Towards a 21st century enlightenment organisation
It is a few months now since we launched the new RSA strapline, 21st century enlightenment. Rather than throwing money at an expensive but superficial rebrand, the strategy has been to focus on an expression of the Society’s underlying focus on human capability and gradually to add the strapline to the various RSA materials and outputs. At their last meeting, the Trustees agreed a visual refresh for the Society and this too will enable us to embed in the brand.
So far, at least, I think we can be pleased with progress. Tomorrow I am delivering the annual Edward Boyle lecture at Leeds University. This will be the latest in a series of talks I have been invited to give on 21ce. This comes on top of the YouTube viewing figure for my lecture, which now stands at 305,000. Furthermore the Society gets regular letters and e-mails from a variety of people who think that it is a powerful notion which chimes with their own work. As we had hoped, it has enough substance to feel substantive and distinct but is broad enough for people to interpret in many different ways, of which my annual lecture is only one.
Over the festive season my thoughts start to turn to the next annual lecture (that is, assuming Fellows still want me around!). I suggested a few weeks ago that one possible topic was the need for a different, more deliberative, form of democratic decision making. But I now have another idea playing around: ‘towards a 21st century enlightenment organisation’.
Partly, this comes out of the experiences of trying to increase the RSA’s profile and impact, partly also the thinking I did before my NCVO lecture last month. It also relates to a challenge given me by Lord Nat Wei, David Cameron’s Big Society advisor to explore what might count as a Big Society organisation.
It is a truism that if we are not just to cope with austerity but to advance as a society we need to get much better at tapping into human potential. But organisations – especially large ones – systematically waste human potential. This is not primarily due to ill will or bad leadership, but simply because the things that large organisations tend to require, such as bureaucracy, hierarchy, and a strict division of labour, all tend to squander human resources.
This is, of course, well known and a large library could be filled with books offering theories and stories designed to help organisational leaders get the best out of their managers, staff and clients.
Can the idea of 21ce offer its own way of thinking about this? It starts from two ideas: first that we need to foster an enhanced idea of citizenship (more engaged, more resourceful and more pro-social), and, second, that in seeking to do so we should draw on the much more nuanced, and social, model of human nature which has emerged from science and social science over the last 20 or 30 years. The case made in my own lecture was that from these two ideas flow a third, namely that we should critically examine the way we think about the core enlightenment values of freedom, justice and progress.
But what does freedom, justice and progress mean in an organisational context? Could answering such a question help organisations think afresh about how to reconcile the imperatives of organisational stability with unleashing the potential of people? Taking just the question of defining progress, most organisations tend to think of success simply in terms of expansion or – in the commercial sector – profit. But, on the one hand, size is not always, or perhaps even usually, the best way of measuring impact, while, on the other, John Kay has suggested in his book ‘Obliquity’ that profit may be one of those complex goals which we are less likely to achieve if we target it too directly and exclusively.
I am acutely aware that if I was to talk about organisations it would take me into an area of research and practice which is deep and wide and in which I am a novice. I can usually rely on my readers to suggest good sources to help me start to climb the learning curve so, come on you organisational experts and consultants, what do you think I should read first?
Suffolk comfort and Scottish support – all I need for a fulfilling Friday
There is something especially galling about finding out you have failed a test you didn’t know you had entered. A few years ago someone told me I had briefly been on a very long list of candidates to join the roster of Newsnight presenters. I suspect the list was as long as a telephone directory and my time on it as short as the life of a fruit fly, but imagine what I could have done if I’d known I was in with a distant shout: maybe I’d have hung around the reception area of Television Centre randomly stopping people on their way into work to ask searching and occasionally aggressive questions? Or perhaps written a blog demonstrating that I held all senior politicians in withering contempt?
I had another of these ‘if only’ moments last Wednesday. I was chairing an all day conference – entitled ‘getting more wfor less’ – dedicated to discussing efficiencies in public sector spending. The key note speaker after lunch was Andrea Hill, the dynamic and visionary chief executive of Suffolk County Council. But when we met she didn’t greet me with her usual warmth. It was only after I casually mentioned something in my blog that the reason became clear: ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost your Suffolk readers after you said something disparaging about us’ said Andrea. ‘But’, I lamely protested ‘I had no idea I had any readers in Suffolk. You’ve taken away something I never knew I had, and before I could even enjoy it!’
Had I know about my Suffolk fan base not only would I have steered clear of any criticism of the authority, but been sure to use frequent Suffolk references in my posts; not just to the wonderful Ms Hill and her reforming council but perhaps to Ipswich football club, the Aldeburgh Festival or Adnams bitter. If there are any last fragments of following out there in East Anglia - perhaps having failed to delete me from their list of favourites though sheer inertia – then please leave a comment and give me just a bit of hope.
The only redeeming moment of a session, which will otherwise always be tinged with remorse and regret, was when the charismatic Ms Hill concurred with my view of the challenges of becoming a Big Society council.
For councils genuinely to hand over power and responsibility to the community involves getting three things in alignment: a committed leadership, capacity in the community to rise to the challenge and an organisation (the council staff), between the leadership and the community, which gets the idea, understands and accepts the implications and makes it real. Changing the whole operating logic of an organisation is hard enough; to do it in a time of austerity (even though it is of course austerity that drives it) is harder still. Two out of three won’t do the trick; unless leaders, staff and community are on side , the smaller state will happen sure enough, but the bigger society probably won’t.
