This is my second VE on The Hive. I will be linking plenty of external folk to this in the hope that they come and play, learn and experiment on The Hive and learn about immutable social value!
Looking back.
The idea here is between your last Value Exchange and now (in my case almost 3 months - which is the maximum recommended) how have you identified any social value have you delivered that you recognise? This can be literally anything. Writing a blog that people enjoy due to its honesty? What's yours?
On 7th March, just under a month ago, my mother's funeral took place. It was a deeply meaningful event that brought our family together in celebration of her life. As the youngest of her three children, I can attest to her unwavering love and devotion. She lived a fulfilling 88 years, and although she faced challenges after a fall on 3rd December 2022, her suffering was mercifully brief, for which I am grateful.
Over the past 10 weeks and 5 days, we have made significant strides in promoting Ethos' social value. Our accomplishments include the successful completion of dovetail governance, the production of nearly ten episodes of the Value Exchangers podcast, and advancements in our outreach efforts and social value proposition for government suppliers. Our website has been revamped, thanks in large part to Annabelle's hard work and my minor contributions.
While our attempts to secure a deal with Guildford/Surrey were ultimately unsuccessful, Oscar and I have developed a strong working relationship. Together, we have gained valuable knowledge and experience with the WordPress hosting service, with Oscar skillfully replicating it manually.
We have established a pipeline and submitted several proposals. Although Babcock's interest has waned for now, potential for future collaboration remains. My current focus is on creating a pragmatic plan to generate sustainable monthly revenue of £20-50k + VAT, which will enable us to maintain and expand upon our work.
A key milestone was the signing of the TP spinoff agreement, which not only promises potential revenue but also signifies a vital social value venture. I attended their first independent event, the TP Sports & Wellbeing Awards in York, and we are now preparing our first royalty invoice.
In terms of personal growth, I have successfully addressed my self-doubt regarding the efficacy of value exchange, which has opened up new opportunities. As for my well-being, I have reintroduced meditation, yoga, and the Couch to 5k program into my routine. To strike a balance between my commitments, I am exploring outsourcing some domestic tasks while still participating in the activities I enjoy.
I am particularly proud of the automated ClickUp mail system I developed, which involved creating custom Make.com routines for seamless feedback integration. This system will enable us to scale more efficiently with our CRM, which has proven effective in managing our people-to-organizations-to-opportunities-to-work meta-model.
Finally, we have laid the groundwork for a potential exit agreement with Wilder Sensing, which requires further development. This agreement may involve an Ethos Wilder webinar and event to raise sponsorship funds.
The Party!
The Value Recognition event - it is planned for Thursday 6th April. I may record and upload. May not!
Only a few of us need to attend! - of course this can happen asynchronously via comments but having a real-life event make this PHUN (Ethos spelling). Have food, alcohol, whatever. Run it virtually. But try and speak to each other. First the Value Exchanger talks about what it's been like and then others ask question and then add their own comments. No negative stuff but it's full of caring people who can offer kind advice and support - only when invited to of course! Below is a tiny flavour of the actual conversation that happened over Google Meet earlier this week:
Time invested during the VE period (days)
Roughly 40 hours per week on Ethos. Not sure about the non-Ethos stuff but that would have been considerable.
What is your Mission?
What’s your story? Your “Why?” What change would you like to see in the World (value to society)? Why this change? Why now? What will you give in order to achieve this? How will you personally change to achieve this? Note: this does NOT have to change each time you do VE but you include it to make sure you have an opportunity to rethink for the next phase!
My vision is for a world where future generations prioritise serving people and the planet above their own or organisational interests through collaboration. My mission is to surface the stories that exist in all of us which demonstrate how we can create social and environmental value.
While this may seem like a simple goal, it is challenging to achieve. How can an individual or organisation ensure that we never harm another citizen, employee, customer, or stakeholder? Perhaps we need to moderate our self-interests, default to trust, and collaborate for social purposes. By prioritising the common good, we can create a better future for everyone.
Spiritually, I am at peace with the World as it is right now. “It is what it is”. I nevertheless can be restless in my quest for promoting change in an energetic and excited way.
Anger (and disagreement) is not my best self. I recognise that the world may not change in any discernible way during my lifetime. That’s OK. Maybe some small thing I do will have a positive effect on a future generation or parallel universe. I’m not looking for instant gratification on this one!
I love innovation and playing in the space between discipline boundaries such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, technology, socal value, organisational interests, individual interests and economics. I am a do-er which for me means mission and vision are closely followed by strategy and action research. Try, fail, LEARN. I want the world to be a safe-to-learn space.
I am a bit of a workaholic who has frequently over committed. I now recognise as an issue to address. Perhaps for my social value more than me having issues with unfilled priorities and goals per set. So whilst I am still give myself permission to broaden my interests beyond what has traditionally been “work” for me (such as AI, tech and basically everything!) I am taking steps to “outsource” home things in order to move forward on maintenance and improvement of the house in particular. Watch this space!
I love starting things. I need to be careful not to over commit or to be over ambitious. Nor must I burden myself with too much responsibility. These come naturally to me but can be weaknesses. I love leadership. I don’t love management. I love working out loud, Open data. Networks, Blockchain, Tech (open source, Linux, Docker, Github) and what it means to lead oneself in a networked society.
The support that I give to my family together with the social value I exchange with my 1st degree network is a key priority.
I recognise that health is a gift and as such can be taken away. I will exercise regularly and will not overindulge. I will benefit from more energy.
Only one thing is for sure: things will change. I will embrace each change and respond with flexibility and agility. I recognise and search for the opportunities and adventure that each change presents.
