(re)make a future

It’s been a while since I was here. 

I posed the following questions on Facebook and Twitter yesterday:

Facebook: “Anyone else feeling like we need to go in to battle for the heart & soul of our nation before all our public institutions are weakened beyond repair & we've gone too far down the road to entrenched inequality to recover?”

Twitter: “Feeling like we are at war for the heart & soul of our nation. Fairness & equality, human rights, dignity, public institutions being eroded.”

(Admittedly Twitter was more of a statement than a question!)

The FB post was followed by further engagement with some friends and colleagues, many of whom feel the same, or some version of it, and are grappling with what to do about it.

On Twitter, I had a lengthy engagement with a respected colleague on the same topic area.

Some points worth summarising:

I’ve lost whatever faith I had in the ALP as an opposition party to effectively counter the ideologically driven and extremely damaging agenda of the LNP Gov’t. Seems most others have too. This could be remedied, but no one is holding their breath. The battles are going to need to be fought outside the Parliamentary system and party politics

The language of ‘war’ and ‘battles’ is problematic and immediately fuels an adversarial approach, which may not be the most productive short or long term strategy

Another way to think about this is in terms of organisational and cultural change, informed by Community Psychology, and the creation of ‘alternative settings’ or ‘parallel institutions’ … i.e. you build something new that captures the hearts and minds of people, and they leave the old and migrate to the new (this is how you ‘change’ organisations, i.e. you don’t, you build a new one from inside and everyone leaves the old and comes to the new)

There are a lot of amazing, positive things happening in Australia - but they are being crowded out, drowned, denied oxygen by the Gov’ts assault on basic fairness, etc. - we need to a) find a way to amplify them, b) get better at collaborating and coordinating

People are looking for ideas, projects, activities to get behind as a counter to what they see happening to their country

At a personal level, outside the conversations, I have been thinking what I can do to start to act, to get some momentum in putting myself in to the field on some of these matters that are eating at me.

A guiding question has been, for me: “What am I prepared to sacrifice?”

An easy answer, that I can start with, is money. I can spend less on stuff, and put some of that $ towards things we need to preserve, amplify, celebrate.

My thoughts on what to invest in:

Free, independent press, i.e. New Matilda, Crikey, The Saturday Paper

Think Tanks and research bodies, i.e. The Australia Institute, The Climate Council

Advocacy orgs and citizen movements, i..e GetUp!, Friends of the Earth

Platforms for collaboration, incubation and movement building like the Centre for Australian Progress

Orgs that are working to reduce inequality and tackle climate change, either domestically or overseas, such as Oxfam

I’m sure there are others.

So as a first step - one I’ll explore further in the FY as ongoing, recurring $ contributions - I have made EOFY donations to the following organisations:

The Australia Institute

Friends of the Earth Australia

New Matilda (I already have a recurring subscription with them as well)

[ This is the first of a series of blog posts about the Impact Economy in Australia.]

I’ve been doing some thinking and reading about impact investment and what I call the impact economy over the last month or so. I’ve also been engaging in some great conversations with others working and interested in the field.

Some thoughts/themes that have emerged for me. Here is the first one.

Start with Why

The Impact Economy includes a wide variety of businesses and ‘movements’

I use the term ‘impact economy’ to describe the collection of movements that are putting solving social and environmental problems at the heart of commercially sustainable business models.

For me, this includes everything from social enterprise (typically used to describe businesses at the smaller end of the scale that have emerged from the community sector) to shared value (typically associated with large national or multinational businesses), and B-Corps in between (typically business emergent enterprises that are small to medium sized … though there are some big ones!).

It also includes the cooperatives movement (though I would argue that not all coops have solving social or environmental problems at the heart of their business models), indigenous business, social business, inclusive business, fair trade and more.

I like to use Sinek’s Golden Circle theory (see https://www.startwithwhy.com/) in relation to this ‘taxonomy’, i.e. every enterprise has a What, How and Why. And Why is the most important.

