If you know a few 20 somethings, you probably know people frustrated and looking for a job. I see lots of posts on the web about how to write the perfect CV, behave in an interview (if you can get one) and dressing for success. I also see lots more touting ridiculous jobs in multi-level marketing outfits, £500 investments that will make you £1000s, and so on. When things are not going your way, it works to simplify.

What do I mean? Simplify your approach and simplify your thinking.

What is likely the biggest single hurdle for small companies (and big I suppose) to jump in order to hire you? Risk. Taking a risk on you working out. How can you mitigate that risk? By showing them you can perform; try Volunteering for a company you want to work with…make them realise how hard life was before you started helping out around the place. This will make them jump. This put’s the risk with you, but it’s not a great risk if you are gaining something in the process, experience.

We have hired at least 3 volunteers and hourly staff into full-time professional positions. We realised how hard it was before they came to work for us and we didn’t want to go back.

Set the boundaries (time), set the expectations (what you can do), and put yourself out there.

Employers; listen up. This is not a gimmick, it’s a sure fire way to mitigate your risk.

Jobseekers; take action. Volunteer.

I have been thinking alot about design lately. Not in the classical sense, but rather in regards to how social business intersects with physical design. We challenge our projects constantly, to deliver a high quality design, community accessibility and importantly connectivity. And I think much of the best design now and importantly into the future will be focused on the intersection of these elements. Surprisingly, many people think community accessibility requires a low quality folksy atmosphere and connectivity means brochures at the door. The argument, to substantiate this view, follows that high design is not appropriate for engaging with economically challenging areas. I think this viewpoint is myopic.

Interestingly, glamorous malls and mega shops attract much of our communities of interest. Why is it then, that building design at the geographic heart of the community is always pushed or allowed to be so much less? am not advocating shopping malls in the heart of our communities;  I am advocating that design,  in the context of communities and regeneration, move beyond a patronizing assumption around mediocrity as the way to achieve accessibility.

One of the biggest opportunities at the moment is the design of schools. Schools at the heart of the community. Places for engaging everyone. Encouragingly, the leaders in Leeds are thinking about this and attempting to change the school paradigm from that place you learn to the hub of the community. These leaders are opening the doors to afternoon and night time use by the community (novel idea, huh), but they are stopping short of moving the paradigm further. Why can’t a school have a public cafe? Why not shops? Why not art gallery? Why not office units? Doctor’s surgery?

Something is stopping this progress. I am not sure what it is. Maybe it is not one thing, because when I pose the question I get responses like health and safety, commercialism, budgets. I think these are just excuses. Take health and safety; it is OK for kids to spend 5 hours a day unsupervised or otherwise in public malls or parks where surely pedophiles and other miscreants lurk; but it’s not OK to build a public environment in a custodial environment like a school? Furthermore, if we have the school as a hub, wouldn’t learning become part of the culture instead of that thing you do when you are young?

We are attempting to push the envelope on community space and embarking on a school paradigm shift. I am not sure how long it will be before this kind of thinking takes hold, but I am sure that at the intersection of high quality design, accessibility, and connectivity are smart spaces (buildings, parks, or shopfronts) that will lift aspirations and create opportunities for those living in economically challenged areas of the UK.

What a week it has been. Social entrepreneurs are still the negative (white) space in an Escher symmetry drawing.

We saw an investment project go to an investment panel, returning to the panel actually, having achieved all that was asked of it and a bit more for good measure – including reducing the costs by 35%.

We saw Barclays transfer risky debt of £12bn to 40+ former employees in the Cayman Islands, and give them £40m a year to suffer through the management of it using money loaned from Barclays to purchase it from Barclays. (Confused? You should be).

We saw what appears to be a no reply from the investment panel on that investment project I just mentioned.

What are third sector investment panels doing when they give a provisional green light to a project and ask the team to address X number of concerns to release the financing (yes, 80% finance 20% grant)? One would assume they are ensuring the social business invests more time and money to provide a project ready for investment. But that assumption would be wrong.

It appears that the investment panel gives a green light with conditions only to meet again and dismiss the previous requirements, replacing them with vague commentary about project risks and a no.

