Singing about a better life: the Durban enumeration

“Have you ever been to an enumeration?” asked my hostess at the Gates Foundation convening.  She had brought together all the grantees under the Urban Poverty Limited Learning Initiative, including ourselves, for two days of brain-cudgeling on what we had individually and collectively learned, so far in our respective grants, about the complex challenge of alleviating urban poverty.  On the third day, we had a chance to go as individuals to see an event.  The Durban affiliate of uTshani and FED-UP, South African’s Federation of the Urban Poor, which in turn is a member of AHI’s customer Slum Dwellers International, was holding the first enumeration in Durban.

Durban is South Africa’s third city, after Cape Town and Johannesburg (some might say fourth, after Pretoria).  Long the capital of Natal, now KwaZulu Natal, it is a gritty industrial port with a magnificent seafront and a slowly reviving downtown being given radical ablative surgery in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup.  Radiating from the center in concentric rings like ripples of a stone dropped in a pond are hillside settlements, each outer ring less formal than the one before.

The Durban hillside, carpeted with houses

For that is the nature of tidal wave urbanization in the global South.  People move to the city for a better life for themselves and their children. 

As we arrived, school was letting out

They need to live affordably.  Because the value of urban land is a function of the earning power of those who live or work on it, for the structures close to town, even the smallest inhabitable space they can afford – a single-room building only 100 feet square with an outhouse nearby – is unaffordable.  So they move out until there is a low-value plot of land large enough to accommodate a self-built house, and build one.

Informal house being enumerated, Durban

Multiply that by hundreds of people moving to the city every week, everywhere, and the city grows and grows.  On the periphery, informality rules, outstripping any knowledge that the formal city has.

On the city’s maps, this is green space

So we drove, a dozen of us, out and out from the gleaming downtown, past the soaring white new stadium – it really is beautiful, past the smooth two-lane roadways, past the gradually diminishing shopping centers and grocery stores, off the bitumen, and up into the dirt hills. 

Someone asked, are we still in the city?  Yes, we were.  We came to the big tent, and got out.

A celebration, a fair, or a political event?  A little of each.

Patrick Magabhula of uTshani, whose group had organized and scheduled this enumeration, led us under the big tent to a long dais at its front, with empty chairs.  To my astonishment, we were directed into those chairs, the honored guests at the feast.  We as in Slum Dwellers International – Jockin and Sheela and Somsook, and the rest of us white folk as attendants and courtiers.  Our entry was greeted by singing – chorus after chorus of delighted women ululating in tune and time.

The guests are here!  Let the celebration begin!

Someone told me that their Zulu lyrics said, We are despoiling our beautiful country with our ugly houses, and we want houses as beautiful as our country.

(Aside from its emotive power, I thought that was a brilliant posture: to demand better housing not for oneself but for one’s city and country.  It happens to be true, yet it is simultaneously brilliant messaging.)

Patrick had been passionate about getting us here.  This was Durban’s first venture into citizen-led enumeration, and he importuned us to come.  Sitting there, feeling the energy, I understood: we are your witnesses.

They brought us drinks, nuts, potato chips and pretzels, and they sang until Patrick quieted them.

“Amandla!” he shouted, swinging his arm forward to inspire the crowd.  “Amandla!” the crowd shouted back.

He spoke in passionate and happy Zulu.  We want houses, we want to be part of the city.

Patrick Magabhula in full expository oration

Today, he told them, we will be counted.  Today is the beginning.

“Today is the beginning.”

As always in these urban change-making environments, the leadership is women.

Committee member

The women are in the circle, the men cluster on its edges, watchful.

Women under the tent, men nearby, gradually moving closer

Cautious.

Listening to Patrick orate

An enumeration, as the term implies, is a counting of place, people, and property – done by the people themselves who live there.

Enumeration map of the neighborhood

It’s done with low-tech but reliable materials, using the poor’s own labor as the substitute for technology.

Using a roller to size houses, rooms, streets, plots of land

All at once – one day, one morning – people from the community fan out to every house, and every household, and collect information, in a standardized way.  The people’s census.

Easy to read, easy to compile, and verified on the spot: a household survey

Yet critical to the enumeration is not that it is done by the informal people, but that it is accepted by the formal city.  Months of negotiations had led to these moments, where the city had slowly, even grudgingly, come to accept that there were more people living on this particular hillside than the city had thought.

