Responding to Change – Keep Your Ship Steady

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A Little Help Responding to Change – How to Keep a Steady Ship from

What kind of exercises should I use to teach a group of salesman ( in a very practical way) what empathy is and how to practice it? Any suggestions?Thank you!

empathy training from

THE latest round of the government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF) was deluged with regeneration bids worth three times the funding actually on offer, the department of business has confirmed.

Altogether 492 bids, asking for £3.3 billion of funding were submitted to ministers, although just £950 million was availble in the RGF’s pot. These bids will now be whittled down by a panel chaired by Lord Michael Heseltine before being signed off by a ministerial committee chaired by deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.

The scale of demand for the limited money on offer is staggering, confirming that many parts of the country are desperately struggling to find leverage to kickstart moribund economies. Last week’s dismal quarterly growth figure of just 0.2% disguises the fact that many parts of Britain are actually grappling with negative growth.

Although welcome, the RGF pot amounts to just a third of what Labour’s regional development agencies would have spent over the same period.

Commenting on the latest round of bids, Lord Heseltine said:

 “We knew from the road shows there was going to be a huge amount of interest in the second round of the Regional Growth Fund, and we have been overwhelmed by the volume of bids submitted.

“There is clearly a hunger for public support which will allow new and exciting projects to deliver jobs and growth in their local communities to get off the ground, and I’m pleased to see so many people wanting to be a part of this.”

 Yet despite being “overwhelmed” by the “hunger” for investment, the government has not pledged any extra money to the fund, despite its multiplier effect – which is expected to draw in private sector investment equivalent to five times the public outlay.

Given the government’s stated desire to diversify our economy away from an over-reliance on financial services and to stimulate private sector growth in areas dominated by the public sector, ministers must now tell us if they will fund subsequent bidding rounds of the fund.

To leave unsuccessful bidders high and dry would mean many parts of the country continue to languish in the economic slow lane and confirm suspicions that the RGF was simply a tactical ruse to offset criticism about the scrapping of regional development agencies.

Huge demand for Regional Growth Fund shows desperate need for business credit from Left Foot Forward

New poll data from YouGov show that two-thirds of the public believe that the Coalition’s spending cuts should only be temporary, with just a fifth thinking they should be permanent.

Over the last year, polls have sought to gauge public opinion by asking people about ‘the cuts’ – are they fair or unfair, necessary or unnecessary? But, of course, ‘the cuts’ mean different things depending on whether you think they are temporary belt-tightening to reduce the deficit or  an ideological attempt to roll back the state for good.

Last summer David Cameron came clean that – for the Tories – these cuts are permanent:

“Should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them? I think we should be trying to avoid that approach.”

This should come as no surprise, given the ideological ambitions he expressed as opposition leader: as he told the CBI, long before the financial crisis hit:

 “what really matters is reducing the share of the national income taken by the state”.

So we thought it was time to ask the public about it. And the results are not good for Cameron. Of all those expressing an opinion, 69% want the cuts to be temporary and think that “the Government should increase spending on public services again when the public finances are in better shape”, while just 22% want the cuts to be permanent and think that “the Government should look to reduce its role for the long term” (a further 9% opt for neither). (Including ‘don’t knows’, the figures are: 64% temporary, 20% permanent, 8% neither, 8% don’t know.) This is a huge rejection of the Tories’ Thatcherite, state-shrinking ideology.

Even more interesting is the fact that a clear majority of Tory voters want the cuts to be only temporary. Of those Tories expressing an opinion, 56% want the cuts to be temporary, while just 39% want the cuts to be permanent (a further 5% opt for neither). (Including ‘don’t knows’, the figures are: 52% temporary, 36% permanent, 5% neither, 7% don’t know.) This is a huge rejection of the Tories’ Thatcherite, state-shrinking ideology from Conservative voters.

As I comment in today’s Independent, it’s been perhaps the best-kept secret of the last 30 years that that around half of Tory voters are fundamentally un-Thatcherite about the state – deeply attached to public services and fiercely protective of their social entitlements.

