The measure of what we do

Maybe it’s winter blues, but I just can’t get stuck into a new year of fighting the good fight in housing. In fact, I feel like one of those “celebrities” in the Diary Room, fed up after a stint in the Big Brother house and dying to get out.

The problem is that I keep questioning what it is that makes a truly great housing association – does that notion even exist any more and is it something worth striving for?

A quick review of the long list of measures or indicators of success we hold dear in the housing sector doesn’t provide much enlightenment – in some ways it just confuses things. So what if you are listed as the number one organisation in the efficiency, or is it cost, index?

I notice that the chief executives who scrambled to the housing press to “beat their chest” on how well their organisation performed when the controversial efficiency index was first published, have been notably slow to come forward on the publication of the new list. I wonder what the reason is for this new-found reticence; nothing to do with the fact that they’re no longer top ranking, I’m sure.

A yet-to-be published study by the Housing Quality Network examining how councils can improve their housing services and maintain the momentum, suggests leadership style plays an important role in associations that have three stars from the Audit Commission. In particular, it identifies the importance of humble and self-critical senior managers.

Interestingly, this point was confirmed by business studies guru Jim Collins in his book From Good to Great. Collins says he was surprised and shocked to discover that the type of leadership required to turn a good company into a great one was not your high-profile “big beasts” but self-effacing, quiet, reserved and even shy leaders. But how many times have I sat on an interview panel where being self-effacing or even quiet was perceived as being weak?

If my past experience of the National Housing Federation’s chief executives’ conference is anything to go by, no doubt discussions about the number of homes owned and the number being developed featured greatly in last week’s event.

For some reason, we view the number of homes we are developing as a measurement of greatness. Forget the fact that the quality of what we develop these days in the main does not match the legacy of homes developed in the past by the Peabody Trust, the William Sutton Trust or the Guinness Trust.

Many a time I have asked my colleagues, are we proud of the buildings we have developed? Are we creating landmarks that will last for years or shoeboxes that will be demolished at the earliest opportunity? Being able to produce homes at the lowest cost may win us laurels today but bring us grief in years to come.

So I am still scrambling for answers on what makes a great housing organisation but, surely, it must have something to do with demonstrable evidence that we are making a positive difference in the neighbourhoods where we operate.

This means, over a long period, our employees willingly work for us, customers value our services and products and that suppliers and stakeholders value the relationships they have with us. Such organisations are missed if they are no longer in existence.

I wonder how many of us will pass that test? Oh, of course, we can just rely on the operating cost index to tell us.