South Africa, you see, takes urban citizenship seriously.  Every adult household is entitled to a one-time capital subsidy, with a face amount of R54,000 (the visible subsidy) and a total value closer to R140,000 (meaning about R85,00 of invisible subsidy), for home purchase, home construction, and ancillary infrastructure (from the invisible subsidy).  Enumerating people and their property enables them to access that capital subsidy, which is what motivates them.  Over-enumerating them compels the municipality to deliver the invisible subsidy, which worries the city. 

Throughout South Africa, I was told on other days by many other people, the single biggest breakdown in delivery is at the municipal level.  From bankers to developers to researchers to consultants, everyone with whom I spoke fingered municipal incapacity as the blockage.

Enumeration by the people themselves represents outsourcing an essential governmental function both to accelerate its delivery and to create political standing for the poor themselves.  If you won’t do it for us, we will do it for ourselves and make you acknowledge us.

That’s why our presence mattered.  Here was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, standing at the dais, telling the assembled gathering, Amandla!  We see what you do today, we recognize your rights as people.  When I come back here next year, she told them, I want to see houses!  They roared with approval.  Of such moments are personal pledges made.

The speeches over, the business of enumeration taking place and winding up, we toured to see the consequences of enumerating.  Start with new houses. 

While the South African capital subsidy was originally intended to stimulate new formal production – and to this day, it principally does – it is a demand-side subsidy, meaning an entitlement of acknowledged citizens.  One can access it to build one’s own house, a house which one has designed.  Like this:

The self-designed house

House maquette, made from a corrugated box

Rooms laid out inside

As I understand it, to access the capital subsidy, one has to show that one lives somewhere.  Of course the people do – they live in houses they have built themselves, like this one:

Showing his house: self-built, of sun-baked adobe and wattle

Again and again I was struck that though people will sleep in the meanest of dwellings, they dress better than they sleep:

Just under 100 square feet total, but note the wall coverings

And they speak better than they dress.

Describing how a new house will change his life.

People will improve their homes when they believe it will be they who benefits from the improvement.  For that, you need security of tenure, and access to capital subsidy.  Enter the map:

Every house, every outhouse, every dirt road, recorded and listed

The map also captures data about the existing structures.

Painted on the house are its dimensions: 4.4 x 9.2 meters (435 square feet)

While the land was being surveyed, and the houses measured and inventoried, the people were interviewed, each a four-page profile of core verifiable information: name with identification number, house with plat number, age, people in household:

A profile of a particular family in a particular place

Together with information regarding the property and its status:

Note question 3.4: “Is the house yours?”  And the follow-up, “Yes, self-built”

Equally important to the compilation is the quality control that went into the information.  The City of Durban had observers, and before the information would be uploaded they would sign off on the documents’ validity. 

What is important is not principally what happened – it totaled a few hours’ work, and resulted in a stack of papers with information.  Papers that had legal validity to the city of Durban, hence economic, judicial, and political consequences. 

I realized with a shiver that I’d seen this dynamic before – at real estate closings.  The same curious convergence: months of work, negotiations, bringing people together, culminating in a gathering where papers are filled out and signed, then taken to government for recordation. 

Information becomes part of the legal reality.  A bargain is struck, a bargain with consequences. 

In a closing, it’s about property and money and future obligations.  So too in an enumeration – property and money and future obligations.

The city has now taken cognizance of this neighborhood, its people, and their property. 

Enumeration is the inauguration of urban citizenship.

A stack of citizenship rights: the enumeration’s output

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Update, August 4, 2009:

The BBC Web site now has the program. 

·         Click here: http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/ProgrammeMultiFeature.aspx?id=196

·         Then click, “Also click here to watch in Broadband” – it should pop up and just run

As a point of information, here are five times I speak: 5:00, 12:30, 16:30, 37:00, and 40:30. 

                                                                  *  *  * 

On August 1 and 2, BBC World News will broadcast a fifty-minute debate, “Housing the Future,” in which I was an active participant.  It’ll be on this weekend, and I urge you to watch.  For channels and times, check the BBC World News website.

