Putting the redundant consultants to work …
In response to my asking yesterday whether the new army of redundant consultants might be willing to do good works, Sarah Grant poses the very reasonable question:
‘What kind of incentives might be used to encourage you to offer your skills freely or very cheaply?’
I also got an e-mail from a friend who is a part time academic and consultant and who has, as it happens, done some work for the soon to be defunct Sustainable Development Commission. It’s not, he tells me, that there isn’t lots to be done – he has a constant flow of pro bono work requests, it’s just that the work doesn’t add up to an adequate income. This is from someone whose green values lead him to live frugally and aspire only to earn the average wage.
‘Perhaps’ he says ‘it is time to revisit Charlie Leadbeater’s Demos booklet of 1997 or so, The Employee Mutual - a mutual network organisation acting as an all-in trainer, retrainer, placement agency, mutual support network, LET scheme and supplier of project staff on contract?’.
Going back to Sarah’s question, I imagine that for many in the older group of professionals the big finance issue is reducing costs. If they are homeowners they will typically have some capital, especially if kids have left home and they no longer need a family house. They may not be extravagant in their consumption desires (this does seem to be something we do get over as we age) but they may worry about meeting bills. On this basis they might be tempted by a local authority or community organisation that made this offer: move out of London/South East into a nice house in an mixed area with lower prices. We will help with relocation costs and – if you agree to do twenty hours a week pro bono consultancy – we will pay your council tax bills. We will also connect you to a variety of networks so that you are over time more able to find paid work alongside the unpaid.
This is a big change of lifestyle and people may be more willing to do it if they feel part of a group. So the host organisation might set up a mutual structure (of the kind it sounds like Charlie was advocating) for people to join when they arrive in their new location.
There are, of course, lots of objections to this idea. Perhaps none of the people I am describing would be attracted to the idea of ‘social down-sizing’ As there are cuts everywhere, won’t there be a national glut of under-employed public service professionals – why would anywhere want to import more? Also, would these people really have the skills necessary to increase capacity and develop initiatives to improve run down areas? I’ll rely on my readers to tell me whether the objections kill the idea.
But if anyone thinks there is something to this I will see if we can explore the idea a bit more. I know I am getting carried away, but imagine a whole network of RSA Social Consultancies working in disadvantaged areas, drawing on the wider RSA Fellowship, swapping skills and insights, applying some of the Society’s own research into civic innovation and social networks. What a brilliant symbol that would be of twenty first century enlightenment.
We do
Last night we had a great lecture from Charlie Leadbeater discussing his new book We Think. The book has got interest and praise, not just for its content but also how it was written – collaboratively, via Charlie’s website. It may well be the first wiki-book
One connection I made was between Charlie’s thesis and Brooke Harrington who spoke here last week on her book Pop Finance. I asked Brooke whether Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the foremost exponent of the breakdown in social capital, was interested in the 20 million Americans taking part in investment clubs.
Brooke surmised that Putman didn’t investigate this on the grounds that investment clubs aim to make money. But, as she points out in her book, there’s no correlation between the financial success of the club and its long term future. There are clubs which make no money but are still meeting and investing, just as there are some clubs which are financially successful, but break-up due to personality clashes. In the final analysis, it’s all about people voluntarily doing stuff together.
I similarly asked Charlie what he thought about Putnam’s thesis. Does the rise of forms of on-line collaboration like Wikipedia and Linux disprove social capital theory.
The answer in part is Putnam was looking at distinct forms of social capital, arguing that the capital communities most need is the type that is declining fastest. So for instance, in deprived communities, what’s needed is ‘bridging capital’; people who are not in work having contact with those who are and thus creating opportunities through networks and connections.
The problem with the simplistic social capital thesis is that it seems to imply that after 150,000 years of human evolution in which we have been hard wired as a social species we have suddenly decided to retreat from the public sphere.
What I take from both Charlie and Brooke is that Putnam was mapping less a fundamental shift in human nature and more was the decline of old collectivist institutions. These institutions – think political parties, think trade unions, think established churches – are characteristically bureaucratic, rigidly hierarchical, and culturally self-denying (‘you have boring meetings to make the world a better place’).
What Putnam didn’t see was that alongside the decline of these institutions what would occur is the emergence of ‘new collectivist’ institutions – like investment clubs and on-line social networks – which are less bureaucratic, more dispersed, more subtly hierarchical, and more self-actualising (or what ordinary people tend to call ‘fun’).
Human beings do still want to do good stuff together, but because our lives and our expectations have changed we want to work together differently. This is what we’re trying to do here at the Society. RSA Networks is one way of doing that, but there will no doubt be others – such as this blog. One way of defining my mission for the RSA is to build on the great traditions of this old collectivist institution, but work with Fellows to turn it into an exemplar of a new collectivist spirit.
State empowerment
Thanks to those who responded positively to last week’s post. With yet another crazy RSA week behind me I can only add a few lines.
Among lectures chaired, speeches made and interviews given, this week I hosted a supper for a range of people involved in the idea of empowerment and participation.
Charlie Leadbeater started us off with aspects of the thesis in his new book – ‘We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity‘. You can view it as a wiki and add comments or edit it online.
The discussion was wide ranging but recurrent themes included the scope for empowerment as a public sector strategy, the implication of this for equity and accountability and whether empowerment is fundamentally an individualistic or collectivist solution (of course, it can be both).
There were good examples such as individual budgets for social care clients and carers, or provision for disaffected school pupils. But underlying the discussion was the question: is the idea of the empowering state the next big thing or just the spirit behind isolated bits of good practice? Is it the future or is it a fad?
The idea that public services should seek to give people a stronger sense of self confidence, autonomy and responsibility to others lies behind RSA initiatives as diverse as Opening Minds and our approach to long term drug users.
For me it is a key plank in pro-social strategy. Maybe it’s because politicians of all parties like the word, but ‘empowerment’ can too easily mean everything and nothing.
Through more of these suppers and the in-depth work of our programme I hope the RSA can add some rigour to the optimism and idealism of those who think a reformed public sector can help more people take greater control of their lives as individuals and community members.
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