 These voters – who I like to call Daily Mail Collectivists – offer Ed Miliband a real chance to win the next election if Labour can make them a convincing offer on public services and social security, since a Conservative government focused on shrinking the state will always struggle here. Over the next few months, the Fabian Society will be looking in more detail at this interesting group of voters and the electoral vulnerability they create for the Conservatives.

 The polling, analysed in detail in the latest issue of the Fabian Review, was part of a huge survey of the UK conducted by YouGov in May 2011, which included some key questions to explore attitudes to the state, tax and spending. For more details, visit the Fabian Society website and YouGov@Cambridge

Even Tory voters want cuts to be temporary from Left Foot Forward

Andrew Allison of the Taxpayers’ Alliance has delighted us today by unveiling the ‘non-job of the week’. Central London Healthcare NHS Trust are employing a head of communications at £75,000 a year. Allison isn’t being irresponsible in calling this a non-job. He very graciously concedes: 

“Of course I accept there has to be people employed to handle media enquiries and contact with the public, but the primary role of the NHS is to heal the sick.”

What if one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to heal the sick is sometimes done through communications strategies? In what kind of scenario would be this statement hold true?

Well let’s take a hypothetical situation in that there is a big flu epidemic which could threaten vulnerable groups such as the elderly in winter (a scenario that the Taxpayers’ Alliance themselves noted occured recently).

Central London is one of the areas most at risk due to close proximity of people in a region characterised by high volume and density of population.

Advisers tell us that the best way to prevent this is to roll out a big immunisation programme. This is reliant on letting those most at risk know about the programme. How do we reach those service users to get this information to them?

This would seem like the kind of thing you would need, I don’t know, a highly qualified Head of Communications and Engagement for? You might argue, the best in the business? 

So we’ve established that a head of communications can actually be one of the most efficient ways in preventing sickness and providing good healthcare. It’s not always the most important thing but can form a core part of a more complex network of health care. Failing to understand this has Allison getting carried away and asking a range of questions: 

“If this Trust has a head of communications earning over £70K a year, how large is the team beneath them? How many communications officers are there in London? How many are there in the UK?” 

 Well, London is massive. Lots of people live in it – roughly 8 million. And then there’s all the commuters and visitors who pass through from the rest of the country. As we’ve seen, we need good healthcare provision that can be flexible and be able to reach out to customers effectively.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to see government waste my money. But I also want to enjoy the high-quality health care provided by the NHS. I think this health care should be available to all free at the point of use and funded by myself and my fellow taxpayers. 

 As it happens, the Taxpayers’ Alliance have form on this. Their call to slash government communications was answered by the Coalition. They particularly welcomed attacks on the public health advertising budget saying: 

 “The swelling of this budget in the last decade has coincided with extensive and expensive ‘nanny state’ PR campaigns paid for by you, the taxpayer. These campaigns simply do not offer value for money.” 

And gave the government 5/5 for its action on the issue when it halved government advertising budgets – no if, buts or maybes.

However, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley had to reinstate £29 million of funding for healthy living and tobacco communication schemes after it was found that engagement with cessation and healthy living advice services had dropped, leading to increased ill-health, potential mortality and bigger costs for the NHS in the long run.

Taxpayers’ Alliance attack NHS communications – just as government reprieves services from Left Foot Forward

By Ed Turner, Lecturer in Politics at Aston University’s Centre for Europe, and Deputy Leader of Oxford City Council.  The views expressed are his own.

The casual reader of the Department for Communities and Local Government website might think that the headline: ‘Supporting more people into work: councils to take the lead in boosting local economic prosperity’ was in some way good news.  Sadly not: instead it marked the start of the long-overdue consultation on cutting 10% off the bill for council tax benefit, and allowing councils to devise their own local benefit schemes.

 Of all the areas of the government’s welfare reform agenda, this is probably the most ill-conceived and unpleasant, for reasons of both principle and practice. 

Council tax benefit is cut paid to around 5.8 million people in Great Britain, at a cost of £4.8 billion (it’s a reserved matter and so the cut in funding will affect Scotland and Wales also, although these precise proposals will not). 

