So the inevitable has been almost confirmed. The bonfire of the Quangos will, according to a leaked list published by the Telegraph, consume both Capacitybuilders and the Commission for the Compact.
No one can be very surprised by this decision, and the sector should resist its natural urge for outcry. Both organisations have done good things over the last few years, but what matters now is how their functions are delivered in new architecture, and how effectively the sector is supported as a result.
There is no doubt that the sector will need ongoing capacity building support if our potential in building strong communities and delivering public services is going to be realized. ACEVO has for many months been arguing for a more demand led approach, and we will be making this case strongly in the forthcoming OCS consultation. Our focus therefore must not be on institutions but on the quality and impact of the support which is provided.
Similarly with the Commission for the Compact, what matters is better partnership working between statutory bodies and the sector. There is a promotion role there which must still be done, although others like Compact Voice are well placed to do that. And there is the accountability role too, which the Commission, because of its lack of statutory power, has never been able to deliver. Greater accountability measures are part of the deal for the new compact, on which Compact Voice is currently consulting.
There is so much still to be decided over the coming months, so it’s vital that we all concentrate on what matters and getting the right outcomes to support the sector.
Friday, 24 September 2010
Monday, 9 August 2010
Saving the NHS
Interesting to see the comments by Prof Steve Field, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, in yesterday’s Observer. He argues that much more responsibility for good health needs to lie with the general public and strongly criticises “reckless” behaviour such as excessive drinking, smoking and poor diets.
He also makes clear though that this personal responsibility does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it the whole solution, and that the NHS and government must be there to support and encourage better decisions.
It is interesting because the new government somehow needs to find a way to make conversations about spending less money on healthcare politically acceptable. The Tories knew that any suspicion of being hostile to the NHS or seeking to cut health budgets would be electorally fatal. The Coalition has maintained the promise to ring fence health spending, even though the Lib-Dems did not match that promise during the campaign.
Now I have absolutely no desire for government to spend less on healthcare for its own sake. But as I have argued here before, the focus in our popular narrative on protecting acute care above all else means that we neglect investing in community care and preventative interventions which crucially both cost less money and can stop people getting acutely ill in the first place. The kind of behaviour change which Prof Field speaks of should be our strength as a sector.
The conversation which government needs to stimulate therefore is not how to cut money from the NHS, but rather how can health care and public health be delivered in a way which focuses less on institutions and more on good outcomes for the public. As we know, seeking to close a hospital is met with placards and protests. Yet there no longer being a need for that hospital could be met with celebration.
The third sector has an absolutely key role to play in all of this. Recently Paul Corrigan wrote an outstanding pamphlet for us on how the third sector will be the catalyst for a transformation of the way in which healthcare is delivered through revolutionising the business model and changing the way in which value in healthcare is conceived. The public themselves can add value to their own healthcare, not just by adopting healthier behaviour but by learning more about the long term conditions from which they may suffer. His argument is purely an economic one – although with a clear moral obligation.
I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It will change the way you think about the healthcare sector. You can download it here (you just need to enter your email address to see it).
So how do we get there? This round of NHS reform is going to be crucial for the third sector. GP commissioning consortia could be a huge opportunity for third sector organisations to have a greater role in both provision and in working with clinicians to commission the right interventions for particular demographic groups. Details of the White Paper are currently open for consultation and the ACEVO policy team is working furiously with members to respond.
But it will be a difficult challenge. A colleague of mine was recently hosting a roundtable with GPs to talk about how the third sector could play a significant role in markets for patients with personal health budgets. While very enthusiastic about what the third sector could offer in their local area they ended the meeting asking whether there were in fact any third sector organisations in that area!
That dialogue must be quickly formed if we stand any chance of encouraging behaviour change in the general public to live healthier lifestyles, or create a health service which can respond to the challenges it now faces.
He also makes clear though that this personal responsibility does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it the whole solution, and that the NHS and government must be there to support and encourage better decisions.
It is interesting because the new government somehow needs to find a way to make conversations about spending less money on healthcare politically acceptable. The Tories knew that any suspicion of being hostile to the NHS or seeking to cut health budgets would be electorally fatal. The Coalition has maintained the promise to ring fence health spending, even though the Lib-Dems did not match that promise during the campaign.
Now I have absolutely no desire for government to spend less on healthcare for its own sake. But as I have argued here before, the focus in our popular narrative on protecting acute care above all else means that we neglect investing in community care and preventative interventions which crucially both cost less money and can stop people getting acutely ill in the first place. The kind of behaviour change which Prof Field speaks of should be our strength as a sector.