Look for the BBC World Debate: “Housing the Future”

This came about during an intense four-plus-day workshop at Wilton Park, “Financing affordable housing for low income groups: innovative funding for urban housing.”  (The Power Point deck of the talk Bob Buckley of Rockefeller Foundation and I delivered is here.)  Here’s the press release:

BBC World News broadcasts debate on the global housing crisis

Saturday August 1: with more people living in towns and cities than the countryside for the first time in human history, continuing mass migration from rural areas is now stoking a global housing crisis. The UN estimates that meeting the demand for adequate, affordable housing would need 4000 new houses being built every hour. And what will happen if we continue to ignore the crisis in our cities? ‘Housing the Future’, a new BBC World News debate produced by tve and broadcast on BBC World News this weekend, goes in search of answers.

BBC World News broadcasts ‘Housing the Future’ at the following times:

Saturday August 1, 0710 GMT, 1510 GMT, 1910 GMT

Sunday August 2, 0010 GMT, 0710 GMT, 1510 GMT, 1910 GMT

BBC World News broadcast times vary around the world. For details of transmissions in your region, check the BBC World News website.

The program, and indeed the conference, was principally sponsored by UN Habitat:

A worthy goal

QUOTES

“Every year the world creates roughly four Mumbais – a city of 20 million people. Every year the world has 80 million more people, and nearly all of them live in cities. If we don’t do anything about this, cities drown in poor people.”  David Smith, Affordable Housing Institute

 “We have to take a position that this is really an indictment of all of us… This is adequate shelters for all, so we need solutions and institutions which cater for various sections of society. This romantic idea of (solutions for) just the very bottom, that is not what this business is about.  Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-Habitat

Mrs. Tibaijuka at Wilton Park

The fall-out from the housing crisis is all too visible in developing countries where vast slums surround most major cities. Here, families improvise their own informal shelters, or slum landlords provide them – but at exorbitant rents. One billion people currently live in slums – and the figure is set to rise by a staggering 25 million a year.

But it’s not just in the developing world – the global financial crash was triggered by the collapse of the high-risk mortgage market in the US. This led to mass evictions and home repossessions, with ‘tent cities’ springing up outside American major cities – a phenomenon not seen since the Depression of the 1930s.

To debate the issues, strategies and solutions to the current crisis, journalist and BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet chairs a panel of distinguished experts:

Our moderator, Lyse Doucet

Somsook Boonyabancha, Secretary General of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights

Garry Garrabrant, CEO of Equity International

Raquel Rolnik, Professor of Urban Planning in Sao Paulo, Brazil

David Smith from the Affordable Housing Institute

Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, the UN Agency responsible for shelter.

‘The World Debate: Housing the Future’ was supported by UN Habitat.

The show will run 50 minutes; I haven’t seen it, and am eager to. 

Imagining the future of housing?

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Though housing is the output of an enormously complex, ever-changing, hugely capitalized value chain, unlike other abstract capital-markets products like Credit Default Swaps, we all connect to it because we live in its results, and we all care about it because the equity in our owned homes drives our new business formation, our self-esteem, our family formation – you name a major life milestone and it is likely accompanied by a change in housing configuration or tenure, and hence in housing finance.

In that spirit, we looked in May at three very micro-level dramas, starting with that invisible informality, the in-law apartment, via Outlaw in-laws: Part 1, symbiotic replication, Part 2, creeping densification, and Part 3, quiet amnesty:

Ma, maybe you should have your own entrance?

“When in-law apartments are outlawed, only outlaw in-laws will have apartments.”

– Bumper sticker from the National Relatives Accommodation Association (NRAA)

Despite all the emphasis we bestow on the visible and regulated forms of affordable housing – LIHTC, HUD Section 8, even inclusionary zoning – there are more forms of invisible affordable housing than are dreamt of in the typical policy maker’s philosophy.

Spot the affordable housing?

To mobile homes and triple-deckers we must add the modest creature with the unlovely name of accessory dwelling unit (ADU), more commonly known as the ‘in-law apartment,’ and featured in a bland but nevertheless thought-provoking little briefing primer, Accessory Dwelling Units: Case Study, prepared for HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research by Sage Computing [Why them? No particular expertise in housing. – Ed.].

Even more fundamental than expanding or subdividing a house is building it or tearing it down, and in both cases the production paradox applies – whatever you want to do, your neighbors will oppose it.

We’re against it! … What are you proposing?

