Charlie Leadbeater seminar
Charlie Leadbeater's insights into social innovation are fabulous. His examples of social innovation from around the world on his most recent visit - from mothers, parents, neighbours, volunteers - are drawn from what he calls the Social Innovation Life World, the relational, civil society-based sphere of life that is outside the formal, institutional sphere of public services management. The focus for Charlie's reflections was the relationship between this relational Life World and the managerial world of public services.
This is a very useful framework for thinking about social innovation, but it immediately poses a major structural problem. His agenda was not "Social innovation in government and the public sector", which was how the recent series of seminars was described. This is a far too narrow formulation of the agenda. In the Melbourne seminar, Charlie mocked the government-centric notion of 'citizen-engagement' that was cited in the seminar promotional blurb; he outlined severe limitations in attempts to reform service delivery solely from within the public sector; and he didn't mention once the fashionable and vacuous phrase 'crowdsourcing" that featured in the promotional blurb describing the issues to be canvassed in the seminars.
In short, Charlie's examples from the Life World were of the very people (mothers, parents, neighbours, volunteers) who are largely absent from the work of the three host organisations for this visit, CSI (Centre for Social Impact), ASIX and TACSI (The Centre for Social Impact in Adelaide). My sober assessment would be that Australian social innovators from the relational Life World are absent in the case of CSI, peripheral in the case of ASIX, and contrived or engineered in the case of TACSI.
To be specific, no person who self-describes as a mother, parent, neighbour or volunteer has ever been sought as a contributor in CSI, or a speaker at a CSI event, or a writer of a CSI publication. Every contributor is from the world of institutional management, not from the relational Life World. I am not aware of a single exception. Even if this balance was 80% managers and 20% from the Life Word, that would be a vast improvement, but is 100% to zero.
The ASIX directory of People contains no-one who self-describes as a parent, a neighbour or a volunteer. The directory consists overwhelmingly of industry consultants and managers. I have searched through trying to locate a person who self-describes as coming from an experience of community or parenting or volunteering, but I can't find one.
I am aware of a dozen family-based peer-support inititiatives around Australia that originate in and are driven through the Life World, but the TACSI Families to Families project is one that is a creature of TACSI. The others that originate in the Life World are seemingly unknown.
There is a major problem here. Culturally, Charlie's insights and examples are a long way removed from the formal management-based culture of his host institutions. His insights will be wasted if they do not prompt a sober self-assessment on the part of these organisations about how they might connect with the relational, civil society-based Social Innovation Life World.
I'd urge social innovators around Australia to assist these three organisations to do the cultural re-invention that is necessary to honour the content in Charlie's presentations and the people who constitute his examples. Otherwise, Charlie may as well have been speaking about the dairy industry or baroque music or anything else that is exotically unconnected with the world of institutional public or corporate management out of which his host organisations derive their culture.
There is a Life World out here - come and visit us.
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Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
Debate about social innovation is very important, and we have far too little of it in Australia. Steve is right that the Australian environment is generally very unfavourable for social innovation: there is a deep-seated culture here which looks to governments to solve problems and whinges when they don't, and there is a deep-seated managerial culture running through all three sectors in which anything voluntary or amateur or oriented to relationships in the Life World rather then outputs in Service Land is disparaged as being second-rate and peripheral. There are very few voices in the country raised in opposition to both our statism and our managerialism.
Martin's comments appear ultra-defensive in tone and seriously averse to debate about the social innovation agenda. That is a pity. But Martin has set out several specific challenges for me to address to ASIX, CSI and TACSI, in order to be constructive, so here they are:
1. For ASIX, set a benchmark for its Directory of People: 50% from the world of institutional management, and 50% from the Life World/civil society, that is, people whose socially innovative aspirations and activities are unpaid and voluntary in character. A 50/50 split signals, without ambiguity, that people from civil society, the Life World, are equal in status to managers and industry consultants, not less or more important, and vice versa. Martin presumably can have no quarrel with this benchmark, even though the current breakdown on the ASIX Directory is running at 95% who self-describe as managers and consultants, 5% others (being conservative in the count). Having set this benchmark, the ASIX Chair could then modify the content and communications of ASIX in order to achieve it.
2. For the Centre for Social Impact, set a benchmark of 80% of its contributors from the world of institutional management, and 20% from the Life World. This would be a radical departure from the present breakdown of 100% managers, 0% from the Life World. To sharpen up the stakes a little, the CSI could return its $12.5 million to the taxpayers until such time as it achieved the 20% benchmark. Incentives have a place in modern management : losing $12.5 million until CSI can find a place for citizens, volunteers and community innovators will work wonders in producing the necessary change of culture in quick time.
