Al Etmanski

Charles Leadbeater - Setting the Post Bridget Jones Agenda

"At the core of a good society, a fulfilling life and an effective state are relationships among people, between citizens, with public services that provide care, recognition, purpose and motivation."  Charles Leadbeater

Charles Leadbeater has been tracking and chronicling creative responses to our social challenges for several decades.  He has a gift for weeding out fads, discerning what has staying power and penetrating to the heart of required public policy shifts.  Decision makers and activists rally to his ideas.

I first encountered his seminal essay, The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, in the late 90's courtesy David Mitchell now CEO of Public Policy Forum.   Finally a piece that validated my experiences; exposed gaps in my thinking and provided an inspiring rationale for staying the course.  Suddenly I wasn't as lonely.  I've been following his work ever since.

Clearly many others have as well.  His TED talks are popular. See The Rise of the Passionate Amateur.   He advises Prime Ministers and government leaders. He is ranked as one of world's leading management consultants. He is a popular author - his most recent book is We-Think (download first 3 chapters) - his next is on radical innovations in education.  Charles was profiled by the New York Times in 2004 for generating one of the best ideas of the year, the rise of the activist amateur, outlined in his report The Pro-Am Revolution.

If I've whetted your appetite there is a webinar interview with him by David Eaves on September 19th that anyone can join.  And if you live in Toronto and Vancouver, SIG is sponsoring his public lectures in each city next week.  I'll be hosting both! Details below.

Leadbeater's monographs and public policy documents are extensive and easily available on his website:  Mainstreaming Mavericks (a ten year update on The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur);  The State of Loneliness; Making it Personal; The Difference Dividend; Cloud Culture; The Future of Capitalism; Up the Down Escalator (an attack on the culture of public pessimism associated with globalization).  He is a longstanding senior research associate with the influential London think-tank Demos and a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School. 

And for good measure when he was associate editor of the Independent he helped Helen Fielding devise Bridget Jones's diary originally meant to lampoon some of society's stranger obsessions. 

My favourite article by Charles is, With: Relationships and the Public Good. Download With 

With is part of a larger project For, With, By and To which proposes a shift from reliance on 'for' and 'to' solutions to those developed 'with' and 'by'.   These form the intellectual framework for a new style organization he has co-founded called Participle.  They are designing public services that make a real difference in everyday life.  They have become allies of disability, family, seniors and welfare reform advocates in the UK and elsewhere. Have a look at Particple's design principles and accompanying public policy shifts. They have set themselves the bold task of re imagining how we collectively take care of each other.

Making change goes much faster if you can converse with all the players in a complex system.  Charles does this as well as anyone.  I hope you get a chance to 'diarize' his ideas soon.

Event Information

To register for the Leadbeater/Eaves webinar Open Innovation: From the Cloud to Policy and Beyond on September 19th click here

September 19th public lecture in Toronto

September 22nd public lecture in Vancouver or call 604-439-9566

Related Posts

Passionate Amateurs - a Primary Source of Social Innovation

Neglected Sources of Innovation: Individuals and Families

Representation Agreements - I Am Because We Are (2)

I wrote the following story nearly 20 years ago when we were in the midst of a law reform campaign to establish Representation Agreements as a grass roots alternate to traditional adult guardianship. (see my previous post - Love in the Architecture)  I had been asked to write what would have been a rather dry article about legal decision making  and traditional conceptions of competence.  I didn't. 

What follows was first published in the Vancouver Sun and reprinted in publications around the world.  I am posting in honour of  ground breaking Representation Agreements finally having their status confirmed by the British Columbia Government.

Since this was written Liz has blazed through any limitations I or anyone else placed before her.  She is a published poet, artist, art teacher among many pursuits and still gets a chuckle out of Wayne's World.  Her world is still, "whole, green and alive with promise."

I am because we are

Elizabeth Amey Kelsey Etmanski, or Liz for short, can turn a dry history assignment on New France into a love story between an Indian princess and a coureur de bois faster than most Grade Nine students at Hugh Boyd High.

She dreams of being a rock guitarist, idolises Madonna, and can lip synch to most of the songs in Wayne’s World. She can be extravagant with her make-up, prefers anything lacy, particularly those black fishnet vests, and applies something called “white mud” to her face every evening.

Boys and romance are passions she shares with her best friend Rachelle and her sisters Catherine and Theressa.

We disagree on a number of matters – her Madonna dance moves, the state of her room, the frequency of her dish washing, and the need for her own phone. The latter seems an extravagance, since she has expropriated the portable one we already have, re-establishing her claim as she walks in the door. I may be off the hook, however, since she has just seen the perfect electric guitar. It’s bright red and costs “only $450, Dad.”