If the investment panels are set up to invest, why are they acting like anonymous credit committees at a traditional bank? Credit committees at banks are not investors, they are auditors. They don’t like or want risk. They are set up to ensure little or no risk is taken.

I am happy to be rejected. If your project sucks or is inordinately risky, you need to realise your limitations and change the project or find the right source of funding. However, I am not happy to be rejected after I spend significant time and money reaching agreed milestones/targets only to be shunted. Even the high street bank and its anonymous credit committee is happy to lend once you meet their criteria.

If 40+ employees can jump ship from a big bank, secure a £12bn loan to allow them to get paid £40m per year to manage risky assets with virtually no downside (they can default on the loan, but they put up the risky assets as security, ha!) while a social business project cannot attract £2m finance from a source set up to invest in social entrepreneurial activity (which is inherently risky) because they see inevitable risks in the project…..the movement is in big trouble. And this is not really about our rejection, its about a bigger problem with the processes. These processes used to be anonymous, slow and risk adverse. Today, the processes are all those things AND schizophrenic. This makes it fun for the business seeking investment.

Many folks have talked about the need for business-like approaches to social business, the need to act like equity investors with loan finance, and indeed the need to bring real equity investment into the sector. However, when I talk to social businesses across the country and now witnessing it first hand – I see something in stark contrast to the vision being presented at the leadership level. I see nervous committees composed of people unfamiliar with social business (or business for that matter) and scared to death to make mistakes with public money. This behavior is in stark contrast to the principles agreed for the funds by the government and the quango delivering it.

If we are going to move the agenda forward, creating a plethora of triple bottom line companies, we will need sources of debt that get risk. We will need a social investment bank, per the current proposals on the table, that acts like an investment organisation; not a bank. We don’t need more banks, that would be a waste of government money and time. The reason most social enterprises can’t get bank finance is not because they can’t present a competent case; rather it’s because they don’t need a bank – they need an investor. This is the fundamental problem today, we have loads of funds set up to act as surrogate banks when what we need are investors.

If we are going to move on from being the negative (white) space in an Escher drawing; (where you can see us, we appear to be fundamental, but you can’t really grasp us because the positive space dominates); then we must create appropriate investment organisations to drive change forward.

Picture from Official Escher Site where you can buy prints from the master.

http://www.mcescher.com/

]]> http://www.socialcatalyst.co.uk/2009/09/19/social-business-in-escher/feed/ 1 http://www.socialcatalyst.co.uk/2009/08/02/regeneration-rethink/ http://www.socialcatalyst.co.uk/2009/08/02/regeneration-rethink/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:36:51 +0000 hannula http://193.189.74.98/%7Esocialca/?p=4

People have been working to regenerate areas of Britain for decades; most acutely since Thatcher took power. Thatcher came along, with the promise of the free market to make our world better. Reagan more aptly described it as trickle down economics. Trickle being the operative world. What ensued, in fact, is the fastest climb to the most economically divided society; where 90% of the wealth was shifted to 5% of the population (or numbers to that effect).

This is the stage. The play, is a decades long commitment by the government and its servants (consultants, voluntary groups, quangos, etc.) to return some equilibrium to the system.

Surely, with such a herculean effort – decades of money/people/plans–we would have brought some equilibrium back into the socio-economic system?  Nope. If you are born poor, you stay poor. In fact, even more disheartening, is that you remain in the socio-economic class (no matter which one) you are born into; period. (according to recently published 20 yr study by Sheffield Hallam University)

What’s wrong. Lots of things, surely.
But I propose one large element of what’s wrong are schemes. That’s right, schemes. One masterplan or government initiative after another being created, partially implemented, changed, implemented some more….so on. And it isn’t just the masterplans, it is the entire thinking process of regeneration, as if the sector has some special powers.

In fact, one of the most spectacular examples of how the scheme might be the most dramatic waste of money in regeneration comes from an iconic location in the USA, Times Square in NYC.

If you have been there recently, can you imagine the following as a description of the place as late as 1995?

The lawless climate had devastating economic consequences. In 1984,
the entire 13-acre area that we sought to revitalize employed only
3,000 people in legitimate businesses and paid the city only $6 million
in property taxes—less than what a medium-size office building
typically produced in tax revenue.