3. For all three organisations, search out social innovators who are hidden away in suburbs and small towns generating innovative responses to management dysfunction in disability, mental health, school education, post-school training and employment support, chronic illness management, ageing,indigenous affairs, and community development. Don't wait for them to come to you. Set a goal of 10 innovations each that you discover in suburban Australia where the originators are parents, neighbours and volunteers, and go to them with people, money and infrastructure. I could nominate 30 right now that your three organisations would not have heard of, and would not regard as sexy, but which are consistent with Charlie Leadbeater's description of social innovation, that originate in the Life World, and are driven by it.
Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
I am entering this blog discussion with some trepidation. I think the passion expressed on both sides is positive and the points being made are important.
I am CEO of ASIX so have an interest in this issues being discussed. Here are my thoughts from this perspective:
Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
I do understand the point you are making and your continued unwilligness to listen to what I am saying makes me wonder if you're really interested in the discussion, as opposed to simply using the platform to make the same points over and over again.
Let me try one more time:
1 I accept your point that the 'life world' is not just important but a key source of some of the deep changes we need to see in the way we address social risks and opportunities. Stop telling me I don't. I do. You've made your point and I accept it.
2 The world of institutions and, as you insist on disparaging it, of management and formal organisations is important. It is part of the mix necessary to make major social change happen, to scale and to stick. Just because you think otherwise or feel that somehow this world has treated you and your ideas less than kindly doesn't undermine the point. The question of how those institutions and organisations learn how to listen to, learn from and adopt the ideas, instincts, expertise and energy of the 'life world' swirling in the communities and networks that surround them is a legitimate an important question. If you feel the need to ignore it and assume it's not important, that's fine. You're entitled to your view. I think it's wrong and unhelpful. Look closely at Charlie's work. This is territory he and his colleagues at Participle are exploring all the time. For some reason, you don't want to accept this. I don't know why. Charlie (and Geoff Mulgan and most of the interesting social innovators I know) spend much of their time working with and tallking to the world of organisations and institutions. Sometimes critically, sometimes with considerable frustration. But it's just plain wrong to claim he/they spend their whole time only and exclusively in the 'life world'.
3 There were 'life world' people at the Sydney session and there are life world people on the ASIX site. Stop telling me there aren't. It's ridiculous. Are there enough? Is it easy for 'life world' people to engage, connect, bring their stories and expertise into a wider world of social change, scaling and sustainability? Probably not. So ASIX is trying to do something about it. What exactly are you trying to do about that, apart from complaining that the way we're trying to make that happen more effectively isn't good enough?
4 I keep coming back to the same conclusion. I accept and share much of your critique and accept totally that it's often too easy for people locked in organisations to misunderstand the deep change instincts of those out in the real world who need to be found, nurtured and helped. Ok. So that's a pain in the arse. So do something about it. Shouting at the world of organistions isn't doing something about it.
5 Instead of writing another diatribe in response to this, here's a challenge for you. Tell me what you would do if you had the chance to make the world work according your preferred model. Is there a place for CSI, TACSi and ASIX at all or would you simply get rid of them? Would you never talk about social innovation to and with those in government departments, nonprofits and companies? How does the expertise and insight of the 'life world' scale and spread? Tell me three things you want ASIX to do to make itself more easily accessible to the 'life world' so they stop feeling as excluded as you claim they do?
Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
At the Melbourne seminar with Charlie Leadbeater, there was no-one present who was not a manager in an institution. Not one. Charlie's point is that there is a world outside institutional management that he calls the Life World. This World was just not present in the seminar, even though the great bulk of Charlie's examples of social innovation were drawn from, and originate in, the Life World. Do you not get this, Martin?
We could ignore this fact, and say "Nice presentation, Charlie. Nice framework". But the absence of the Life World is fundamental if we think what we are doing is social innovation. Otherwise, Charlie would not have bothered giving examples from the Life World. He would have talked solely about the world of institutional management to reflect the demagraphics in the room
The demographics in the room did not match Charlie's examples of social innovation., In fact, there was a huge cultural gap between them.
My plea to you, Martin, is to address this cultural gap. Your comments still don't do that. They address a plethora of other issues except the point in contention: namely, there is a yawning chasm between Charlie's examples of social innovation, and the demographics in the room, and the demographics on the ASIX directory of people, and the demographics in the CSI.
Address this issue, please, Martin. Because the gap is vast. It's so conspicuous, so obvious, that it renders so much of the social innovation scene in Australia a poor imitation of the real thing. And when I hear Charlie speak, as I did this month, I am reminded of what a poor imitation we have here of the real thing.
