Co-oper-tition for change

Here’s a curious notion worth pondering: Co-oper-tition.

Not full cooperation, but not full competition either.

It applies where you and I are compete within a market, but where our market is in competition with another.

For example, the makers selling their goods on felt.co.nz technically compete. They’re competing for the consumer dollar. However, they could also cooperate, because they’re trying to establish a marketplace which is in competition with say, Kmart. Or the Warehouse. Or any other warehouse-based consumer goods reseller.

If you and I are property developers working to put wheels on a more ethical, sustainable and just property system, we might be competing. We compete for projects opportunities, property owners, media attention and finance. But as we strive to establish a market that competes with a prejudiced, unsustainable and unjust incumbent environment, we can cooperate. Your success is my success. Your successful projects adds leverage to my claim that different is possible. Your connections can help to align finance for my project.

Because ultimately, the outcome we’re seeking is change. For the better.

*Credit to Jason for coining the term “Coopertition”. Check out more of Jason’s work and thinking here.

Shared incentive ethical property development

Ethical property development. Alternative property development. Property projects focussed on people and planet instead of profit.

Call it what you will, we’d like to see more of it. One of the challenges is how to weave in the practical reality that money is involved, cash is necessary, and people need to get paid.

How do we recognise and respect the commercial and financial practicalities of all parties involved without focusing on the bottom line?

Firstly, we can question the stories we’re told about commercial realities, and the ways that we approach our commerce. Our business-as-usual environment is combative and competitive, not collaborative, and our business models tend to reflect that. Greater transparency around where the money is flowing to is required in order to genuinely collaborate.

Secondly, we’ll need shared incentives that start with a dollar sign. For example: If all parties were involved in the design from the beginning (i.e. builder, architect, engineer, planner, developer, future owner) could they also all share in the financial risks and rewards? Perhaps, for example, set a fixed budget for the project, and share any under-run between everyone? There’s many details to work through here of course, but the fundamental principle that we all aim to reduce cost however we are able to (within our scope of involvement) because we all win financially has to be worth considering.

Finally, this isn’t theory, this is actually happening.

How many people does it take to change a property system

I've been running numbers tonight.

It looks like, in order to activate about $3M of radical, purposeful, alternative property living, building, and ownership, we need a little over 100 of us.

The list looks something like this:

• 40 people who don't own any property and currently save around $50 per week.
• 40 people who are on the right side of the mortgage mountain, want to change the world at least a little bit, and can afford to pay an extra $50 per week on their mortgage.
• 12 people with cash who want to change the world, but need a return.
• 3 NGOs with cash sitting in their bank accounts.
• A bank in the business of community-building.

And most importantly:

• 15 people who can afford to pay $130p/w in rent and want to live with purpose; and
• The communities around them.

100 people with Purpose.

Do any of these people sound like you?

Designing for impact

So you want to make a difference. You have a dream for a better future. You want to make an impact.

The next step is to try and make it happen within our sphere of control.

While positive personal, individual responses are necessary, it turns out that trying to convince others to "do what I did" isn't a particularly effective way to achieve a large-scale impact.

Attempting to control the situation based on your frame of reference isn't is not the determining factor in creating impact.

Collaboration might be.

This isn't to say that individual stories don't matter. They matter because they are all different. But listening and sharing is more important than convincing and justifying.

Collaboration, not co-opting.

Coordination and cooperation by communication, not command.

Imagine the solutions for housing we might arrive at if we wove our stories together:

• Simpler living in smaller spaces designed for neighbours, not purchasers.
• Coordinated, activated and populated public areas that are accessible to all.
• Households who know households. Neighbours who know neighbours.
• Cross-generational and cross-cultural living within a neighbourhood rather than demographic segregation.
• Shared facilities for making, fixing, growing, playing and being.
• Literal, and potentially common ownership of local commercial activities.
• Educational environments that extend outside the institution into our streets, parks, back yards, garages and kitchens.
• Urban design dominated by spaces for people, not cars.

Picking products for a Good Home

When designing a home, there are an almost insufferable number of decisions to make before you even start to consider what is 'good'.

What is a 'good' construction product?

On the list of things to consider are:

• Life-cycle energy costs
• Transportation carbon footprint
• Ethical procurement
• Impact on operational energy use
• Material sustainability
• End-of-life uses

You can spend a lot of time thinking.

The issue is that the true cost of the products aren't necessarily reflected in the price. When we buy a product with a massive carbon footprint, we don't have to pay the price to off-set the impact on climate if the supply chain doesn't have to pay it.

If we buy a product manufactured under oppressive labour laws that don't adequately value human life, and human capital, we don't pay the price of the negative social impacts of low-wages.

It would be much easier for the average consumer, and the general market, if product pricing reflected the true costs.

Suburban Redevelopment

Pick up a property. Demolish the building. Rebuild what was there, but better, and make more spaces for more people.

A crucial piece of the puzzle of trying to transform a neighbourhood, is how to get hold of the land in the first place. The Nightingale 3 project in Melbourne took the above approach, you can read about it here.

But how about suburbia? We don't have the option of taking a single-storey building and adding space by building up, but could we take a similar approach? Could we find four connected titles, demolish, and rebuild with eight households?

It could be possible if we used the following principles:

More shared spaces: Shared laundries, storage, workshops, maybe even ditch the cars and use a fleet of electric vehicles.

Smaller spaces: Design for what we really need, learn to live with less, and just generally do bette design.

Common ownership: Whether it is a body corporate, a company structure or some other legal delight, sharing more requires a shift from a 'my house, my castle' property mentality.

Energy efficiency: Environmental considerations aside, this is a smart financial move. Keeping running costs low not only makes a higher build cost/mortgage affordable, it provides longer-term financial security by making living costs less tied to market variations in energy costs.

Around here, a typical section could be around 600 sqm. Four sections would give us 2400 sqm to play with.

I'm sure an architect could come up with an 8-household development using the principles above on 2400 sqm, even if we're limited to two storeys.

Organising for good, better.

There are many ways to work together. McKinsey & Company identified four organisational 'recipes'. Interestingly, their research found that focussing on a single recipe was more likely to be successful than attempting to delivery on multiple fronts.

If we wanted to build a system together that delivered better outcomes for all people through property, which recipe would we pick?

I suspect one of the following two could be a valid approach, and aligns with an emphasis on people working together to solve wicked problems.

The "Leadership Factory".

This approach would rely on developing leaders, entrusting them to do work, and wrapping them in support systems to sustain and grow their leadership and impact. Leadership is necessary when we're trying to move in a new direction, and a coordinated group of embedded, aligned and supported leaders could move us all a long way.

The "Continuous Improvement Engine".

We'd embed and maintain systems that promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing, diverse involvement and high engagement among every person involved. As we're trying to solve and unsolved problem, we know we'll need to learn as we go along. "Build it as we fly it" as the saying goes. And we also know that the more diverse the group of people involved in the learning, sharing and design process, the better the outcomes.

Perhaps, if I may, I'll deviate from McKinsey's conclusion that success requires focus on a single approach and theorise on a hybrid model:

Continually Improving Leaders who Continuously Improve the World

What would happen if we developed leaders who lead in a manner that promotes continuous learning, and who themselves are embedded in a leadership network that encourages knowledge sharing and learning around getting the most from others.

We could solve some wicked problems. Together.