The conversation which government needs to stimulate therefore is not how to cut money from the NHS, but rather how can health care and public health be delivered in a way which focuses less on institutions and more on good outcomes for the public. As we know, seeking to close a hospital is met with placards and protests. Yet there no longer being a need for that hospital could be met with celebration.
The third sector has an absolutely key role to play in all of this. Recently Paul Corrigan wrote an outstanding pamphlet for us on how the third sector will be the catalyst for a transformation of the way in which healthcare is delivered through revolutionising the business model and changing the way in which value in healthcare is conceived. The public themselves can add value to their own healthcare, not just by adopting healthier behaviour but by learning more about the long term conditions from which they may suffer. His argument is purely an economic one – although with a clear moral obligation.
I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It will change the way you think about the healthcare sector. You can download it here (you just need to enter your email address to see it).
So how do we get there? This round of NHS reform is going to be crucial for the third sector. GP commissioning consortia could be a huge opportunity for third sector organisations to have a greater role in both provision and in working with clinicians to commission the right interventions for particular demographic groups. Details of the White Paper are currently open for consultation and the ACEVO policy team is working furiously with members to respond.
But it will be a difficult challenge. A colleague of mine was recently hosting a roundtable with GPs to talk about how the third sector could play a significant role in markets for patients with personal health budgets. While very enthusiastic about what the third sector could offer in their local area they ended the meeting asking whether there were in fact any third sector organisations in that area!
That dialogue must be quickly formed if we stand any chance of encouraging behaviour change in the general public to live healthier lifestyles, or create a health service which can respond to the challenges it now faces.
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
The Big Society
Last week I spoke at the ACEVO-Action Planning Funding Readshow in Brimingham, pre-empting Cameron's spech yesterday. This is what I said:
Thank you David [Senior from Action Planning, not to be confused with Cameron!] for that very kind introduction. Our partnership with Action Planning means a great deal to us and I am really pleased to be here today in this great venue.
We’ve got a great line up here this morning with the opportunity to hear straight from the horses mouth with officials across government able to explain how policy is developing across departments. My job is to set a little of the context, to explore what Big Society may mean and how it will affect our roles in running charities.
It’s now three months since the election and a result which I don’t think many of us would have predicted. It’s been a whirlwind period for all of us as we try to identify what is at the heart of the new government’s vision, and how new policies will affect us and the work we do.
As the dust has begun to settle it is clear that there are some important narratives which are coming to the fore, and which will dominate policy making across government.
The first of these big narratives is of course The Big Society. While this agenda certainly does need some more development there is a great deal of welcome news for the sector in the announcements which have been made.
I think that many of the principles for which we have been fighting for over many years seem now to be the starting point for the Coalition’s interaction with the sector. Government is talking with great enthusiasm about the importance of vibrant civil life and the role of the third sector in delivering reformed public services.
The likes of David Cameron and Francis Maude are talking about the need for a “smart, strategic state” to make the Big Society possible, avoiding simple state retrenchment and recognizing that the detail of the commissioning process, with a level playing field for the third sector, is what matters.
Words are warm elsewhere too with figures as diverse as Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and HM the Queen making it explicitly clear that the third sector is central to the new government’s vision.
This is without doubt good news. Our sector’s dialogue with the new government starts from a strong position. We don’t need to work at getting our foot in the door, but rather we should be able to get stuck in to the details about making the relationship work.
The Big Society narrative does however I think present some questions for us here in this room, what you might call the organized part of civil society.
Firstly, as I’ve hinted at, there is still a lack of clarity over what exactly it means. Reports from the election campaign suggested that did not go down well on the doorstep as it failed to make much practical sense to ordinary voters.
It is unclear the extent to which this is an agenda about the third sector and supporting the work of third sector organisations, or a more ethereal idea of stimulating civic action and engagement. On the one hand we have very clear, concrete and very welcome initiatives in the offing such as the Big Society Bank, but on the other hand many of the key individuals who have been at the heart of the development of the government’s vision for the Big Society have tended not been established third sector leaders.
A look at the Big Society website, jointly run by Lord Wei the advisor to the new government on the Big Society agenda, illustrates some of this. The blogs, articles and videos on the site very colorfully illustrate examples of what is Big Society. However, they do not really provide much analysis of how to turn these examples into a broader policy agenda, or indeed how the levers of government can turn this wide scale reality.
