Not-for-Profits face a "perfect storm"

Some interesting findings from a recent IPSOS MORI poll on behalf of the Charity Commission:

"Despite high levels of trust (in charities), and 7% saying their trust and confidence in charities has increased over the past two years, one in ten (11%) say that their trust and confidence in charities has decreased.

The most common reason for this decrease is media coverage about how charities spend their donations (response given by 28% of those whose trust has declined).

Indeed, ‘ensuring that a reasonable proportion of donations make it to the end cause’ is the most important factor affecting trust and confidence in charities (42%).

People are more likely to trust charities generally if they, or close friends or family members, have benefited from them. However, people are not always aware of being beneficiaries of a charity - fewer than one in three (30%) say they personally or have close friends or family who have used the services of a charity. However, when prompted with activities that charities might provide, around nine in ten (93%) say they or close friends or family have used these services."

The report is quoted in an article by Zoe Williams in today's (26th May) Guardian which describes how, at the point where not-for-profit organisations seem to be central to the delivery of a plank of government policy, there is a "perfect storm" affecting their sustainability: fast dwindling reserves (which were not huge in the first place), a growing need for their services (as public services contract), local authorities and government paying less for services delivered by not-for-profits, and a limited capacity to withstand the financial challenges of discontinuous change.

There is a range of developing negative impacts on the employees in this sector, including pay freezes and cuts, job cuts, and a growing number of organisational closures as the 'storm' develops. The article also suggests that large commercial companies are beginning to hoover up contracts and employees, undercutting rates and rendering TUPE of limited protection. As one of the 'masters of the universe' who work for outsourcing behemoths said to me many years ago, "TUPE protection only lasts 24 hours if you know what to do". The Guardian article mentions the 25% job-change threshold that presages pay-cuts for transferring employees.

Not a hopeful picture, and one that provides really deep challenges to not-for-profits to find new and effective ways to continue to respond to change and engage their employees, clients, service users and other stakeholders in meaningful work to identify and sustain their positive core, i.e. their core values and beliefs, best ways of working and their most effective relationships, during these challenging times. Using strengths-based development approaches for individuals and teams and seeing the world through appreciative eyes might be a way into this. Not the only way, but a way that experience and science shows is yielding sustainable outcomes in a range of environments.

The Open Channel cuts the cost of supporting managers

I am delighted to be writing about The Open Channel which is launched today. This new venture, in which I am collaborating with Janet Dean, hits the internet just three months after we conceived it in the Millennium Galleries Cafe in Sheffield.

Over the past six months many of us with long experience across the public sector and in public, private and voluntary partnerships, have been challenged to think afresh about what we need to do to make sure we retain the best and change the rest across all our public services.

However you view the politics, change is inevitable and resources are in short supply. Janet and I believe we need to think about a more responsive and cost effective way to build skills and capacity across the public sector and amongst those partners in the private, voluntary and community sectors who share the challenge.

We are motivated by our deep beliefs in the strengths of people and our interest and skills in networking and social media. The Open Channel aims to create and support a community of people who work with communities and across organisations to provide excellent public services in whatever form is best.

The concept of The Open Channel is to provide easy access to knowledge, support and networks which will help individuals, organisations and communities tackle really difficult problems today. By making use of web links, social media, email, Skype, teleconferencing and webinars we are offering a choice of face to face or 'virtual' online support. This enables users of The Open Channel to tailor the services they need to meet their budget without compromising on quality.

Our focus is on organisational change and our core products are Action Learning, Developmental Coaching and Appreciative Inquiry- all three building on the strengths that people have already. Our knowledge and skill base is wide, capturing the issues across the widest definition of public service. We assure the quality of our Services by working only with associates whom we trust and value - they are the best in the field in our opinion.

If you are interested in what The Open Channel has to offer, please look at the website and contact us personally to find out more. If you don't need us now, remember us for the future, and today, just tell a friend.

Prime Minister talks of "health not sickness"

Listening today to the PM's speech on NHS reform, he spoke of a health service being more focused on "health and not sickness." I presume he meant the health of individuals, of communities and of the nation as a whole perhaps.

