The case for talent

Sir Ronald Cohen was recently praising, in the Daily Telegraph, the virtues of the innovative social impact bond and predicting the rise of social finance.

Along with it, he emphasises both the importance of attracting the best people to social enterprise and the commitment that many people feel towards this field: 

"Some of the most talented people are being drawn to it [social finance and social enterprise]. We are appealing to peoples' sense of social obligation and of social mission.

"About a fifth of recent Harvard Business School graduates have been drawn to social enterprise type organisations."

The social enterprise field is, of course, already populated with hugely inspirational and talented people. Like all industries though, it will only continue to be as good as the talent it is able to attract, develop and retain. 


Social enterprises need to offer the career prospects, development opportunities and salaries that compete with other top employers, not only during a recession, but also once the big private and public sector guns start hiring again. 


Managing a social enterprise is a difficult undertaking. It requires not only solid commercial skills but also well-honed social sector know-how. Developing leaders who spend significant amounts of time in social enterprise from an early age, who know and can manage the tensions, quirks and intricacies that are unique to these organisations has to be a priority for the sector. 


Neglecting to develop the next generation of talent risks social enterprise delivering on its promise; bringing in the best and brightest minds will mean that innovations like the social impact bond will be but the first steps towards a brighter, fairer and more inclusive economy.

The Art of disruption ....

Earlier on last month we at On Purpose had heard how Michael Morley the chairman of Coutts Bank had an 'epiphany' moment about Social Enterprise when he 'job swapped' for a day with Nigel Kersaw, Head of Big Issue. You can read more about that here. 

I saw this epiphany at first hand last night when Coutts in partnership with Real Business magazine hosted a 'Celebration of New Enterprise'. We were delighted to be invited along and the timing couldn't have been more perfect as this week Real Business published their latest article about On Purpose.

It was a great evening -it's always great to meet new faces and I heard how the recession has pushed innovation and market disruption to the fore - 'the art of disruption' has been favoured thinking during the recession and last nights gathering would recognise that therein lies the strength of an entrepreneurial mind!

But i also heard a really simple truth - Matthew Rock - founder of the Real Business magazine reminded us how it's really not that long ago when it was deemed unnatural for business to be run without social purpose.

You'll see that Tom has just written about 'Conscious Employerism' and reflected on Dragons Den's Doug Richards challenge that we should be counting down the last 100 enterprises that don't have a social focus.

What do you think? Can you see the day that we'll return (as Matthew Rock would hold) to a world where all business is social business?  What disruption will need to be caused first?

Conscious Employerism

The launch of the RBS Social Enterprise 100 Index was a glitzy affair - and rightly so. Lots of awards to high-performing social enterprises around the country in a variety of categories.

Doug Richards, of Dragons' Den and School 4 Startups fame interjected in an interesting way. In his usual engaging and assured way, he called for the Anti SE 100 Index. He looks forward to the days when rather than counting the best social enterprises we are counting down the last 100 enterprises that can afford not to be a social enterprise. The ultimate main-streaming of social enterprise throughout the econonmy.

Whilst this is a vision that I applaud, I also wonder how it is going to happen. Doug's argument seemed to rest, at least implicitly, on consumer power: ultimately, consumers won't buy goods and services that are not delivered by social enterprises. This is a powerful lever and initiatives such as the Social Enterprise Mark are tugging at it with all their strength.

It is worth remembering though that 'conscious consumerism' is not a new phenomenon. Fair Trade, for example, has been with us a long time and is going well - many reports acknowledge that such products are remarkably recession proof. Similarly, campaigning NGOs have for decades been mobilising consumers to boycott this company or that product. In the big picture though, much of this movement is relatively confined in its demographics and so is still relatively niche.

I believe there is another, much overlooked mechanism for changing the way companies operate: employees. Companies don't only respond to their costumers and shareholders, they are also themselves made up of people; interested, ever-more socially motivated and keen to make a difference - not only to the share price but also to the world they live in.

Changing business models, finding disruptive technologies and growing into new markets (such as those at the 'bottom of the pyramid') will occasionally be prompted by consumer pressure; sometimes (as in the case of banning CFCs from fridges) governments can legislate; sometimes new challenger brands such as the Body Shop help change an industry. In the end though, I believe that most innovation will come because employees are excited by more than creating shareholder value. They want to create new social business models and so find more fulfilment on what they do - those companies who cannot find ways of accommodating this will, ultimately, lose talent and fare poorly. Those who can embrace it will not only attract and retain the most exciting talent but also launch the most resilient and innovative offerings.

