Elements of Success, aimed at people entering this sphere will be full of good advice.

I could, needless to say, go on, but these struck me as the highlights. A final word for a current SSE student, Stephen Gyasi-Kwaw, who pretty much singlehandedly ran Entrepreneurship Week in Ghana! Check his work out at GhanaEnterpriseWeek.com / UnleashingIdeas.org, in Trailblazers magazine [pdf] (along with another SSE student Max Graef) and, drum roll, on Ghanaian TV. Nice one Stephen:

What the Iraq War can teach you about strategic planning

Posted on by

Fiasco
Just as optimism reigns in the US, I've been reading about arguably its darkest days of recent times in the Iraq War. Fiasco by Thomas Ricks (a US journalist on the Washington Post) details the build-up to the war, the invasion, the insurgency, and the reconstruction efforts in fascinating detail. It's not an easy read and has left me, by turns, angry, frustrated, depressed but also uplifted, inspired and amazed. So what relevance to this blog and the world of social entrepreneurs? Well, a couple of things really stood out to me:

1) The first is the emphasis the military in the US places on learning (from mistakes). That may sound a bit bizarre, given that Iraq is largely viewed as a Vietnam repeat and, at least to start with, a case study in how not to carry out a counterinsurgency. Time and again, though, senior military figures give realistic assessments of what is happening / going wrong, and highlight what needs to be done to change this: and much of this is done publicly in workshops / publications / speeches and so forth. This happens throughout the first five years of the war, and the military's ability to be honest with itself, to highlight errors (and successes) and incorporate those into its future operations has been crucial in improving (eventually) its performance there. This doesn't apply to all, of course; some of the most senior figures involved consistently made out that Iraq was in a better state than it was, and continue to delude (or contradict) themselves to this day.

2) The second was about strategic planning. Ricks argues that the failure in Iraq was primarily one of strategic planning (or the lack of therein). Firstly, there was a lack of realism (if only their goals had been SMART) and a lack of consistency: their grounds for going to war were based on a worst-case scenario (i.e. Iraq has loads of WMD, Saddam works with Al-Qaeda, the US is under threat) while their plans for the occupation / reconstruction were based on a best-case scenario (we'll be welcomed as liberators, and the country's in an alright state etc).

Secondly, there was a lack of clarity over the actual objective of the invasion: was it about finding WMDs, was it about removing Saddam, was it about regime change, was it about introducing democracy to Iraq, or to the wider Middle East? (some would add, of course, was it about oil?) and so on; and it shifted as the politics demanded it. This was hugely confusing and bewildering for the troops on the ground, because each of these goals requires different operational activity, different tactics and so on. If you are unclear about your mission, how can you decide how you are going to get there and achieve it? How can you make decisions between where you apply resources (and how many are needed)?

Thirdly, there was a lack of planning in and of itself. Phase IV (the reconstruction) didn't have an overall plan in place when people arrived in Baghdad to start, whereas Phase III (the invasion) had been planned and war-gamed to within an inch of its life. 

Fourthly, the US Army had not done its homework on insurgency and counterinsurgency as a whole (though individual commanders had knowledge of, say, Vietnam or Algeria, and applied it appropriately), nor on experiences of occupation. They only started to bring in this learning 2-3 years in, in a formalised way (via pre-Iraq training etc).

Finally, there was also confused leadership / ownership between the State Department (Rumsfeld et al) and the military in Washington, and between the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Army in Iraq. From Ricks' account, this caused untold problems at every level of operations.

So, lessons from the Iraq disaster?

– do your research (it may not involve Vietnam or Algeria, but is necessary)
– a plan is important (entrepreneurs are prone to action, but a thought-through plan is crucial)
– get clear on your overall objective / vision and ensure it is clear to everyone else involved
– be realistic in your planning, rather than overly pessimistic or optimistic
– be clear about leadership and autonomy over particular areas (and who has the final say over what)
– be open to learning, honest about mistakes and constantly try to improve

Not a bad checklist for a social entrepreneur, or for the new US President to insist on the next time someone suggests a military invasion…..