Now this lack of clarity is also a significant opportunity for us all here, as it is our collective role to work with government to better define Big Society. ACEVO has been arguing since the election that the rather romantic language used to articulate Big Society needs grounding in the reality of the modern third sector. Stephen Bubb gave a lecture back in May which argued that to achieve the vision of the Big Society we need not just civic action but organized civic action and that means a professional third sector which is well capitalized and business-like.
The second challenge which government faces with implementing the Big Society is a challenge which it will also face in many other areas, which is how to swing parliament and the juggernaut of central government behind it.
The Coalition’s majority is much smaller than those which have been enjoyed by the recent Labour governments, and even then government wasn’t always able to do what it wanted. Parliament will therefore have a stronger role; and the political reform agenda is set to give it a stronger role still. Backbenchers will matter and there is little telling at this stage whether or not the Big Society matters to them.
Ministers and senior officials may “get” the role which the sector can play, but it will mean lots of doing things differently, lots of new structures and systems, and the taking of lots of chances – some of which will of course fail. Convincing the treasury mandarin or the local authority chief executive of the need to take these chances will require sustained policy direction and real political bravery from central government. It will also require a sector better able to demonstrate its impact and make its own case.
So Big Society presents definite opportunities for the sector, and we all have some work to do in developing it further. But there is of course a cloud over all of this.
On the last page of the Coalition agreement, after thirty odd pages of commitments, it says in large letters in the middle of the page: “The Deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this agreement”.
Spending cuts are the biggest game in town and this is of course the second big narrative of the Ccoalition. This year we have seen the beginning of the cuts, and already we have seen an impact on the work of the third sector with the end of programmes such as the Future Jobs Fund. The budget made clear the enormity of the challenge ahead: an average of 25% cuts in departmental spending over the course of the parliament, £11bn lopped from the welfare bill and tax rises of which many (such as the rise in VAT) will hit the sector and those we serve hard. The Autumn’s spending review will be all important as each department submits its proposals for the 2011-14 period.
Now, there is no doubt that public services need reforming in many areas, and there is the potential for a bigger role for the third sector to deliver those services which are preventative and holistic, and keep people out of the most expensive government institutions like hospitals and prisons. We had a conference with our Health and Social care members yesterday and there was a real buzz in the room about the opportunities for a significant increase in the role of the sector in health and social care. But even optimists like us at ACEVO would see it a little far fetched to believe that the sector isn’t going to be hit hard by these cuts.
When we look back at the last decade or so we have seen a very significant expansion of the third sector. Now while there has been some very favourable specific policies towards the sector in terms of capacity building and capitalization, the real change for us has not been down to these sector specific policies, but rather down to the public service reform agenda, the significant growth in the public services industry and the increase in contestability with more opportunity for third sector organizations to play a role in providing those services. Capacity building didn’t grow the sector on its own. Public service reform did.
In this light we might reflect that however well intentioned the policies around the big society are, and however significant the opportunities for the will be to transform the way services are delivered, the reality is that the savage cuts which we will see across the board are likely to have more significant impact in the short and medium term on what it feels like to run a charity.
We don’t yet know exactly what Big Society means in terms of our day to day jobs, but we do know what losing funding would mean. Big Society could be a very interesting and coherent political philosophy, but we may not feel that this is the time for philosophizing.
Our focus at ACEVO is to support the sector’s leaders through spending cuts, with guidance and advice on collaboration and partnerships, on demonstrating impact, and on making those tough decisions which senior managers will have to take. We have recently launched cutswatch.org.uk to provide a first port of call for sector leaders and I’d commend it to you.
So to conclude David, two key narratives from the new government will significantly impact on the sector, Big Society and spending cuts. Both present opportunities and challenges, but one still needs a good deal more explaining. We all have a big role in shaping the debate about what the big society means, but until you’re clear on how it will impact on your day to day role, my advice would be to focus on the spending review, think about income diversity, investigate collaboration and demonstrate your impact; because the challenge of spending cuts is a very real one.
I look forward to hearing the perspectives to colleagues here from government and look forward to the discussion.
Thank you David [Senior from Action Planning, not to be confused with Cameron!] for that very kind introduction. Our partnership with Action Planning means a great deal to us and I am really pleased to be here today in this great venue.
We’ve got a great line up here this morning with the opportunity to hear straight from the horses mouth with officials across government able to explain how policy is developing across departments. My job is to set a little of the context, to explore what Big Society may mean and how it will affect our roles in running charities.
It’s now three months since the election and a result which I don’t think many of us would have predicted. It’s been a whirlwind period for all of us as we try to identify what is at the heart of the new government’s vision, and how new policies will affect us and the work we do.
