2nd opinion: Means to an end

For the first time in years I didn't have a delegate pass to last month's National Housing Federation conference. So, bereft of stirring speeches, seminars and workshops, all I had to go on were the stalls in the exhibition.

On some occasions in the past, the dominant presence has been lenders wanting to help me build new properties; in other years development partners have taken prominence. This year the key to being a state-of-the-art association would appear to be buying a new software system (although what's the betting someone from the NHF will decide to ruin my story with a statistical analysis of stallholders?).

I've nothing against up-to-date computer systems. Indeed, my own association is upgrading at the moment. But I would like to think that what potential exhibitors feel chief executives and senior board members will be most interested in is stuff more directly connected to the purposes of our organisations than to their internal mechanisms. Yes, I am riding my "outcomes matter more than processes" hobbyhorse again; I promise to stop when I get the message across.

It's there in the In Business for Neighbourhoods programme, launched at the conference. "In" is not just another kitemark, to be awarded on the basis of having the right policy documents somewhere on a dusty top shelf. Please don't sign up to it unless you really are committed to making a visible difference in the communities where you are working. Half-hearted involvement will simply damage the efforts of those who are trying to make a real impact.

Even more tellingly, a determined and sophisticated effort to identify and focus on outcomes is now at the forefront of thinking among a whole range of grant makers and funders, including some of the lottery bodies. We can be part of the thinking, identifying outcomes and the sorts of measures that will tell whether we really are achieving them, or we can wait around and let someone else impose a system on us. I hate jargonistic titles, but I was delighted to receive details of a day course on outcomes management for homelessness organisations, being held by the London Housing Federation and the Community Empowerment Fund in December. If you've limited time and budget for training events this winter, I would certainly press the case for this, rather than, say, a day on payments for voluntary board members.

Spending energy on deciding whether to pay board members is sheer process obsession, not least because it remains a solution in search of its problem. Small housing associations like my own can't afford to pay; large and rich ones don't need to. I know it is demanding and time-consuming to be an active chair of a substantial and developing registered social landlord because I've done it. But I've never heard of a serious attempt to recruit a chair or board member failing because there wasn't money on the table. Maybe Housing Today should offer a prize to the first chief executive prepared to come out and say on record that if they had cash upfront, they would have a better chair than the one they're lumbered with?

With the conference season behind us and bids and budgets for the next financial year looming, let's focus our money and energy in proportion to the effect it will have on improving the lives of our present and future tenants. That, and that alone, is what we are "In Business" for.