realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Archives for March 2009

Mini Me or Maxi You?

by

mini-me

When you teach, coach and instill a new way of thinking into every employee in your company, so that when employees are faced with any decision, they would do whatever YOU would do as the business owner or leader, you very quickly create a company which stands out in its market place as one which is attentive, alert and focused on its customers needs.

Richard Parkes Cordock

Richard Parkes Cordock produces great advice for managers and entrepreneurs.  I am an especially big fan of the Millionaire MBA programme.

However I think he has got this bit wrong.

I want to employ people:

  • who can do things that I can’t do,
  • who can see choices that I can’t see,
  • who act from their own unique perspective to take the action that they believe will be best for them and the business.

Success depends on diversity not a monoculture of mini mes.

Cicero and the Progressive Manager

by

cicero

“If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.”

Cicero – Roman statesman

Hat tip to Steve Roesler.

Let’s get this straight from the start.  In my book persuading DOES NOT involve influencing employees to do something that is not in their best interest.  It involves helping them to see why the action proposed IS in their best interest.  Or to create a plan that we can all see the upsides from.

Thinking their thoughts

How do things look from their personal perspective – REALLY?  Have they worked in the organisation for 10 years and never made a promotion?  Are they more interested in the week-end than the working week?  Let’s try to be honest with ourselves about the thinking that our latest ideas might trigger.

Feeling their feelings

What do they really care about?  What matters most to them?  How do they feel about what matters?  Optimistic?  Resigned?  Detached?  Hopeful, fearful? DO they feel like they have to keep their head down and play it safe, or are they up for taking some risks in pursuit of greatness.  Are they comfortable in the bureaucratic comfort zone or do they prefer the white water of the entrepreneurial mindset.

Speak their words

Are your words clear and unequivocal – or are they weasel words – designed to create an illusion of clear communication?  Do you speak direclty to them clear about your own self interest and really prepared to re-negotiate it as they communicate reservations, concerns, hopes and desires?  Are you speaking their language?  If they are talking about fear of redundancy are you talking to those fears – honestly?

Connect or Collude

Do you really want to establish an honest connection or to collude in a pretense of communication that enable everyone to duck the real issue – ignore the 900lb gorillas?  Do you want to connect human to human or ‘work mask to work mask’? Do you want to communicate clearly what you stand for and what your best thinking is?  Are you really interested in their interests – or do you just want quiet compliance?

If the answer to the connection question is yes, human to human, naming the real issues, clear and powerful communication, honestly negotiating self interests then you are ready to communicate.  Face to face, up close and personal you will come across as caring, compassionate, honest (and if your thinking is good) capable.  Even if your thinking is not so great you are likely to elicit information that will help you to take it forward.

If on the other hand you would prefer the masks to stay on, to keep playing the management game the face to face is not going to work so well.

Your lack of commitment will ooze from every pore.

Your lack of compassion and clarity will be clear.

You will be filed in the ‘just another bureacrat’ drawer.

Mediocrity will prevail.

Fascinating and Frightening in Equal Measures?

by

Kanya King is a remarkable woman.  More precisely she is a very unremarkable woman with a remarkable story.  We all have the potential to do remarkable things.  She is best known for re-mortgaging her house to see her dream – The MOBO Awards – become a reality.

She is passionate about giving young people the opportunity to experience enterprise.   To inspire a new generation of business entrepreneurs.

To further this passion she has teamed up with Thomson Local – the database people – to challenge school children (16+) to develop business ideas that will benefit their local community.

The best will secure a  bursary of £100 and mentoring from a ‘business hero’.

Thomson will also build them a web site – apparently whether their business idea demands one – or not.  It might have been more interesting if Thomson helped them to develop a strategy to get to market.  The default position of ‘I need a website’ is not always the best one.

The overall competition winners will win a ‘money can’t buy prize’.  VIP experience at the next MOBOs perhaps?

I love the fact that this kind of stuff happens.  That people care about enterprise.