As the dust has begun to settle it is clear that there are some important narratives which are coming to the fore, and which will dominate policy making across government.
The first of these big narratives is of course The Big Society. While this agenda certainly does need some more development there is a great deal of welcome news for the sector in the announcements which have been made.
I think that many of the principles for which we have been fighting for over many years seem now to be the starting point for the Coalition’s interaction with the sector. Government is talking with great enthusiasm about the importance of vibrant civil life and the role of the third sector in delivering reformed public services.
The likes of David Cameron and Francis Maude are talking about the need for a “smart, strategic state” to make the Big Society possible, avoiding simple state retrenchment and recognizing that the detail of the commissioning process, with a level playing field for the third sector, is what matters.
Words are warm elsewhere too with figures as diverse as Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and HM the Queen making it explicitly clear that the third sector is central to the new government’s vision.
This is without doubt good news. Our sector’s dialogue with the new government starts from a strong position. We don’t need to work at getting our foot in the door, but rather we should be able to get stuck in to the details about making the relationship work.
The Big Society narrative does however I think present some questions for us here in this room, what you might call the organized part of civil society.
Firstly, as I’ve hinted at, there is still a lack of clarity over what exactly it means. Reports from the election campaign suggested that did not go down well on the doorstep as it failed to make much practical sense to ordinary voters.
It is unclear the extent to which this is an agenda about the third sector and supporting the work of third sector organisations, or a more ethereal idea of stimulating civic action and engagement. On the one hand we have very clear, concrete and very welcome initiatives in the offing such as the Big Society Bank, but on the other hand many of the key individuals who have been at the heart of the development of the government’s vision for the Big Society have tended not been established third sector leaders.
A look at the Big Society website, jointly run by Lord Wei the advisor to the new government on the Big Society agenda, illustrates some of this. The blogs, articles and videos on the site very colorfully illustrate examples of what is Big Society. However, they do not really provide much analysis of how to turn these examples into a broader policy agenda, or indeed how the levers of government can turn this wide scale reality.
Now this lack of clarity is also a significant opportunity for us all here, as it is our collective role to work with government to better define Big Society. ACEVO has been arguing since the election that the rather romantic language used to articulate Big Society needs grounding in the reality of the modern third sector. Stephen Bubb gave a lecture back in May which argued that to achieve the vision of the Big Society we need not just civic action but organized civic action and that means a professional third sector which is well capitalized and business-like.
The second challenge which government faces with implementing the Big Society is a challenge which it will also face in many other areas, which is how to swing parliament and the juggernaut of central government behind it.
The Coalition’s majority is much smaller than those which have been enjoyed by the recent Labour governments, and even then government wasn’t always able to do what it wanted. Parliament will therefore have a stronger role; and the political reform agenda is set to give it a stronger role still. Backbenchers will matter and there is little telling at this stage whether or not the Big Society matters to them.
Ministers and senior officials may “get” the role which the sector can play, but it will mean lots of doing things differently, lots of new structures and systems, and the taking of lots of chances – some of which will of course fail. Convincing the treasury mandarin or the local authority chief executive of the need to take these chances will require sustained policy direction and real political bravery from central government. It will also require a sector better able to demonstrate its impact and make its own case.
So Big Society presents definite opportunities for the sector, and we all have some work to do in developing it further. But there is of course a cloud over all of this.
On the last page of the Coalition agreement, after thirty odd pages of commitments, it says in large letters in the middle of the page: “The Deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this agreement”.
Spending cuts are the biggest game in town and this is of course the second big narrative of the Ccoalition. This year we have seen the beginning of the cuts, and already we have seen an impact on the work of the third sector with the end of programmes such as the Future Jobs Fund. The budget made clear the enormity of the challenge ahead: an average of 25% cuts in departmental spending over the course of the parliament, £11bn lopped from the welfare bill and tax rises of which many (such as the rise in VAT) will hit the sector and those we serve hard. The Autumn’s spending review will be all important as each department submits its proposals for the 2011-14 period.
Now, there is no doubt that public services need reforming in many areas, and there is the potential for a bigger role for the third sector to deliver those services which are preventative and holistic, and keep people out of the most expensive government institutions like hospitals and prisons. We had a conference with our Health and Social care members yesterday and there was a real buzz in the room about the opportunities for a significant increase in the role of the sector in health and social care. But even optimists like us at ACEVO would see it a little far fetched to believe that the sector isn’t going to be hit hard by these cuts.