This was also a point I also made yesterday, speaking at a social care conference in Scotland. I was on a panel with the big-thinking Anna Coote from NEF (who was also my step-mother for a few years in the eighties!) and James (Jim) McCormick from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Jim, who is one of the wisest and nicest people I know, was forthright with the conference saying that there was a huge gap between the private conversation about public services in Scotland (which recognises the need for radical reform) and the public one (which tends to be slightly complacent and defensive).
I expected the conference delegates to object to this idea but instead they seemed in complete agreement. So, afterwards, I talked to Jim about the idea of a joint RSA/JRF lecture series in which we would invite to Scotland people with radical views and/or who have delivered major change in public services. The series could work as an accompaniment to – and hopefully an influence on – on the Scottish Commission on Public Services recently established by the Scottish Government under the chairmanship of Dr Campbell Christie. If the series went ahead I suspect one of our first invitations would be to the impressive Ms Hill.
Obviously, we won’t take the idea any further unless Scottish Fellows like it and would be willing to get involved.
So, as well as comfort from Suffolk, this Friday sees me needing enthusiasm from Scotland.
A bit more on drugs – and an award for the RSA
I posted yesterday about the launch of our Drugs Report. As I was on my way to the launch, I have only just caught up with the Today programme coverage - if you have a moment it is well worth a listen (with a great introduction about the RSA).
And, it’s great to be able to report another piece of good news. The RSA Journal has won a couple of awards at the International Customer Publishing Awards 2010: one for best membership title (not for profit, charities and associations), with the judges commenting that ‘the content is excellent’ and ‘that there is a rich range of subjects that are both thought-provoking and debate-starting; and one for best use of illustration for the recent Frans de Waal feature. I’m sure any RSA Fellow readers will join me in congratulating the Journal team.
Whole person recovery – the RSA’s new drugs report
Today saw the publication of the RSA report on whole person recovery.
It is a great piece of work and also timely. I see it as a signpost to the Big Society public services of the future. It takes the idea of personalisation to a new level. Based on deliberation involving 200 problem users, the report argues that capacity of individuals with drug and alcohol issues to cope with addiction, to enter treatment and to recover reflects their own social resources comprising individual, social and community capital. Services need to focus on the key factors which enable people to take control of their lives. One interesting finding, for example, is that service users can be significantly helped by being involved in civic life and feeling that they are valued as citizens.
Equally important is the way the report encourages us to define public services not simply in terms of those things provided by the state but also wider social attitudes and support. As austerity bites it is important that we reconceptualise public services by including the vital networks of family, friends and the wider community. By blurring the boundary between the state and civil society we can not only understand services more fully but also see the ways in which well designed public services encourage and support, rather than crowd out, the efforts of families and communities to help vulnerable people.
The report offers a new way of thinking but also continuity with our past:
- The focus is on invention, not simply policy making. The next stage of the project will seek to implement and test the ideas developed in the first phase.
- The emphasis on understanding human capability and how to enhance it: made even more powerful by considering this from the perspective of a vulnerable and stigmatised group
- The project itself emerged from the excellent work of our 2007 Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy.
The report makes concrete the concept at the heart of our recent 2020 Public Services Commission – that we should judge public services by their social productivity: the extent to which they help people help themselves, and each other.
RSA Academy – let the success continue
Yesterday was a proud day for the RSA. Our President, Prince Philip, officially opened the new building of our RSA Academy in Tipton. Indeed, as he himself noted, this was the second time he had ‘opened’ the school having visited back in 2009 when the school officially came under RSA governance.
Our inspirational Principal, Mick Gernon, got the proceedings off to a great start by telling us that the school is now in the top one percent of performers in terms of improvement in pupils’ overall attainment. After some words from our President pupils then showed us around the new buildings which, as well as their many other qualities, were custom built to enable the teaching of our Opening Minds curriculum.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the Academy is to see such a nationally prestigious institution based where it is. As I said in my previous blog, I am a great fan of the West Midlands (despite West Brom’s terrible form) but I’m sure I won’t be insulting anyone if I say that few people would have associated an area like Tipton, in the black country, with cutting edge innovation. As well as providing brilliant education, the Academy is both transforming expectations among pupils (all last year’s sixth formers who wanted to went to the universities of their choice to do the course of their choice) and changing the way a community sees itself and is seen from outside.
There was however one small cloud overt the proceedings. This week – in fact tomorrow – will see the Coalition’s schools white paper. In this we will find out more about how Michael Gove intends to reconcile his commitment to devolving more power to schools and teachers with his somewhat prescriptive views about what should be in the curriculum and how it should be taught.
I don’t have any problem with the idea that every pupil should acquire key areas of knowledge – although I think we should avoid the mistake that beset Kenneth Baker’s original national curriculum; swamping teachers with content they have to cram into the curriculum. But I also believe that knowledge can be taught through a competencies based curriculum such at the RSA’s Opening Minds. Yesterday, in the lessons we observed, the pupils were acquiring lots of knowledge but not through chalk and talk but by through working together in groups on projects structured around key competencies.
The RSA academy is a success story and I believe the Society is poised to play a bigger role by working with more schools to offer engaging, demanding and innovative learning within intelligent institutions. So I, like many other champions of broadly progressive education, will be hoping that Michael Gove balances his own preferences for learning with the need to allow a wide range of successful practice in schools.
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