In England you can’t built it up, as we saw with the Travellers, who are blatantly exploiting British government’s inability to move quickly, in Whose side are you on? Part 1, the invasion, and Part 2, choose your side:

The Daily Mail provides a link to a previous article showing exactly the same tactics:

A Daily Mail photograph of Crays Hill in Essex, a Travellers’ community

Travellers tarmac a new camp in a bank holiday weekend as helpless villagers watch

Marching to the faster-than-government beat of their own drummer, the Travellers were determined to finish all their structures before the opening of business Tuesday morning.

Farm worker Matthew Davies, who lives near the site, said: ‘They changed what was a pretty meadow into a building site overnight. Who knows what it will look like a few days down the line?’

It’ll look like a community of people – informal, unzoned, but not unplanned.

Local councillor Len Lawton said: ‘Villagers were told the field’s owners only wanted to build temporary accommodation for horses.’

Horses yes, people no? Is something out of whack here?

‘When the owners started making small engineering changes earlier this year, such as laying pipes, the council reminded them that major building work required planning permission.’

That shivered their timbers.

Not another council reminder!

No, no, shooting an elephant, not an elephant shooting!

In America you can’t tear it down, as newly liver-transplanted Steve Jobs found out in Shooting a white elephant: Part 1, the elephant, Part 2, the blunderbuss, and Part 3, the human shields:

After this exhaustive exercise in proving the blindingly obvious, the Environmental Impact Report found that:

Things physically feasible cost lots more money

Things that didn’t cost more money neither

Built a new house nor

Stopped the current house from crumbling.

Ladies and gentlemen of the electronic Town Council, you have now heard the staff’s report.

How would you vote?

Remember, then Friends of the Jackling House will be watching:

On May 12, 2009, the Woodside Town Council may vote to wiggle around a string of Court rulings AGAINST granting demolition of this historic mansion. There is still no adequate evidence to grant demolition.

Before you vote, let me add the most ironic part:

It is important to point out that in acting on this application, the Town Council’s authority is limited. The Council may approve or deny the demolition permit. The Council does not have authority to direct that one of the restoration alternatives described below be implemented.

Because directing such an action would be equivalent to a taking, and that would cost the town a lot of money.

I wonder, did Mr. Jobs realize that if he submitted plans for a big new house, such a projection might cost a high enough figure that it would make salvaging the Jackling house economically feasible? Might he have gamed the new-house price down?

Council members asked why cost estimates for renovation of the Jackling House appeared so high, while projected costs for a proposed new house for Mr. Jobs appeared preposterously low. Will there really be very low-grade surfaces in the new master bathroom? many wondered in disbelief.

Now you see it …

Remember, the demolition approval has nothing to do with the application for a new house. Mr. Jobs could then change his mind.

… Now you don’t

It’s my mansion and will die if I want it to

Die if I want it to.

Die if I want it to.

The end?

Housing affects health, both mental and physical, as we saw in Check out of the roach motel

Asthma is an urban disease, possibly affecting as many as one in four urban children, a much higher toxicology rate than in rural areas.  So naturally we deduce that something about urban buildings triggers asthmatic responses – but the causes have been much debated until a recent study fingers a likely culprit:

Hiding in plain sight?

During May, it was our great privilege at AHI to be favored with two of the three parts of Sherlock Holmes’s long-lost and definitive Socratic dialogs on What makes a good consultant? Rules of engagement, Part 1a, Part 1b, and Part 1c, throughout which Holmes first established that though the consultant may be expert, the client is the decider:

A5. Never makes the client’s choice for the client

Although Holmes never truckled at setting himself up as judge and jury where John law was concerned, he had no delusions of grandeur concerning his clients.

“Well, it is not for me to judge you,” said Holmes as the old man signed the statement which had been drawn out. “I pray that we may never be exposed to such a temptation.”
The Boscombe Valley Mystery

He once said to me, in the course of the case of the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant, of whose particulars we were sworn to secrecy, that “a client, Watson, is owed our energy, our insights, and our wholehearted commitment to her problem – but neither our reproof nor our foreclosing her options. No client thanks us for superseding her right to choose for herself.”

The first thing I knew about it was when I saw you two gentlemen driving back in her dog-cart.”

“And I had my doubts about you gentlemen, I should add.”