She earns the occasional detention, would rather watch a video than do homework, and has a wicked sense of humour, especially about my bald spot. Notwithstanding, she is an adornment to her dad’s life, equal in beauty and charm to both her younger and older sisters.

Yet there is a darkness already threatening a corner of her future. Not that Liz is aware, fortunately. She sees the world as Timothy Findley describes it, “whole and green and alive with promise.” The spectre sadly is all mine.

In four years she begins a high stakes game of chance. On her 19th birthday the law will silently confer the assumption of decision-making capability on Liz. It is a Pandora’s present.

The standards of decision-making capability in our society remain firmly rooted in a narrowly defined, highly overrated form of intellectual ability. In our province the legal test is your ability to demonstrate you understand the nature and effect of your decision.

Using that standard, Liz, who has Down syndrome, would most likely fail.

The utensils the law has to measure our worth have not changed significantly throughout this century. Neither has their intent. Verbal ability, proficiency of expression and abstract intellectual thinking remain the criteria for determining a person’s decision-making ability.

As long as our society continues to ignore other factors that contribute to decision-making, there is no equality in the assumption of capability; there is intellectual imperialism. IQ scores may have faded from use but their successors haven’t. The law has embraced them all.

We know, learn, and understand even when we cannot explain. We learn through self-awareness, through our relationships and through confronting the challenges of our environment. We can know emotionally, spiritually and intuitively. We can express ourselves through the medium of music, art, mathematics, relationships, and love. Our tears, laughter, smiles, and frowns reveal our trust, confidence, security, and wishes as surely as intellectual
expression.

Ask yourself how you have made some of the important decisions in your life. Marriage? Children? Change of career? New car? Can you honestly say you understood the consequences of your decisions all the time?

How often did you rationalise afterward? And how often did you make decisions alone, completely cut off from advice, consultation or influence of any kind? Is there really such a thing as independent decision-making?

Our insights into the varied, complex and different ways of knowing remain half-eaten, too strange and threatening to be digested by the law. Its teeth are clenched. Liz and her abilities are a forbidden delicacy.

As an adult Liz can anticipate the law ignoring her decision-making ability and ultimately usurping it. The law does not value her intuition, her compassion, her manner of expression, and her relationships.

As a father I am beset by burning questions. Which benign agents of society’s institutions will challenge Liz’s decisions? What choices and risks will they eliminate from her life under the guise of protection? How will the mask of caring prevent her initiation into life’s mysteries?

When the law demands the password of her, will it appreciate the determination that convinced the largest bookstore in North America to search for an hour for a book on signing which she didn’t know the title of? She knew it when she saw it.

Will it value her diplomatic skills, mature enough to find common ground even in irreconcilable positions? Will it honour her ability to assess emotions with uncanny accuracy and to read a room with more facility than any politician? Will it credit her storytelling, her humour, and her razor-sharp imitations of friends and family? Will it understand her motivation to plough through babysitting and leadership training courses even though she is just learning to read?

My daughter has a wisdom that eludes many of us. She understands her limitations and adjusts with patience and eagerness. She negotiates the complexities and inequities of her world with more ingenuity, courage and equanimity than she should have to. She offers, for all those willing to listen, a course in perfecting a life.

Yet, unlike her sisters, Liz is a candidate for exclusion.

No admittance. Access forbidden. Restricted. Off limits. Too risky. Vulnerable. Incompetence. Choices ignored. For your own good. Go directly to … a program, a service, a professional, an institution, a legal guardian. Become a client, not a citizen.

Our province, like many jurisdictions in North America, is currently reviewing its guardianship legislation. We need laws that recognise Liz’s talents and attitudes, including her ability to participate in caring, committed and trusting relationships. That’s really what keeps you and me safe and contributes to the quality of our decisions.

If that kind of brilliance were to shine on the darkened corner of Liz’s future, I know an Indian princess and a coureur de bois who would be pleased.

Post Script:  Brilliance shone - thanks to determined citizens acting collectively.

Related Posts:

Representation Agreements: Love in the Architecture(1)

 

Representation Agreements - Love in the Architecture

Simone Weil the French mystic, philosopher and social activist wrote, "Intelligence is enlightened by love."  So is legislation. 

After a nearly 25 year journey the British Columbia government recently affirmed the status of Representation Agreements, a grass roots alternative to formal adult guardianship.  This ends numerous attempts to claw back its usefulness. 

Rep Agreements are unique to B.C. as far as I know - the result of a community based coalition formed in the eighties that attracted advocates, health care professionals, administrators, lawyers, public servants and concerned citizens.

