This is not the age of information.
This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

— David Whyte, “Loaves and Fishes”

The future of work may indeed be a mystery ... but it is no mystery what governance needs to be doing at this time. The challenge for local leadership is to reach into the deeper layers of sustainable development. In doing so, the role of governance is to speak up for the larger and slower good.

If anything, this is not the time for leadership to be frozen in cautious wonder. The job right now is to prepare our communities for change by actively building our capacity to respond to an uncertain future.

This is one area where the Labour Department has got it right. In 1999, the Department introduced a whole institutional philosophy which has its emphasis on building capability. It is a framework for thinking about labour market interventions.

It says that in times of uncertainty and change we need to

Essentially, I would describe this framework as “organised common sense”. But there is no use having this common sense unless we get on with the job. These three aspects of capability need to be actively fostered.

The trouble is that we still live in a political and bureaucratic culture that likes to tie all its activities to knowable outcomes. But, in an as-yet-unknowable future, this is a time to create the climate where the 1001 as-yet-unnamable outcomes can unfold.

What this capability framework tells me about youth unemployment is that we’ve got to turn our heads around about the whole issue. Our job here is to ensure that, in our communities, youth is a capable age.

We’ve got to turn around the fact that 1.2 billion people are arriving onto the global labour market in the next ten years ... into being the best news this planet has heard for a thousand years.

This means actively fostering the important contributions that young people will make as innovators, as entrepreneurs, as healers, as productive workers, as consumers, as artists and athletes, as trouble-makers, as citizens ... and as the people we continue to love and treasure in our communities.

17.

I want to talk about four ways which will be important in building the capabilities of young people.

The first is a no-brainer: we’ve got to continue to do all we can in terms of education and growing skills. There has already been plenty written and said about this ... and it is a major focus for the present government.

In the context of this meeting, I am mindful of what Owen O’Connor, the Mayor of Gore, has said when he questions whether or not too much emphasis is being put on education.

O’Connor was pointing to the skill shortages of tradespeople in his area. His observation is that young people are being encouraged to go higher and higher into academic learning that does not necessarily have a job at the end of it. Meanwhile, these same young people start to feel that working in “a trade” is somewhat beneath them.

There’s a lot of truth in what he says. Some forms of education simply breed arrogance. People learn to look to academic achievement for status rather than capability.

The education system is a critical component of the labour market, and has huge resources going into it. Like Owen O’Connor, we need to keep asking ourselves: are these resources hitting the mark?

18.

You may be interested to discover that Skill New Zealand has also set itself strategic goals which are very similar to that of the Mayors Taskforce.

The agency seeks to ensure that, by 2005, “every young person leaving school will have the opportunity to access a structured range of further education and workplace learning pathways, so that they can have the best possible future in a changing world” and that, by 2005, “every adult in the labour market will have the opportunity to access education and training leading to nationally recognised skills and qualifications and expanded employment opportunities.”

It is also interesting for me to dig further into this agency’s current success story with Modern Apprenticeships. You couldn’t get a better example of political good news — I’m sure that Helen Clark and Steve Maharey announced the scheme at least five times. And Skill NZ General Manager Max Kerr tells us that the interest and inquiries about Modern Apprenticeships outnumber inquiries on all his other activities combined.

Max Kerr also tells us that Skill NZ recently did a survey on what employers think are the blockages to creating more apprenticeships. The employers told the agency that training young people was becoming too complicated — especially with things like the national framework of unit standards that they had to pay attention to.

The new Modern Apprenticeships scheme addresses this issue by employing co-ordinators who recruit and act as mentors to the young apprentices. The co-ordinators ensure that the apprentices are looked after, and they sort out the details of an individualised training plan that will lead to nationally recognised qualifications. They are also there to ensure that if the employer runs out of work — or goes out of business — the apprentice can start with another employer.

These co-ordinators have been the missing link in making the apprenticeship system work again. They represent the “connecting” people – the ones that can do that matching-up aspect of the Labour Department’s capability framework.

So how many Modern Apprenticeships can we expect to be created as we work towards the Skill NZ strategic goals for 2005? The scheme was launched two years ago, and the numbers have just passed the 2,000 mark, and are heading for 3,000 people in training by the middle of this year.

Max Kerr has pointed out to the Mayors Taskforce that, in the early 1980s, there were 25,000 New Zealanders in apprenticeships or industry-based training. He doubts, however, that his agency would be able to reach such numbers today. His guess is that a realistic target would be about 10-15,000 apprenticeships.