Holmes rose and tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate. “I think, Watson, that in your medical capacity, you might wait upon Miss Smith and tell her that if she is sufficiently recovered, we shall be happy to escort her to her mother’s home. If she is not quite convalescent, you will find that a hint that we were about to telegraph to a young electrician in the Midlands would probably complete the cure.”
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist

More truths will be revealed in due course

Good God, Holmes, they’ve posted your essay without paying for it

Later that month we offered the world the second volume, What makes a good consultant? Services and activities, Part 2a, and Part 2b:

B1. Protects his client’s interests

Clients, he once told me with great exasperation, have the annoying habit of acting despite our advice. Then he chuckled.

I heard a sharp rustle, the night air blew into the heated room, and the avenger was gone.

On occasion those ruined by evildoers received vengeance.

If they did not, if they always acted wisely, why then there would be no clients for me, no emerald stick pins, no continuing stream of challenges.

When given the opportunity to do the right thing, he acted:

Hardly had the woman rushed from the room when Holmes, with swift, silent steps, was over at the other door. He turned the key in the lock. At the same instant we heard voices in the house and the sound of hurrying feet. The revolver shots had roused the household. With perfect coolness Holmes slipped across to the safe, filled his two arms with bundles of letters, and poured them all into the fire. Again and again he did it, until the safe was empty.

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

When I later asked Holmes why he had done this, at some risk to ourselves, he looked at me as if I were daft, and said merely, Common decency warrants no surcharge.

Common decency warrants no surcharge

New York and Boston are an endless source of entertaining housing or real estate stories:

Good source of baseball stories, too!

– as we saw in Spot the culprit, and Better dead than read?:

As the unionized employees of the Boston Globe debate among themselves whether they will accede to the $20 million in annual wage cuts demanded by their owner, the New York Times Company, they might do well to ponder a grim real estate reality, as presented with clinical dispassion by the Boston Business Journal:

The Boston Globe might be worth more dead than alive to the New York Times Company.

A dismantling of the Globe’s assets could yield roughly $85 million.

Worth 85x that dead?

One who was worth much more alive regrettably died: Jack Kemp, 1935-2009:

Kemp was, I think, the first American who rode sports success into politics. Nowadays we think nothing of having Jim Bunning in the Senate, or Steve Largent and J. C. Watts in the House – back in 1971, for a football to win elective office was either a joke or a novelty (and, as Jesse The Brain Ventura later showed us in Minnesota, sometimes too much a novelty) – but his real success, at least in housing, was his single term as HUD Secretary under President Bush 41.

“Pro football gave me a good perspective. When I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.” – Jack Kemp, 1996

Not to mention, “chewed out by the best”

Kemp’s predecessor was the narcoleptic Samuel Pierce, on whose soap-opera-fueled watch HUD experienced its worst scandals ever (and that is saying something), and he entered the building, under Pierce’s tenure as a place for being quietly irrelevant, in much the manner of the Tasmanian Devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He was a whirlwind of ideas, including:

1. Reorientation of public housing toward residents as principal customers.

2. Lobbying for an American version of UK stock transfer. Kemp promoted Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere (HOPE), under which public housing would be sold to tenants. (Congress appropriated only a tenth of what he sought.)

3. Creation of Empowerment Zones.

4. Welfare reform with a temporary rent-increase freeze for people who get jobs, to get them out of the means-testing poverty trap.

Too bad more of them weren’t implemented consistently or sufficiently.

I’ve still got ideas!

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[A previous trio, Part 1a , Part 1b , and Part 1c, covered the rules of engagement with clients.]

Holmes sat for some time in silent thought. He had lit the oldest and foulest of his pipes.
“I am not clear yet what you want me to do in this matter, Mr. Mason,” he said at last. “Can’t you make it more definite?”

The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place

Three decades of experience in affordable housing finance, alongside the great detective Sherlock Holmes, the Compleat housing finance consultant, has given me insight into the profession of consulting, and to the services and activities requisite to success.  A hundred years hence, New York City will give rise to the ultimate consultants, the Ghostbusters, but in nineteenth century London, Holmes reigns supreme, because his services are comprehensive.

B6.       Asks all the questions the client finds it difficult to ask

A specialist, be he doctor, lawyer, or affordable housing consultant, must be fully expert in his field, and thus must delve into the muck of human existence:

“He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.”
“Very right too.”
“Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.”
“Beating the subjects!”
“Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.”