I was privileged to attend Progress 2015 last Friday (8th May) in Melbourne. It was the second iteration of an event conceived and delivered by Australian Progress (http://australianprogress.org.au) to bring together a 1000 or so Australian changemakers to have critical conversations, plan and collaborate.

The event itself went for 3 days (Thursday to Saturday) - and had an outstanding program. I followed along on Twitter most of the time (search on #progress2015), but was only physically present on the Friday.

As is typically the case with such events, the value is not only in the speakers (Snowden was a personal highlight for me; Singer was there; Naomi Klein via videoconference, etc. - all listed on the http://progress2015.org.au website) but also the participants and the conversation you have with each other. 

Having worked for “progress” in some way or another for the last two decades, it was also inevitably a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues.

Human connection aside, the event was a brilliant learning and conversation platform. It got my mind ticking over - as I agreed, disagreed, had ‘established wisdom’ challenged, and found issues reframed or better understood.

I expect I’ll keep percolating on many things from my day at Progress and the related twitter conversations, yet I wanted to pin down some of my key ‘takeaways’ from the event - which may or may not be of relevance and interest to others!

A. We need evidence-based social changemaking:

While I missed Peter Singer’s keynote on the Thursday, it was no surprise to me that his thoughts generated discussion, disagreement, and passion! While I disagree with some of where Singer takes the concept of ‘Empathy with Evidence’, the theme of using evidence to guide our choices and action permeated the whole of Progress 2015. This shouldn’t be surprising, as it is really just fundamental change theory! I blogged about my take on Effective Altruism here, before attending Progress http://cameronneil.tumblr.com/post/118325594390/singer-effective-altruism.

B. ‘There is little new under the sun’:

Contrary to a great deal of the ‘technological innovation’ love I heard and read, and a fair dose of what the wonderful Jan Owen calls “Terminal Uniqueness”, much of what underpinned the presentations and discussions about achieving effective progress was old school, fundamental change and learning theory and practice. Yes, we need social innovation to apply these theories and practices to the current bundles of problems and challenges. Yet, there is power and precedent to unlock in getting back to, and understanding, some of these fundamentals.

C. Social innovation is the core of progress:

Technology is not our saviour. It is a powerful tool. We need social innovation to power our movements and organisations – and harness all the tools we have available. My view is that many of the challenges we face at the moment is because technological innovation has outpaced social innovation. We need to value and support social innovation as much as – if not more than – our obsession and love for the latest hardware or application. (To be fair, what I heard when a lot of people talked about technological innovation was actually social innovation, as they were changing or designing the ways people organise and deploy tools … )

D. Inequality and Climate Change are the key challenges:

I missed John Falzon’s contribution on the Thursday morning, but his rallying call around ‘inequality as the common enemy’ came through loud and clear over Twitter – and was picked up in the press. I agree with John (I think his whole speech is available online). I see inequality underpinning so much of what social change movements seek to overcome. It has certainly been the focus of much of the work I’ve done in my life. Alongside inequality as the key challenge are the impacts of climate change and the necessity to stop carbon pollution as quickly as possible (as well as mitigation and adaptation where necessary).

We need to be able to hold both of those challenges as ‘constraints’ on our solutions. For example, we can’t propose or push for climate change actions that increase inequality. Nor can we accept solutions for inequality that risk making climate change worse. I believe we are smart enough to tackle both at once – and that we must.

For me, it seems that a lot of what we need to do to tackle climate change is known (it’s political will that is lacking – and a v well organised opposition team). We have even developed market mechanisms, i.e. a price on carbon, that helps us get things done. But what about inequality reduction? Where is the market mechanism for that? What does it look like?