It is partly a question of attitudes: while the concept of apprenticeships is very popular amongst older generations, a problem is that apprenticeships haven’t been promoted in schools as a viable pathway to further training and a career ... and there is clearly much more work to do in changing this approach.

19.

But are we being too timid here? In view of our current skill shortages, and high youth unemployment ... what is stopping us trying to get to the 10-15,000 apprenticeships as soon as possible?

The North & South magazine for March 2002 contains an excellent feature on the Modern Apprenticeship scheme, written by deputy Editor Jenny Chamberlain. In the article, Steve Maharey says that a problem with the scheme is “to try and keep up with demand”.

But Maharey only anticipates doubling the target to 6,000 young people signed up by the year 2005 — providing, that is, Labour is returned to government at this year’s general election. Maharey would eventually like to see a quarter of all school leavers — or 13,000 young people — opting for work-based training. He points out, however, that in order to achieve this, the scheme will require a significant increase in government investment.

For me, this may also be a question of attitudes as well as resources. Perhaps this is a case where the different government departments need to pick up the challenge to be more flexible about the way they are using their budgetary allocations. A good example of this is the $100 million Winz wage subsidy fund which the National Commissioner, Ray Smith, tells us has been consistently underspent for a decade.

It looks like Skill NZ could well do with access to that money.

20.

The second major area to focus on, in terms of building capabilities, is fostering the whole entrepreneurial spirit of the next generation. This also needs to be seen as a cultural mission.

We’ve certainly got the talent. Last November, a major international survey called the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) found that New Zealanders are among the most highly entrepreneurial and innovative people in the world... and Maori people are every bit as entrepreneurial as Pakeha, or European New Zealanders.

The question here is whether all this talent is being channeled into effectiveness.

In the 1980s I developed the Skills of Enterprise training programmes for unemployed people, which today are known as Be Your Own Boss. The courses have spread from Taranaki to most areas of this country, and even into the Pacific.

They continue to struggle for consistent funding, but these courses have been one of the most cost-effective development tools that just keep on paying back to our communities ... as the hundreds of participants go on to create small businesses, or become more entrepreneurial in other areas of their lives.

But, in recent years, I have started to consider that we have been teaching the Skills of Enterprise at the wrong end of the problem. Why wait until someone is unemployed and desperate before they get access to this important bag of skills?

I have come to believe that the Skills of Enterprise need to be woven into all levels of our learning institutions. We should be starting with it in our primary schools.

21.

It was inspirational to hear the Scottish leader in enterprise education, Gordon McVie, speaking at last year’s Regional Development Conference in Rotorua.

McVie told us that, in the past 5-10 years, there has been a significant attitude shift in the 16-24 year old age bracket. McVie: “This age group no longer expects to have security of employment. But they can achieve security of employability if they have positive can-do attitudes, and are prepared to go for it ... Young people have had the doctrine of working for someone else ingrained into them for years, but we now need to encourage them to have a more entrepreneurial attitude to their working lives. And this spirit of enterprise needs to be fostered both in terms of working for someone else, as well as working for themselves.”

McVie has been a key figure in Scotland’s campaign to foster entrepreneurship as a cultural component in economic development. As a result, Scotland is now one of the few countries in the world which has an enterprise development campaign which reaches from primary school to university, and from unemployed young people to small business executives.

The impetus for this strategy was an inquiry carried out in 1992 into the reasons for the low rate of new business formation in Scotland — only 60 per cent of the comparable rate in the rest of the UK.

As part of the enquiry, attitudes to entrepreneurship were compared in Scotland, England, West Germany and the USA. It was found that far fewer people in Scotland than in the other countries believed that entrepreneurs contributed much to the economy. These attitudes were found to be spread throughout Scottish society with little variation among most social groups.

The Scots also believed that government investment was more likely to create jobs than entrepreneurs and similar views were to be found in schools, universities, the media and local authorities.

These findings shocked Scottish Enterprise, the government business development agency. It came to the conclusion that support for enterprise is linked to personal attitudes as much as to abilities ... and it also realised that changes in the world of work would require fundamental changes in the way entrepreneurship is developed in the education system.

This led to a wide-ranging campaign to change attitudes throughout Scottish society. Its goal is both to increase the profile for entrepreneurship in the education system as well as developing a more encouraging environment for new business start ups.

Let us hope the Ministry of Economic Development takes a serious look at Gordon McVie and this Scottish model for changing attitudes. The cultural component of fostering entrepreneurship needs to be put into any future plan for regional development.