When we look back at the last decade or so we have seen a very significant expansion of the third sector. Now while there has been some very favourable specific policies towards the sector in terms of capacity building and capitalization, the real change for us has not been down to these sector specific policies, but rather down to the public service reform agenda, the significant growth in the public services industry and the increase in contestability with more opportunity for third sector organizations to play a role in providing those services. Capacity building didn’t grow the sector on its own. Public service reform did.
In this light we might reflect that however well intentioned the policies around the big society are, and however significant the opportunities for the will be to transform the way services are delivered, the reality is that the savage cuts which we will see across the board are likely to have more significant impact in the short and medium term on what it feels like to run a charity.
We don’t yet know exactly what Big Society means in terms of our day to day jobs, but we do know what losing funding would mean. Big Society could be a very interesting and coherent political philosophy, but we may not feel that this is the time for philosophizing.
Our focus at ACEVO is to support the sector’s leaders through spending cuts, with guidance and advice on collaboration and partnerships, on demonstrating impact, and on making those tough decisions which senior managers will have to take. We have recently launched cutswatch.org.uk to provide a first port of call for sector leaders and I’d commend it to you.
So to conclude David, two key narratives from the new government will significantly impact on the sector, Big Society and spending cuts. Both present opportunities and challenges, but one still needs a good deal more explaining. We all have a big role in shaping the debate about what the big society means, but until you’re clear on how it will impact on your day to day role, my advice would be to focus on the spending review, think about income diversity, investigate collaboration and demonstrate your impact; because the challenge of spending cuts is a very real one.
I look forward to hearing the perspectives to colleagues here from government and look forward to the discussion.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Convergence
“Convergence” is a great report produced by La Piana Consulting for the James Irvine Foundation. The report argues that there are five converging trends which are aligning to shape the future of the sector. Successful organisations will be the ones which can adapt to these trends:
· Demographic shifts redefining participation;
· Rapid advanced in technology;
· Networks enabling work to be organised in new ways;
· Rising interest in civil engagement and volunteering; and
· Blurring boundaries between the sectors.
The report outlines the ways in which organisations will need to respond and how we will need to develop the sector’s leadership to rise to these challenges.
For me the highlights are the quotes from sector leaders which explain what these changes will mean and present some real challenges to our thinking:
Tara Mohr, a coach from San Francisco said on the growth of inter-organisational networks:
“The organisation as an entity is becoming less and less important... We need to be looking at entrepreneurs, programs, organisations and networks of organisations, and thinking about how we organise our work and organise our impact across all four of those things, and less focused on the organisation as a central unit of how we get our work done.”
Shiree Teng, a consultant working with the sector argues that a radically different approach is needed for the models of leadership (not necessarily on-message for ACEVO!):
"It’s interesting to look at recent studies on nonprofit leadership deficits. That’s very conventional thinking — "replacement thinking." I think generational shift, along with trends related to diversity and technological advances, will change how we look at the leadership pipeline. Less replacement theory, more demand to revamp the executive director job so [it is] more doable. [We need to] increasingly look at the single leader model... and challenge that assumption of "leader." We need to move to more shared leadership for organizations."
Stephen Bauer, from American Humanics warned of the consequences of ignoring good HR:
"In our drive to put mission first, sometimes the staff are sacrificed. There are some funders out there that have taken the initiative in supporting effective HR functions and staff development, but if we don’t do more to take care of our own folk, we are going to lose them to other sectors."
David Eisner, former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, champions the need for new partnerships:
"Organizations must become more facile around all sorts of dynamics, from 'co-opetition,' where an organization they are competing with they must also have to cooperate with, to understanding joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions activities. The geographic world is changing dramatically. In the business landscape, there have been massive changes about how organizations are meeting supply; a lot of big nonprofits have not been able to restructure themselves to meet these new realities."
Peter Brinckerhoff, another consultant argued that funders have a key role in supporting organisations through these changes:
"As nonprofits, we can’t set money aside in a fund; you have to spend all the money according to the norms, which are "If we are not poor we are not holy." This gives us no cushion to thinking strategically. If nonprofits always budget just to break even, they can never grow and help more people."
As we focus on the immediate challenges we face around spending cuts and responding to the new government it is easy to forget the broader context and the longer term evolution of our environment. However we will ignore this at our peril.
· Demographic shifts redefining participation;
· Rapid advanced in technology;
· Networks enabling work to be organised in new ways;
· Rising interest in civil engagement and volunteering; and
· Blurring boundaries between the sectors.
The report outlines the ways in which organisations will need to respond and how we will need to develop the sector’s leadership to rise to these challenges.
