Social Entrepreneurs – rare and decorative or hardworking risk takers?

by Craig Dearden-Phillips, MBE Chief Executive of Stepping Out and a Liberal Democrat councillor in Suffolk.

My life so far has taught me one important lesson…

… Which is that if you want something to happen, you've got to apply a massive amount of focused personal energy to see it through. Talk to anyone who has ever achieved anything in their life and this is what they will tell you. It's mostly about focus and application. Talent? Yes, but that's not actually what gets things done.

Entrepreneurs, to a person, understand this fundamental point. That to change the world, you have to put everything you've got into the effort. In the social field, of course other things matter, including policy and politics. But when you look even at the systems we have got, they can often be traced to individuals who fought tooth-and-nail to see something into reality. It is no joke to say that the godmother of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, was a social entrepreneur.

In the UK, the role of the social entrepreneur is often looked upon with scepticism. The public sector sees us as disruptive, unhelpful and unmindful of the wider constraints. The voluntary sector, dare I say this, regards social entrepreneurs a bit like interesting wild-life - rare, decorative - but very much 'other'. We're not trusted with public money because we're not 'accountable' and we're only offered jobs by charities if we stick to the job-description.

So what is so good and important about social entrepreneurs in the lean 2010s (and probably 20s!). In short, we play the role in the social sector that new and early stage companies play in the private sector. We take risks with both our time and money. We do things which are outside anyone's 'strategic framework'. We are free, like birds, to operate in the way we see fit and in doing so stumble across new ideas or ways of doing things differently. Unlike organisations, we 'do' trial and error. We're not risk-managed and we don't ask permission. We just do it.

In my view, all of these things are in grossly short supply in both the UK public and voluntary sectors. Culturally, we are conservative and anti-change. I say this as a former CEO of a sizeable organisation. My own innovating tendencies were often cooled by organisational 'drag', which stops new things happening.

Eventually I turned my frustrations to positive use - and wrote a book. My first - 'Your Chance to Change the World' - published by DSC - is a handbook for aspiring social entrepreneurs. It says 'You can do this' and it tkes people through the fundamentals of starting something from scratch.

Everything great that has ever happened - Apple, the internet, the Red Cross - started from nothing, just an idea and a few noble experiments. In a hundred years, there will be a new list of organisations that have changed our world, including the charity world. Some of these won't even exist yet. They are not even a twinkle in a social entrepreneurs eye. Others, like Street League, Ripplez and Blue Sky are with us - the early products of social-entrepreneurs - will, I hope, be the big names of tomorrow, as the old is replaced by the new.

 'Your Chance to Change the World' was, as many first books are, a bit of an autobiography too. It describes how, between the age of 24 and 38, I created and grew a new organisation out of nothing - and then worked with others to make it into a success. It is a frank and, I hope, helpful account of a journey in which I invite people to learn as much from my mistakes as my successes. 

I have been taken aback by the response to 'Your Chance'. Hardly a week goes by without a contact from someone, somewhere who has found the book and used it to help them build something from scratch. It hit an audience, I think, of people who don't really belong in organisations, who want to make their lives count, but need support and guidance as to what to do next.

My latest  book ‘How to Step Out' targets a new audience - public sector workers. Between 2001 and 2009 about a million extra people were taken on by the state. The same number, by 2020, will have been released and this book invites people with public service values to move their services outside the dead-zones of the public sector and into independent social businesses which then sell services back to government and direct to consumers themselves.

I was motivated by three things with this book. The first was a belief that public services shouldn't necessarily be run by the state or by profit-maximising private operators. The second was a conviction that there are social entrepreneurs squirreled away inside the public sector who just need help to get out. And the third was a profound disillusionment with large public sector organisations which, in my view, became large, brutal, self-interested bureaucracies, rather than proper servants of the people. The guide is for people who seek to set up a new business that can, in turn, do business with the state and serve the community at the same time.

The theme running through both books is very clear: that people change the world. That if you want to do some good in the world, beyond your own individual efforts you have to put your heart and soul into creating an organisation which can do this and do it well. Most of all, my books say that you can do it, if you really want do - and here's some guidance on how to take your ideas forward. Change starts, always, always, with people. Both books are about giving those change-makers, a small helping hand.

by Craig Dearden-Phillips, Author of Your Chance to Change the World published by DSC.