Chapter 1, A Study in Scarlet

When Holmes struck, he knew what he was striking and what effect it would have.

B7.       Identifies the relevant information from a welter of data

As an expert, the consultant can identify what information is critical to uncover, can extract it from sources, and can then arrange the information into a format suitable for interpretation, which the consultant then provides to the client. 

“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.”

The Reigate Puzzle

Holmes grunted from the sofa.
“The county police ought to make something of that,” said he; “why, it is surely obvious that– –”

All that scrying of entrails is for the purpose of making explicit a vision of the proposed transaction, so that at each time a new fact or resource is added, the consultant is able instantly to update the projection and give the client real-time guidance.

“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

Eliminating the impossible on behalf of Alexander Holder

B8.       Creates options and does not foreclose them

The consultant is the expert, Holmes once lectured me.  The client not required to be an expert.  Not for clients to develop theories, design alternative financial structures, or create options.  That is our job.

When Miss Violet Hunter was puzzled by events at her situation, Holmes spared no effort to decipher them.

“I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we shall no doubt find waiting for us.”

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

B9.       Makes things decisionable

An effective consultant is like a hound on a leash, Holmes once commented to me as we were being hauled through the streets of London by Toby, a half-spaniel, half-lurcher with an infallible nose.  It is his job to lead the client unerringly to the decision point, and then let the client decide.

Like his bloodhound Toby, Holmes was relentless when scenting a solution

A good consultant thus works for his client by operating independently within the absolute limits of his remit.  There is no need to ask the client for permission to do things which are preparatory or technical in nature, and where no client decision is required. 

Nevertheless, in every complex matter, there come points where the client must choose:

“It was not the wife; it was the children,” groaned the prisoner. “God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?”

The Man with the Twisted Lip

At such times, the consultant must sketch the probable outcome of actions, and invite the client’s decision:

Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him kindly on the shoulder.
“If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up,” said he, “of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details should find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case would then never go into court at all.”

The Man with the Twisted Lip

Holmes gave Neville St. Clair a chance to redeem his life and his good name

B10.     Recommends to his client

Even as the consultant operates independently over large stretches of territory, there are some essential decisions that are the province solely of the customer.  Time and again I have seen Holmes nudge a client toward an answer, or frame it in a way that he hoped would yield a particular result, but as he emphasized many times to me, the ultimate decision is always and ever the client’s choice:

“God bless you!” cried the prisoner passionately. “I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.

“It must stop here, however,” said Bradstreet. “If the police are to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone.”
“I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take.”
“In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results.”
“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”

How to solve a complex problem: an ounce of shag

B11.     Puts the right team on the case, and manages his subcontractors

Even the cleverest consultant is but a single man, and some assignments call for teams of people.  Indeed, when portfolios are involved, or vast geographies must be covered.  For this the consultant needs to be able on short notice to assemble a team of subcontractors:

As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street Arabs. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number, taller and older than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little scarecrow.

For all that they were street urchins, the Irregulars were professional

“Got your message, sir,” said he, “and brought ’em on sharp. Three bob and a tanner for tickets.”

Holmes had a romantic view of street Arabs, as we called them.  These homeless children, byproducts of the Victorian slums, suffered exploitation, violence, and disease.  Nevertheless, London’s slums were hives of entrepreneurialism, and Holmes, like any good prime contractor, dealt equitably with his subcontractors:

“Here you are,” said Holmes, producing some silver. “In future they can report to you, Wiggins, and you to me. I cannot have the house invaded in this way. However, it is just as well that you should all hear the instructions. I want to find the whereabouts of a steam launch called the Aurora, owner Mordecai Smith, black with two red streaks, funnel black with a white band. She is down the river somewhere. I want one boy to be at Mordecai Smith’s landing-stage opposite Millbank to say if the boat comes back.”

Holmes also knew how to delegate and to insist upon subcontractor accountability:

“You must divide it out among yourselves and do both banks thoroughly. Let me know the moment you have news. Is that all clear?”

“Yes, guv’nor,” said Wiggins. “The old scale of pay, and a guinea to the boy who finds the boat.” “Here’s a day in advance. Now off you go!”

They were named Irregulars but they performed yeoman service.