Rep Agreements enable you to choose whom you want to support you make decisions as a result of illness, injury or disability.  Everyone can use them including people who traditionally are assumed not to have legal 'capacity.'  And that's the breakthrough.  Typically people with presumed intellectual incapacity have been excluded from using personal planning tools like powers of attorney, advance directives, living wills or consent to health care.

The pioneering aspect of the Representation Agreement Act is its enlightened approach to this legal concept of 'capacity.'

For the first time anywhere, relationships characterized by trust are legitimized in statute as a key criterion in determining capacity.  The law has finally caught up with what we have always known - relationships are the key to safety, security and a good life.  In effect this B.C. law recognizes social intelligence. 

Rep Agreements enable people who traditionally would be deemed incompetent, to determine who they want to support them make decisions.  This includes many seniors, people with disabilities, brain injuries or mental illness. To date over 5,000 Rep Agreements have been registered with Nidus and likely a similar number have been created independently.  Certainly most of PLAN's lifetime members have created one.

And that's the point, Rep Agreements are a low cost, legally enforceable tool which validates the caring and support provided by friends, families and network members.

The organizational legacy of the coalition is the Nidus Personal Planning Resource Centre and Registry.   Nidus is celebrating the consolidation of Rep Agreements as a permanent personal planning tool during September. Visit their celebration website here.

Here is the contribution I wrote for their celebration:

The creation of the Representation Agreement is a powerful example of citizens taking action to improve how we take care of each other.  Like all creative acts it started with a simple but transformational insight.
We are kept safest, our choices are respected and our life has meaning, texture and pizzazz in the company of family and friends.  
In most circumstances we don't need a costly professional system.  
We need each other.
That was the driving force behind the grass roots coalition that invented and ushered Representation Agreements into existence.
That is also the driving force behind those of us who have Rep 
Agreements or who have become representatives.
Imagine this. Enshrined, indeed shining in British Columbia law for 
the first time anywhere in the world, a declaration that trust and 
caring relationships are critical to sound decision making.  There 
is more to legal competence and good decision making than IQ.  There is our natural commitment to each other.
Inspired by love, Representation Agreements offer something 
extraordinary - they are a practical grass roots alternative to 
formal guardianship.  They are also symbolic of our capacity to care for each other.   In our modern world they remind us that we have each other, that we rely on each other, that we care for each other.
Three cheers for the citizens, grass roots advocates, allies, 
professionals, public who made Rep Agreements possible.

Note:  The custodian of the Rep Agreement vision and the curator of its potential is Joanne Taylor, Executive Director of Nidus.  Joanne has devoted a large chunk of her life to spreading the word about Rep Agreements and assisting with timely information and advice.   Joanne works tirelessly and without fanfare. 

She is indeed  a labourer of love.  Simone Weil had people like her in mind.

Stephen Huddart's Beautiful World

"There's always someone trying to make change happen and to make our world even more beautiful," observes Stephen Huddart, the new President and CEO of the McConnell Family Foundation. And that pretty well sums up Stephen's inspiration and delight in his new job.

Stephen's path to McConnell circumnavigates the world geographically and experientially. The little I know of his life would fit the category of a daring adventure.  It included rescuing two children under siege and gunfire during the Salvadoran Civil War; a stint at the Chelsea Hotel coinciding with the Sex Pistols and helping the children's troubadour Raffi launch his Institute for Child Honouring. He's made films that are now in the Smithsonian, run non profits, swam with piranhas in the Amazon, broadcasted, acted, had his own construction business and started the legendary Alma Street Jazz Café here in Vancouver.

Just the kind of person you'd rely on in a crisis.  Cool, bold, ingenious.

Philanthropic and Community Foundations, particularly in Canada, are the bedrock of support for those 'canaries in the mine' who spot and solve societal challenges years before they appear on the institutional radar screen.  Foundations provide funding to explore the idea, work out the kinks and implement to a modest scale.  By then our governments have caught up and take it from there.

Chair Lyn Baptist and McConnell's Board have wisely chosen renaissance over retrenchment.  We can use more fresh thinking and fresh approaches to add to our palette of social change.  Being well versed in a variety of fields makes Stephen the perfect companion to join with Canadians who are re-imagining how we take care of each other, our planet and all creatures who inhabit it.

As for that opening quote.  The furthest thing from Stephen's mind is that it applies to him.  The surest thing in the minds of those of us who know him is that it defines him.

By Stephen Huddart:

Stephen Huddart - Becoming Visible 2011 - Hope

On Ramping to the Next Economy - Financing, Innovation, Sustainability and Resilience

Patterns, Principles and Practices in Social Innovation

Innovate or Perish: Redrawing the Business and Social Landscape

Do We Need Another Hero:  Understanding Celebrities' Role in Advancing Social Causes