10 Comments on Putting the redundant consultants to work …

IAN CHRISTIE on Thu, 22nd Jul 2010 1:48 pm


Thanks Matthew. It is an important issue and it is very helpful to have the problems and potential solutions aired. Two thoughts:

1) There will be a mass of displaced professionals who have debt and big expenses and commitments – children off to university, aged parents needing care, etc – for whom a policy of deliberate downshifting will be hard to consider. But one could imagine a package of a ‘social wage’ plus benefits such as council tax concessions that would be attractive even for people with families and a lot of overheads.
2) Once again, the Church of England has pioneered the way. Vicars earn very little – around £16k – but have free lodging in the vicarage, etc. in return for their service. Does the Big Society not require a cadre of secular ‘clergy’ doing community work on this kind of basis?

David Barrie on Thu, 22nd Jul 2010 2:23 pm


Timely post. Was wondering just yesterday whether by Spring 2011, social enterprises and Third Sector organizations might be in a position to start hiring former high-ranking civil servants to manage their businesses: we could do with the expertise.

So here’s a thought – and forgive the advert – in exchange for a 10% discount on their weekly shopping expenses,consultants could pay £25.00 a year in membership fees and donate four hours pro-bono time per month to work for a start-up co-operative social enterprise in London called The People’s Supermarket. Register here: http://www.peoplessupermarket.org (Or find and follow our group on Facebook. FRSA Arthur Potts-Dawson is a co-founder)

Or why don’t consultants set up their own local social enterprise provider of goods and services and similarly trade time for savings?

On the one hand, follow Dimitry Orlov’s advice in a recent RSA lecture and look to grassroots economy as a counter to Collapse.

On the other, contradict him and prove that poverty, not just affluence, can lead to an increased desire for self-fulfillment and self-expression.

Alistair Sinclair on Thu, 22nd Jul 2010 3:12 pm


I think the big objection is pretty obvious really and you’ve touched on it. Why would ‘mixed’ areas welcome consultants from London and the South-East and provide them with networking opportunities that lead to paid work? It doesn’t really chime with asset building from within communities does it? If we are looking at new models of community capacity building should we be looking ‘upwards’ towards senior civil servants and newly redundant consultants from the South. Doesn’t their ‘redundancy’ point to certain questions around their previous effectiveness and social value? I’m being a little extreme here but, as someone who lives up North, I can imagine some of the reactions within communities here who haven’t had a great time as a direct result of decisions made down south by creative consultants. I’m reminded a little bit of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ and Douglas Adam’s solution to ‘redundant armies’ . I think it included telephone box cleaners and consultants.

I do have my tongue very firmly embedded in my cheek here but would seriously suggest that the RSA might consider the support of radically different ‘consultancies,’ situated within communities, owned/populated by them and committed to the fostering of reciprocal relationships, the challenging of traditional power relations/inequalities and community ‘recovery’. There would be a role for ‘outside’ supporters but I would question the whole concept of consultant ‘parachuting’ in to save the day . Though I’m still not there yet I think the work of Jane Addams and US ‘Settlement’ movement is very interesting and might offer some suggestions as to how ‘outsiders’ might support community capacity/agency. I guess I’m saying the RSA might think about recruiting a new type of consultant?!

carl allen on Thu, 22nd Jul 2010 8:58 pm


The objections kill the idea.

But the spirit of the idea still lives. Hard to kill and bury an idea which has something good in it.

How many of these Fellows have a clear understanding what it is to be 1) poor and 2) live in a depressed area? Or do these Fellows only have a lot of data and some information on poverty?

Data Information Knowledge Wisdom Insight.

These are assumed to be sequential but can be cyclical.

Sarah Grant on Thu, 22nd Jul 2010 10:39 pm


My question Matthew was also directed at you personally. On what basis would you leave the labour market and volunteer your time and services? Also which public services should be volunteer run and which paid? How to distinguish?

Obviously the Big society idea implies Big questions will be asked, particularly about the system that currently defines what is possible or likely. Perhaps the biggest issue being the fair distribution of resources, including the value placed by society on skills and services. For example is a banker’s contribution worth over 100 teachers and nurses? Is a marketer or advertiser of junk food to kids worth over 100 marie currie support for people facing terminal illness? This is where the civic markets idea starts to crumble as profit opportunities define value and the value is being defined by those who benefit from the profit. Cyclical ignorance based on self interest. Perhaps this why there are so many social needs, so much public interest to be protected by volunteers as the rich/poor gap widens.

I get a sense here that those promoting people work for free aren’t the ones doing it. Reminds me a bit of all those keen supporters of the Iraq/Afghanistan war who wouldn’t enlist their own kids to go and fight it. Its a nice idea for other people but not for me kind of approach, which i guess is both understandable and part of our times – back to the Big questions which need addressed. Of course these public services needs are worthy of important thinking, I just think this Big Society idea has been predefined already by the very people on whose watch the problems manifested.

The challenge reminds me of something Martin Luther King realised when drawn into the protest after Mrs Parks arrest. “I had started out with great optimism and a great illusion. I had believed the privileged would give up their privileges on request. This experience, however, taught me a lesson. I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance”.

