What the Iraq War can teach you about strategic planning

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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…..

The Big Vote…

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…was, of course, on which photos were going to win the Social Enterprise Day photo competition. Rarely has an electoral college vote been better used inside the Coalition…..

….or was it about which CAN founder gave the best speech at their 10th anniversary (well done to all at CAN by the way: particularly enjoyed the London Gay Men's Chorus singing Stand By Your Man; a fixture at all social enterprise events next year I hope?)….

OK, just kidding. Obviously, it's all about Obama today. Particularly with our next door neighbours Operation Black Vote having the biggest and best Obama party in town: what a shot in the arm for their work, as well. Amazing.

I'm off doing interviews for Ashoka UK for their second round of Fellows the next couple of days, so not much blog-time. So I'll just link to this in the interim, which was well worth being awake at 5.30am for.

– Barack Obama victory speech (17 mins / BBC website)

Monday round-up: Observer, organisations, opinion, Obama

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Obama
Round-up of recent news, views, links and opinions; at the start of the week for a change….

– Interesting article by Simon Caulkin in the Observer on EAGA, a partnership that works on fuel poverty and green service: Hot prospects for a company with a conscience:

"The company could be a poster-child for post-crunch capitalism, the
embodiment of Peter Drucker's definition of the socially responsible
business, turning 'a social problem into economic opportunity and
economic benefit, into productive capacity, into human competence, into
well-paid jobs, and into wealth'."

– More on the SROI vs. social auditing brouhaha, in New Sector magazine. Although there are many similarities as well as differences of emphasis. As Jeremy Nicholls put it, the aim should be to "keep credible, keep practical"

– Good overview report of the Social Enterprise World Forum

– This is an interesting discussion (on something called Social Velocity: nice!) here on scaling and communication, focusing on the US example organisation, FORGE…

– ….which also gets a mention in this post on clear, honest communication in the field of social entrepreneurship

– Pamela Hartigan, who co-wrote The Power of Unreasonable People, is writing a 5 part blog on Harvard's Center for Public Leadership on social entrepreneurship

– Am also a fan, US-wise, of Kevin Jones, and he has an article in Stanford Social Innovation Review laying out the landscape of social capital on the back of SoCap08

– Free photocopying for charity? What's not to love?

– Can social entrepreneurs really have work-life balance and succeed? Social Enterprise Ambassador Craig Dearden-Phillips thinks not

– Back in 2004, in my previous job, TheyWorkForYou made the shortlist of an award I was running. MySociety, the organisation behind that site (and many others), recently celebrated its 5th birthday. David Wilcox has a good overview here, whilst founder Tom Steinberg looks to the future here

– We were also delighted to hear SSE Fellow Amanda Roberts on Radio Five Live Breakfast this morning, standing up to the smug-tastic Nicky Campbell about why her organisation's therapeutic services were right for the children of Lambeth; I can't find it in the 3 hours of Listen Again (!), but I can point you to her website: Bud Umbrella

– And finally, looking ahead to the big event of tomorrow which is of course…..CAN's 10th Birthday, joining us in reaching a decade in age! Congrats to all current and previous staff involved.

Oh, OK, here's a post for the Obama fans amongst you:
Barack Obama and the Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship

Enjoy the late night coverage…………..

Statistics, damn statistics…and lies

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I mentioned in my review of Made to Stick (incidentally, they have a website about it here) the other day about statistics giving credibility, but often inducing glazed eyes and heavy eyelids. But, in the broader area of evaluation and measurement, they are incredibly important in this sector.

I had a great conversation with Steve Lawrence (founder of Work Ventures in Australia) at the SSE residential recently about the SSE evaluation, and how we can seek to extend and improve upon that work. You can find and download a full 100+ page copy of the report in the Outcomes and Impact section of the main website…and an exec summary version as well. One challenge we talked about was how much of the nuance and detail you lose when boiling this stuff down to headlines. A few times, Steve mentioned different things he was interested in, only for me to say that some of them were in the 100+ page version, but not the shorter exec summary; or had been in an earlier version and then cut. I'd love everyone to read that full report, as it gives such a rounded view of SSE programmes and their various outcomes. It also has more on the evaluation process, such as how we tried to provide incentives / anonymous responses (in order to get a good cross-section of participants), how we also used the process to empower SSE students and Fellows to use evaluative tools, and so forth. But, ultimately, the highlights are incredibly important organisationally because of people's time, and their need to grasp something swiftly. And simple, concise points do that. Balancing that with the need to give as full and holistic picture as possible is one challenge for those heading up evaluative work. (And, lest we forget, to improve and develop internally as an organisation from that learning).

You can see something of the same debate in the SROI vs. social auditing argument. See this exceprt from the Social Enterprise Magazine article linked to above:

"Where there are impacts which can be easily ‘financialised', like
people moving off benefits into work, by all means use SROI. But there
will always be impacts which are difficult to attribute reasonably in
this way. In these cases how people think and feel is important and
social audit methods will be more appropriate"

Not quite the 'highlights' vs. 'holistic' wrangle, I'm talking about, but it is about that same sense of crunching something down and losing something of the reality and totality of it all. But, as Craig Dearden-Phillips puts it in a typically provocative column, the sector can't rely on anecdotal evidence either:

"For years we have got away with being the sector of great anecdotes.
When asked about the difference we make, we often bang on about our
best-ever success or offer improbable statistics that would do a
Soviet-era government proud ("our two staff provide services for
267,000 people" and so on). In a tougher climate, those who properly
measure and prove impact will thrive while those who bleat that it's
all too difficult will sink."

