PEOPLE ON PURPOSE - GRAHAM ALLCOTT

GRAHAM ALLCOTT

Graham Allcott is a social entrepreneur, consultant and trainer, specialising in youth engagement, volunteering and voluntary sector issues.  He became one of the youngest leaders in the charity sector when he was appointed Chief Executive of the national charity, Student Volunteering England at the age of 25: a post he held for three years.  Graham currently divides his time between Fruitful Consulting and time management specialists Think Productive, and in his spare time is putting the finishing touches on his first book “How to be a Productivity Ninja”.

Why do you do the job you do?

A happy accident.  I spent the first few years of my career in the charity and social enterprise worlds.  I’d summarise my first few years as “good at leadership, rubbish at doing”.  So I began working on my own productivity, reading books and blogs, experimenting with what made me productive or unproductive.  Then I kind of fell into teaching it to people and realised it was a bit of a calling.  So I followed my hunch, set up a training business just as the recession hit (!) and thankfully I’m still here 3 years later, with a great team of people around it now too.

What are you most proud of?

I’m proud of lots of the things I’ve done over the years, but right now, I’d have to say my book, “How to be a Productivity Ninja”.  Writing is hard work, especially alongside running a growing business.  It’s been a tough couple of years but I’m really proud of this book and as I write this, I can’t wait to unleash it on the world in a couple of months’ time!

 

What keeps you awake at night?

My cat.  She goes a bit crazy at night.

What were you doing 5  years ago?

I was CEO of a small national charity called Student Volunteering England.  I got that job when I was 25, which I still think is ridiculous, but it taught me a lot. 

What do you expect to be doing in 5 years' time?

I genuinely don’t know.  In my twenties I always used to have a 5 year plan, but these days I tend to wait and see what opportunities come along.  I’m still really happy doing what I’m doing with Think Productive, but in the longer term I’d maybe go part-time on that and fill a couple of days a week with a new social enterprise project.  A have a few ideas for things that I daydream about every now and then.

If you were Prime Minister for the day, what would you do? 

Wow.  I think first I’d see if I could invent a time machine in a day so that I had more than a day!  There’s so much to do isn’t there?!  I’m really passionate about social mobility and the potential for education to empower kids from less well off backgrounds.  I was a free school meals grammar school kid that ended up at a good uni... and all for free.  I know there are thousands just like me who weren’t so lucky.  However you argue the new system, debt is scarier to a kid from a council estate than to a kid from Eton.  Personally, I think we need LESS uni places, but paid for out of the taxes of, er, all the people who got their university education for free themselves!  That way, we’d have the best chance of ensuring we get the brightest and the best at uni, not the wealthiest.  Surely that’s also best for pushing forward our society.  Tragic that so many believe that view is so radical in 2012.

Why are you involved with On Purpose? 

I met Tom and he asked me if I’d offer some pro bono training to the group.  It’s always such a pleasure to be surrounded my like-minded people all doing such interesting things.  I’m secretly jealous I’m not one of the group!


Think Productive provide workshops on email etiquette and facilitation training that add value to your bottom line, by saving time, reducing stress and increasing productivity. Visit their site to find out more.

First Impressions Are Made to Last

Ever wondered what it would be like to make the leap from the commercial world into social enterprise? One of On Purpose's 2012 Associates, Isabelle de Morlhon shares her thoughts on Shaftesbury Partnership's blog about what she has learnt in her few first weeks of her placement there.

First impressions are made to last…and I hope they will. After 7 years working in brand management I joined the social sector in January as an associate at OnPurpose, the 1-year leadership programme for professionals starting their career in social enterprise. I am spending the first half of the year applying my business and marketing skills to support social innovation at the Shaftesbury Partnership.

Three early observations from a newbie to the social sphere:

The diversity and passion of people is fascinating.

Here at SP I am surrounded by a talented team covering a huge range of experiences (teacher, nurse, entrepreneur, business owner, public sector senior manager, banker and more…), with an impressive combined expertise. What brings everyone together despite these very different profiles and styles are shared values, a common purpose, and a passion for innovating and creating social change. 

Bridges between the business world and the social sector are strengthening.

Going well beyond the out-dated, one-way “cheque-writing” approach there is now a well-spread recognition of the benefits for both worlds to work together. This collaboration is taking various forms - partnerships, sharing business expertise or employee time, developing appropriate commercial products and services... Business collaboration is particularly key for the Shaftesbury Partnership as a vehicle for scaling our ventures and accelerating social impact.

There has never been a time with more opportunities for the social sector to grow and scale the impact it’s already proven to have.

