Monthly Archives: July 2015

5 My Three Function Model

My key community development model.

In last Wednesday’s post about how to use models, I promised this time I would introduce my key three function model.   I’ve found it simple to use and effective.   How do you use it?   You find out where and how these three functions are taking place in your neighbourhood.

No two places are the same and you find sometimes several organisations share a single function or it is absent.   Sometimes one organisation is responsible for all three.   Once you know who is responsible for these three functions, you can find out how they work together.

In general, I seek a clear separation between these roles, encouraging them to be delivered from different organisations. However, some organisations are able to carry out all three and if that is what is happening, the next step is to ask how it’s working and how to improve the ways in which they interact.  It is usually not a good idea to impose changes so the model fits better, remember all models are descriptive, not prescriptive.

The Three Functions

1. I usually put Representation along the base of the triangle because it is the foundation for everything else.  You need some means of bringing people together and helping them discuss and develop their ideas.
2. Planning is an activity distinct from representation and so do not confuse the two.  Planning is a partnership activity.  If partners are not present, you are not planning.  What you are probably doing, and this accounts for the confusion, is preparing for your planning.  If you are going to plan for real change in your area, you need a community plan because all your partners, the local authority, the police, the NHS – whoever they are – will have their own plans.  Maybe planning would be better labelled ‘negotiation’ but I insist on leaving it as planning because that is what you do when you sit down with partners who, like you, have their own plans.
3. And delivery is implementation of ideas from your planning.  If you want lasting change, delivery should emerge from negotiated plans.

Using the Three Function Model

The power of this model is in the way you circle it.   Circle clockwise and it is a development process.   So,

Circle anti-clockwise and you have accountability.  So,

Either of these flows can be blocked in various ways and the development worker’s challenge is to name blockages and help others see them too.  That should keep you busy!

Can you think of examples where you can apply this model?   What did you learn and how did it help?

1 Why You Do What You Do

On Friday I told the story of my recent hardware meltdown.  For this reason I’ve delayed the fifth element of the circuit questionnaire, in the hope I can recover the draft.  So, this post is the first in a new series about branding and asks: why you do what you do.

You may have followed my overview of the five elements of marketing found in the circuit questionnaire:

Your Response

Now, this may or may not appeal to you. If it does, sign up to my e-book, details below. It is free and you will also receive a weekly update of my blog posts, so you can follow what I’m doing. Apart from five introductory emails, I rarely send broadcast emails and so I will not clutter your inbox with loads of unwanted emails.

If it doesn’t appeal to you, why are you still reading? Maybe because you’re following what I’m saying about branding and you’re not distracted by my particular brand. That’s good. You can perhaps see you don’t need to agree with me. Your brand might be opposite of mine. If you think you can sell it, good luck with that. I’m using my business as a worked example throughout these posts. If you find the posts helpful, then you don’t need to be sympathetic to my brand. So, please consider signing up below. You don’t have to read the e-book and you will receive a weekly reminder about these posts and the other topics on my blog.

That’ll do for today. Next time I’ll explore why I do what I do in more depth.

2 The Inevitability of Hardware Failure

I haven’t written a great deal about hardware because mostly it doesn’t matter.  The beauty of most software these days is it will run on just about anything.  This is obviously an advantage but a qualified one.

Your software may run on your hardware but that doesn’t mean it runs well.  I sometimes find when working with clients, they are struggling with ancient systems and have no concept of how much easier life would be if they invested in  up-to-date hardware.  You would not believe how many steam-powered computers there are out there!

Yes it is expensive but essential if you are planning some significant online activity.

There is one thing everyone needs to know about hardware: sooner or later it will fail.  (Software can also fail cataclysmically and so what I say here applies equally to hardware and software failure.)

