Category: Leadership

Linda Hines MBE: No pay made her powerful

I have a guilty secret. I have favourites.

Among the dozens of brilliant people I’ve interviewed for the Grassroots Channel Podcast, Linda Hines is right up there amongst the ones who really made an impact on me.  She is an unstoppable pragmatist and optimists (and has even begun blogging, although we still need to help her along with this).

Linda is a volunteer director of the Witton Lodge Community Association and has just been awarded her MBE for services to the community in North Birmingham.

It was Linda who told me that “no pay makes me powerful” – something which should be the mantra of volunteers everywhere. Listen to why she does what she does through this link or by clicking on the arrow below. Then you might understand why she has been honoured.

 

ESRC report on Future Management of the UK's Creative Industries.

The report (pdf link here) was funded by the ESRC and written by Aim Research.  Their conclusion on the impact of digital technologies on the future of the UK’s creative industries could be paraphrased as “Whoah – this is all a bit confusing. Can we do some more research please?” (see also Dave Harte) or in their words:

1  Firstly, research is still needed on creative practices and skills requirements for the creative industries. We have as yet a rudimentary understanding of how creative products and services are designed, produced and delivered in the light of new technologies, organisational practices and user expectations. The development of the necessary technical and managerial skills is an important area for research.
2 Secondly, the creation of products and services by users themselves is increasingly important, yet we lack both intellectual and practical frameworks for understanding the impact of user centric innovation on existing business models and how it should be managed in its own development. This will require cross-disciplinary skills and knowledge in managerial, technical, policy and legal domains. An important factor is the changing nature of Intellectual Property systems, given the brittle texture of existing structures in the new era of mash-ups, modding and mass downloading.
3 Thirdly, the new international markets and how the UK should engage with them: for example, the question of outsourcing of creative services and the related issues of country specialisation. Should we worry about the relative weaknesses we have in the UK e.g. online video games, or big budget films? Should we direct resources to those weaknesses or instead focus on our relative strengths and feel confident in
outsourcing what is peripheral? Research is needed in business and academe on how these important decisions are made, and should be made by managers.
4 Finally, a fourth area that will benefit the creative industries and stimulate scholarly insight is the linking between creative industries, in terms of mobility of people, the cross-pollination of ideas, the unrealised opportunities for cross-marketing and technological convergence, and the application of skills and tools in new domains for which they were not originally intended. Considered by many to be the basis for creativity, opportunities for spillovers across sector are too little understood, searched for, and exploited, yet hold significant potential for continued, and greater success.

I don’t want to be to rude here but couldn’t they come up with something more positive than a whole bunch of questions we already know exist?

Hat tip d-log. Image courtesy jscardia.

Why doesn't government have reservists?

It starts here

The role of government is going to change.  As individuals find it easier to collaborate and solve problems, traditional government structures will need to be reshaped and rewired. So how do we start this change?

The people’s pilot light

I first found myself thinking of the role of government as a “pilot light” at a Department for Communities and Local Government event on digital inclusion. Most government bodies are prone to consider themselves as somehow permanent but what would they be like if they got their collective heads around being only sometimes on? The pilot light on the boiler that hums quietly away, then sparks into life when things get a bit chilly.

That, of course, is very Keynsian and at the moment government is turning itself to full roar and bunging on all 4 rings on the gas cooker in an attempt to get some heat back into the economy.

What is interesting though is how we habitually structure most government on an assumption of permanence.  That means that when we need more government we struggle to find the capacity and when we need less we are clumsy at shrinking, often reluctant to scale it back and put the excess capacity to useful work elsewhere.

32nd Birmingham and District Leisure and Tourism Light Foot (reserve)

This is why I think government needs reservists.  In the good times these people will be working happily in private industry, training a couple of weeks of the year with government oppos, creating links and bridges that wouldn’t otherwise exist, speeding up the modernisation of government by sharing new ideas and ways of working.

Of course social/private firms and the third sector already provide contractual spare capacity for government.  – I’m wondering if it makes sense to create some stronger culture of treating government as something that gets deployed where and when it is needed.

Rehydrate in case of emergency.

We need to create the core notion of government that grows and shrinks depending on the task in hand.  This habit will be key to responding to self organising citizens.  Why clean a street if the people who live there use some of their combined social capital to keep it clean for themselves? Often it’s simply because we planned to clean it, it’s our job – what are they doing cleaning it anyway!

This is not a complete answer, nor a wholly formed thought, so help me here please.  How do we re-structure government to respond to widespread self organising citizens?