For me the highlights are the quotes from sector leaders which explain what these changes will mean and present some real challenges to our thinking:
Tara Mohr, a coach from San Francisco said on the growth of inter-organisational networks:
“The organisation as an entity is becoming less and less important... We need to be looking at entrepreneurs, programs, organisations and networks of organisations, and thinking about how we organise our work and organise our impact across all four of those things, and less focused on the organisation as a central unit of how we get our work done.”
Shiree Teng, a consultant working with the sector argues that a radically different approach is needed for the models of leadership (not necessarily on-message for ACEVO!):
"It’s interesting to look at recent studies on nonprofit leadership deficits. That’s very conventional thinking — "replacement thinking." I think generational shift, along with trends related to diversity and technological advances, will change how we look at the leadership pipeline. Less replacement theory, more demand to revamp the executive director job so [it is] more doable. [We need to] increasingly look at the single leader model... and challenge that assumption of "leader." We need to move to more shared leadership for organizations."
Stephen Bauer, from American Humanics warned of the consequences of ignoring good HR:
"In our drive to put mission first, sometimes the staff are sacrificed. There are some funders out there that have taken the initiative in supporting effective HR functions and staff development, but if we don’t do more to take care of our own folk, we are going to lose them to other sectors."
David Eisner, former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, champions the need for new partnerships:
"Organizations must become more facile around all sorts of dynamics, from 'co-opetition,' where an organization they are competing with they must also have to cooperate with, to understanding joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions activities. The geographic world is changing dramatically. In the business landscape, there have been massive changes about how organizations are meeting supply; a lot of big nonprofits have not been able to restructure themselves to meet these new realities."
Peter Brinckerhoff, another consultant argued that funders have a key role in supporting organisations through these changes:
"As nonprofits, we can’t set money aside in a fund; you have to spend all the money according to the norms, which are "If we are not poor we are not holy." This gives us no cushion to thinking strategically. If nonprofits always budget just to break even, they can never grow and help more people."
As we focus on the immediate challenges we face around spending cuts and responding to the new government it is easy to forget the broader context and the longer term evolution of our environment. However we will ignore this at our peril.
Friday, 18 June 2010
On being a (future) Chief Executive
I’m glad I’m not Tony Haywood. It’s not that that BP deserves any particular sympathy, but he’s clearly had a pretty rough few weeks. In the eyes of America’s media and politicians, desperate to trump one another in the outrage stakes to curry favour with November’s electorate, he cannot do anything right.
Appear contrite and apologetic and he’s not sincere, or he’s wasting time when he could be plugging the hole himself. Appear pro-active in fixing the problem and he’s not sorry enough. Appear British (which he finds hard not to) and it’s the fault of his whole country. Appear to worry more about his own life and family and everyone hates him.
Now Tony is pretty well paid for his trouble. According to Wikipedia he is paid an annual salary of £998,000 and in 2008 his bonus was £1,496,000. But his experience does proove that it’s lonely at the top. His Chair has avoided putting his head above the parrapet except to declare how much he cares for the small people. Tony has been in the firing line, and, to be fair to him, he has not shirked away from it.
Today is our future leaders summit and I am looking forward to chairing the afternoon session. The conference, aimed at our associate members who are looking to make the step up to the role of chief executive, will see a great line up of speakers sharing experience about how to bag that top job. It will also see the launch of our new publication, written by Cass Business School, on How to Become a Third Sector Chief Executive.
I suspect that most of the delegates are more interested in leading a charity than a multi-national oil company. But Tony’s experience should remind them all of one thing: once you’re the CEO there is no passing the buck. When something goes wrong it’s all your fault, even if it’s a genuine accident, even if you had all the right policies in place, even if your staff do something completely stupid.
It’s that kind of isolating responsibility which makes ACEVO’s networks so valuable. There is a point at which only other CEOs can provide you with the support you need, because only they can know what’s it’s really like.
And it is that responsibility which justifies the salaries which we pay to our CEOs. In the media circus surrounding executive pay, it’s easy to forget that it is responsibility, and not just the complexity of the role or the hours worked, which makes CEOs so valuable.
Everything comes on a scale, and not many ACEVO members have the capacity to destroy large swathes of the American coastline. But we do extremely complicated work with the most vulnerable people in the UK and around the world. The risks are enormous, and the responsibility sometimes overwhelming. Things have gone wrong in our sector and you can be sure they will again. So spare a thought for those who choose to isolate themselves with responsibility, and don’t complain when we pay them a little for their trouble.
