Silos and egos are holding back change!

Is the charity landscape increasingly blighted by silos and run by egos? Silos mean lots of people are working in separate towers. Egos mean promoting individualism while missing out on the wider impact that our combined work could achieve. Lot’s of silos + driven by egos = a scattergun approach to social change.

Last week I got an Uber from Manchester Piccadilly to the Justlife Centre in East Manchester. I was telling the driver what I was doing that day. He said he thought there were “too many charities, wasting resources, and they should all merge into one”. All the money, all the best people, all the creative thinkers and innovators, working together with one goal and approach. Nice idea, maybe! If I was redesigning the system this would be a good approach, but actually, if I was designing the system from scratch, there would be no need for charities! There is no redesign of the system coming soon, so could we work better together. Partnerships and shared resources + driven by the need of those we exist to serve = effective social change?

Through my work at Justlife, I’ve seen some partnerships lately that I think are doing something different. Take the Better Way Network, that’s promoting a set of principles that organisations live out rather than just pay lip service too. Then there’s Saint Martin’s in the Fields and their Frontline Networks working across the country, sharing ideas, knowledge, and solidarity between frontline workers within the homelessness sector. And don’t forget the Manchester Homelessness Charter, uniting a whole city in the task of ending homelessness. Do they have silver bullets to solve the problems? No of course not! But what we’ve been doing certainly hasn’t been working, so let’s not keep doing the same old same old. 

Our frustrations at Justlife are around the thousands and thousands of people who are the hidden homeless. These are people living in unsuitable temporary accommodation up and down the country, in their most vulnerable moment of life, who are often left with no support, help, or guidance. The question I have is – how can we join up our thinking across the sector, use the skills of the public and private sectors, and draw on the many innovators and creatives in our towns and cities to make a difference?

Let’s try and come together, replacing silo’s and ego’s with partnerships and a person-centred approach to create social change.

Simon Gale is the CEO of Justlife, an organisation aiming to help people’s experience of temporary accommodation be as short, safe and healthy as possible. 

Justlife took part in the study Small Charities and Social Change, which explores how small charities across the UK are speaking out on the issues that those they support are facing. It explores the challenges many charities are experiencing as they promote social change, and highlights examples of how to do it well, often on a shoe-string budget. Through studying 11 organisations (including Justlife) working across four fields the research aims to, inspire and equip small charities in their social change work and inform funders and infrastructure/training organisations who support charities in this field.

You can read the report, executive summary and the Justlife case study here.