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The importance of having hope in the future: Elaine Henry

Written by Jan Lee Martin
Thursday, 16 November 2006
"When do we accept that multi-layered social issues require multi-layered responses? And who is setting the agenda?" When Elaine Henry, chief executive officer of The Smith Family, spoke to the AusForesight2006 conference in October, these were the core questions she invited her audience to consider. They were not new to the futurists, of course, but it was refreshing to hear a social leader from outside the futures community addressing these issues with energy and clarity. The full text of her speech appears below. Thank you for your kind invitation, congratulations on the reaccreditation of the Masters of Strategic Foresight Program and best wishes for your deliberations over the next few days. Ladies and Gentlemen, 2006 has been, for some of us, an extraordinary year. In Australia our newspapers have been peppered with articles on social and environmental issues, the likes of which we haven’t seen for decades given our preoccupation with all things economic. For example, many of us had smiles on our faces in February when the Council of Australian Governments, or COAG, adopted a reform agenda that included human capital development which we were told was to embrace key transition points over the life course starting with the early years. (Incidentally, it is fair to say we have to thank the Bracks Government in Victoria for showing leadership in this area.) The media didn’t sweep this aside nor did it ignore the calls by the Australian Minister for Education, Science and Training for debate on the adoption of a national curriculum for our schools, and only last week, the Prime Minister announced an $800 million package for improving literacy and numeracy for those adults who left school without completing year 12, which was front-page news. Indigenous leaders such as Noel Pearson and Chris Sarra have become sought after for their opinion pieces on how we might overcome the intolerable situation facing our aboriginal population. These and other social issues have been vying with the dramatic changes to our climate patterns to capture the news headlines. The agenda has shifted dramatically since the turn of the century when The Smith Family was in the early throes of its transformation to a national, independent social enterprise focused on unlocking opportunities for disadvantaged Australians, particularly our children, to participate more fully in society through education. In 1999 when this venerable and enduring organisation announced we were refocusing our mission on children and education we had to be prepared to defend our decision. Today, the world is a very different place and, of course, it is a given that it is education which will give our disadvantaged hope for the future. There is nothing like an idea whose time has come. But reflecting on the make-up of this audience, you may well ask “why is this so and is it good enough”? Why, after so many years of a burgeoning economy, do we still have more than 700,000 children living in jobless families and destined to remain disadvantaged because of their family’s circumstances unless the experience of organisations such as The Smith Family that have had the foresight to take their flagship and demonstration Learning for Life suite of programs to scale start to have a visible impact which can’t be ignored? Why in this “sunburnt country” do we not have a national water policy? Weren’t we told decades ago about the knowledge economy and the need to transform our organisations from those more suited to the industrial age? Is it such a mystery that parents are voting with their feet as far as education is concerned and abandoning our great public education system? And what about one of the most significant western social phenomena of our time - the disappearance of the extended family, the reshaping of the nuclear family and the rise of lone parent households. How did we think women were going to juggle their career or work commitments with that of raising children without changes to the workplace and accessibility to quality early childhood learning and care? Was it so surprising that the birth rate dropped and that mental illness has been on the rise? Wrapped round these and many other questions, you have to ask: Is Adam Smith’s invisible hand good enough? In business studies 101 we are taught to plan to close the gap between our desired future and the current situation and this may prove to be a good strategy for individual businesses where leadership is defined. But what about the national agenda? Can we leave this to destiny? In his latest book Identity and Violence, Amartya Sen posits that “The illusion of destiny is the antithesis of thinking about the future and foresight”. Sen perhaps needs to be more widely read. Incidentally, I know that the Head of Treasury in Australia, Dr Ken Henry, is a devotee of Sen and his views on social capability, so this gives me some hope for the future. Even so, there are some people who find it quite difficult to rise above the here and now because of the way their brains are wired. It took me some time to accept that such people weren’t being bloody-minded or dismissive. As the neurosciences extended our understanding of the functioning of the brain, the easier it was to isolate different thinking pathways and we can now possibly rejoice in our diversity and be justifiably discriminatory in who gets a seat at the table when we are considering how we might disrupt the laissez faire flow of events to change the course of history. Furthermore, if we add to the mix some words of wisdom from Einstein, viz, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” then our challenge becomes clearer. Robert Cailliau (co-developer of the worldwide web) is visiting Australia from CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) and he would caution that at this time our intellectual capacity is limited by the ability of our brains to adapt and change through the development of new cognitive processes because the exponential growth in knowledge has just been too swift. The Board of The Smith Family made the courageous decision in 1998 that change was on the agenda. The metrics were showing that more families in Australia needed assistance each year rather than less. Things were not working and Australia was leaving behind up to 20% of its population. For me joining the social sector from public health was a rather shocking experience in those early days. And please note I am talking about the sector not about the organisation per se. The thinking we were able to bring to bear in terms of cancer control, for example, in the 1980s and 1990s did not register on the radar in the social sector. The evidence was there for anyone who cared to look that the intractable social problems in Australia needed a new approach for their resolution. Stephen R. Covey stated in a recent article in Leader to Leader, the journal published by the Leadership Institute which had its genesis as The