Friday, 11 June 2010
Partnership and Placards
There’s a fascinating article on the relationship between the corporate sector and NGOs in The Economist this week. It’s written in the context of a backlash against NGOs who have build long term relationships with BP following the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The article cites a number of major campaigning organizations, including the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and The Environmental Defense Fund, who have worked closely with BP to advise on extraction methods or help develop carbon trading schemes. Some have received donations from BP in return. Now, many of the groups’ supporters and other activists are protesting that those organizations are too close to the wicked BP and have sold-out.
The article reminds us that in the last twenty years the relationships between the corporate sector and nonprofits has changed beyond all recognition, and real partnership is the norm on both sides. ACEVO is currently working closely with the CBI on identifying what leadership skills are needed in both third and private sector in order to build effective service delivery partnerships. We are also running the Sustainable Business Forum, led by Oliver Rothschild, which is looking at the future of corporate-third sector relationships.
BP’s shattered reputation does raise some important questions about how our sector works with big corporates. There is no doubt that close partnerships make a real difference to the behaviour of organizations. McDonald’s relationship with a number of environmental groups is a case in point. An equal seat at the decision making table is always likely to bring about more change than waiving placards outside the board room. However, every nonprofit has, or should have, its limit; and sometimes things happen which we must oppose. So understanding the point at which we turn our back on partnerships and pick up our placards again is key.
Many organizations in the UK will be feeling a similar dilemma about our relationship with government. The partnership between the sector and government here is the most sophisticated in the world. However, the age of austerity and fears for our most vulnerable beneficiaries cause us all to ask at what point we have to turn away from partnership and protest. (Polly Toynbee wrote on this a couple of weeks ago.)
It is a tough call for third sector organizations as there is still huge potential opportunity in partnership with government. As ACEVO has been arguing since the start of the credit crunch, by focusing on prevention, devolving control towards service users and joining up silos, the third sector can bring about real reform in our public services – both saving money and delivering better outcomes. The question is whether or not government is brave enough and bold enough to lead that kind of reform. If not, salami slicing and the protection of vested public sector interests will leave many of our service users much worse off. When this happens we have a responsibility to cry out. We must not be afraid to do so when necessary.
The article cites a number of major campaigning organizations, including the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and The Environmental Defense Fund, who have worked closely with BP to advise on extraction methods or help develop carbon trading schemes. Some have received donations from BP in return. Now, many of the groups’ supporters and other activists are protesting that those organizations are too close to the wicked BP and have sold-out.
The article reminds us that in the last twenty years the relationships between the corporate sector and nonprofits has changed beyond all recognition, and real partnership is the norm on both sides. ACEVO is currently working closely with the CBI on identifying what leadership skills are needed in both third and private sector in order to build effective service delivery partnerships. We are also running the Sustainable Business Forum, led by Oliver Rothschild, which is looking at the future of corporate-third sector relationships.
BP’s shattered reputation does raise some important questions about how our sector works with big corporates. There is no doubt that close partnerships make a real difference to the behaviour of organizations. McDonald’s relationship with a number of environmental groups is a case in point. An equal seat at the decision making table is always likely to bring about more change than waiving placards outside the board room. However, every nonprofit has, or should have, its limit; and sometimes things happen which we must oppose. So understanding the point at which we turn our back on partnerships and pick up our placards again is key.
Many organizations in the UK will be feeling a similar dilemma about our relationship with government. The partnership between the sector and government here is the most sophisticated in the world. However, the age of austerity and fears for our most vulnerable beneficiaries cause us all to ask at what point we have to turn away from partnership and protest. (Polly Toynbee wrote on this a couple of weeks ago.)
It is a tough call for third sector organizations as there is still huge potential opportunity in partnership with government. As ACEVO has been arguing since the start of the credit crunch, by focusing on prevention, devolving control towards service users and joining up silos, the third sector can bring about real reform in our public services – both saving money and delivering better outcomes. The question is whether or not government is brave enough and bold enough to lead that kind of reform. If not, salami slicing and the protection of vested public sector interests will leave many of our service users much worse off. When this happens we have a responsibility to cry out. We must not be afraid to do so when necessary.
Friday, 4 June 2010
“Uncovering” salaries
Pay of public sector chief executives has been thrust into the headlines again this week thanks to the Cabinet Office’s decision to release the names of 170 civil servants earning more than £150,000 per year.
Much more significant for third sector leaders is the decision of Grant Shapps the new housing minister to highlight the salaries of housing association chief executives, as reported in the Telegraph the following day. The fact that these organizations receive a significant amount of public money is key to the argument in the article.