This has just happened to me.  There was no warning.  Everything was running as normal and then in an instant, it wasn’t.  My lap-top was between 3 and 4 years old and so was due for renewal.  It went to the doctors and returned yesterday with all my files wiped against my explicit instructions to contact me if they needed to wipe the hardware.  It is back with the doctors for data recovery.  They claimed they phoned me twice.  They had the correct number and I have an answer machine.  And why did they think, after finding me unavailable twice, I wanted to lose all my files?  This is not hardware failure, is it?

The most important safeguard against such cataclysms is you must back things up.  I’m more or less confident I will recover everything I need in the fullness  of time but at the moment I can’t access my work between 10 and 26 June.  (This will have a few consequences for the blog but I’ll resume normal services in time.)

So, how should we guard against inevitable hardware failure?

Things are easier than they were.  Ideally, these days you can set up new hardware and instantly access your files and continue as normal.  Inevitably, things are never that easy but it is certainly easier than it used to be.

Essentially there are two approaches to backing up your system.  The belt and braces approach is to use both and I would recommend you do that.

First, you can back up in the cloud.  I have used Norton to do that and I’ve found three problems with it:

1. For some reason it hadn’t backed up my files for 15 – 16 days.  It’s meant to back-up periodically but I hadn’t kept an eye on it.
2. It takes forever to download from back-up to my new lap top.  I used their support services and 4 or 5 different people helped me over three days.  They contradicted one another and didn’t fully understand their system.  This is why it took so long.  Eventually I found someone who knew my files were too big to download in one sitting.  I had to download them in sections.  Of course, keeping track of what you have downloaded is difficult but I got there in the end.
3. It was not backing up everything in my folders.  As far as I can see it backed up from every folder I asked it to but it did not copy all the files in the folders.  I use an application called xmind that creates it own file type.  Norton decided they didn’t count.

It is generally true that you only learn the true nature of something when you use it!  I shall not be using Norton for back-up again.  It’s anti-virus and identity functions are brilliant, so I’m not saying you shouldn’t use them for those purposes but I would use a different back-up system.

There are alternatives.  My new lap-top uses Windows 8 and this includes OneDrive.  I’ve used it for only a few days, so this is by no means a recommendation but it does seem to have advantages over Norton’s back-up.

However, it is a good idea to back-up onto an external hard drive as well.  This is the second approach.  I recommend you do this as well as the cloud so that you know you have both.

Usually, it is possible to recover files lost if your equipment fails.  You can’t be certain of this and even if it is possible it is likely to take several days or even weeks.  And you have to factor in the vagaries of techies who know how machines work but can’t communicate with human beings.

Finally, if you have a website you will need to back it up too.  That’s a topic for another time.

1 How to Use Models

One key skill development workers need is how to use models. They are in practice mentors for activists. So, they need to know how to read the situation in a neighbourhood to support local activists. This is the fourth post about these four topics:

If I were mentoring a development worker or activist and suggested a model that might apply to their work, I would monitor how the worker or activist used the model.

Not all models are in words. They can be pictures, maps, photos and even 3D models.

Models can be seductive and when they seduce us, we surrender our critical faculties to them.  The model becomes prescriptive.

Models are better understood as descriptive.  They help the development worker look at and understand what is happening in their community.  Models do not and should not tell the worker what to do.  What workers do should come out of the conversations they have with local residents and conversations can be informed by a model.

Models Generate Questions

Perhaps a worker might use a model to generate questions about what is going on in the neighbourhood.  The conversations generated by these questions can be inspiration for the worker and for activists.

If a model suggests an organisation in most successful communities carries out a particular function, it does not mean your community needs a new organisation to carry out that function.  In conversation you may find the function happens in ways not immediately obvious.  Or you may find an entirely different approach that works around the lack of the function locally.

Models inspire conversations and so generate new, home-grown ideas.  Remember, nothing should be attempted just because it worked somewhere else.  Maybe the way the other community generated their idea is what you need to copy.

Leave a comment if you have experienced positive or negative use of models.  Maybe you have introduced an idea from somewhere else and it worked!

Next time, I’ll introduce my key model.  It pulls together many of the issues I’ve covered so far.