He handed them a shilling each, and away they buzzed down the stairs, and I saw them a moment later streaming down the street.

We should note that just as Holmes could be a deniable ambassador for his client, the Irregulars were deniable ambassadors for Holmes.

“If the launch is above water they will find her,” said Holmes as he rose from the table and lit his pipe. “They can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone.”

The Sign of the Four, Chapter 8

B12.     Executes decisions made wholeheartedly, even if having disagreed

I never had occasion to record it in my diary – Holmes forbade me even to document it privately – but on a handful of occasions, Holmes was called upon to execute client instructions he had counseled against.  Considerations of state occasionally intervened, the tawdry business of diplomacy being a field of endeavor that Holmes eschewed entirely.  More commonly the client made a dreadful blunder, and Holmes was then consulted a second time to minimize the damage. 

If that happened, the client emerged shaken, grateful, and in awe of Holmes, and thus the perfect referrer of interesting cases:

I read as follows:

Sir:
Our client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, has made some inquiry from us in a communication of even date concerning vampires. As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you. We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.

“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.”

The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

“Yes, here we find Vavasoeur, and Vandeleur and the Giant Rat of Sumatra

The world is still not prepared …

 [Continued in Part 3a.]

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The blog, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

In my three decades of experience accompanying my friend Sherlock Holmes, the world’s foremost consulting housing finance detective, the Compleat Consultant, I have seen him solve mysteries far and wide, and use methods both of detection and reasoning that have been justly celebrated around the world.  Yet there was more to Holmes that a magnifying glass or a microscope – or even of his logic.  Holmes had the activity and energy that even his great brother Mycroft lacked:

“That Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit.”

“Find an answer to all these questions, and you will have done good service for your country.”
“Why do you not solve it yourself, Mycroft? You can see as far as I.”
“Possibly, Sherlock. But it is a question of getting details. Give me your details, and from an armchair I will return you an excellent expert opinion. But to run here and run there, to cross-question railway guards, and lie on my face with a lens to my eye–it is not my métier. No, you are the one man who can clear the matter up. If you have a fancy to see your name in the next honours list– –”
My friend smiled and shook his head.
“I play the game for the game’s own sake,” said he. “But the problem certainly presents some points of interest, and I shall be very pleased to look into it. Some more facts, please.”

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

B.        Services and activities

Energy – an attribute, I know, not a service – is a sine qua non of the successful consultant.  A consultant’s mind must always been spinning with his client’s problems:

He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands.

“I am going out now!”
“To the police?”

“No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”

The Five Orange Pips

B1.       Protects his client’s interests

Clients, he once told me with great exasperation, have the annoying habit of acting despite our advice.  Then he chuckled. 

I heard a sharp rustle, the night air blew into the heated room, and the avenger was gone.

On occasion those ruined by evildoers received vengeance.

If they did not, if they always acted wisely, why then there would be no clients for me, no emerald stick pins, no continuing stream of challenges.

When given the opportunity to do the right thing, he acted:

Hardly had the woman rushed from the room when Holmes, with swift, silent steps, was over at the other door. He turned the key in the lock. At the same instant we heard voices in the house and the sound of hurrying feet. The revolver shots had roused the household. With perfect coolness Holmes slipped across to the safe, filled his two arms with bundles of letters, and poured them all into the fire. Again and again he did it, until the safe was empty.

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

When I later asked Holmes why he had done this, at some risk to ourselves, he looked at me as if I were daft, and said merely, Common decency warrants no surcharge.

Common decency warrants no surcharge

B2.       Coordinates and communicates

A good consultant communicates.  I always told my patients both my prescription and my diagnosis and the observations on which it was based.  The patient being an actor in his own treatment, that knowledge would serve not only to calm their minds but also help them change their habits to speed recovery or prevent illness.  Throughout our association, Holmes delighted in secretiveness, leading to the breathtaking denouement.  That was an error:

One of Sherlock Holmes’s defects–if, indeed, one may call it a defect– was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment.

Often Holmes observed and deduced things he could not communicate to others.

Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter 14

It reduced his effectiveness.  In later years, when he had retired to Sussex to keep bees, he admitted as such.

“What I expected to see”

“I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.”
“Not him.”
“What then?”
“The knees of his trousers.”
“And what did you see?”
“What I expected to see.”