This is also a test for policy making: 1) Does it reduce carbon emissions and the likelihood of runaway climate change? 2) Does it reduce inequality? … It could also be a test we apply to my next point …

E. Align how we Donate, Purchase, Invest:

Danny Almagor of Small Giants challenged everyone at the Philanthropy session to think about all the ways we can use money to create progress – not just what we donate, or that is available via philanthropy. Whether as individuals or organisations/businesses, this is so very true. What we donate tends to be a relatively small quantum of $ compared to what we spend, and is most certainly less than what we have invested (whether this be superannuation funds, bank accounts, investment funds, shares, etc.). To maximise our efforts, we need to do our best to align where our money flows. (and not just our money – our time that we donate and invest as well!).  

Very much related to this, and something I would have loved seen discussed in the Philanthropy session, is how we unlock the corpus of the various social and environmental charitable foundations, so that it is not just the interest earned that is fuelling progress, but also how that interest is derived. The last figure I heard is that there is $9 billion under investment across such charities in Australia. How good would it be to have that $9 billion – or even 10% of it to begin with – invested in for-purpose businesses delivering social and environmental change, with the interest on such investments then providing the fuel for philanthropy?  

Other quick reflections:

Energy follows focus – love this! It came up in one of the workshops I was in. We need to get focused and shut down distractions if we are going to win

Social change is a 3 generation endeavour. Anything we achieve today is because of what those generations ahead of us have done. And what will be achieved down the line will be cause of what we do. We must ensure we are tilling the soil and planting the seeds, as much as we are harvesting. “We stand on the shoulders of giants”.

Over the weekend, Peter Singer spoke at some ideas event in Sydney. I didn’t attend, but more than a handful of people I follow on Twitter were there.

From the tweets, I gained some insight in to the day and the discussions/ideas.

Singer spoke about Effective Altruism - a concept that seems to have both taken hold in public consciousness and also created quite a bit of angst.

As an example of the former, see here: https://centreforeffectivealtruism.org/

As an example of the latter, see here: http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/the_elitist_philanthropy_of_so_called_effective_altruism

I’ve heard of effective altruism before, but more like passing whispers, or something seen in the ongoing torrent of social media streams. I hadn’t really stopped to engage or think about it before.

Given my work over the years in all manner of social change and environmental sustainability arenas, my gut reaction to the central principles of effective altruism (e.g. Empathy with Evidence) is positive. More than that - a ‘my god yes yes yes!’

I’ve seen so much effort and $$ poured in to well meaning but, in my view, ineffective projects, organisations, causes, etc.

In addition, I’ve seen efforts with huge potential to create meaningful, lasting impact fail to get off the ground, or really struggle to attract time and money to enable them to grow and scale.

My experience also reminds me that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between those two types of projects or initiatives at any one point in time - and that there is a continuum stretching between such things. It’s not black and white. I get that.

I also understand that is often hard to put a value on the impact of initiatives - and often there are value judgements at play.

Yet, the problems the world is facing today demand more from us than good intentions.

We should all want to do better. Do more. Do the best we can with what we have.

And that is what effective altruism boils down to for me - an interpretation that isn’t dogmatic or threatening - but a challenge to us all to:

(a) do the best we can today with the information we have available

(b) actively seek out information on how we can do better

(c) change what we do based on the new information

When you look at effective altruism in such a way, it is pretty basic change theory.

The problem problem many of us have (myself included) is that we stop at the first step ... or maybe some way towards the first step. We give our time and money to some things that are good intentioned, that are meaningful to us in some way, that capture our heart.

But we rarely proactively seek information on whether what we are doing is the best we can do, or for better ways of achieving results we want to see.

For me, this is basic human psychology at work. Once we’ve committed to, or done something, we tend to want to be able to justify it or believe that it is awesome. We don’t want to find out we were wrong!

But that is life. We learn. We get more data. And we adapt.

Our social and environmental change efforts need to be seen as a continuous learning process, not an endpoint.

This is vitally important.

Our world has any number of wicked problems and complex challenges. Solving them, overcoming challenges, creating a better world for as many as possible, requires us to question, to learn, to demand and consider the evidence.