No
legitimate business—indeed, scarcely a normal person—would willingly
visit so blighted and threatening an area. As head of the UDC during
the mid-eighties, I would walk through Times Square at night, a state
trooper by my side, and feel revulsion. We’d hurry past
prostitute-filled single-room-occupancy hotels and massage parlors,
greasy spoons and pornographic bookstores; past X-rated movie houses
and peep shows and a pathetic assortment of junkies and pushers and
johns and hookers and pimps—the whole panorama of big-city low life.
Everywhere I’d look, I’d see—except for female prostitutes—only men. A
UDC study later verified my impression empirically: 90 percent of those
who walked Times Square’s streets were adult males. Times Square was
haunted with them, like a circle of lost souls in Dante. (http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_4_the_unexpected.html)

What happened in the following decade is a lesson for regeneration; How did Times Square revive? Was it the result of the NDC’s or UDC’s (in USA) $2.6 billion Redevelopment Plan? Nope. In fact, it had nothing to do with it. One of the plan’s authors states:

Simple really. This simplicity is also outlined in Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and in Buchanan’s The Social Atom. Getting the basics right and paying attention to the natural and basic laws of nature hold the keys to affecting change.

This simplicity element also emanates from online and in person conversations with folks like Chitty (my interpretation of Chitty, et. al’s thinking) and others who are vociferously pointing out that we need to stop anointing gurus to save our cities. We need to stop master planning our way out of the disequilibrium. We need practical investment and action for and in support of good work, not special paradigms created by governments.

A sign that this thinking is starting to take hold:  A top regeneration officer, last month, suggested to a small group of committed people taking action in a neigbhourhood that the most effective way for the council to help in the near term would be “to ensure the trash is collected and flytipping laws were enforced”. Now there is a step in the right direction.

We need to encourage more action on the basics in order that we may raise aspirations and create opportunities. Actions like strategic investments with return in mind, better delivery of basic services, and support for straightforward (see: simple) and high return people support.

Imagine what would happen if the trash actually got picked up and new bins (like exist in Chapel Allerton) were put into Chapeltown. What would happen if zoning laws were enforced regarding advertising in Harehills (see: big billboards littering the road), and jobshops were actually clean inviting places to look for a job that attracted both the employees AND employers to meet?

The CIC needs to change. That’s community interest company to the uninitiated.

Simply really. We need to change it one simple way for two reasons:

How?
The asset lock needs to look like the dividend cap. Some portion of the asset needs to be available for private asset appreciation.

Why?
1. Social Entrepreneurs need to be fairly compensated for creating value for social benefit. We aren’t talking about anything close to traditional Entrepreneurs and yet the social entrepreneur often leaves a larger legacy.

2. Investors need to be enticed to put capital into social businesses in the form of equity. This is only really possible if the investment can appreciate.

Let’s change the CIC to allow some portion of the asset to be available for a return. You can place all kinds of caveats on the changes if you are paranoid; examples include a cap (35%), a portion of the unlocked asset must be in the form of employee shares, the unlocked portion cannot exceed private investment, etc.

I am hearing rumblings of pent up socially-minded money waiting to invest in our kinds of businesses. We need to unlock that potential to grow the movement. We don’t need more debt, we need more investment.

? A question has been swirling around in my head for weeks now. I can’t seem to answer it or even utter it to those who might listen. It would be like swearing in church or wearing shorts to a formal wedding; you sometimes want to, but you know the response from the crowd will be instant rejection.

Social Enterprise Business is currently being led by 45 person boards of coalitions and 1,720 quangos. Is this a real movement-a new way to do business- or is it simply a place to park some government funding? When the Times and RBS give out social entrepreneur awards to CEOs running charities…we have surely lost the plot. The folks mentioned in the awards are highly qualified and delivering high social value. But, I would argue that incorporation as a charity is not really social entrepreneurial. (yuck! I sound like some ranting fool in the corner.) *Footnote: I did not apply for, nor do I know anyone who applied for the awards.

But, this got me thinking about what I was doing. I have been working on this dream of a new economy for 4 years. Not long by most accounts. But, what I noticed lately is that I have become entranced with the public purse. What direction is government going? What will the local authority do next? What is the regional play?