22.

The third area of developing capability concerns livelihood: we’ve got to ensure that young people have got an income.

Part of the reason that the very definition of “young people” seem to have shifted boundaries — from the late-teens to the mid-twenties — is because young people are now much more dependent on their parents for a livelihood.

I believe that young people have got to have a basic income which gives them choices amidst change. More than this, we need to shift significant capital from one generation to another ... so that young people have the financial capability to seize the opportunities opening up in a new and changing environment.

The problem is we seem to be doing the opposite of this. The present student loans scheme is putting a huge burden on the talents of the next generation ... and is sending many of them offshore where they can earn bigger money and get out of debt sooner. (The Ministry of Education predicts that student loan debts will reach $20 billion on the government’s books by 2020).

We know that it is wrong, and it is unsustainable. In accounting terms, the government puts student loans on the “asset” side of their ledger. We have to turn our heads around and value not the loans as assets ... but the young people themselves.

23.

These first three things — education, enterprise and income — have been about actively fostering the capacity side of the problem. But we have also got to open up the doors of demand for our young people.

We’ve got to create as many opportunities for participation and connection as there are numbers of young people looking for them.

It will come as no surprise to you to find that I advocate active intervention and, to me, this must involve public investment and public works.

My model for public works isn’t the make-work schemes we saw in the 1930s or the 1980s. Today, a public works strategy has to be about doing real work for real wages, for real employers ... and doing things that are really valued.

Perhaps these work schemes might look more like the filming of “The Lord of the Rings”. If you look at the tax write-offs that came with the production of this magnificent series of films — something like $216 million — then you can make a case for these movies being one of the biggest work schemes that New Zealanders have had a hand in. And look at the spin-offs in terms of tourism and international media coverage!

24.

We need to have a proper debate in this country about the level of public investment we are prepared to make in order to stimulate these real opportunities — and not just in the entertainment and tourism industries.

We need this debate because one of the great ironies of youth unemployment is that enormous numbers of young people are arriving on the labour market at a time when there is so much important work to do.

But this work is hungry for what the poet, David Whyte, describes as “one good word”. This work is waiting for our capacity to value different things.

There are two job-rich areas which have the potential to be big employers in the future. The first sector contains those jobs that will come from us choosing to look after one another better. The second sector contains those jobs that come from choosing to look after the earth better.

There is so much real work here, and it is work that young people love to do, and have a sense of mission in doing it.

The key to unlocking this work is putting in “a good word” for it. It is unlocked by the governance choices made by community leaders such as yourselves, and by your determination in gaining or redesigning the resources you need to make this work happen.

25.

A cultural vision is about how we work towards the sort of New Zealand we want to live in, and about the country that we want our young people to inherit.

This is why a goal such as ensuring that “no young person under 25 years will be out of work or training in our communities” ... should not be seen as an act of charity.

In effect, it is what should be guaranteed to the younger generation by an older generation that wants to keep in relationship with its own generative spirit. It is not charity ... it is an act of connection and hopefulness about the future.

There really is no mystery to how we get on with it. Activating local leadership around this cultural goal is the key. And when a goal that talks of ending “the waste” of young people is set in place, then that governance choice opens up a market for local solutions to unfold.

Your local people — and your young people — will come up with 1001 ideas on how to get on with the job.

This is how our communities will ensure that youth becomes a capable age.

And when we are all getting on with these 1001 solutions, we remember: there was always plenty of good work for our young people to do.

vivian Hutchinson
February 2002

vivian@jobsletter.org.nz
www.jobsletter.org.nz/vivian.htm

NOTES and LINKS

David Whyte’s “Loaves and Fishes” is from his book of poems House of Belonging (pub 1996 by Many Rivers Press) ISBN 0962152439

David Whyte is one of the few poets to have taken his perspectives on work and creativity into the field of organisational development, where he consults with many leading Fortune 500 companies. In 2001, he published Crossing the Unknown Sea, an instant classic described by fellow author Paul Hawken as possibly “the most consoling piece of writing ever published on the subject of work.” See review at www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl14310.htm.
Crossing the Unknown Sea — Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, by David Whyte (pub 2001 by Riverhead Books) ISBN 1573221783

a larger and slower good. My thinking about governance in this context owes much to the work of the Long Now Foundation, and particularly the publication of Stewart Brand’s 1999 book The Clock of the Long Now. The Long Now Foundation believes that civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be seen in the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase.
The Foundation proposes that some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed — a mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where “long-term” is measured at least in centuries. Their concept of a “Long Now” Clock and Library endeavours to help people reframe the way they think about these issues, and to become an icon for public dialogue. For more information www.longnow.org
The Clock of the Long Now — Time and Responsibility , by Stewart Brand (pub 2000 Basic Books) ISBN 0465007805

The Long Now perspective on governance: The fast layers innovate; the slow layers stablise. The whole combines learning with continuity.

