Australian Foyer Foundation Conference, 2017

 (showing the Australian Foyer movement some love)

When you are a restless traveller, people and places recede in time only to welcome you home again.  

I went back to Australia this October to join the Foyer Foundation’s annual conference.  It was a chance to complete the ‘journey’ of their first accreditation cohort - a group of pioneering Foyers, from Melbourne to Perth, successfully completing the pilot of the FOR Youth accreditation framework. The trip felt heavy in the heart from the death of Jane the week before, someone who worked tirelessly for Australia to put Accreditation in its DNA.  What a legacy those first young people left, who asked the Federation to develop an accreditation system in late 90s.

Before I got to the beautiful conference setting at Coogee beach, I headed to Adelaide, to Cairns, to the suburbs of Sydney, offering my expertise on asset-based approaches to practitioners in different training workshops – from youth organisations to those working with dementia care and domestic violence.  Questions ranged from how to embed asset-thinking across organisational practice, to how to sustain approaches in compliance based settings, to how to distinguish between the ‘intent’ to be ‘advantaged thinking’, and the actuality and outcomes achieved. I shared the ‘Assetspots’ framework, developed for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Youth Fund, offering people a powerful starting point to engage discussion and develop deeper insights.  That, and the best advice I learned over the years: never stop building a dream team; and get yourselves a very good bullshit detector.

The conference was excellent – a large diverse audience including funders and commissioners with practitioners old and new. Presentations ranged from looking at a new Foyer for young people from care backgrounds being funded through a social impact bond, to impact and evaluation approaches, and the role of educational institutions. Throughout the conference, the voice of young people was heard through a series of videos reflecting on what they liked about their different Foyers, and a final live panel telling powerful stories of transition, complete with a memorable rap performance.  As so often with young people from Foyers, you are reminded of their appreciation for opportunities, for the importance of accessible support, and for the alternative family that communal living can offer. 

My main contribution at the conference was a keynote address reflecting on the Australian accreditation journey, framed between a question I was asked recently from a young person at Ravenhead Foyer – 'is it true kangeroos can punch you in the face?' – along with a memory of the powerful ‘synergy’ that Jane brought in her work.  The opportunity, each day, and in each conference room, is for everyone to harness collective talents and potential.

Looking at how Australian Foyers continue to grow a strong deal for young people, I think there is a powerful synergy across the ocean the UK could learn from too. Jane would have loved that. 

If you would like to find out more about my work, drop me a line at hello@inspirechilli.com

Remembering Jane

My personal memory of Jane Slowey, who died on 7th October.  Always much loved.

Within the first months of Jane’s arrival at Foyer Federation, I met with her at Victoria Station to tell her that I had decided to leave in order to pursue other interests. ‘What things?’ she replied, with that distinctive rub of her hand over her chin.  ‘Developing ideas’, I said, ‘challenging the system – radical stuff.’  ‘Then why don’t we do it here?’ 

So began a precious relationship that lasted professionally over 11 incredible years.  ‘What things’ was a question she’d ask on a few occasions.  Whether it was my desire to harness energy flows from the moon in the work place, or stage an experimental theatre show, she calmly opened paths for the possible rather than reach to shut doors.  There was always a stylish touch of purple to add somewhere, too.

Jane had infinite depths of wisdom, humanity, and the linguist’s art for a good story. Most of all, to me at least, she had a burning hunger for people’s ideas - and knew how to get the best from them.  She lived to make things happen. Drawing on each other’s strengths and the teams around us, ideas and opportunity flowed through an exciting line of programmes, culminating at their asset-based best with things like Open Talent, Advantaged Thinking, Healthy Conversations, a reclaimed youth offer.  They were never just ‘projects’, more an inquiry into shifting our understanding of, investment in and work with young people.  In many ways, she was inseparable from the words within the programmes.  I might have written the tests of Advantaged Thinking, but it was Jane who lived them –the understanding, the belief, her nuance of knowing where to invest, her passion for challenging others. 

As a CEO, she was someone you could rely on in a crisis; who’d offer you space and energy. She was generous with her time with lots of people, and did much to encourage new leaders, particularly other women.  Building roads to drive down together, not toll gates that limit access, was one of many things she cared about.