Peter Drucker Foundation, that one of the most profound learnings of his life was “if you want to make minor, incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behaviour, or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms”, and in his thinking paradigm refers to a frame of reference or lens through which you view the world. At The Smith Family in 1999 at the beginning of our transformation, we believed that we would have way more impact if we focused on a few things specifically rather than a lot of things broadly. This wasn’t the prevailing attitude in the social sector at that time. We also agreed with the views of the founder of the Robin Hood Foundation, Paul Tudor Jones, when he was discussing focusing on education…”I think it has the greatest multiplicative powers in terms of the ultimate good you’re going to do for the hours and dollars expended”. As an organisation, we’ve come through a classic 7-year comprehensive transformation and, I hope, in so doing brought some change leadership to the sector. We have been sensitive to the fact that as a social enterprise, pioneering endeavours have needed to be measured in terms of the capacity of the sector, and society as a whole, to embrace change. In other words, you can’t run too far ahead of the pack. Certainly in those intervening years, after a slow start, the curve shows many more “early adopters”. In particular, we have seen networked governance gain momentum, for example, where partnerships between the business, community and government sectors are a favoured model for moving forward. And Communities for Children which is a stream under the second phase of the Commonwealth Government’s Stronger Families and Communities Strategy, provides us with an innovative model which despite being used by the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, to illustrate a new way to promote social inclusion and protection, has had little recognition to date as a tool for cultural change in the social sector in Australia. For me it offers a beginning which might pave the way for a paradigm shift. Firstly, it focuses on the learning and development needs of 0-5 year olds, and there is plenty of evidence from thinkers such as the 2000 Nobel Laureate, Professor James Heckman, of the value of intervening early in terms of cognitive and socio-emotional development especially in disadvantaged families, not to mention the 17% annualised return on investment which pricks up the ears of economists. It empowers members of a community to determine which needs should be priorities according to a menu of proven interventions. The communities have been selected not just according to the level of disadvantage but also their assets (in particular leadership) and the interventions are offered on a universal basis which avoids the stigmatising potential of targeted interventions. Given that all parents want the best for their kids, parents – most often the mums – come along to events and as such offer an opportunity, once trust is gained and confidence increases, for spin-offs in terms of dual generational learning. Skills can be gained by parents that will make their transition into the workforce, which is a requirement of contemporary Welfare to Work policy, smoother. The model calls for large community organisations to be the Facilitating Partner in the particular place, and there are 45 communities around Australia at the moment participating. The Facilitating Partner, which may be a consortium, is the banker or the stewards of the Commonwealth Government’s investment in the community. It needs to leverage this investment to attract greater resourcing from other layers of government and business who seek the same, defined outcomes. In taking care of the back-room business such as legal, financial, IT and HR, the Facilitating Partner’s main role is to broker services with local grass roots organisations, so for the first time clarity is emerging around the roles played by large and small organisations in the sector. This concentration of effort based on place or location gives us a major opportunity over time to build multilayered responses to the multilayered social issues. After two years, the challenge is one of communication. How do we get greater recognition for the various attributes of the model? The Smith Family is the Facilitating Partner in seven communities and we are using the opportunity to realign our Learning for Life model with that of Communities for Children, which is entirely consistent with our approach that was informed by research in 2000. I am personally committed to the model because of an experience I had last year in New York. It was a warm spring day in April when I found myself alighting from the subway and walking down the street to the Charter School in the Harlem Children’s Zone. I had never been to Harlem before let alone taken the subway there. It was almost unreal. A major transformation had taken place over the decade and the school was at the very heart. The building was a high-rise like an office block on a street corner. The principal (once called the superintendent) was a powerhouse, a disciplinarian and a motivator. Children were in their school uniform, indeed if they came to school not correctly dressed, I was told, they were sent home or given a mobile to call someone to bring the appropriate clothes. School went from about 7 am to 7pm including time on Saturdays. Literacy and numeracy lessons occupied the first two hours every day. Dell computers sat on all desks. Homework was done before leaving the school and kids had time for sport, music and creativity in between. The day began with positive affirmations in true American style. All the kids were black and from the south Harlem zone. The school had a waiting list so attendance was high – you couldn’t contemplate losing your position. You could feel the vibrancy of the place. We then went down the street and visited “Baby College”. This was again on a corner in a shop-front with rooms behind. New parents were given six weeks of parenting skills and then they graduated – often looking for their next college challenge. Residents were given incentives to come into the shop – help with filling out the long tax forms which would likely mean a rebate. Balloons attracted the kids. The Harlem Children’s Zone people through their community out-reach programs had been helping to initiate the rejuvenation of the brown builts – the tenement buildings – with new wiring, plumbing etc in the neighbourhood. And the park – the oldies were strolling in the afternoon sunshine as the spring bulbs were pushing through. They had reclaimed it from the drug pushers and addicts and the kids could play or go swimming but only if they had attended school. It has been such a success that they are now transforming middle Harlem and will go on to north Harlem. The school was seen as the hub of the community and the instigator of change in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the developed world. The Harlem Children’s Zone is living proof of the concept that if there is a will there is a way. Behind