Human Capability — a Framework for Analysis (published by the Department of Labour 1999) can be downloaded (76 pages, 337 kb) from www.dol.govt.nz/fldImages/Final%20Full%20HCF%20_13%20Oct_.pdf

education that breeds arrogance. Michael Young, Lord Young of Dartington, was a critic of the “meritocracy” bred by today’s education system. Young, who died in January 2002 at the age of 86, was also an amazing British social entrepreneur who created many charities — including the Consumers Association and the Open University.
He recently wrote: “Were we to evaluate people, not only according to their intelligence and their education, their occupations and their power, but according to their kindliness and their courage, their imagination and sensitivity, their sympathy and generosity, there would be no overall inequalities of the sort we have got used to.” — from “Equality and Public Service” by Michael Young, speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 11 September 2000

The Skill New Zealand website is at www.skillnz.govt.nz. Figures and references on Modern Apprenticeships are taken from Max Kerr’s meeting with the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs in Wellington on 3rd November 2000

“On the Job — The Young Apprentices” by Jenny Chamberlain, North and South March 2002

wage subsidy fund consistently underspent for a decade. From statement by Winz National Commissioner Ray Smith to the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs meeting in Christchurch 15 February 2002.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2001 is the most comprehensive country-by-country comparison of entrepreneurship in the world today. The survey finds that 18.2% of the NZ adult population are involved in entrepreneurial activity. This rate is higher than in the United States, and is second only to Mexico.
We have the world's highest proportion of “opportunity entrepreneurs” in the world, at 15.05 % of the adult population (or 370,000 people). They constitute about 82% of the entrepreneurs in NZ (compared to 55% world-wide). Opportunity entrepreneurs are people who identify a business opportunity and go after it ... in contrast to “necessity entrepreneurs”, who are those who create self-employment in response to job loss or redundancy. We have about 70,000 “necessity entrepreneurs” in this country, and they constitute 17% of the entrepreneurs in NZ (compared to 55% world-wide).
Another interesting finding in the GEM report is that NZ has the highest proportion of senior (35-65 years) entrepreneurs. In the 45 to 54-year-old bracket, the NZ average is over 15%, compared to the world average of 6%. The GEM report finds “the global trend is for entrepreneurs to be in the 24 to 45-year range”.
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor — New Zealand 2001 by Howard H Frederick and Peter J Carswell of the New Zealand Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (UNITEC). This report can be downloaded (49 pages, 310 kb) from www.unitec.ac.nz/gem/pdf/gem_nz.pdf .
See also “The GEM Report” Special Supplement to the New Zealand Herald 15 November 2001.

Scottish Enterprise Strategy. Gordon McVie spoke at the Regional Development Conference Rotorua Convention Centre 28 November 2001. His speech “Creating Enterprising Communities: Culture before Structure?” is available at www.regdev.govt.nz .
For more information on the Scottish Enterprise strategy see www.enterpriseinsight-scotland.com. Also paper “Enterprise Development In Scotland” by Tony Burton of The Planning Exchange (New Entrepreneurs Conference, Athens, January 2000).

student debt $20 billion by 2020. Ministry of Education Statistics from “Government to release more info on student loans” by Mathew Brockett, The Daily News 31 January 2001

Lord of the Rings. “The full details of the LOTR tax write-off will probably never be released publicly. One unverified figure doing the rounds is that at present the IRD is down $216 million from the tax loophole exploited by LOTR, a figure that excludes PAYE and GST payments related to the production.” — quote from “Film Commission snagged in Inland Revenue attack on ‘smart’ tax schemes” by John Drinnan, National Business Review 8 February 2002. See also “Rings movie already a major winner for NZ” by David King, the Christchurch Press 14 February 2002.

Previous speeches by vivian Hutchinson, relating to the work of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, are also available on the internet. These include

— It is the Local That Learns — some thoughts on community governance (1999) available at www.jobsletter.org.nz/vivian/comgov99.htm.

— Making Hope Possible — some thoughts on the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs (2000) available at www.jobsletter.org.nz/vivian/mtfj2000.htm.

Ends