I last saw Jane before her summer holiday, at the Tate members bar.  We talked about starting to work together again once she’d returned – our ideas were sparking. There was always a sense with Jane of things that could be done.  As I left for another meeting, she said she wanted to stay at our table for a little longer to take in the view.  She was enjoying the time she had, finding love in every moment.  Though I dearly wished there’d been more, I’m grateful for what she achieved with us all.

LEADING ASSETS TOGETHER

Asset-based philosophy has an Aristotle-like emphasis on the ‘what’ we should develop in order to build a ‘good life’. I believe doing more than react to or prevent disadvantage is something that can help invigorate our social leadership.

‘Asset-based’ means embracing capability and shifting the focus from what is lacking to what is working – from Strengths-based Practice and Asset-Based Community Development, to Appreciative Inquiry, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and Advantaged Thinking. These approaches range from working with an individual’s strengths, to mobilising resources within a community, to maximising opportunities for systemic change.  What unites them as ‘asset-based’ is a belief in relational solutions and a passion for looking beyond meeting problems towards nurturing possibilities.  

I help organisations apply asset-based innovations, including providing advice for The Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Youth Fund. Since asset-based theory is not about one-size-fits-all, I have worked with Paul Hamlyn Foundation to introduce a glossary of ‘where’ different asset-based approaches are likely to thrive.  These translate into ‘assetspots’ that highlight the practice of what and how organisations deliver, alongside the influence organisations apply to wider policies and perceptions. Exploring them, four leadership challenges emerge.

The first challenge is in growing ‘identity-positive’ organisations.  In particular, this refers to what and how vision and values that invest in enabling good, and how they are communicated. It means more, however, than articulating an inspirational vision for social transformation. Leadership must also define and share the ethos by which transformation actually happens.  Who you are, and what you say, increasingly matters.

The second challenge is being open to work ‘with-people’.  This means empathetic leadership, sensitive to how far the people an organisation supports are involved across governance, decision making and service design, as well as in delivery.  People-powered organisations must have leaders who trust people as citizens of change – not just clients or customers. Openness requires an equalising relationship.

The third challenge is in the operational and strategic ‘know-how’ to optimise the various processes and programmes that nurture assets.  In other words, leaders who understand the significance of building purposeful culture and technology, from staff performance systems to project logic models.  Organisations that continue to ‘cope’ with management and delivery styles that do not flourish skills and resources will struggle to sustain asset-based endeavours longer term.  

The fourth challenge is in determining what impact means.  It can never be enough to capture outputs and outcomes required by contracts, if they do not match the mission we believe in or the complex narrative of people’s lived experience.  Equally, we cannot be satisfied to evidence what we do just to attract more funding, if we do not also learn from what happens in order to evolve our offer.  Treasuring thoughtful measurement and practical insight defines our capacity for progress.

Exploring these challenges through the Clore Social Leaders’ Capabilities Framework, the ‘generous collaborator’ stands out to me as an underrated capability to recognise assets in each other and to harness them collectively. When it comes to good social change, we best lead assets together.

PUBLISHED BY CLORE SOCIAL LEADERSHIP AS PART OF THEIR 'LEADERS NOW' BLOG SERIES -http://www.cloresocialleadership.org.uk/Leading-Assets-Together

Finding a Moment

In her film, Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson responds to the passing of her pet dog and her partner Lou Reed through music and words that identify death as the ‘release of love’. It’s a touching film about powerful moments where our concept of life becomes clearer through death.  As Anderson describes it, she ‘expected to feel sad and lost. But I felt the opposite (…) How to open yourself to the world. And really appreciate it.” (http://www.waldemar.tv/, May 2016)

I felt a little of the same after the passing of my mother at the end of November last year.  I was working with organisations in Australia at the time, and found myself returning home with a different set of eyes.  The latest news from the charity sector and beyond left me with a sense of detachment, as though the things I cared for were suddenly disassociated from their meaning. I thought it was just because I was sad and lost too. But I wasn’t. I was starting to see from a stronger perspective.

‘Opened to the world,’ I experienced a shift in what had value. The ‘laws of the universe’ became more relevant to me than knowing the latest funding campaign or innovation programme.  Death sharpened my bullshit detector.  Looking back on 20 years of working in the charity sector, I found glaring fault-lines in the narrative of progress to ‘end youth disadvantage and homelessness’, or whatever the current terminology is.  As the stats keep reminding us that everything from street homelessness to health inequality is on the rise, it’s easy to feel that we are stuck between knowing what ought to be done, knowing what was done before, and our frustration to make things happen now.  I began to wonder if there was an opportunity in that ‘stickiness’ to shift how our various assets work to create deeper change.