It is administered by local councils alongside housing benefit, and gives a full or partial subsidy to the council tax that would be payable by those on low incomes.  Currently, the government meets the full costs of council tax benefit; what we knew from the government’s spending review was that it intended to reduce the funding for council tax benefit by 10%, and allow local authorities to develop their own ways of paying it.

The government’s latest announcement includes one important new claim: that it intends to protect pensioners from any cuts by this policy.  As a result, the 42% of claimants of council tax benefit who are aged over 65 may be unaffected, although the government has not announced the details of how they will be treated. 

But of course this doesn’t affect the overall scale of the funding cut, so those below pension age will be hit nearly twice as heard.  In broad terms, if the average council tax per dwelling in England is £1,195, then the average poorer claimant of working age, prior to yesterday’s announcement, would have expected to fork out £119.50 per annum out of his or her benefits; now that sum will be around £200 per annum.

 This is wrong in both principle and in practice.  Let’s start with the principle.  First, the government has suggested that local authorities will be able to develop frameworks for council tax benefit costing less than their (reduced) government grant, and keep any difference. 

So an authority will be financially rewarded for cutting benefits to the poor.  In doing so, it might expect poorer people to move out of its area, further reducing council tax benefit bills, but adversely affecting neighbouring areas with more generous schemes, who will receive these desperate claimants – a classic ‘race to the bottom’.

 Secondly, the government’s consultation patronisingly suggests the reform will “Give local authorities a greater stake in the economic future of their local area, and so supporting the Government’s wider agenda to enable stronger, balanced economic growth across the country”. 

The idea that local councils are currently uninterested in levels of unemployment in their areas is pretty insulting, but more importantly, the government appears not to recognise that rises (and falls) in unemployment are, to a very significant degree, completely outside the control of local authorities.  So, if a major employer in a town closes, not only will the local council have to deal with the social consequences, it will also find itself severely out of pocket because it will have to pay out more in council tax benefit.

Thirdly, the regional effects of this cut are highly unlikely to be equal: instead, as Dan Paskins of the New Policy Institute has shown, the cut in funds, if applied equally, will hit the poorest areas hardest: Haringey, Hartlepool and Liverpool, for instance, are in the top ten of losers per dwelling.  In cutting funds for local government, it has been shown that the government has hit poorer areas the hardest, and this reform is set to exacerbate the trend.

The reform is also going to create mayhem in practice.  For a start, the government has the aim of simplifying the benefits and tax credits system by introducing the “Universal Credit”; it is very hard to see how having 300 different local schemes of council tax benefit will help achieve this aim. 

In addition, the hundreds of different council tax benefit schemes will be administered by local authorities.  This currently happens alongside housing benefit, but under the universal credit, the administration of housing support will shift to the DWP; there have been assumptions this will reduce staffing costs – but if the staff are still needed to process council tax benefit, savings will be drastically reduced. 

Moreover, the DWP, not local councils, will hold information (primarily on incomes and benefits) which will be needed to calculate the new council tax benefit entitlements, so the transfer of large amounts of data will be needed from the DWP’s highly risky, planned new IT system to local councils, just at the time when two systems of benefits will be running in tandem (universal credit for new claimants, administered by the DWP, and existing benefits including housing benefit for current claimants).  It’s hard to see this herculean task being accomplished without chaos.

Finally, local authorities, already under severe financial pressure, are going to be exposed to tremendous risks, potentially facing catastrophic funding shortfalls for council tax benefit for several years if, for instance, unemployment rises. 

 The consultation document encourages them to earmark contingencies for increases in the number of claimants as well as, in the document’s words, dealing with the risk that “Local authorities struggle to collect increased amounts of council tax from those households who experience a reduction in support with their bill”.  Pretty obviously, chasing people with little money for a proportion of their council tax will prove expensive, and will increase arrears.

 One suspects that this particular cut was announced with little consideration for the consequences, which is why it has taken nearly a year to come up with this pathetic consultation document.  Frankly, the government would do well to go back to the drawing board, rather than pressing on with a policy which is as economically inefficient as it is morally reprehensible.

How Pickles’s brutal council tax benefit reforms will pulverise the working-age poor from Left Foot Forward

By IPPR Director, Nick Pearce.  Follow him on twitter: @IPPR_NickP

I’d like to nominate four US thinkers who are influencing the British left.