The economic crisis has uncovered the limits of capitalism as we knew it, and is opening the space to develop and innovate with new models. Risk-takers who accept the possibility of failure will be the ones creating successful social innovation in this incredibly fast-changing environment.  

Passionate people, bridges between business and social sector and a time of opportunities are very compelling reasons for young professionals to move their careers to the social space. I am glad to be part of it!

Author: 

Isabelle de Morlhon

People On Purpose

This is the first in a new series of regular blogs, profiling social sector leaders.  Do let us know if there is anyone you would like to see profiled in People On Purpose!

TOM RIPPIN

Tom Rippin founded On Purpose in 2009 after a career spanning such prominent organisations like Comic Relief, McKinsey & Company and (RED).  Tom is also the Chairman of Spice, a time banking social enterprise.  On any given day, Tom can be seen cycling around London meeting up with interested supporters, giving talks, providing training and supporting the growing number of On Purpose Fellows and Associates.

1. Why do you do the job you do?

Because I believe that social enterprise will change the way that society thinks about and does business and because I love working with smart, motivated people. I also believe that getting the best people to work in social enterprise is the best way to help social enterprise fulfill its promise. 

2. What are you most proud of?

The Associates that On Purpose has attracted and the fact that they are not only motivated, interested/ing but also genuinely nice people!

3. What keeps you awake at night?

Trying to remember not to drop any balls - of which there are many. Luckily I have recently been throwing many of them at my new colleague Kate Richardson

4. What were you doing 5 years ago?

I was just leaving management consultancy, looking for places where I could do work that used commercial dynamics for good. I was lucky to end up first at Comic Relief!

5. What do you expect to be doing in 5 years' time?

With any luck, On Purpose might have done itself out of a job... if not, we're planning that On Purpose will be working across the UK and internationally too - I'm told Barbados is nice.

6. If you were Prime Minister for the day, what would you do? 

I'd get every FTSE100 CEO to swap jobs for a day with their counterpart from the 100 most exciting social enterprises in the UK.

7. Why are you involved with On Purpose? 

Editor’s note: Tom is the founder of On Purpose and needless to say has 101 reasons (maybe more) to stay involved. 

Stuck in a corner: Fair Finance, exclusion and a room full of women

On becoming an On Purpose Associate I made a simple promise to myself; take advantage of each and every opportunity I am presented with.  I see this year as a chance to explore new horizons, take a dip into the unknown, and push the boundaries a little. It was with this new found motivation that I recently attended a Women Advancing Microfinance (WAM) talk by Fair Finance on ‘Addressing Financial Exclusion in the UK and East London’. Such was my enthusiasm for making the most of my On Purpose year, it was only when I found myself as the only male in the room that I realised the talk was in fact part of a women’s networking event. 

I was however invited to stay, and I am happy to say I did as the talk provided a great insight into what it means to be financially excluded in the UK.  In particular, Fair Finance’s talk highlighted for me two significant issues in our society - financial exclusion and over-inclusion.

Financially excluded individuals are those who simply cannot get ‘into the system’. They don’t have a utility bill, they don’t have any assets, they don’t have a financial history, and as a result they don’t have a credit score.  These people are usually exploited by payday loan providers and credit merchants, taking advantage of the current economic environment and charging them interest anywhere from 300 to 4,000% for loans.  Fair Finance supports these financially excluded individuals by working closely with them to provide personal and microcredit loans at much more manageable rates.

The talk also highlighted the problems caused by financial over-inclusion, people having too much access to credit. In November 2011 total UK personal debt stood at £1.45bn, with average household debt amounting to £7,900.  In such circumstances it is clear that a more personalised approach to financial wellbeing is required to help people get back on track.

The WAM event was one in which I could have been excluded myself, by not meeting the most basic of criteria. However, the warm welcome I received reinforced to me the importance of giving everyone, including financially vulnerable people, a second chance.  Fair Finance’s bad debt rate of just 8% reinforces that there are benefits and a growing demand to revolutionise personal finance in the UK.  Perhaps this is a space for greater social enterprise growth?

David Bartram

@DavidBartram100

Financial Instruments On A Mission

During my first week as an On Purpose associate I was lucky enough to be one of the 15 people attending a talk by Paul Cheng of CAF Venturesome on the role of financial intermediaries in the development of a social investment market. This was particularly interesting for me given my previous life as an investment banker.

Paul highlighted the stark contrast between the wide variety of ways that corporates can raise capital and the limited selection of funding mechanisms currently available in the social investment market, largely represented by grants and donations.

During my career I've seen the design of financial instruments driven by a number of factors, unfortunately these are not always for social good. Consider for example the role that complex credit derivatives have played in perpetuating the current debt crisis. Hopefully by ensuring that positive impact is the primary goal of social investment markets we can avoid the pitfalls of the traditional financial system.