The first step in addressing this is to talk about. Drop the defensiveness, and talk about it.
Re: Charlie Leadbeater seminar
As the author of much of the vacuous and fashionable language to which Vern is objecting, I giuess i need to say something, although frankly I"m not sure why I'm bothering. Vern's insights, even the valuable ones (and there are plenty of those) are increasingly wrapped in his own version of vacuous nonsense it's almost impossible to know here to start or whether it's worth the effort. So these are my quick responses:
1 Vern is one of the most original, determined and inventive innovators I know in the social sphere. He should get more support and he should be more influential. The fact that he feels he isn't is not my fault. I'd like to do something about it, and ASIX is one way that could help, So far, we're not having much success. But I wish he'd stop taking it out on me or us.
2 Vern is right that formal institutions of any sort - public, private, civil society - find it extraordinarily hard to innovate. That is the nature of organisations, even the ones that Vern himself has started or worked in As Peter Drucker noted a long time ago, the problem with organisations is that they were invented to keep things stable, to make sure things didn't change.
So it's true that it's unlikely that very much social innovation is going to originate from within formal structures, public or private. It's made even worse by the steady professionalisation of so much of the work of public and social action where "amateurs" (ie users, families, non-experts) have gradually given up status and power to "experts" (ie professionals with formal credentials and unquestionable authority). But the more interesting question is how the formal structures and institutions of the public sector engage the rising innovation and invention from the communities and networks that surround them.
The Charlie Leadbeater sessions were intended to explore exactly that territory. If the way the sessions were described was clumsy, inaccurate or vacuous, I apologize. I must say, though, that most of the other people in the session I attended in Sydney (I didn't go to the other ones) didn't seem to find the sessions either vacuous or misleading. And judging by the nature of the discussions, and the way people described themselves, the session was full of the kind of 'real' people that Vern claims are completely absent from these discussions.
3 Maybe I'm reading different lists, but the ASIX list of people registering as change makers, over 300 of them, is full of people who are not organizational or managerial, although there are some of those too. There are individual enthusiasts, geeks, people setting up nonprofit ventures, people using technology to create new platforms for social action...often just a name, a short description and a quick insight into what motivated them to sign up in the the first place. I'm not sure that they use the self-descriptions that Vern seems to prefer - parent, neighbor, volunteer - but it doesn't make them any less real or authentic, assuming we're accepting the distinction between managerial people and authentic people who live and work in the "life world". So I get the critique, but I just think it's unfair, unbalanced, mostly not true and not especially helpful.
4 The final comment is about Charlie. I too like his work and find his perspective rich, rewarding and demanding. I've been reading his work since his first research on social entrpreneurs in the mid 90s. It is true that much of his approach is challenging to the formal structures of both the private and public sector. His analysis of the limitations of many of the instincts and cultures found in large organisations, and especially in the public sector at times, is tough and sometimes confronting. And I am sure, as Vern notes, that some who applaud him from within government either don't understand or won't accept the implications of at least some of his analysis. But it is not true that Charlie argues that the only source of innovation is always to be found outside government or large organsiatons. If you listen to him speak about his work about "learning from the extremes", and I had done that for some time now, what emerges is a much richer, more nuanced and complex picture than Vern seems to allow.
There are types of innovation you can do inside formal structures but, and increasingly, much of the change we need in some social contexts has to be sourced from networks and communities outside those structures. The 'life world' indeed. Fair enough, and it seems to me, difficult to argue with. Charlie spends a lot of time working with, and for, the very institutions at which Vern seems intent to direct some of his toughest rhetoric. And why not. If you want to spread and scale innovation, it's hard to avoid the challenge of engaging the power and heft of large institutions. It's tough and often deeply frustrating, but still an important part of the mix. Let me repeat. Vern is a gifted and determined innovator. I've learned a lot from him and continue to admire his work and his instincts about the risks of being trapped by the inevitably conservative tendencies of large organisations are pretty right. I'd like to see people like Vern get more support and investment for their work and to push the boundaries of new approaches that combine networks, empowerment and a true shift of resources and authority in the direction of users, clients, families and communities. But the critique aimed at TACSI,CSI and ASIX misses the point and isn't correct anyway, at least in the kind of sweeping generalizations in which it is couched.
His characterization of Family by Family in South Australia is just plain wrong (disclosure...I'm a TACSI Board member) All of us, in our own ways, are on to something very important in this debate. Some of Vern's analysis is, in my view, incorrect and unhelpful. But he has a great track record and his contributions are both necessary and useful. This is tough work and I agree that there's no point wasting time and energy if we can't aim at least for some rigor and honesty But maybe a little goodwill and generosity wouldn't go astray either...