I will be grateful, thankful and happy with everything that we have and I will give more than I take.
Being in flow for me means aligning my actions to this mission and my strengths. Time flies when I am having phun! I review this mission every three months or so.
Last re-visited 03/04/2023 (quite a bit in the top section)
Looking forward
The outcomes and deliverables in the table below don't have to mean a whole lot to everyone - although they could that's OK. This period they are really my shorthand on my commitments. I will come back to in a month and write about in my social value recognition in these areas. So you can link my narrative if you like to my first VE linked at the top.
| Social Value Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What problem can you help solve (Outcomes) | Deliverables | Organisations | Opportunities | Progress | |
| 1. New sponsors for TP and smooth exit | Plan for contact on the back of police ESG contacts. Pipeline built | UK Gov supplier - too many to list. | 2 years of sponsor royalties | ||
| Support Bill / Catharine in exit activities | Completed - success | ||||
| 2. ESG Discovery delivery for 5 clients Paid or not! | Build Supplier outreach plan | MoD and central gov suppliers to TCV > £5m | Have an actionable ESG innovation strategy. Score Higher on SV. Deliver better SV. Integrate SV across all activities. | ||
| Launch new website | Work with Annabelle | Completed - success | |||
| Build strong pipeline of proposals | Work with Annabelle | ||||
| Write up Dovetail as reference | Noam/Annabelle | ||||
| 3. Build community of Value Exchangers | Find a pilot cohort of 12 people for a “free” VE community to test with | Mix of YLs and Old leaders!!! | |||
| Build a free community of 12 CEOs to test with | NHS, Gov Suppliers, Gov Buyers | ||||
| Continue weekly The Value Exchange podcast show | |||||
| Daily blogs across social media platforms | |||||
| Recruit an army of volunteers. | |||||
| Build revenue plan on Social Value masterclass | |||||
| 4. Parking Exit post April | Learn about out github/Docker environment | Oscar and get a lunch with Sven | Completed - success | ||
| Find a group of SMEs (LGA association) to work with | LGA, SMEs | Completed - success | |||
| Meet with Surrey and Guildford again for next steps. | Completed - success | ||||
| 5. Raise funds for our non profit | Develop a pitch-deck for the proposition | ||||
| Build a go-to-market | ID the funder segment (individuals or organisations) | ||||
| Recruit a cohort of volunteers board of Trustees (only people who sign up for VE). Perhaps organisation secondees. (Pathways to work) | |||||
| Register as a charity | |||||
| 6. Build a pipeline of non Discovery engagements | SV subcontracting through consultants (at least £1k per day) | ||||
| Larger SV contracts (at least £20k) | |||||
| Larger funding opps (>£50k) |
- I'm going to be working full time on the above outcomes other than family and stuff.
- I'm only going to be paid when there is project or grant revenue directly associated to these things.
- January is going to be a 'zero' month so I am have capacity to roll my sleeves up on so many things - although I don't want to divert from my core mission especially Value Exchange.
- There are no conflicts of interest to manage.
People / Your network
"no person is an island" You need lots of people to help you work! Supporters, coaches and mentors. They work with you along the way to achieve shared goals. One of the keys to this section is to encourage you to engage with others and enlist others to support your mission.
Back-casting
This is completely optional. Where are you in the process right now? I've recognised my social value, recapped my personal vision, thought about outcomes and deliverables and the people who will help me stay well and who can support me. Sometimes it can be helpful to run-the next Value Recognition event in your mind, who will be there? What did you achieve? What led to those achievements? I needed to do this right now as we have launched a whole new strategy for 2023. It's big and ambitious. I was able to identify a major lack of self-confidence in the permission I have been giving myself around Value Exchange.
From: 26/01/2023 To: 25/02/2023
Major progress has been made in that we have now attracted many people on a LI group and a google group and a few people have signed up to our mailing list (about 20 I think so far!). Most important we have now got a group of 20 people to volunteer to participate in the first Social Value Masterclass which builds on our experience of Value Exchange to the complex subject of building our narratives on how we personally build more social and environmental sustainability.
Key to building value exchange we have also developed a community of practice for Value Exchangers which is a group of people who support each other in the developing Practice of Value Exchange. This is really the cornerstone of our B2B and B2C income products/services and an explosion of the practice will position Ethos well for a socially and environmentally sustainable future.
We have also developed a pipeline of 20 prospects where Ethos is helping those organisations develop their social value capability. The pipeline of 20 is spread amongst the following opportunities
10 x £3-5k proposals for initial Social Value Discovery Engagements - total value £40k. These engagement are about Ethos discovering where the organisations are today versus where they would like to be and establishing action plans for them to close the gaps.
4 x social value Masterclass workshops (one per month) with a price of £200 per participant. Total forecasted revenue of £11,400
45 paid days of subcontract work to consultancies who are engaged in the delivery of Social Value and ESG work on the basis that Ethos can deliver specialist experience based on our 24 years of experience of innovating around social value.
2 x £20,000 fixed price proposals to support organisations in delivering Value Exchange and or Social Value Sponsorship development contracts.
2 x £50,000 plus proposals which are larger proposals to funders or angel investors to support Ethos in the development of a larger community of practice of Value Exchange participants.
For non-Ethos work, I have found support with home maintenance task (decorating, leaks, home improvement) and garden maintenance. I have progressed the swimming pool project now that the weather has improved!
Probate was granted for mum’s estate (well done me!) and the house is now on the market and we have a strategy of passing on those items which are no longer needed (thanks Jac)
Our Portugal walking holiday at the end of May was a great success and we managed no major injuries. We have booked our holiday to India for later on in the year.