The report claims that these figures have been “uncovered” by Mr Shapps, suggesting an air of cover-up. It doesn’t, of course, take much uncovering to look through the annual reports of housing associations which, like other charities, publish the salaries of the highest paid. But this language is important as Mr Shapps is clearly suggesting that any salary over than of the prime Minister is unacceptable, and the article goes on to say:
“The housing association salary packages are embarrassing as the executives run non-profit making bodies providing housing to some of Britain’s most disadvantaged citizens.”
The obvious question is how long will it be before salaries of other third sector chief executives are again making the headlines, and how will we respond when they do?
Salaries such as those reported in the Telegraph, even for those running housing associations, are very rare in our sector. (Journalists do like to turn the exception into the rule.) The ACEVO pay survey for 2009-10 shows a median salary of £57,264, and even for organizations with a turnover of more than £25m the median salary is 104,500 (significantly less than David Cameron).
But we know that there is a significant gulf between what the public think we do in the third sector and the reality of our work in the 21st Century. In the still-frenzied media world following the expenses scandals of last year, and the supposed “new politics” of the coalition government, there is a very real risk that the very modest salaries which most third sector CEOs are paid could be conflated yet again with the excesses of the city and alienate many of the public on whose support we depend. Many serious people believe that charity CEOs should do the job for free.
The National Housing Federation are right to point out in their response to the article that housing associations have been open and accountable about senior salaries for many years (unlike the civil service) and match every penny of public money with two pence of their own resources, thus providing excellent value to the tax payer. The same argument is true of other charities.
I am not going to try to make a detailed value-for-money case here. My point is simply that making such a case is the only way for the public to judge whether or not these salaries are acceptable. I have argued many times in this blog that as a sector we need to take charge of the narrative about what makes for a good charity. Measuring and judging inputs is pointless. Describing how our work makes a difference to the world and how we use recourses effectively to achieve that difference must be the priority.
We have nothing to hide about what we pay our chief executives, and nor have we been hiding it. But in this climate we need more than ever to champion how the sector’s leaders bring about change for the most vulnerable and needy in society and how they are worth every penny.
Much more significant for third sector leaders is the decision of Grant Shapps the new housing minister to highlight the salaries of housing association chief executives, as reported in the Telegraph the following day. The fact that these organizations receive a significant amount of public money is key to the argument in the article.
The report claims that these figures have been “uncovered” by Mr Shapps, suggesting an air of cover-up. It doesn’t, of course, take much uncovering to look through the annual reports of housing associations which, like other charities, publish the salaries of the highest paid. But this language is important as Mr Shapps is clearly suggesting that any salary over than of the prime Minister is unacceptable, and the article goes on to say:
“The housing association salary packages are embarrassing as the executives run non-profit making bodies providing housing to some of Britain’s most disadvantaged citizens.”
The obvious question is how long will it be before salaries of other third sector chief executives are again making the headlines, and how will we respond when they do?
Salaries such as those reported in the Telegraph, even for those running housing associations, are very rare in our sector. (Journalists do like to turn the exception into the rule.) The ACEVO pay survey for 2009-10 shows a median salary of £57,264, and even for organizations with a turnover of more than £25m the median salary is 104,500 (significantly less than David Cameron).
But we know that there is a significant gulf between what the public think we do in the third sector and the reality of our work in the 21st Century. In the still-frenzied media world following the expenses scandals of last year, and the supposed “new politics” of the coalition government, there is a very real risk that the very modest salaries which most third sector CEOs are paid could be conflated yet again with the excesses of the city and alienate many of the public on whose support we depend. Many serious people believe that charity CEOs should do the job for free.
The National Housing Federation are right to point out in their response to the article that housing associations have been open and accountable about senior salaries for many years (unlike the civil service) and match every penny of public money with two pence of their own resources, thus providing excellent value to the tax payer. The same argument is true of other charities.
I am not going to try to make a detailed value-for-money case here. My point is simply that making such a case is the only way for the public to judge whether or not these salaries are acceptable. I have argued many times in this blog that as a sector we need to take charge of the narrative about what makes for a good charity. Measuring and judging inputs is pointless. Describing how our work makes a difference to the world and how we use recourses effectively to achieve that difference must be the priority.
We have nothing to hide about what we pay our chief executives, and nor have we been hiding it. But in this climate we need more than ever to champion how the sector’s leaders bring about change for the most vulnerable and needy in society and how they are worth every penny.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