I agree with this, and make sure we introduce evaluation, impact measurement, outcomes, and all the rest of it to our students while their projects are at an early stage. So much easier to build it in at the start than try and retrospectively collect and analyse….

Having said that, the masters of the twisted statistic remain the retail sector. The current Flora Buttery advert has Gary Rhodes offering crumpets to people around the country: one with Lurpak Spreadable butter on, and one with Flora Buttery on. The whole ad is based around the fact that "more people said they preferred Flora". At the bottom of the screen (as with the classic shampoo ads), the "proof" pops up. In this case, it has 200 people who were asked, of whom 48% preferred Flora…..and 45% preferred Lurpak. With 7% having no opinion. That's 96 people for Flora, 90 for Lurpak and 14 for neither. So, yes, in a one-off exercise conducted by Flora with 200 people, 6 more out of those 200 preferred Flora to another brand. In my humble opinion, that proves absolutely nothing….do another 20 tests with the public, independently, and not conducted by a celebrity chef driving a Flora van with a crumpet on top…and then I might be swayed. (Mis)using statistics like that is why people say things like this:

"Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death" (Hillaire Belloc)

and, more poetically,

"Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment" (Jean Baudrillard)



The Top 5 social entrepreneurship debates…in the world…ever

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Debate
Part of me thinks I should blog about the new £6m Bank of Scotland social entrepreneur awards, announced this weekend in the Times. Obviously all new money and publicity for the movement is welcome…but my excitement lessened slightly on reading that the awards were for 2 organisations and of that £6m, only £600k was actual cash: the rest is loan, admittedly at very friendly rates in this credit crunch age. Is this what we need in the social entrepreneurship world? Possibly, I guess: will be interesting to see. But with CAN's Breakthrough, Impetus Trust, Venture Partnership Foundation, UnLtd Ventures, Ashoka, Schwab, Futurebuilders et al all concentrating on scaling up/recognising a small number of organisations, is this the best use of £600,000 for social entrepreneurship? Let's hope one of the awards goes to a new outstanding organisation that hasn't benefited from similar sources……

So, instead, I thought I'd discuss a post on the (relatively) new Social Entrepreneurship blog on Change.org (US non-profit social networking site), which I've been enjoying of late. Nathaniel Whittemore posted up what he considered the Top 5 Controversies in Social Entrepreneurship. These were as follows:

– Individual vs. collective
– Definition
– Scale
– Symptoms vs. causes
– Non-profit and for-profit relations

Reading those, and thinking of the posts over the last two and half years and 327 posts (oh yes), I thought that was a pretty decent stab at what lies at the root of most debate and argument across the sector. I guess the symptoms vs. causes one (i.e. are social entrepreneurs ever going to achieve systemic change, addressing the causes) is probably one that is less relevant here; the 'philanthrocapitalism' debate has been predominantly held in the US to this point.

My other point would be that some of these contain more than one debate; the definition debate is about social enterprise vs. social entrepreneurship (structures vs people), but also about earned income vs. structure (eg. 50% earned income means you are…), and, further about Ashoka-Schwab-Skoll social entrepreneur vs. UnLtd-SSE social entrepreneur….although the latter is also about heroic individual vs. networked changemaker, and about scale as a criterion of definition.

So, with large hat tip to Nat for the idea, my 5 would be:

– Scale: by which I mean the "can (lots of) social entrepreneur-led organisations in this movement scale and still retain what made them work in the first place?", but also the "do you have to scale to be a social entrepreneur?" question

– Importing private sector practice: slightly different emphasis from Nat here (who discusses the profit imperative), as I think the large issue is the effective and appropriate use of business and private sector practice, be this in venture philanthropy, evaluation, mergers & acquisitions etc

– Definition: in the UK, particularly, this is a social entrepreneurship and social enterprise question; always sounds semantic squabbling, but is much more important than that: ultimately, it's about where resources are most effectively invested to create social change. All the CIC debate etc is about people vs. structure, ultimately….

– Role of individual: puncturing the myth of the 'heroic individual' is a common thing for us, pointing out that successful social entrepreneurs need to inspire, engage, motivate, network and build effective teams and supporters; but also pointing out that community groups don't spring out of the ether as a fully-formed group…there is always an individual who is the catalyst or spark-plug

– Public service delivery: again, more UK-specific, I think, but you can't move for conversations and debates about whether social enterprise should be responding to the public service delivery agenda (see today's slightly terrifying headline: "Let social enterprises run the NHS") or whether, seeing as they are also meant to be entrepreneurship, innovation and risk, they should in fact be meeting needs NOT being met by public services; not to mention the independence from government, reliance on funding issues…..

So what do you reckon….have I missed an enormous elephant in the social entrepreneurship room?