These are important issues, but who is leading this? God help us (and I think they would agree) if the quangos/local authorities/government/fill in the blank are leading this. We, the entrepreneurs need to lead this. What is THIS? It’s a better way to do business and create value. Social Business.

I read a book called Creating Shareholder Value during my MBA program. I want to write the new version, with the help of a tribe; Creating Stakeholder Value. A small change, but a huge difference. Stakeholders are the beneficiaries of the social outcomes of social business. It might be a group of people (elderly, poor, disabled), it might be an area (think regeneration), it might be international (think eradication of disease or drinking water), it might be environmental (think green), it might be (______). Importantly, the value will have a wider impact and will be both monetary and social. (And so ended the lesson)

Let’s build a business focused tribe that gets the importance of social impact. Focused on starting and growing businesses that do more than profit. No, we will not make subscription to specific paradigms a pre-requisite (charitable/community owned/etc.) – making a difference is difficult enough. No, we will not hold seminars on how to get public funding or contracts – if you are an entrepreneur, you will have figured this out. No, we will not hold seminars extolling the virtues of social business – it’s not about group chants, it’s about data, profit, change. No, we will not hold award ceremonies giving trophies to the same group of 12 for 3 years running b/c we can’t be bothered to dig deeper to find those like Baraka Coffee.

We will get like minded entrepreneurs together to share ideas and inspiration.
We will drive forward a community to connect (with money) and support (with info).
We will make profit the priority (in order that we may support our social mission!).
We will insist you must be doing more than CSR.
We will change the world. Together.
We will lead.

How is this different than my perception of the workings today? The social business creating value attracts the finance/investment, interest from government; moving away from the social business begging a bureaucrat to approve an investment in something they know little about. Tails, Dogs, and wagging.

Want to be part of this tribe of social entrepreneurs running business differently? Stop following the mandates and start leading from where you are.

Ok. So you are social entreprenuer. Your business works (congrats you are now in the top 10% of SEs) and you want to increase the scope of your impact. You now need additional outside investment.

Problem: how do you prove that you are already making an impact?!

1. You provide a myriad of case studies. (anectdotal)
2. You point to your output list from the original grant portion used to start the biz. (vutually meaningless; it’s likely your outputs are quantities, but aren’t they the same ones that were achieved by the last bunch in the 90’s?)
3. You contrast a video,picture, survey of your area/tribe with one today and photoshop one for the next 5 years. (getting closer, but didn’t loads of other projects work on your area? Could it be them who has succeeded in making the change?)

What’s that famous paradox? Now you really know what it is to be a social entreprenuer.

There is not one right way to tell your story, but there are better ways. We are trying to clarify what we impact and finding it challenging staying out of the above traps. In the end, I think we will go for the macro level indicators, and bet on a sustainable model that probably delivers modest impact over a longer period. At least the ROI will be greater and grant money can be directed towards other non sustainable but equally important things.

I don't think I can improve on this post and its message; so I am posting it here in its entirety with links to it.

This is from a daring person who is taking control of a process usually much out of your control (finding a job). She is, at least from what I gather from her approach and her website, pretty much the prototype for hiring. She? I have lost my manners; it's Susan. And Susan says:

One person in charge at a time

k at a company with more than two people, you’ve likely had a project that was SNOWED.

Do you want amazing? Put one person in charge. Be
willing to be the person in charge. Take charge, take responsibility,
take the blame, share the credit.

*As seen on Susan's website/blog: http://main.susanhiresaboss.com/

This is the classic scenario at most companies; including ours. Plowing the SNOW out of the system is the way forward—just hope you find enough people to do something amazing AND you get out of the way. Entrepreneurs need especially take note.

Is there a way to get the important info to people starting or running a social business (aka enterprise) in a collaborative open source way that eliminates the bureaucracy of hub sites and presented on a user friendly way? Importantly, if you found a way, what chance does it have of reaching a meaningful portion of the businesses?

Imagine you are running a social biz. You are probably (this means most, not all!) not very good at the business part of social biz. But, you don’t realise this usually until it is too late.
How do we, an open source (read free) resource, get you to find the information you need. Info that will skill you up, help you make the right decision, or push you to hire that operations mgr that will save you from yourself.
Breaking through for social biz, as aspired to at the latest convention, will depend on being able to answer this very question.