The Red-Headed League

B3.       Will be deniable-ambassador if required

As a consultant, one is the client’s agent – so one is often called upon to represent one’s principal in encounters with other parties:

“An illustrious client has placed her piteous case in my hands.  This fiend has several imprudent letters–imprudent, Watson, nothing worse–which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to break off the match.  Milverton will send the letters to the Earl unless a large sum of money is paid him.  I have been commissioned to meet him, and – to make the best terms I can.”

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

Ambassadorship also works in the opposite direction, as when one wants to repair a breach or right a wrong, without exposing one’s principal to other parties:

Good heavens! what is this? Lord Bellinger! Lord Bellinger!”

As an ambassador, Holmes arranged the return of valuables without necessarily disclosing from whom he got them.

The Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.
“Yes, it is it–and the letter is intact. Hope, I congratulate you.”
“Thank you! Thank you! What a weight from my heart. But this is inconceivable–impossible. Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer! How did you know it was there?”
“Because I knew it was nowhere else.”
“I cannot believe my eyes!” He ran wildly to the door. “Where is my wife? I must tell her that all is well. Hilda! Hilda!” we heard his voice on the stairs.

Just as Holmes sometimes agreed not to seek to penetrate another’s anonymity, he could persuade others not to try to penetrate his client’s:

The Premier looked at Holmes with twinkling eyes.
“Come, sir,” said he. “There is more in this than meets the eye. How came the letter back in the box?”
Holmes turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.
“We also have our diplomatic secrets,” said he and, picking up his hat, he turned to the door.

The Adventure of the Second Stain

A good consultant like Holmes is naturally curious about many things, so his inquiries will not necessarily reveal on whose behalf he is making them. 

B4.       Will play the attack dog if required

A consultant is more than just an advisor, he is often an ambassador, a spokesperson, an advocate.  Many clients are hesitant; they fear scandal, publicity, even confrontation.  They are unused to the waters in which we swim, and if presented face-to-face with their antagonist (such as Charles Augustus Milverton, whom Holmes dubbed ‘the worst man in London‘), they will show weakness that will be exploited. 

Enter the consultant, who can speak for his client’s wishes:

A Case of Identity

“The law cannot, as you say, touch you,” said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, “yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!” he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man’s face, “it is not part of my duties to my client, but here’s a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to– –”

Mr. James Windibank had no wish to discover to what Holmes intended to treat himself.

He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road.

A Case of Identity

After all, Watson, he said to me, our clients pay us not for our efforts but for our results, and I believe this one will be satisfactory.

B5.       Negotiates as required

Negotiation is a skill.  It can be earned.  Most people do not negotiate much, and few people negotiate anything and everything for a living. 

Holmes was gray with anger and mortification.

It was important here for Holmes to recognize that his own feelings were unimportant; all that mattered was the service for which he had been commissioned.

“Wait a little,” he said. “You go too fast. We should certainly make every effort to avoid scandal in so delicate a matter.”
Milverton relapsed into his chair.
“I was sure that you would see it in that light,” he purred.

When necessary, Holmes would swallow both his pride and his passions.

Negotiation involves a mutability of character, and the challenging task of being both aggressive for one’s client and alert for any signs or signals from one’s antagonist:

At the same time,” Holmes continued, “Lady Eva is not a wealthy woman. I assure you that two thousand pounds would be a drain upon her resources, and that the sum you name is utterly beyond her power. I beg, therefore, that you will moderate your demands, and that you will return the letters at the price I indicate, which is, I assure you, the highest that you can get.”
Milverton’s smile broadened and his eyes twinkled humorously.

Giving more joy than all the candelabra and butter dishes in London: Charles Augustus Milverton

“I am aware that what you say is true about the lady’s resources,” said he. “At the same time you must admit that the occasion of a lady’s marriage is a very suitable time for her friends and relatives to make some little effort upon her behalf. They may hesitate as to an acceptable wedding present. Let me assure them that this little bundle of letters would give more joy than all the candelabra and butter-dishes in London.”
“It is impossible,” said Holmes.

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

Negotiation involves knowing when to keep silent – to provide the other party space for reflection.  Writing blog posts similarly involves knowing when to adjourn until tomorrow.

Burning the midnight oil writing blog posts, eh Holmes?

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2b.]

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