In Defence of Knitting Yoghurt

I recently caught up with a friend of mine, whom I’ve known for about 30 years, and our conversation centred mainly on health, life and relationships and catching up in general. We inevitably moved onto discussing work when I realised how entrenched we can all become.

He asked about my work and when I told him excitedly about the SIU, he suggested I get “a proper job” and not one involving “trying to knit yoghurt”. I had a sense of what he meant by this but sought clarity. He confirmed what I thought and suggested the work of the SIU wasn’t real. To summarise his thoughts – dirty hands whilst working+immediate gain = good; policy/strategic/academic work+medum to long-term gain = bad.

I suggested to my friend that Einstein’s E=MC² would fit into his concept of ‘yoghurt knitting’ as well as the nucleus of almost every other everyday activity, object and gadget we use to make our lives a little easier.

The wider impact of this position on policy work is interesting. When the Coalition Government recently went to war on the civil service, the underlying thought was that those civil servants made redundant should establish social enterprises, but to do what?

The SIU has some excellent work planned and can deliver outstanding results locally by drawing upon national and international good practice, and we’ve planted some work seeds that will take a little time to come to fruition and we’re confident that these will have a lasting positive impact but we only do this by being in the ‘yoghurt knitting’ business. The difficulty arises from the attitude of people, like my friend, who see no value or worth in what we're trying to do. It's obvious to me that our professional roles are symbiotic so how can we ensure everybody understands that? 

So, I take my stance in defence of yoghurt knitters everywhere – without us, my friend wouldn’t have the ladders he needs to do his work because their genesis was possibly the result of someone ‘yoghurt knitting’.

Andrew Lee

Co-Managing Director

The 'Oh-so-clever' Social Media (ab)users

So we're in the middle of setting up a new social enterprise, the Social Innovation Unit. And we actually received some fab marketing advice today - which is such a refreshing change. Advice we've had in the recent past has tended to only focus on social media, and from people that profess to 'not knowing much about social media'. This is, in itself, pretty annoying, and makes you wonder about the purpose of so many PR and Marketing consultants.

This ignorance makes its presence felt, however, in the charming world of online connectivity (which is probably not the right word for it). What I mean by this is that when I look at my Linked In pages (which I do regularly) I am entirely and totally uninterested that someone had a cup of coffee at an airport. This, to me, is not what Linked In is for. But, because the I'm-so-up-to-date people link their Linked In account with their Facebook account and their {shudder} twitter account (why is twitter still going? What possible use does it serve unless you're a celebrity), then they do one thing, and send it out, as if all social media are the same.

Whilst I am sure this seems terribly clever, it is, in fact, terribly annoying. I've already taken people off of my Linked In account (in case you're wondering why your numbers went down), for this abuse of everyone's time. But it shows a remarkable arrogance, coupled with a remarkable lack of intelligence about the, admittedly, subtle differences between professional networking, and humdrum tedium of actual daily life. Certainly link things you have to say like blogs and news updates to other social media sites. But please, please, don't tell me that your professional network have more respect for you because you just bought a new computer for your offspring.

Dr David Land
Co-Managing Director

Week 2 of setting up the SIU

It's being an odd week so far. The amount of ideas we have is great, but it's starting to ask questions about what we focus on, and, more importantly, where do we get our income from? I think that other Social Enterprises must go through a similar process, but it's tough. And it's especially tough for those of us that are not simply delivering something tried and tested, but as a social enterprise. Rather, we are in pursuit of something specific to being a social enterprise, but so far only the two of us are able to see it.

Andrew is storming ahead with his 'ideas' idea, which I have been able to make little contribution to so far. I am feeling a bit stuck doing tenders and contracts. This feels like submitting job applications, in that you know the one you don;t do is the one you might well have got, but it doesn't leave much time for anything else. We have a marketing meeting tomorrow, a free Business Link session with a specialist. We will have to see what that brings.

Dr David Land
Co-Managing Director

The Strange Defiance of Leaders

The character V, in the film (not the excellent graphic novel) V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2006), states, towards the end, “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people”. It often seems that many leaders seem to react to this fear with the action of defiance. Rather than agree, or ever concur with the public, they doggedly hold on to their mandate, as if just because a million people actively disagree, this doesn’t mean they should change their mind.

Whilst the debates of leadership continue to dominate most writing on political economy and political journalism, it is the current news at the Lib Dem party spring conference that is of interest here. Nick Clegg is reportedly ‘defiant’, and will be telling his party to not be “cowed by what people are saying about us”1. This is, supposedly, to show Mr Clegg’s strength through a battle against the ‘activists’, although it appears that many party members are also disgruntled with Mr Clegg’s leadership. This comes amidst suggestions that the Lib Dem leadership are losing any sense of political differentiation from the majority party in the coalition.

There are at least two major fear/defiance linkages here. The first is the tendency to publicly ignore or defy what people are asking for outside of an election period.  Leaders rarefy public opinion for a short time every five years, but ignore it outside of that. But this does not chime well with the electorate who are being ignored. Whilst we might not march as much; the website 38 Degrees, for example, is all about building democratic action against government proposals by the simple expedient of mass online petitions, we still want our needs to be met. And when we did march, in particular the example of the War in Iraq march which saw a million people take to the streets of London, this found Mr Blair in ‘defiant’ mood against the actions of the public. It took Hollywood actor Tim Robbins, who was on the march, to suggest that this was "what democracy looks like. If Mr Bush and Mr Blair ignored them they are not rightful leaders of a democracy"2.

The second linkage is in the term activist. We’ve seen Nick Clegg try and suggest that anyone that disagrees with him are the same as a handful of rioting students. But when the term ‘activists’ cover not only the students, but the group of charming ladies who are trying to save our local library from closing, its time to ask who remains on the side of the non-activists.


Dr David Land
Co-Managing Director
Social Innovation Unit

The Social Innovation Unit exists as a central hub for ideas and innovations to improve the public sector. It offers research, training and support for social enterprises and private businesses that want to know how to engage with the public sector, and how to find a better way to work to deliver better services for all.
www.socialinnovationunit.com
enquiries@socialinnovationunit.com

1 ‘Nick Clegg to rally Lib Dems at Sheffield amid protests’, BBC, 11/03/11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12711060
 2 ‘Million March against Iraq War’. BBC 16/2/03 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2765041.stm