Here's to 'conscious employerism'!

Problem solving and the pyramid principle

We've been having first class training on problem solving at On Purpose with trainers from the top management consultancies.

To date, we have learnt how to: (1) define a problem; (2), structure it so as to break it down into smaller problems you can tackle; (3) identify the analysis we need to develop in order to solve the problems; and finally (4) develop a presentation to communicate what is relevant to the specific audience.

(1)    Defining a problem in a structured framework allows us to have a clear idea about what we want to achieve. The outcome is a full written statement of the problem + information on its context and other important matters.

(2)    Once you have this question, the challenge is to identify the necessary analyses needed to solve the problem. That’s when we were introduced to one of our the core knowledge from this programme: how to break down a problem into its constituent parts, using issue trees. It is a simple concept of hierarchy that forces you to always think which is the most effective and efficient way to solve a problem.
If you are confused about this concept don’t give up. We have learnt that it is just a question of practicing, practicing and more practicing. At its most simple, you have to bear in mind that the ultimate question to solve is at the top of the hierarchy. All the analyses that you need have to answer a part of that overall question. If you follow this framework you will  only perform relevant and necessary analyses and so avoid “boiling the ocean”.

(3)    What next? More information does not necessarily mean more insight and may not help you communicate your solution. One way to communicate your solution effectively is to use the pyramid principle (http://www.barbaraminto.com/). We have learnt the last piece of the puzzle, which is how to write a storyline.  One simple way of thinking about this is always to start your presentations with the chapter headings/agenda items and then filling in the detail as a second step, rather than beginning at the start and carrying on  till you reach the end. 

You get to see the final product before even start working on it. Very helpful technique!

I hope you'll enjoy thinking about these things as much as I did. For those of you who want to check examples before writing a presentation why not having a look at: http://www.slideshare.net/ where there are hundreds of examples of slide presentations.

Good luck!

Simone

Inspiring in every direction...

I've just returned from a fantastic evening at the First Women Awards  it's an evening recognising trailblazing women in business and the public services - it was a stunning evening and the buzz-word of the evening was 'talent'.
We at On Purpose are all about talent, we talk about the importance and value of talent and as you know we focus on leadership talent in the Social Enterprise space - so it was a real pleasure to get dressed up and listen to other people talk about talent in different ways! This evening's awards were recognising women so there was much talk of breaking through the glass ceiling and how values and styles can be so different between men and women.  Did you know that in Norway they recently committed to increasing the number of women at Board levels across all organisations to 40% and they've already achieved 30%? A stunning shift - but whilst we in the UK are still lagging behind - if this evening's room full of women are anything to go by we will definitely catch up!

We're often asked why our 2010 Associates are all women. And it's an easy question to answer - whilst the applications were 49/51% split - and there were male counterparts right through to the second interviews - at the end of the day the best of the bunch were all women.

So i've spent the evening hearing of tales of global success - some started out hatched around the table - in the case of Specsavers it was a table tennis table in a spare room in 1984 - now Mary Perkins heads up a global empire of around 1400 stores and over 26,000 staff. Others are where women entered into established industries and are now global leaders where women 'rarely go' - i was particularly touched (maybe it's the engineer in me) by Angela Strank who entered BP in 1982 as the first female geologist and now heads up their Global Technology arm (in her time she's delivered roles such as opening up a market in Angola).

I'll write more of some of the other winners soon - but for now - i look forward to being at the 'First Women Awards' the year ,in the not too distant future, when there is more talk of social business and one of our On Purpose alumni is receiving an Award (to the roars of joy of the others that will be at the table supporting her!).

Jobs Jobs Jobs Jobs Jobs....

We've added some space just on the Right Hand Side of the screen to keep you in the loop with any interesting jobs that we hear about ....

Don't forget to bookmark our blog and keep an eye on it!

The Lost Generation : Part ii

The Lost Generation video  (which you can find here) has quite rightly had a big impact on a lot of you!

Well, with great thanks to our friend John Caswell who's blog is always thought provoking and causes good discussion amongst us here at On Purpose (which you can find here) we'd like to share this with you. 

Dear Old People Who Run The World.