Let me explain.  It is a popular belief that we ought to be more ‘mindful’ in how we balance the stresses of work with our life. What if it isn’t just the individual self we should be looking at though?  What if the organisational identities we ‘do good’ through are themselves a type of being whose means of production, culture and character can be directly associated with the causes they and we seek to address?  Look at the way people in organisations are supported, people work, people are paid, people talk about each other, how decisions are made, how things get funded, and you will often find examples where the values of doing good are opposite to their functioning. Does it matter? Absolutely. It’s in these things that we end up sticking with the patterns we wish we could transcend.

In former senior roles,  I used to go along with the idea that the end could justify the means.  It meant turning a blind eye to some of the more negative human and social ripples organisations create around them.  The complexities of the system we operate through might force us to work in high stress ways; where we have no time from one meeting, communication, bid and report to the next; where we are constantly too busy doing ‘things’ to care; where we big up ourselves over the significance of others: but that’s all part of the bullshit we have got used to.  Many of us end up cut off from taking responsibility for the actual world we shape in the shadow of over busy inboxes, work goals, business plans, strategic visions and meetings removed from the importance of ‘the now’.

The significance is profound: disadvantage and inequality can never be addressed until we know how to nurture their opposite through the ways we choose to do things – including, in particular, how we work. Organisations with power to do good have a double responsibility: to meet the needs of the people they are meant to benefit, first and foremost; but in doing so, to also create ways of working counter to the root causes of disadvantage they are passionate about. From how people are managed, to how they are paid, to where organisations work together, to what they do, and what they communicate in the world. It’s all relevant as part of the ‘asset base’ that defines what a moment is and what it can achieve.  If we don’t change how these operate, we keep our fingers on the repeat button of things that keep on limiting collective potential.  

Brian Eno addressed a similar theme in a recent interview with Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian (23 Jan, 2017), where he outlined his interest as a musician in ‘how you make a working society rather than a dysfunctional one like the one we live in at the moment – by trying to make music in a new way.’  For Eno, that meant trying to move away from the hierarchical model of an orchestra to embrace ‘the more egalitarian model of a folk or rock band’.  What does that difference mean for social organisations and how they operate?  

I don’t think it’s a simple case of organisations seeking to do good by switching from one mode of production to the next.  Inequalities abound in any structure which is not fully aware of itself.  We need to begin what I see as a gentle 'storm' in our perceptions, to keep a closer check on where the people and systems within a structure are, and by doing so make sure our assets are more ‘alive’ and ‘now’ in the moment we are in.  The summary questions below are starting points for how these conversations could be led by staff:

·      S: Are you Sharing the moment with yourself, and with others?  Do you have time to be aware of the world that is happening around you, to experience that with others you are working with, and to share in your work with organisations who can both benefit from you and benefit you?

·      T: Are you Treasuring this moment?  Are you focused on the needs and possibilities that lie in the here and now, as well as the ‘future good’ of tomorrow?  What can be done today that should be started right in front of you?  Do you talk about your beneficiaries as ‘now’ rather than just a possible future?

·      O: Are you able to Orientate the significance of what is happening now with the past and future? Can you understand the causes to your present, build upon learning in the past to accelerate decisions and impact, and recognise potential future effects from current actions and decisions?  And can you juggle between them? Are you able to see your past and current plans reflected in the present you are working in?

·      R: Are you willing to Revalue how you do things, as well as what you do? Can you reflect on how you do things, their consequences and relevance to your social mission, while staying attuned to developing fairer approaches and processes?

·      M: Are you prepared to measure in the Moment?  Do you have the means to recognise, learn from and feedback in the here and now with those involved, rather than just at a removed distance later on? Is the practice of change as clear as your theory?

We don’t have to experience death to share the same insights from Laurie Anderson’s film.  But we do have to be honest enough to invest in experiencing the world with eyes wide open. It’s a position I call being on the 'inspireside’of now - in a conscious space where individuals and organisations can embrace the responsibility to do good better.  Think you are too busy to get there? Think again.