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The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more efficient. And that someone might be the customer aided by a computer.
Seth goes on to argue that if you are to thrive in the modern age as a broker you need to bring to the table:
Does you supplier matching service major on these?
You might be interested in attending this event being put on next week by friends at TEDCO.
UCanB Anything Event
“Community Enterprise Coaching That Really Works”
Mount Oswald Manor & Golf Course, Durham 18/03/2008, 9.00am – 1.00pm
Community Enterprise Coaching is attracting a lot of interest at the moment and as we are fortunate to be at the forefront of this activity in the region through development and delivery of the UCanB project in South Tyneside, we are hosting a “UCanB Anything – Community Enterprise Coaching That Really Works” event in your area, to which we would personally like to invite you.
The event will take place on 18th March and will be hosted at the Mount Oswald Manor & Golf Course in Durham, 9.00am – 1.00pm.
The focus of this event is to showcase the UCanB model of Enterprise Coaching and event will cover:
– The history of the UCanB Model
– The importance of understanding the local enterprise culture and networks
– The principles of UCanB Enterprise Coaching
– What UCanB Enterprise Coaches actually do – finding clients, engaging them, supporting them on their enterprise journey
– Why this type of work is important and different to business advice
– How applying the UCanB model can complement employment support, economic regeneration or community development work
– What UCanB products we offer that can help your enterprise coaching project become a class leader
If you are looking to fund this sort of community enterprise support or are looking to deliver it then this is a model that is proven in the region and is comparable to other established models such as Sirolli and BizFizz.
This event will be a real opportunity to see first hand how our model has developed and grown and how accessing UCanB products you could apply this model of Enterprise Coaching support to your local area.
The event will be attended by a range of local and regional partners.
To book your place, please contact John Sexton on: 0191 428 3383 or e-mail jsexton@tedco.org
Kindest Regards
John Sexton
UCanB Project Support Officer
TEDCO (The Tyneside Economic Development Company Ltd)
TEDCO Business Centre
Viking Industrial Park
Jarrow
Tyne and Wear
NE32 3DT
Tel: (0191) 428 3383
Mob: 07795 433 366
Fax: (0191) 428 3388
Please contact TEDCO directly if you would like to attend.
The real pupose of 121s is to build a relationship.
An honest, robust, respectful constructive relationship.
This takes time, effort, curiosity, courage, honesty and a degree of self disclosure.
An effective relationship helps us to understand self interest. Ours and the self interest of each and every team member.
Once self interest is understood we are in a position to make agreements that work for all parties – to establish win wins.
It allows us to provide support, encouragement, development and opportunities that helps others become much more powerful and effective in their work.
“Raising someone up does not reduce your stature-it exalts you in ways you have to experience to believe.”
Ken Blanchard
That is the title of a workshop I am running tomorrow for the Young People’s Enterprise Forum at a conference to look at Embedding Enterprise in Further Education.
A fresh look at enterprise….Not an easy challenge when you have been looking at it for decades! How do we engage the history department and the art team?
So how about if we look at Enterprise as a mathematical expression. How would you express it?
I think this has a lot to offer:
E = P x SI
Enterprise is the product of Power multiplied by Self Interest.
Power is the capacity to make things happen to get things done. It is about the ability to organise people, money and other resources to make things happen.
Self Interest is the extent to which we know what it is that we want to achieve. It is about vision, ambition, goals, vocation, purpose, dreams, aspirations and hopes. But self interest is not selfish. Self interest is mediated through a set of relationships with others. With supporters, colleagues, investors and activists (who might have an interest in whether we are helping or harming). Self interest (rightly understood) is the driving force for making progress, for realising potential, for negotiating an interesting and worthwhile life. Increasingly self interest and therefore enteprise is associated with interest in global issues such as climate change, social justice and wellbeing as much as it is about financial wealth.
If this expression has any merit then to embed enterprise in FE – or anywhere else – we need to understand it as an act of embedding the development of power and self interest – rightly understood.
Enterprise becomes a genuine developmental process. It is about equipping people with the knowledge, skills, wisdom and experience to develop their power (capacity to act; to get things done) and really develop an understanding of what lies in their own self interest. It comes straight from the schools of Alinsky and Freire as much as it does from the beliefs of Branson, Sugar et al.
Under this formulation the relevance of enterprise to:
Doesn’t it?
It allows enterprise to be applied to much more than entrepreneurship. It becomes a discipline for living an interesting and worthwhile life.
And isn’t that what education is meant to prepare us for?
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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly on the benevolence of his fellow citizens.
Adam Smith – Wealth of Nations
Is a failure to really understand our own self-interest, a lack of self-love, a causal factor in some of our most disadvantaged communities? If yes, what to do…