(image “It starts here” from Mikey G Ottowa.)

Social Media and Social Housing

Trust from Joi on Flickr - click image to see the original.

This afternoon I spoke at the National Housing and Disrepair Forum annual conference. 100 or so council officers, solicitors, barristers, housing association types and others worrying about just how much money is spent on compensating council tenants for repairs that haven’t been done. This is a link to the presentation:  Talk is cheap – so use it more.

I was invited by Kate Priest, the head of the legal department at Birmingham City Council that deals with such matters.  Kate had heard me talking about local government, social media and the changing democratic relationship in one of my sessions at the Institute of Local Government.

A £3,000 pound compensation bill for a tenant could mean a £15,000 bill from their lawyers – and all that comes out of the repairs budget. So it’s worth exploring other ways to stop this.

I wanted to get across the idea that this can be thought of as a problem of trust. Lawyers thrive where trust does not. The challenge I wanted to throw to the group was how can they understand this as more than a problem of record keeping, accountability and process? Instead can they involve their people in sincere networks of trust within neighbourhoods.
The presentation is simply designed to offer examples of how and where the social web builds real networks of trust – ones which can make things happen. It was intended to give them a sense that trust is worth hard cash. The tenant who trusts their council worker and so negotiates directly with them could free up thousands for work of public value.  The tenants who are part of a wider network of trust may even be able to help negotiate priorities.

Thank you for a big chunk of input on twitter (image here and here of the 19 comments). Here is what you suggested:

“By presenting an authentic face to tenants which listens and responds to their concerns and issues and by helping to link tenants up to find others in their situation, or who have resolved issues to share experience and connect”  Dave Briggs.

“Listen to people where they are already talking about you (good and bad stuff)” Paul Henderson.

“Any way of improving two-way communication must surely help” Catnip.

“Councils need to improve / review their relationships offline before making a difference online”  Stuart Parker.

“One easy win would be for blogs to be set up for individual estates – the council can keep tenants fully in the loop of developments, the tenants would be able to have their say, but also that blog could help develop & bind the community of the estate itself together. wins all round, for minimal financial investment, really.”  Simon Gray.

“Not a council tenant, but as a private one an answerphone and email address would be a start!” and “I think the question’s wrong: maybe, ‘what are the problems facing council tenants’ and keep soc media in mind when addressing them ” Michael Grimes.

“This is helping in some respects, esp with young people on 1st tenancy http://www.inliving.co.uk ” John Popham.

“If social media is ‘informal’ it will help get over the “stigma” of phoning somone or appearing in person.” Paul Jennings.

“Human face and interaction with two-way content. Would also bring tenants into contact with each other as well as council.” Nicky Getgood.

“I think councils are way off social media. Difficult to control comms leads to degraded service. Also privacy issues and challenge of delivering service using tools and channels that are external. Eg what if Twitter down? Ian Edwards.

“Google alerts for blog posts about “dog sh*t” or “broken paving slab” + their ward, then follow it up. That’s only a semi joke”.  Jon Hickman.

“Blogging for different estates. Would get people to know each other and get them talking about issues that matter to them.”  Antonio Roberts.

“Works t’other way- CLG wants tenants 2 have a role in mgmt- better way 2 engage than endless meetings (although meetings r useful)”.  Nick Drew.

Toronto based Michael Cayley also asked: “ pls share some references used for trust & social capital session aimed at lawyers who defend councils from housing repair claims.

I used very simple examples. I was facing an audience of 100 people, none of whom blog, only one had heard of twitter.  Even though I was amongst many lawyers only a smattering had come across Linkedin.   I needed to show how building networks of trust can help make good things happen.  I used the example of the Birmingham Bloggers group and the Social Media Surgeries. I used the volunteer effort that mysociety can apply to ventures like  fixmystreet (and not a soul in the room  had heard of the site). I also talked to them about the open innovation exchange experiment and how it’s model of open collaboration to pitch for contracts is using trust to disrupt existing ways of doing business and improve the outcome for the public.

Responses were mixed. Some went for the very human (my favourites) such as getting good at saying sorry, takings flowers when you’ve messed up and having street meeting with contractors. Others talked specifically about  procedures and software to track transactions.  One reported how law firms use facebook to recruit people for court cases.

Overall I tried to emphasise that I wanted people to go away not so much thinking about the internet, but appreciating that whatever they can do to build trust should ultimately reduce their need to fight fruitless court battles with the very people they exist to help.

We’ll see what comes next.