Whilst millions of words have and will be written about NHS reform, this short phrase is an interesting take on how we can view not only something as gargantuan in scale as the NHS, but much smaller entities, such as our teams, services and organisations.

Setting this apparently positive frame on the proposed NHS reforms suggests that when thinking about our organisations and their 'health', there is great merit and good science to support inquiring into its good 'health', e.g. what is life giving and what works well. This is what Appreciative Inquiry (AI) calls the "positive core" of our organisations. It can be a counter-intuitive position to take when starting out on organisational change, particularly in hard times, yet for many organisations and their constituent teams, this positive framing provides a release from the top-down, deficit and problem-centred nature of so much change, i.e. the study of failure and problems.

A wide and growing variety of public, voluntary, community-based and commercial organisations have experienced the power and liberation of positive energy when using AI. AI never ignores what isn't working, rather it asks us to concentrate our efforts differently, to start our inquiries in an appreciative mind and capture what works well, and then build on that to create new directions and eradicate weaknesses and problems along the way.

What we inquire into is fateful and we will always find more of what we choose to inquire into - so, would we rather inquire into and find examples of great service and resilience, or failure and unsustained change. I posit this as a stark choice, 'though in reality it will be more a matter of emphasis and balance.

Peter Drucker wrote that the role of leaders is to align the strengths of their organisations, rendering weakness irrelevant. Not necessarily easy, but a statement of intent, of hope and potential for liberation from yet more 'solutions' to problems - problems that nevertheless seem to return with depressing regularity.

This appreciative stance might not work every time, but surely to take the appreciative route at least offers a credible alternative to methods that seem to provide only short and medium term palliatives to the wicked issues of public policy formation and public systems management.

The NHS has great stories of success, particularly during its renaissance of recent years, providing deep evidence of a positive core. Concentrating reform on health and not sickness could deliver yet more great stories and also protect that positive core, without which reform will founder in the longer term.

Is 85% achievement failure or success?

On the Government Opportunities website the following quote interested us from a deficit/appreciative analysis point of view.

"Several public authorities have failed to meet the requirement to reduce the time they take to respond to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, the Information Commissioner’s Office has announced.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) monitored the performance of 33 public authorities for a period of three months, following concerns about delays in their responses to FOI requests. The Commissioner has particular concerns about delays at the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence and Birmingham City Council.

Four other authorities – the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the London Borough of Islington, Wolverhampton City Council and Westminster City Council – have been asked to sign undertakings to improve their performance in this area.

The ICO has sent letters to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Service, NHS North West, the London Borough of Croydon, the Scotland Office and the London Borough of Newham to put on record that, while all of them are now meeting the required standard, the monitoring has revealed some areas of concern.

Eighteen public authorities have hit one or more of the following performance markers: the ICO has received six or more complaints concerning delay within a six month period; it appears that an authority has exceeded the time for compliance by a significant margin on one occasion or more; for authorities that publish data on timeliness, it appears that less than 85% of requests are responded to within the appropriate timescales."

There are various ways of looking at the data quoted and one aspect is to ask the question whether "less than 85%" represents a problem, as suggested in the performance marker. If it is, how far "less" than 85% is the actual number and perhaps more crucially, for those authorities that don't publish data, is there better practice or poorer practice in those?

We're also interested in the learning to be had from those organisations who achieve 85% response within timescales, and also from those with less 85% success, yet who therefore still make the vast majority of their responses within appropriate timescales.

Taken from an appreciative perspective, whilst we would always encourage the highest levels of performance, what the quote fails to mention or explore is the obvious effective practice being achieved, even in authorities where the level of achievement is less than 85%. What can we learn from what's working? What more can be done to encourage achievement at that level and better.
Finally, what of those organisations that don't publish any figures? Are they achieving lower than 85% or better? And, could the ICO highlight the learning to be had from those oganisations doing well in this area of operation.

Balanced learning; learning from success as well as highlighting relative 'failure'.

Goodhart's Law

Spotted in the Observer, 20.02.11:

"any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes". Or, as another academic summarised it: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."