On Purpose is in a great position to be part of this exciting field, with associates at Bridges Ventures and Big Society Capital you're sure to hear much more from us on the subject.

The On Purpose 2012 Associates are out of the starting blocks....

Welcome to 2012 - London’s third Olympic year and the third year of On Purpose. And, like the Olympics, On Purpose is getting bigger and better with a record eighteen Associates in this year’s cohort.

For those of you who still don’t know, On Purpose is a one-year leadership development programme which combines two paid six-month work placements in the social enterprise space with weekly training in professional, commercial, social and personal development topics.

I have to admit that I have sometimes been confronted with blank looks when I try to explain On Purpose to others. I think it comes down to the fact that a lot of people are still unfamiliar with the term ‘social enterprise’. However, I like to think that this is a diminishing problem. This week I read YouGov research that showed that a third of people have never heard of social enterprise. My first reaction was that this means that two-thirds of people have heard of social enterprise! Does anyone agree with me that two out of three people ain’t bad?

The 2012 programme kicked off last month with two days of induction (stay tuned for the next blog to learn more about this), led by founder, Tom Rippin, and Programme Manager, Kate Richardson. Day one of induction felt a bit like day one at uni combined with episode one of The Apprentice. I surprised myself by learning the other 17 names almost immediately (see here to learn more about them).

I am now in week 3 of my first placement at the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) and am really excited to get things rolling. The SSE is an established and respected provider of action-learning programmes, and has eight schools in the UK, two in Australia and one in Canada. 2012 is shaping up to be a busy and exciting time, with a new partnership between the SSE and Lloyds Banking Group helping the SSE to reach more entrepreneurs than ever before.

As an On Purpose Associate, I know that my challenge is to have a direct, positive impact and add value at my placement right from the beginning – and I wouldn't have it any other way. The learning curve is steep and will involve me asking my new colleagues at the SSE lots of questions, and so far they have dealt with my queries very patiently. It will also involve me taking advantage of the strong support network that On Purpose builds around us. As well as being able to discuss our placements with our coaches, mentors and buddies, we can, of course, get a second opinion, a third opinion and a seventeenth opinion by talking to each other.

One of the 2011 Associates, Jordyan, said in a previous post on this blog “The other associates are like close colleagues without the competition.” And I feel lucky to be in that position.

One exercise we have been asked to do is write down our goals for the year, and one of mine is to enjoy the year, simple as that. I have a good feeling about that one.

Creating behavioural change

Creating behavioural change is always a difficult task and one that our Associates often have to grapple with in the work they do for their placement organisations.

The topic also come up during our induction training with Charmian Love of Volans. 

Unilever has been doing some interesting work on this. The sustainability targets they have set themselves won't be achieved unless they can inspire widespread change amongst their customers and consumers (never mind the supply chain). Here is a video that describes how they go about it:

Year End Goals

My year of On Purpose is coming to an end. Last week was our last official training session on Friday afternoon. It was an internal meeting, just the 11 Associates alongside the OP team of Tom and Kate. Part of the time was taken by evaluating how well we had achieved the goals we set in the beginning of the year and by setting out our new goals for 2012. Friday’s group setting gave us a chance to individually reflect on the direction we are taking with our careers. How often do I sit down on my own and do such an exercise? Of course it’s not obligatory to “share” with everyone; these are personal goals. But, being surrounded by 10 strangers who have become friends, I found myself glad for the opportunity to ask them to challenge my explanation as to why I have chosen my next path and to ask me to describe the ways in which I will achieve those goals. I don't get too many chances to ask people I respect to challenge my thinking. The other associates are like close colleagues without the competition. They have an insight into me that my friends do not have since we came together for professional reasons. But we also have become friends by sharing experiences such as our weekend retreat to Embercombe in Devon, attendance of social entrepreneurship events, and Friday evening drinks after training. A goal I didn’t set for myself, but now realise I have achieved, is a firm place in a tight network of dedicated SE professionals with whom I can continue to grow alongside professionally. I don’t just have the experiences I have had in the past year to accelerate my career; I have their experiences and contacts as well. There is no Schadenfreude among this group. Only is there a sense of mutual support, where one person’s achievements actually boost everyone else’s chances rather than diminish them. This is a rare trait among colleagues along similar career paths. And, for these relationships alone, I’m grateful to have been an OP Associate for the past year. So, did I meet my goals that I set out in January? 2.5 out of 3 with a bonus it seems. I’m not quite the excel whiz I had planned to be (see a previous post!). But, luckily, I know another associate or two who are.