“Success is not permanent. Failure is not final”.

A friend posted that on his Facebook wall yesterday. I needed to read that.

Both are phases, moments in time, that do not define us. 

I found this piece by Libby Ward-Christie from Social Traders useful and insightful re the current eco-system of support for aspiring and growing social enterprises, for purpose businesses and other members of the ‘impact economy’.

I’ve been tinkering on the edge of what is now known as ‘impact investing’ for about as long as I’ve been tinkering with business models to deliver social/environmental impact in financial sustainable ways - which is about 15 years (since 1999).

There has always been a gap in the middle re financing and capability building. As this article identifies, despite a lot of growth in crowdfunding to unlock up to $50k (or $100k at a stretch), and the interest in impact investing to provide large-scale $, this situation hasn’t really changed that much.

I’ve often argued that at least one of the challenges in the social enterprise space - which is tied in to Libby’s “Lesson 2″ - is a challenge of our own making, i.e. seeking to make business entrepreneurs and people out of those with a passion for social change. I think we could perhaps go bigger, faster, with less capability building, if we could ‘turn on’ business types to solving social problems. I think this is actually happening now - after some social enterprise pioneers have proven that there are viable, profitable businesses to be built in solving social and environmental challenges. Witness also the interest in shared value from major companies.

The Australian Government has unveiled two new reforms to significantly increase the development and growth of Indigenous businesses and employment.

AND

Almost a month after the commitment from to grow Federal Gov’t procurement from Indigenous businesses by 20 times by 2020, the creation/formation of the First Australians Chamber of Commerce & Industry was also announced.

http://www.indigenous.gov.au/news-and-media/announcements/minister-scullion-supporting-indigenous-business-and-jobs

SO

I’m pretty excited about the window of opportunity that seems to have been created in Australia for serious growth of Indigenous businesses.

I think this window - likely the next 5 to 10 years - is vitally important for economic empowerment and self-determination/autonomy for Indigenous Australians.

This window opens at a time where major players in Corporate Australia have made commitments and are strategically aligned to also pursue the objectives that the Federal Government has announced, and is also 5.5 years since the formation of Supply Nation (formerly and established as the Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council).

In my experience, a lot of organisations have experimented with supplier diversity, and in particular Indigenous procurement, over the last decade, with some success (and also learning a lot from some less successful approaches).

Day 3 in to my post-Hub Australia world ... and day 3 of exploring what to do next.

In between doing a bunch of things around the house that have been building up, and of course spending a lot of time with my amazing little boy, I've been reaching out to a few folks, talking to friends about ideas and thoughts, and doing some thinking about this new beginning.

Things I am interested in right now:

* the intersection of ethical and sustainable supply chains, customer engagement, and brand (value, resilience)

* the future of work (as per twitter ramblings over the New Year) - especially on my mind of late is how cooperatives, collaborative structures, institutions, etc can be created or evolve to ensure that workforce fragmentation, freelancing, 'freedom', the sharing economy, etc. don't further entrench poverty, exclusion, inequality

* what a policy and economic framework would look like that provided free childcare, primary and secondary schooling, and tertiary education - and how it could be funded (i.e. what do you take money from to achieve this)

* food and agriculture sustainability continues to be a big focus of my thinking - Fairtrade, small farmer cooperatives, local and distributed food systems, moving people from food welfare (i.e. Foodbank) in to food businesses, 'Big Ag' and the opportunities in Asia

* Indonesia - if Australia could pick one country to assist via technology and knowledge transfer, cooperation, collaboration, ODA, etc that would make a huge difference on the world stage (think carbon emissions, forests, food production, poverty, etc.) it would be Indonesia, right on our doorstep!

* finance still very much interests me ... Shared Interest, Root Capital, impact investing ...

Obviously, lots of things on my mind!

Resurrecting this blog now, having moved on from Hub Australia as of Friday ... my last blog was announcing me leaving Net Balance and joining Hub!