just because everyone seems to be at it doesn't mean you should...

So – mentoring. Everyone seems to be at it these days: Unltd Connect are running a national scheme, there’s the Mowgli Foundation if you prefer something a bit more international, and Social Enterprise North West are running a programme that will accredit your mentor in the process!

But is mentoring worth it?

Undoubtedly yes – the chance to share some of a mentee’s infectious enthusiasm and the chance for mentors to help to short-cut processes and learning, and sometimes even save a venture from failure by sharing hard-earned lessons elsewhere can only be a good thing.

But it comes at a cost. As mentors, we need to be able to keep paying the bills and mentoring doesn’t usually pay well (if at all) in terms of cash. As mentees – don’t forget you’ve also got an enterprise to keep running and developing: don’t neglect your own customers; your mentors might be more enjoyable company, but we don’t actually pay you any money…

As for me – I still prefer my own model of mentoring: “beer mentoring”

is SROI damaging our economy?

Social Return On Investment (SROI) is a tool that's gaining increasing credibility and acceptance through its ability to monetise the benefits that a project or intervention accrues to the wider community and society.

However, I wonder if this hasn't unintentionally led to a damaging of our economies – local and otherwise?

SROI calculates the financial value of benefits that have been created – in other words, how much cash has been saved that would otherwise have had to have been spent – cash that would have supported additional jobs, purchases of equipment and so on (those things that are used to measure the growth of our economy). From this perspective, the SROI figure therefore shows how far that organisation has 'limited' and constrained the economy.

Further, it also shows how concentrated the influence in the economy is within that single venture, highlighting the economy's reliance upon it - if it were to fail, then the 'shock' to the economy would be their turnover multiplied by their SROI figure.

So with the drive to make our local economies more resilient, SROI could then start to show us where the 'weak points' in our economies are...

So – if you use SROI and calculate a high figure – rejoice, but also be aware of the wider implications of what it may mean for your wider impact upon the economy, both local and national... alternatively, it could mean that we just need better tools to consider how we measure and understand the wider economy?

do we need a new co-op model for Transition?

The Transition Towns movement is well recognised, credible and attracting increasing amounts of interest. It is also recognised and cited as being very closed aligned to the co-operative movement, no doubt due to the shared values upon which both are based.

However, to date, Transition initiatives have rarely (if at all) structured or incorporated themselves as recognised co-operatives, and many people in the co-operative movement are starting to encourage them to do so. (here, here, and here)

But after spending some time with a ‘Transitioner’ recently, I wonder if perhaps the reason for this apparent reticence on the part of the Transitioners is because the co-operative movement doesn’t have an appropriate model for them...yet

Co-operatives are recognised as taking many wondrous and diverse forms, all of which share the same underpinning and defining values, but which allow them to reflect their members’ interests and circumstances – for example, housing co-ops are structured to reflect the nature of members as tenants within the context of housing legislation, consumer co-ops reflect their members’ engagement as being intermittent (we don’t spend all of our time in the co-op shop) but we do expect to be regular and ongoing purchasers, worker co-ops where members expect to be in employment for the foreseeable future, and so on.

For the Transition movement, the members’ interests are transitionery – one of the principles of Transition is that obsolescence is built in from the outset, with the expectation that people will join the group based on a specific interest that may not be shared by all others, and that their involvement will ebb and flow over time rather than remain at a constant ongoing commitment (as in other forms of co-operative – see above). There is also the consideration that the group will be made up of a number of distinct themed ‘sub-groups’ who are united by their co-existing within the same geographical area, and that Transition initiatives will rarely share common sets of such groupings.

Perhaps then we need to create a new co-op model to reflect this and so better support and encourage Transitioners to more easily manage and strengthen their relationships through a co-op structure.

Such a model could be based around the existing consortia or secondary co-op models, with individuals becoming members of the wider co-operative, but then engaging primarily with their particular interest group within the wider Transition initiative. Each of these thematic groups would then nominate one of their number to the board of the co-op to ensure that (1) the co-op remains accountable to its members, (2) members shape and direct the co-operative themselves, (3) all parts of the co-operative are included and (4) allows individual members and the overall Transition initiative more flexibility about their level of involvement and engagement according to their own circumstances and that of the part of the initiative that they have an interest in.

What do people think?

Have I hit upon a ‘magic bullet’ here or simply ‘missed the point’?

Would be good to have feedback from people within both the co-operative and Transition movements.

Where next for social enterprise in the 'Big Society'?

