Although the call for change has been a constant cry for many years, the shift we now face in the housing world is different from anything we have experienced in both size and significance. Such radical upheaval requires an equally radical response, and total transformation rather than incremental change is now our guiding imperative.
When we take an international perspective, the challenges we face across the western world are remarkably similar. Despite the political and geographical distances, potential inspiration and shared solutions may be closer at hand than we think.
Research for the International Housing Partnership (IHP), a network of housing organisations from the USA, Canada, England and Australia, found a remarkable synergy around the need for transformation, opening up a debate about new options for the housing sector cutting across our traditional boundaries.
Clearly there are significant legislative, policy, funding and cultural differences between our countries. In the US, non-profit organisations are much smaller in scale than in England; they tend to be mission-driven social enterprises reliant on marshalling complicated tax credit finance packages on a project by project basis. In the UK and Canada asset backed organisations receive grant and revenue support from government, although this is changing rapidly. Australia is particularly entrepreneurial.
But despite these differences, the rapidly changing operating and policy environments are exerting similar pressures around restricted debt financing, changing governance and leadership, economic austerity and cuts to public expenditure. There are also surprising similarities within the policy agenda: neighbourhoods, big society and communities, and forms of social enterprise.
Global markets enable us to explore global solutions, from shared services to joint procurement processes and energy efficiency. Is there any reason why a UK housing organisation couldn't provide services to a small provider in Canada or America?
Critics of our sector in the UK have long claimed it is too insular. Taking this international perspective enables us to identify common areas of activity and converging trends in affordable housing systems, where the sharing of experience, expertise and good practice can help us to drive the change we need today to deliver the organisations of tomorrow.
So what does that mean for organisations like Orbit, working in local communities across the midlands, east and south-east of England? In our case we have adopted business transformation as a way of working.
We are using a new business strategy which triangulates risk, return and direction. This helps us to understand our future environment, explore our business drivers, develop a more radical vision, identify our change agents and focus on our results. It is clear that our ongoing ability to transform will be critical in helping us to shape our own future as organisations and manage the agenda rather than simply respond to it. This structure allows organisations to flex and bend to future change; we can be light on our feet, remain relevant to our communities and adapt effectively to the world we operate in.
Now is certainly not the time to hunker down and hope it all goes away - it won't. There is much we can learn from abroad, as well as at home. Above all, what IHP's research shows us is that true transformation allows organisations to adapt, evolve and succeed, irrespective of where they are and the difficulties thrown at them.
Paul Tennant is group chief executive of Orbit
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