How Marketing needs to adapt to Social Media

Here's a video we liked that we saw in our training last Fri, shown to us by Adele Barlow who was giving us the basics on all things digital.

More Social Finance

As the Eurozone seems to continually teeter on the brink of collapse, Western governments strain to control budget deficits generated by bailing out failed banks and the stagnant economies left in their wake, there are growing demands for new ways of doing business. The Occupy Wall Street protests have swept the globe, now totalling some 951 cities in 82 countries. Calls for reform are not just coming from the radical left and anarchists; public sentiment for change has been growing worldwide, and this month David Cameron has reiterated the need for reform of "capitalism without a conscience".

As consensus grows on the need for changes in the way businesses are managed, the real question is what needs to change and how can this change be brought about?

Back in March Dominic Barton, MD of McKinsey, expressed his view that “business as usual was not an option”. Top of his list of reforms was to "Fight the tyranny of short-termism". Put simply, the vast majority of major corporations are focused on short-term profits over long-term value.

Breaking this tyranny has much to do with changing the way WE own companies - by WE I mean the 99% in the language of the occupy movement. By McKinsey’s calculations pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and sovereign wealth funds hold $65 trillion, or roughly 35%, of the world’s financial assets. They hold and trade these assets on behalf of the 99%. The culture of investment that these investors have is, in general, the epitome of short-termism. Shares are traded based on quarterly profit targets, basic analysis and PE ratios over the short term. These investors who represent the many often fail to take any active role in the governance of the companies they own, and there is limited interest in the long-term vision or culture of management so long as profit targets are met. And if targets are not hit, there is no challenge to strategy, no block on executive pay: they simply dispose of shares and invest where profit appears easier.

Conversely, the 1% tend to take a very different approach to investment. Warren Buffet, for example, is famed for his active and long-term value-based investment strategy. This is where I see an exciting opportunity in a growing form of more “social” finance, one which offers a more direct route to ownership of growing businesses and, with it, a chance to influence a businesses culture and development.

Crowd funding is a way to raise finance by tapping into a “crowd” or community of people willing to invest smaller amounts of cash in exchange for rewards and a stake in the business. Recently crowd funding has been made much easier by the internet, online micro-payment systems, social networking and more recently by overcoming legal barriers on the marketing of equities.

An enterprise ranging in size from a start-up to an SME can pitch its idea or business opportunity, spread the word to like-minded people or passionate consumers and raise direct investment. The resulting shareholders have a genuine and long-standing interest, and, because the shares are generally not publicly traded, they will inevitably have a more long-term perspective.

This is an exciting time for crowd funding. In the UK the new crowd funding website Crowdcube has just celebrated its first funding request of £1m, the highest amount to date on an online crowd funding site. Crowdcube’s business model is very accessible: there’s no registration fee the site only charges a 5% commission on amounts successfully raised - this is extremely reasonable in comparison to the cost in fees of a typical IPO (c10%).

But sites like Crowdcube are not the only route to crowd funding. Brewdog, an innovative and unorthodox Scottish brewer, recently raised 0.5m in a self-issued online IPO dubbed equity for Punks. This year they are seeking a second tranche of investment, a further 2.1m. Shareholders receive a return on investment through dividends as well as drinks discounts and a sense of ownership of a business close to the heart of passionate beer-drinkers.

The investment mechanism is beneficial to both parties. Investors get access to growing businesses, potentially offering products or services they believe in, opportunities that have previously been restricted to institutional investors and high net worth individuals. There are often additional benefits for investors such as discounts and exclusive access. There’s also the potential for smaller investors to access the Enterprise Investment Scheme tax break for investing in start-up businesses.

The businesses get much needed capital for growth, capital that traditionally would only be available from venture capital. The cost of working with venture capital is often high; a large share of the business and short term focus on growing profits to allow the venture capital partner a lucrative exit via resale or stock market listing. By this point the vision and ethos of the founding entrepreneurs is often lost. Crowd investors bring other benefits, a ready army of advocates keen to promote and support the enterprise, or a wide range of supporters willing to offer skills or experience to support their investment.

It’s still early days for crowd funding so it won’t revolutionise institutional shareholding this quarter, but in the long-term it could play an increasingly important part in business finance and ownership. Firstly, at least some of the 99% get an opportunity to invest small amounts of savings in businesses they believe in – an important step in the right direction towards a culture of empowered share ownership. Secondly, I believe the crowd funding model could lead to the development of new governance relationships; investors being asked to vote on new strategies or product developments, attending online AGMs and crucially really caring about what happens to the business.

If this is a better way of doing business, in the longer term it will be these businesses that flourish. And when they do it will force a wider change.