There’s increasing interest from politicians and investors for social enterprises to enter ‘non-traditional’ market places (apparently there’s a belief that social enterprises don’t usually foray out of construction, catering or childcare into markets like telecoms, IT, financial services, etc etc...), especially into industries where private businesses have failed.

So – leaving aside the argument that if other businesses fail in these markets, where is the logic in us entering them?, this may seem fair enough, but ask any actual trading business about their entering new marketplaces and they’ve very hesitant. This is because this strategy for business growth is proven to be the most risky, and most likely to fail.

Therefore we need an incentive – if the state wants us to take such high risks, then they should recognise the cost to us for delivering their agenda (assuming that we decide it’s actually a good idea to enter new marketplaces). This doesn’t and shouldn’t be through grants, but maybe through tax and investment reliefs, interest free loans, and so on – possibly the need that the big society bank that’s being created could meet?

But if we do diversify and enter these ‘non-traditional’ market places, ultimately it should be because we see that there’s business sense in doing so – otherwise we change into charities or subsidiaries of the state and loose our distinctiveness.

Could social enterprise benefit from using a co-operative identity?

Co-operative enterprises are extremely varied in their basis for membership, forms and structures, but all share a common global basis of shared values and principles to unite them.

To help reduce confusion about what type of co-operative they are, they group and identify themselves into a number of types, with each being based on their primary focus (type of member) – worker, housing, community, credit, consumer, ...

Maybe that’s a trick which the wider social enterprise movement might look to adopt in helping to reduce the ongoing confusion about what it is. Perhaps the basis for such ‘sub-grouping’ would be on their primary market or beneficiary, so we’d see ‘employment social enterprises’, ‘training social enterprises’, ‘health care social enterprises’, maybe even ‘co-operative social enterprises’?

Marked for success or more confusion?

The principle aim of the Community Interest Company (CIC) was as an easy identifier for social enterprises, but this seems not to have happened in the way people hoped – perhaps because as a legal form CICs offer no features that are inherently unique (i.e. protected asset locks and principle purposes can be entrenched in other legal forms).

But we now have the shiny new Social Enterprise Mark, which will hopefully have a better chance of being the easy identifier as it’s based on recognising defining characteristics of social enterprise in whatever legal form or structured they are enshrined.

BUT... will this Mark spark a new market for ‘marks’? The Soil Association and FairTrade Foundation were both pioneers in certifying organic and fairly traded goods, but other organisations offering organic and fair trade certifications have since emerged...

So perhaps we should be more open to the other ‘marks’ that are available to social enterprises to seek (the Social Firms Star for instance), and welcome others’ attempts to introduce other standards (there’s moves for a worker co-op mark, and Scotland did look at having its own mark as well) and explore how they might best complement each other.

Ultimately though, the Social Enterprise Mark shouldn’t be a holy grail, but one of a number of tools that we should approach and consider its appropriateness to us in the context of our enterprises’ own needs and marketplaces. Some will take the mark and use it to great commercial advantage I’m sure, while for others it simply won’t be relevant...

Should you trust your business advisor?

OK, seeing as a lot of work that I do is in the guise of a business advisor, this may sound a bit odd, but bear with me…

I recently saw some publicity for a local enterprise agency that caught my eye (for the wrong reasons) because of a client testimonial they’d used: “their advisors give you honest feedback as to whether or not your idea is a good one”.

As business advisors, it shouldn’t be our job to tell you if your idea is any good or not, but to support you to best understand the marketplace and your potential customers, what it will take to launch and manage it, and what you’ll need to be aware of in doing so. We shouldn’t tell you whether we think the idea is any good or not because:

1) It’s your business not ours – you’ll have to live with it, not us, so why are we telling you what to do with your life?

2) How do we know if a new business idea really is any good or not? - Look at all the ‘rubbish’ ideas that were rejected by the “gurus” of Dragon’s Den that went on to make a fortune; and history is littered with ideas and inventions that the ‘powers that be’ and recognised purveyors of ‘wisdom’ of the day just didn’t get – as a result we almost never had TV, the jet engine or even photocopiers!


You – the entrepreneur, should not always take what you’re told as gospel by a business advisor about if your idea will work or not: it’s your idea, your life, not ours.
If you don’t think we ‘get it’, then challenge us, or ask for another advisor; but please don’t abandon your brilliant idea that will change your world and mine just because someone else tells you it’ll never work based on their own personal tastes and prejudices.