Family Pressures

Check out a fascinating report by the Relationships Foundation, with some really important insights into the relative position Britain's families are in when compared to their European neighbours in the context of a host of dimensions, such as work, finance, caring and the environment.
A very brief introduction from the Relationships Foundation says:


Our index, built entirely on official data from Eurostat, Eurofound, and the OECD, shows that the UK is almost the least family friendly country in Europe. Families in the UK are the third most pressured of 27 European countries. Only families in Bulgaria and Romania have a worse time of it. Financial and work pressures, combine with poor maternity and paternity provision, and poor living environments put our families among the most pressured in Europe.

http://www.relationshipsfoundation.org/Web/OnlineStore/Product.aspx?ID=142


The Foundation juxtaposes the position of families in Britain with the oft avowed commitment of the Coalition to "make Britain the most family friendly country in Europe" and sets a challenge to make the apparent rhetoric a policy reality.   

Localism Bill or centralism Bill?

The LGA has put up a brief and helpful note on the 2nd Reading in the Lords of the (in my opinion, underwhelming) Localism Bill, exposing to a degree the espoused theory behind the Bill of shifting power to local communities and the theory-in-use of providing Ministers with new powers to direct, instruct and impose. Perhaps 'twas ever thus in relation to the central/local nexus, but this evermore looks like an opportunity that might be lost amidst some muddled thinking which seeks to do one thing, i.e. localise/devolve, and might conceivably achieve quite another, i.e. centralise/direct. A lack of trust between the centre and the local characterised too much of the previous Government's behaviour towards local government, and this trait seems to have been inherited by the Coalition.
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/18775810

Leadership that overcomes barriers to progress

A really interesting piece on the new leadership styles required prosper in the most challenging of times, and ‘heroic’, forcing leadership styles do not feature. If I have a criticism of what is generally a helpful piece for the debate about public leadership, it is that the article perhaps understandably, uses examples that focus on the ‘usual’ star names and does not seem to offer a longer term historical perspective. These leadership styles have been extant in some local authorities for over 25 years and not only in large city authorities. There are many others in local government, less well known, who achieve significant progress, against the odds, using the fierceness of their quiet resolve to work through boundaries, around constraints and over barriers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2011/jun/07/local-authorities-leaders-red-tape#start-of-comments

Well Being and Flourishing, Talent and Perseverance

Some interesting 'side-bars' over the weekend:

Martin Seligman, of Positive Psychology fame sees well-being as a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment. His own positive psychology movement, which I find a particularly persuasive world-view to challenge the deficit paradigms of our time, has inspired many efforts to survey people's state of mind. One example being David Cameron's moves to measure GWB as well as GDP.

Seligman is now concerned however that surveys exploring well being use questions which tend to concentrate on "life satisfaction", which might include the above elements of well-being, but he says that the answers to these questions are largely, i.e. 70%+, determined by how respondents are feeling at the point of the survey and not how they evaluate their lives overall. For this he believes better questions search out notions of "flourishing", ask people about their moods, i.e. the present, then go on to explore their relationships with others and how far they have a sense of accomplishing something worthwhile or meaningful. This offers a more comprehensive assessment than joy and happiness of previous survey methods.

For the record, a recent study in 23 countries found that the citizens of Denmark and Switzerland topped the table for having flourishing lives with more than 25%, and citizens of France, Hungary, Portugal and Russia reporting fewer than 10% of citizens as flourishing.

Motivation. Many will have enjoyed listening to motivational speakers from business, sport and leadership. Interesting, inspirational even, yet beyond the intrinsic value of the speech the longer term value back in the office can sometimes be difficult to realise. In a Guardian article over the weekend, there was an interesting exploration of how innate talent is seen as having a strong influence on excellent performance, but it's not the only determinant. In fact, research shows that high-flyers learn no faster than those who reach lower levels of attainment, but the critical feature of their success is that "high achievers practice for more hours." Strengths theory speaks often about talents being part of us and not learned, and that talents only become true strengths when combined with activities that bring the talents into full and frequent use, i.e. 'practice make perfect.'

In addition, it appears that mindset, in this case fixed or growth focused shaped very different responses to challenges and apparent 'failure.' For instance, fixed mindset groups, i.e. those who see talent as fixed and incapable of development, rapidly shift into a blame mode when things go badly, whereas 'growth' mindset groups seek new approaches, are flexible in their thinking, don't recognise 'failure' as such and teach themselves new strategies for addressing apparently intractable problems. Perseverance it seems opens the door to the potential for personal transformation and access to higher performance. Or, as the great golfer Gary Player once said, "it's funny, when winning major tournaments, I'm often called lucky, yet the more I practice, the luckier I seem to get!"

And finally, one sentence I couldn't resist replaying from today's press:

"A Conservative Council,with a history of cleansing the poor from its housing, is currently attempting to criminalise the good souls who distribute soup to the destitute." LB Westminster draft bye-law refers. What price the Big Society, in Westminster at least?

Now is the time to be properly supported

Times are tough for the public services. We know this. Over 45,000 jobs have gone from the public sector in the past few months. The narrative around the public sector emanating from government concentrated in part on the alleged bloated scale and terms and conditions, the easy-to-say "budget cuts won't equate to front-line service cuts" and on back-office transformation, i.e. cuts or outsourcing or both - all possible with minimal impact on service quality, or indeed the economy more broadly. For some public bodies the worst is yet to come as the back-loaded cuts of 2013-15 will come into sharper relief.

Yet, it would appear a succession of economic statistics have given the lie to this narrative. The recession stumbles on, mortgage approvals hit an 18 year low, new housing starts are in a similar slump; unemployment is not falling and the attempts to make large inroads into various benefits and their claimants are having some really unfortunate consequences for individuals. The 'feel' is also that the private sector is neither ready nor willing and able to take up the 'slack' of public and charitable sector job losses.

So, where does The Open Channel come in to this difficult complex and worrying scenario? Well, we believe strongly, and more so every day as we speak with colleagues delivering services, that now is the moment when hard-pressed middle and senior managers, in all sectors, could really do with some cost-effective, flexible and knowledgeable support. Support that comes over the 'phone', on-line via Skype, through email and by using other web technologies.

This support needn't and will not cost a great deal to our subscribers, and that's a deliberate positioning to ensure no-one need miss out on what we offer. In fact, we offer much that is easily accessible at no cost, and as we develop our networks further this content will increase alongside the depth of our password protected resources for subscribers only. We fully intend that a learning community develops around our subscribers, ensuring that when they want to, there is a platform to share ideas, experiences, knowledge and intelligence.

We define ourselves by who we are, e.g. leaders, managers and practitioners, able to share and pass on what we have learnt and achieved - whilst still remaining avid learners ourselves. That's The Open Channel. When times are at their hardest you want your providers to intrinsically understand your challenges and yet also to have sufficient detachment and objectivity to be of real value to you.

So, our new venture comes to the end of its second week. The Open Channel offers us the opportunity to help our subscribers make the most of their talents, to deliver the best of what they can. Take a visit to our new website -http://www.theopenchannel.co.uk/ If you think this is not for you just now, do you know a colleague who might need this kind of support - please alert them if you do. Thanks and we look forward to welcoming you.