The Measurement of Success
JESSIE WILDE, DEPUTY PROJECT DIRECTOR, HOUSING FESTIVAL
All of us, as individuals and as organisations, make decisions regularly that impact others positively and negatively, even with the best of intentions. As a nation, a city, a neighbourhood, a community, we are interwoven more than we realise. While we explore innovation in housing, new ideas and new technologies, it is important to ask who the beneficiaries are and, crucially, whether there is a hidden cost.
It is easy to demonise profit makers in the process, but for-profit businesses are essential for meeting the needs of society. For example, both the corner shop greengrocers and the large, open-all-hours supermarket chain provide necessary services to our communities. And, where there are inevitable gaps in services provided for our cities by both public bodies and for-profit companies, the UK’s phenomenal charitable sector steps in, sustained by profit from other sectors, grants from government, or its own for-profit activities. However, problems arise where money (income, profit, increase or lack of) is the single success measure.
The for-profit sector has the potential to cause massive global positive change where it is leading the way in how we measure and understand success, where it can incorporate more than largest profit in success, but also impact on our planet and on people. Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland’s Prime Minister, has recently highlighted the need to rethink countries’ growth, how it is achieved and what it costs, calling for economic policy to support ‘collective well-being… approaching quality of life not from just a monetary measure but from a well-being perspective’.
To enable housing innovation for inclusive growth, and to enable a fair and inclusive recovery from the pandemic, requires our measures of success to be inclusive too. As a city (and a nation) we must be prepared to update the way we think about success to include both people and planet alongside profit. The UK Government have already begun to recognise this need (before Covid 19) through the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requiring ‘people who commission public services to think about how they can also secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits’.
Changing a culture, changing the way we as society tend to understand and measure success will not be a quick process. But if wider measures can be broadly adopted, across all areas of society, government and by us as individuals, we have the potential to cause a huge shift in the way everyone (not just a few) experience growth.
Visit our YouTube channel to see the Measurement of Success playlist Jessie compiled to accompany this blog or click here.