Jacob Hacker, whose book (co-authored with Paul Pierson) Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington made the rich richer and turned its back on the middle class  is an innovative work of political economy, tracing the rise of economic inequality in the US since the 1970s to political factors, such as corporate lobbying, executive drift and the weakening of the power of working people, rather than the standard causes of technological change or higher returns to education.

It has already bequeathed a new sensibility to what Ed Miliband has called the problem of the “rich versus the rest” in UK debates on the squeezed middle.

Lane Kenworthy, whose blog Consider the Evidence is a must read port of call for anybody interested in debates on economic policy, welfare state theory, the labour market and poverty reduction.  

A prolific writer, whose work is always rich in empirical evidence as well as the latest theoretical debates, he is the author of Egalitarian Capitalism,  Jobs with Equality: Jobs, Incomes and Growth in Affluent Societies and Progress for the Poor (forthcoming). Great for debunking lazy thinking on left and right.

Dani Rodrik, Turkish-born Harvard-based theorist of globalisation, with a must-follow twitter account, is the author of seminal books of development economics on how different countries have forged paths to prosperity.

His latest work, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, surveys three centuries of economic history and argues for a leaner global system that recognises the vital role of national democracies. His thinking on modern industrial strategies is also set to become more influential in the UK.

Elizabeth Anderson, a lesser-known political philosopher who wrote a brilliant and influential essay on democratic or relational equality in the late 1990s, and whose recent work ranges from feminist theory to ethics and economics. She argues that democratic societies have a compelling interest in educating an integrated elite, drawn from all socially significant groups in society, offering a radically different perspective on social mobility for debates in the UK.

Her most recent book, The Imperative of Integration, deserves to be read by anybody concerned with the inadequacy of conservative and mosaic multiculturalist theories of segregation and disadvantage, and will be important to the development of distinctive centre-left approaches to integration in the UK.

Nick Pearce’s nominations for most influential left-wing thinker of 2010/11 from Left Foot Forward

Figures in today’s Independent suggest that Britain is bottom of the G7′s growth league table. Excluding Japan because of the “special factors” caused by the Tohoku earthquake, Britain is growing more slowly than every other major developed economy.

The graphic – reproduced below – accompanies an interview with Robert Chote, head of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Mr Chote warned that Britain was facing “relatively weak” growth over the next few months and was unlikely to hit the OBR’s own growth forecast. Britain grew by just 0.2 per cent in the second quarter. By comparison, the Independent’s figures suggest that Canada grew by 0.9 per cent, France by 0.7 per cent and even Italy and the US by 0.33 per cent.

In the interview, Mr Chote said:

“Back in March our central forecast was for 1.7 per cent growth this year, which at the time was fractionally more pessimistic than the average of the outside forecasters.

“Since then obviously we’ve had weaker out-turns in the first and second quarters than most people, including us, anticipated. For the second quarter the ONS [Office for National Statistics] explained a variety of one-off factors that contributed to that.

“As a simple matter of arithmetic, in order to get to 1.7 per cent now you’d be looking for quarter-on-quarter growth rates of 1 per cent in the second and third quarters of 2011, and there aren’t many people out there expecting that.”

Earlier this week, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted that “domestic demand will hinder any meaningful recovery this year” with growth hitting just 1.3 per cent. They suggested that:

“short term fiscal policy is too tight, and a modest loosening would improve prospects for output and employment with little or no negative effect on fiscal credibility.”

If the OBR were forced to downgrade their growth estimates in the autumn, it would be the fourth time that they had done so since Alistair Darling left No 11 Downing Street.

Britain is bottom of the G7′s growth table from Left Foot Forward

Executive coach Carole Pemberton provides a review of the recent Association for Coaching UK conference.

You deal with changing job, changing employer, moving home and take it all in your stride. You manage the daily ups and downs of life which call on you to swiftly change plans and readjust. Then bang, something happens which floors you. The person who could roll with the punches disappears. You find yourself struggling to keep things in perspective, to retain any sense of optimism and confidence goes through the floor. 

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Conference report: the Association for Coaching UK conference from