1. My generation would like to break up with you. Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world - and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.
2. You wanted big, fat, lazy “business.” We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce. You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy - everywhere.
3. You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people - not just banks. You wanted shareholder value - built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.
4. You wanted an invisible hand - it became a digital hand. Today’s markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.
5. You wanted growth - faster. We want to slow down - so we can become better.
6. You didn’t care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats. You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.
7. You wanted more money, credit and leverage - to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.
8. You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We’re not for sale: we’re learning to once again do what is meaningful.

You can find the original post here with the vast debate in the comments afterwards -

Friends of On Purpose - what do you think?  Does it strike a chord with you or incite you? 

We'll be talking more of our thoughts on 'Millenial Generation' / 'Generation M'  soon....

Social Enterprise - commitment from the Queen.

Last month the Queen placed Social Enterprise at the heart of Parliaments delivery in the next session.  There's been much comment on the contents of the speech - some say that as the content wasn't vast and complex the accountability is therefore stronger. What do you think? 

We at On Purpose are excited to hear that Social Enterprises are being valued at the highest levels of Government and the commitment during this Parliamentary session is to support the growth of social businesses. We're looking forward to see how the government will deliver on this commitment. Needless to say, we believe that if the social enterprise and business arena is to deliver, it needs to continue to attract high calibre talent who will not only create social enterprises, but also help them scale. 

What the Queen said about social enterprise....

"The role of social enterprises, charities and the co-operatives in our public services will be enhanced. The cost of bureaucracy and the number of public bodies will be reduced."


By the way, we also think that social enterprises aspire to more than simply reducing the cost of government bureaucracy, but that will be up to us in the sector to prove.

The full speech can be read here.

The Lost Generation

We think that this is pretty close to brilliant...
A palindrome can be read the same way in either direction - however this video reads exactly the opposite in each direction - opposite in reading and meaning all at once.
It was submitted into a contest titled 'U @ 50' by a 20 year old and won second place.

We at On Purpose wonder what came in first as we think this is clever, simple and stunningly executed - and do you think the 1st place piece has had over 13million hits?

Complementary Currencies and Co-Production

That Friday afternoon, my energy was definitely waning after a long week spent with friends from overseas.  I was hoping to just make it through the afternoon, and as soon as Becky Booth began explaining the history of complementary currencies, I was hooked and wide awake!  It was one of the most interesting presentations we have had, outlining the incredible innovation and outside-the-box thinking that is possible in terms of developing alternative economic systems – something that is more and more necessary in light of recent financial crises!  Becky is the Programmes Director and co-founder of Spice, a social enterprise that designs and develops community credit systems which encourage active participation and engagement of community members.

What the heck does all this mean, exactly?  Well, complementary currencies have arisen throughout history usually in response to the collapse of conventional currencies, or to address specific problems in society.  Becky gave us an example of one currency started by the local government in Curitiba, Brazil, which was used both to promote recycling and reduce local unemployment.  People received ‘tokens’ for bringing in a bag of recycling.  This token was then good for one bus ride into town, where there were more jobs.

Another example is the Brixton pound (http://brixtonpound.org/).  The purpose of this currency is to promote local consumption by Brixton (an eclectic area in South-East London) community members, and to encourage the currency to circulate locally thus improving the local economy.  This pound can only be spent at participating local shops, and can be gotten and traded in one-for-one for the British pound sterling £.

Along the same lines, co-production is the concept of a non-market economy, or a ‘core’ economy, in which people provide services to each other with no money exchanging hands.  Co-production is an approach that re-invigorates and rebuilds the core economy and realises its potential as key to the sustainable and effective delivery of public services.  Community currencies are tools that can help embedd co-production within services and communities.  This system has been gaining a lot of attention of late, especially in light of the Tory’s ‘Big Society’ manifesto in which citizens are expected to self-manage and organize to tackle society’s problems.

Under this broad umbrella, Spice works with organisations and communities to design and implement person-to-agency time credit systems that support the engagement of the many in service delivery.  In this form, people receive credits for volunteering hours, and may then spend these time credits at participating local shops and services.  The fundamental quality of this system is that it does not replace and thus undermine the traditional cash-for-goods system, but rather complements it.  This system, known as timebanking, is another tool that helps to embedd co-production within communities.

Ok, enough for now, but it’s hard to stop writing about something so interesting!  Find out more at http://justaddspice.org/