it is the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation which took a gamble ten years ago and determined that it was into strategic investment of the few rather than providing grants to the many. It was into backing people with a track record and vision. Business people as well as educators were in the driving seat. Over time they will be building a seamless transition from birth to early learning and school for the children with dual generational learning on the agenda. The school is not trying to do it all but it has recognised the difficulty of the home environment for the kids and is trying to build a strong community to help to strengthen the families. Robin Hood has been intimately involved in taking this to scale; it currently takes in 60 blocks. We don’t have the likes of Robin Hood where the leaders of the hedge fund world banded together to fight poverty, taking money from the rich, applying strict financial metrics and giving it away. But what The Smith Family did in partnership with the Benevolent Society and WorkVentures was to establish Social Ventures Australia bringing the principles of venture capital into the mix, as well as playing a major role in establishing Nonprofit Australia which seeks to build the capacity of the sector. We were also an early adopter of community business partnerships. This year, as we enter a new growth phase, we have set out to ensure that “our mind is not halved by a horizon”, to use the phrase coined by Derek Walcott in “Names” in Collected Poems: 1948 - 1984 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986). With the pro bono expertise of the Boston Consulting Group we have presented the results of a feasibility study for the establishment of a social incubator to key players in Melbourne with the objective of producing a model for, and implementation of, child and youth friendly communities. We see a future where the built, natural, social and economic environments interconnect in such as way that optimises learning and care for our citizens of tomorrow. Shared space which facilitates a hotbed of creative ideas not constrained by horizons and emanating from the mix of experience and thinking of leaders from business, governments, academia and community can be made available. Basically, we are looking for people with the capacity for big picture thinking and strong pattern recognition, innate curiosity and an ability to explore the full range of plausible futures to come together to redefine our communities, in a way which is perhaps even more ambitious than the Harlem Children’s Zone. Alas, I fear that in the sector we are quick to explain the complexity associated with social issues but we are reluctant, it seems to seek multilayered responses. Maybe we can’t let go of the past or our “territory”. And yet this isn’t about organisations – we should be trying to do ourselves out of business – it is about social inclusion and a future which offers hope and gives purpose to the lives of many. This will happen with or without players in the sector and we only have to look at what is happening in other countries, and indeed globally to confirm this. The Dean of Yale School of Management, Jeffrey E. Garten, has made it explicit: “We are not just training people to run companies, but to handle some of society’s most important and complex tasks. After all, the private sector will be the engine of economic growth and job creation everywhere; it will increasingly create and manage the social safety nets; it will have the most powerful voice in setting global regulations and technical standards; it will rearrange political and social relationships.” I was at a small breakfast briefing of senior business leaders just last week and an overseas guest, with his anecdotes of what was happening around the world, brought that vividly to life. Business is willing and able to tackle the big issues of world poverty, HIV/Aids, global warming and perhaps even world peace. We need to look no further than the work of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, the Bill Clinton Foundation, Bono, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation etc to see the blurring of the lines between non profits, politics and business. Who would have thought not so long ago that there would have been consensus on the fact that rich nations might best address the plight of poor nations, not by aid and debt relief, but by the removal of trade and migration barriers. In this hardheaded philanthropic world, outcomes matter more than intentions, influence isn’t measured in dollars alone, and you hear buzzwords like scalability, sustainability and measurability. And what about this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, and his Grameen Bank’s $5.7 billion in loans, 31,000 in education scholarships, and his newest venture, Grameen Danone Foods which he contends will help lift Bangladesh from poverty by 2015. His work most certainly was pattern changing behaviour and reminiscent of this, the July 19 edition of The New York Times carried an article on a study by the Brookings Institution on the ghetto tax being paid by the urban poor. Just by reducing the costs of living for lower income families by one percent would add up to over $6.5 billion in new spending power for these families. This would enable lower and modest income families to save for, and invest in, income growing assets like homes and retirement savings, or to pay for critical expenses for their children like education and health care. It has been found the lower income families tend to pay more for the exact same consumer product than families with higher incomes. For example, about 4.5 million lower income households pay higher than average prices for car loans. At least 1.6 million lower income adults pay excessive fees for furniture, appliances, and electronics. And, countless more pay high prices for other necessities, such as basic financial services, groceries, and insurance. The report concludes that “leaders at all levels of government should identify strategies to inform and educate lower income consumers struggling with the complexity of making choices in the market today”. We now have a National Financial Literacy Foundation which might just do this. But from where I am positioned it seems that governments and the public service which delivers against their policies respond through any number of ad hoc initiatives to the issues of the day, even though it doesn’t take much to start joining the dots for a much more strategic pattern to emerge. They most certainly seem reluctant to be identified with anything as progressive as foresight. The missing ingredient is leadership to envision the future as one which is full of hope and “to open up the possibility of a world that can overcome the memory of its troubled past and subdue the insecurities of its difficult present” to close with a quote from Amartya Sen in “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny” p.185. Can Swinburne develop the missing ingredient and give hope for the future?
Last Updated ( Thursday, 16 November 2006 )