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Towards Enterprising Communities…

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No-one can agree on a community.  Is it defined by political geography? Physical geography? Economic geography?  Interest, practice, culture?  So how do we use such an elusive, slippery yet, for some of us, attractive and powerful concept.

Well, personally I have given up worrying about how ‘communities’ are defined by outsiders (politicians, funders, missionaries of various kinds, what Paul Theroux calls the Dark Angels of Virtue).  The only thing that matters for me is the individual, or the usually small group sat in front of me, and their perception of their community, defined their way.  Any other attempt to work with the concept for me is just hot air.  We all define community personally and, very probably, uniquely.

But that does not make the concept useless.  Quite the opposite.

I spend a lot of time helping people to look at the relationships and contexts that they are a part of and the extent to which they help or hinder them to become the kind of person that they wish to become, accomplishing the things that they most wish to accomplish.  And I will spend time working with them on how they can get more of the support that they need from their ‘community’.  I spend a lot of time and energy building networks of people who just love to ‘help’.  Many of these networks are a blend of face to face and online – mediated through blogs and social networks as well as through a range of meetings, gatherings and parties.  And I try to connect individuals from one network into individuals from another, so that help can start to flow across and between different groups.

So first we have to find self interest.  That which really matters personally.  That which shapes who we are.  That on which our identity is based and through which it can be constructively shaped.

Then we have to find common cause and build networks and relationships where we can successfully negotiate our self interest.  We then forge connections between these networks to build a diverse, resourceful ‘community’ of individuals who are helping and being helped as part of their daily practice.  Surely this puts us firmly on the trail of the enterprising community?

And for great things to happen people have to learn to help each other.   The stereotype of the selfish backstabbing ‘Apprentice’ does not thrive in an enterprising community – though they may do well in The City.  Successful citizens in the enterprising community learn to associate, collaborate, cooperate and mutualise.  To find those with whom there is a common cause.  And they understand that giving hep to others is as important as getting help themselves.  The have the Go-Giver mindset and they express it through their actions.  They live it.

So, as those who attended Enterprising Community: Big Conversation explored, enterprising community is not a place or a neighbourhood but a philosophy, that can be summed up as ‘Concentrate on yourself and helping your neighbour’.

Breaking the Stranglehold on Enterprise

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For a few years now I seem to have been living in Groundhog Day.

Not everyday, but enough to be disconcerting.

I will be chatting with an enterprise professional, perhaps a lecturer in a University, an enterprise coach in a ‘deprived’ community, a start-up business adviser or a bureaucrat managing an enterprise project. In our conversations about enterprise we will recognise how it is not all about business. How enterprise can be expressed in a seemingly infinite number of ways.

Sure, for a significant and important minority, it is about commercial endeavour.  Business, profit, and social impact in some combination. In order to express their enterprising soul a minority have to start a business.

But for the majority being enterprising, being proactive in pursuit of a better future, does not mean starting up a business. It may mean making a phone call, having a conversation, calling a meeting or writing a letter. Taking some action that increases agency and power in pursuing a preferred future. It may be taking the opportunity to reflect on ‘The direction in which progress lies’, or ‘What are the next steps that I can take to make progress?’ or ‘What options have I got?’

We will reflect on how some of the most enterprising people we know may work in the Council, or the University, or organise festivals and campaigns in the community. That the enterprising soul finds its expressions in many forms and not just in entrepreneurship.

We will agree that the real point of leverage in our communities lies not in providing start-up advice with those who are already minded to start a business, although of course this IS important. The real leverage lies in helping more people to establish the direction in which progress lies for them and their loved ones and helping them to plan and execute actions designed to move them in that direction.

If we can significantly increase the stock of enterprising people then, as sure as eggs is eggs, we will also increase the stock of entrepreneurial people. And we will not lose so many who are completely turned off by enterprise because of the Gordon Gecko or Victorian perceptions of enterprise nurtured by the reality TV shows and newspaper headlines.

We will also increase the survival rate of new businesses as people make natural progress into entrepreneurship instead of being persuaded to start a business (‘all you need is the idea and the determination to succeed’) when they have not yet gained the real skills or capital that they will need to succeed.

In our conversations we will agree on these things. And then almost invariably they will head off to run another course on ‘Marketing and Sales’ or ‘Business Planning’ or to look at monitoring returns that count bums on seats and business start-up rates. If ever there was an industry that needed to innovate and re-invent itself and its role in modern Britain it is the enterprise industry. If we really want to build a much more enterprising Britain then we need to break the stranglehold that the business start-up industry has on enterprise policy.

Now of course there are a lot of people who like things the just the way that they are.  There are a whole army of ‘enterprise professionals’ out there with ‘start up workshops’, business planning sessions and assorted ‘enterprise = business’ paraphernalia all telling the policy makers that ‘This is the way’.

Yet in decades of trying to increase the business start-up rates things have not changed significantly. Indeed according to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in the last decade the ‘nascent entrepreneur rate’ (the percentage of 16-64 year olds actively involved in setting up a business in the UK) has dropped from 3.3% in 2001 to 3.1% in 2010.  And this in spite of enterprise and entrepreneurship climbing the policy agenda and attracting significant investment.

Time for the community to reclaim the enterprise agenda from the suits perhaps?

The Song Remains the Same

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And so it happens again.

A benevolent funder/project sponsor breezes into our city with a great project to build social capital, spread information, to raise the profile of local issues and to  report on the local political process.

And just as things start to find their feet and make a real difference, they breeze out again.

It happens all of the time.  Funding runs out.  Patience runs out. Commitment runs out.

Because for the project sponsor this is little more than ‘an experiment’.  Or ‘a contract’.  A community to dabble in.  A kind of train set for grown ups.

This is not their community.

This is not where their children will grow up or their parents will grow old.  Of course they will have local people on the ground – but the ones that really call the shots?  This is not THEIR community.

This is what passes for community development work these days.  A never ending stream of short-term projects that raise aspirations, engage people, make ground and then, in the vast majority of cases, fade away – leaving behind a sense of betrayal, frustration and in some cases apathy.

But it is alright because there is always another funding stream to apply for, another gig to get, another project to manage.  We just need to secure the standard evaluation that declares ‘Much has been achieved – but much remains to be done’ and we can all move on holding our chins up high.  This is the standard pattern of the ‘development industry’ – less so in the developing world these days but still almost exclusively on domestic ‘projects’.

And most of us development professionals are complicit in the process.  We kid ourselves that THIS funding stream is different, that THIS project will help to shift things, that THIS building holds the keys to the kingdom, or at least pay our mortgage for another year or two until the right opportunity comes along.

At some point we have to recognise that change that is prompted from outside, that is funded by someone else, that delivers someone else’s policy goals or answers someone else’s questions is really unlikely to provide us with any hope of transformation.

At some point we have to recognise that for any real long-term success we have to start from where WE are, and work with what WE have got, and break this dangerous habit of relying on external ‘benevolence’.