But I worry too;

  • I worry that they cite research (unreferenced) suggesting that 81% of British children want to run their own business – can this be true?  On what basis has this want developed?
  • I worry that combining the forces of a for profit like Thomson with a business planning competition will further distort what educationalists percieve enterprise education to be all about.
  • I worry that the emphasis on ‘pitching your ideas’ – letting others attach their valuation to your business dream – will emphasise an external locus of control that is unhelpful to the entrepreneur.
  • I worry that asking young people to focus on making things better in their community – perhaps before they have learned how to make things better for themselves might inculcate lessons of selflessness that could be unhelpful.
  • I worry that this type of scheme will attract those who are already destined for an enterprising future and turn off those who think that school based competitions are uncool and that business is for geeks.
  • I worry about the language of supplying ‘business hero’ mentors.
  • I worry about the volume of work that such projects place on students and their teachers at a really busy time in the their school life.
  • I worry about further strengthening the perception that enterprise = business and more teachers resisting the enterprise agenda as a capitalist plot to brainwash young people.
  • I worry about the fact that the website that is the home of the competition appears to have no RSS feed.  I am invited to ‘check back’ for updates!  As if web 2.0 had not happened!!

So I have signed up to offer to be a business hero – notwithstanding considerable reservations.

Let’s see where this takes us!

Definition of Enterprise?

by

There are lots of them and most of them are not very helpful.

No, not SEOs.  Definitions of enterprise.

At the moment this is my favourite:

Enterprise  – something, anything, you do intentionally that you believe will help to shape the world more to your liking.

This then makes enterprise a function of your power to shape the world and your self interest – rightly understood and negotiated.

E=PxSI

What is your favourite definition of enterprise?

Prizes for the best!

Enterprise Education Wrongly Understood?

by

Shout out to Gareth Sear for putting me onto this from TeacherNet:

Enterprise education consists of enterprise capability supported by better financial capability and economic and business understanding. Young people need opportunities to be enterprising through applying their knowledge, skills and attributes — to ‘make their mark’

Learners are expected to take personal responsibility for their own actions through an enterprise process that involves four stages.

  • Stage 1 — tackling a problem or need: students generate ideas through discussion to reach a common understanding of what is required to resolve the problem or meet the need.
  • Stage 2 — planning the project or activity: breaking down tasks, organising resources, deploying team members and allocating responsibilities.
  • Stage 3 — implementing the plan: solving problems, monitoring progress.
  • Stage 4 — evaluating the processes: reviewing activities and final outcomes, reflecting on lessons learned and assessing the skills, attitudes, qualities and understanding acquired.

Enterprise education consists of enterprise capability? Very enlightening!

Young people need opportunities to be enterprising? Young people are enterprising. Really enterprising. They have to be.

Even the ones who are quiet, shy and withdrawn are being enterprising. This is their ‘best plan’ for how to get by in life. Our job is to help them find a better, more powerful one that will help them fulfil their potential. Or to at least recognise the possibility.

Once again this all pervading direct linking of enterprise education with ‘financial capability, economic and business understanding’. Why?

Why not link it to sociological understanding? Or to psychology?

Why not link it to the Romantic poets and their descriptions of the transformational power of imagination and vision?

Why not link it to History and the power of some individuals to shape the course of civilisation? Hitler, Gandhi, Mandela as case studies in enterprise.

Why link it to money?

Why take such a utilitarian approach to enterprise?

In pursuing a narrow definition we are likely to turn students off rather than on. And certainly we will turn off other teaching staff who will continue to see enterprise education as just an extension of business studies, another example of the corruption of education by capitalism.

Learners are expected to take personal responsibility it says. Enterprise is the ultimate lesson in taking responsibility. It is only when we are enterprising – really living our lives in tune with our convictions that we have to take responsibility. All the time we operate in more bureaucratic modes we can duck responsibility by blaming others. “Sorry guv’ just following orders”.

There is nothing very enterprising about reaching a common understanding – although it is a valuable skill. It is holding a different understanding and having the courage to live by it that characterises enterprise.  Seth Godin has just written on this.

And then the soulless linear process of develop an idea, develop a plan, implement it and then learn from it. The enterprising process is all about ups and downs; it is about emotions and resilience more than it is about ‘problem solving’ and ‘deploying team members’.

It is no wonder that we are struggling to embed enterprise in the curriculum.