Personally i do not see why the deficit and cuts being requested to service the deficit aren’t part of the Big questions. If the banks paid back the bail out money we could pay the volunteers? I believe the amount of public money given to the private sector ‘markets’ equates to the deficit. Would love to see how the finance industry would work with a volunteer system and no bonuses – probably no staff. As a few comments indicate its the motivational factors we need to look at, both locally and nationally for our Big Society to work. We need to re-connect as people, as human beings on shared understandings, values and future visions perhaps………As a Hopi Indian elder once said to a stunned business leader, having asked if he was a father and with grandchildren, ‘at what point do you become a grandfather not a business-man?’ Is this what Cameron implies in relation to personal responsibility?

Margaret Bowker on Sat, 24th Jul 2010 9:31 am


This is a hugely interesting concept and one which particularly appeals to me. We (because this is going to affect your nearest family), have been involved in the life change Matthew is describing since the last recession, about eighteen years. It can work to leave the area one has known and where one’s career was. It helps, as he and others have said, to be adaptable, older and financially independent to some degree; i.e to have a basic means of income, along with lots of experience and a thick skin. This is a serious life change, but it can be extremely rewarding. Personally, we didn’t come across anyone else taking this path in the early Nineties, so it seems the idea has come of age and please proceed with it. I should add that we are unusual in that we have always worked pro bono, which is hard, but it has helped us to reach our goals. Matthew’s idea for a combination of pro bono and paid work is significant and should be developed and explored. I could write a book on what it means to tackle this change of direction and priorities in life and what it will demand. But isn’t the sea change this country is going through with the Big Society what it’s all about.

Chris Cook on Sat, 24th Jul 2010 10:21 pm


Absolutely first-rate thinking, Matthew, and good comments, too.

I attended a very interesting seminar at Strathclyde University yesterday on the subject of ‘systems thinking’, in respect of which at least one of the Scottish government ministers, Jim Mather, has been very supportive. There were some top-notch participants, both from the academic world and the business world.

One of them was an RSA fellow, and proud of it, and was very much of the same pro-active view you are appear to advocate to mobilise RSA resources.

My presentation, which concerned finance and systems thinking, was particularly focused on legal and financial structures

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/economic-systems-thinking230710

and the possibility of a new partnership-based enterprise model operating ‘Not for Loss’ .

I believe that Leadbeater was very much on the button, but that the route to achieving his (and your) visions is not to create new ‘Organisations’ – which develop an agenda and management all their own – but rather to create a new generation of networked partnership-based agreements/protocols within which RSA members may ‘self-organise’.

In political terms I see the outcome of the model – if adopted more widely – as approaching a 21st century form of ‘open’ guild socialism, and with echoes of the brief wartime phenomenon, the Common Wealth Party.

Another way of seeing it is a new synthesis of radical liberalism (sovereign individuals) and mutualism ie the solidarity which underpins Labour, the absence of which will forever prevent the Con Dems achieving anything with the Big Society.

Using such an Orange Labour, or Red Liberal partnership-based enterprise model the membership of Unions may, working with communities from the ground up, take the Big Society ball from the Con Dems and stroll it into the empty goal they have left wide open.

Evidence Matters on Mon, 26th Jul 2010 10:56 am


I strongly agree with Ian Christie that “There will be a mass of displaced professionals who have debt and big expenses and commitments – children off to university, aged parents needing care, etc – for whom a policy of deliberate downshifting will be hard to consider”. For many people relocation is impractical even if they were willing to give up proximity to friends and a rich social network.

As for the suggestion, “if you agree to do twenty hours a week pro bono consultancy – we will pay your council tax bills.”, in many depressed parts of the UK that are the sort of areas under discussion, and with the modest accommodation implied, that would equate to the consultants working for between 1/5-1/2 of the minimum wage rate. I doubt that would be an acceptable example of the value of experience or knowledge to those who might be inspired by the presence of such knowledge workers.

The idea is notionally attractive for those who can relocate without major disruption but, as above, it would need a level of pro-bono and paid work to be sustainable for the individuals even if the ‘parachuting in’ of expertise were acceptable to the local community.

nuunio on Mon, 26th Jul 2010 5:39 pm


Why would anyone want to save the skins of the army of consultants who have leeched money out of the public purse for the last 13 years?

Are we to cry because they cannot afford their second homes in Tuscany or their private school fees?

What good have they ever done?

Self-serving manipulators. They all bought into the idea of the ‘market state’ and now you want them to buy into the ‘civic market state’ (whatever that is), crowing about how we need a new ‘model’ and they are (because they need the work) the right people to produce it (whatever ‘it’ is).

Most consultants are socially useless parasites trading on the ridiculously hubristic idea that also permeates the RSA: that we can through clever thinking move to some kind of new enlightenment (whatever that is).

Consultants tell us that we don’t think as much as we think we do and that it was a mistake to think of people as ‘rational men’. Then they tell us if we think differently we can solve all our problems. Spot the obvious contradiction.

And why should poor people have to run all their own public services (whatever this actually means) with their ‘hidden resources’ (whatever that actually means)? Why should they have to do it and not the rest of us? When are they going to find the time to find paid work in between all the volunteering? Or are we just writing them off as unemployable?

Sarah Grant on Tue, 27th Jul 2010 2:41 pm


Hi Matthew,

I would still love an answer to the question I asked you.

On what basis would you offer your time voluntarily and for what job?
And what currently prevents this?

Thanks and I’m glad my question helped your blog topic.

Sarah

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