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An Enterprise Marketing Fiasco?

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I have been doing some work for a while now with LEGI practitioners in Leeds looking at the quality of marketing that we use to promote enterprise services and the people that might respond to it. Below is a piece of (non LEGI) marketing collateral that is currently doing the rounds. I think it originates from Business Link – and is featured on their website.

All, the following FREE events are happening on:

14th July 5pm to 9pm at Met Hotel, Leeds
15th July 9.30 to 1.30 at Agbrigg/Belle Vue Community Centre, Wakefield
22nd July 5pm to 9pm at Leeds Media Centre
8th September 9.30 to 1.30 at St Roberts Parish Centre, Harrogate
18th September 9.30 to 1.30 at The Tower House Hotel, Halifax
29th September 9.30 to 1.30 at the Town Hall, Bridlington

Title:
Explore! – Motivational events for the BAME (Black and Ethnic Minority) and Diverse communities

Motivational events are aimed to enthuse, inspire and excite BAME and Women groups into exploring the world of business. These events will also offer further information on what to do next and how to move your idea forward.

Who should attend?
Individuals from BAME and Diverse communities who are looking to start-up in business and who will be inspired to make their business ideas a reality.

What will it cover:

  • Why you want to start your own business?
  • How to generate more ideas
  • Where to find customers
  • Building Confidence
  • Gaining inspiration from success
  • Learn from inspirational key note speakers
  • Showcase of successful entrepreneurs
  • Information sources and networks
  • Friendly people to talk through your idea

To find out more about these FREE events or to book a place immediately you can call on 0845 xxxxx or email xxxx

For more information about these and other events visit www.businesslinkyorkshire.co.uk and click on ‘Events’

Well it’s another piece of lovely piece of ‘enterprise’ marketing.

When you go the Business Link website (as instructed in the e-mail) to try to find more information about these events it takes a while to find exactly the information that is given above – no extra information at all!

When I rang the telephone number I got a loud piece of ‘Dire Straits/Mark Knopfleresque’ guitar music – almost painful on the ear – and I like Dire Straits!

At the third attempt I was successfully transferred to someone who worked on the events team who promised to e-mail me some further information. I am still waiting…watch this space…

The piece is written in a very passive and remote style.

It talks about BAME and Women Groups in one line and then BAME and Diverse communities in the next.

It talks about these communities rather than to individuals from these communities. (Is it just me or is this (close to being) insulting?)

I am not a marketing copywriter – but I can recognise this as BAD! It is unlikely to motivate anyone to want to attend the events.

What qualifies as a ‘diverse community’?

Are we really happy to group BAME/Women and Diverse communities into a workshop? Seems to me that only Caucasian men from ‘non-diverse’ communities need not apply!

Has it become ‘OK’ to use this sort of language in tokenistic efforts to be socially inclusive?

I don’t think so!

Or am I the one who is losing the plot?

ADDENDUM

I am delighted to say that I did get my e-mail from Business link – with exactly the same information that was on the website. They also gave me the name of the organisation that is running the programme and told me that one of the dates have been cancellled.

Enterprise, Entrepreneurs and the Fine Art of Progress

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‘Enterprising’ people can recognise a gap between the way the world is, and the way they would like it to be and are taking actions that they think will help to close the gap between the two.

They are practitioners of the fine art of progress. I would also make a case that everyone is already enterprising, acting in ways that we think will make things better. We are all practitioners of the fine art of progress.  It is a fundamental characteristic of of healthy people.  It is just that some – many –  of us have got ‘stuck’.

For some the nature of ‘progress’ is purely personal – making things better for themselves and their immediate families. For others it is a much more social objective – about making things better for others or for the planet. For the vast majority it is some combination of the two – which is why the distinction between the entrepreneur and the social entrepreneur, enterprise and social enterprise is such a tricky one to maintain.

If we want to develop more enterprising communities then our task is to:

  • encourage more people to reflect on the gap between the way the world is and the way they would like it to be;
  • nurture the skills and passions required to help more people believe that they can take action to close the gap;
  • help people to recognise that action can and often does lead to progress;
  • recognise that each ‘failure’ represents progress – a lesson learned.

It is about helping more people to become active citizens in shaping their own futures rather than to be passive consumers of whatever ‘life’ throws their way. It is about helping ‘stuck’ people to ‘unstick’ themselves.  If we can help more people to get on this ‘enterprise journey’ then incredible progress becomes possible. We will be building more enterprising communities. We will even find that the business startup (and survival) rates go up as some enterprising people become entrepreneurs. This will be a by-product of our efforts to develop a more enterprising community and not a cause of it! Indeed by pusuing business start-ups direclty we may become the victims of at least two unintended consequences:

  • we ‘skim’ the most enterprising people from the least enterprising communities
  • we temporarily increase start-up rates with a parallel increase in business failure rates  – the net result of which is more people even more certain that ‘enterprise’ is not for them

In some of the most deprived communities we have to recognise that large numbers of people have become stuck. The options for progress that they see are narrow. Their belief in their own ability to make progress has been eroded. They have little or no confidence in their own skills or their ability to develop them. This is one of the reasons that I have been finding out more about the work of The Pacific Institute.  The Pacific Institute started life in 1971 with a simple idea – if you open people’s mind to their own potential and how to achieve it, step changes in organisational and community effectiveness will follow.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr Neil Straker who heads up TPI here in the UK. I found out that they are already massively engaged with Leeds City Council and with Education Leeds – although the links to enterprise in the city do not yet seem to have been made.  They seem to have developed a strong track record in the city for helping individuals to recognise and develop their own potential.  They have developed a large number of ‘facilitators’ in the city who have worked with both children and parents in many of the secondary schools throughout the city as well as with young people and adults in some of our most deprived communities.

They may have an important part to play in the enterprise agenda in the city.

Enterprise Insight – Mind the Gap

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Although it is almost 12 months old now this report from Enterprise Insight carries much sensible advice.

‘Thinkers’ are overlooked

Large numbers of people think about setting up their own business, or becoming their own boss (which is an important difference) – but many of them don’t turn the thinking into action. Reasons for this include:

  • Believing that they don’t have what it takes to run a business, and
  • Not having a business idea

The first of these beliefs is perpetuated by much of the entrepreneurship reality programming on TV. Think The Apprentice, Dragon’s Den etc where only certain ‘types of people’ are deemed to have what it takes. I am sure that had Sir Richard Branson pitched some of his early business ideas (Budgerigar Breeding and Christmas Tree Farming – both of which he tried and failed at) to the Dragon’s he would have received the ritual humiliation that is meted out to so many.

The truth of the matter is that no-one knows what it takes to run a business until they try it. So when you here you someone say ‘Oh I could never run my my own business – I don’t have what it takes.’ ask them what they think it takes. This will get you much clearer on their perceptions on what business is all about.

The second is perpetuated by most of the enterprise marketing collateral I see. Most start of with some variation of ‘Do you have a great business idea?’. The implication being that if you don’t then perhaps enterprise is not for you.

Most entrepreneurs have to learn how to have, develop and let go of enterprise ideas before they find one that works for them. Anyone who wants to work for themselves or finds a way of expressing themselves can be helped to explore their passion and skill to develop some business ideas.

Ideas are the easy bits – its allowing yourself to believe that you could succeed that’s hard. So when you find yourself working with a thinker who never seems to act – exploring and challenging their ideas about the importance of ‘the business idea’ or ‘having what it takes’ can sometimes help them bridge the gap to action.

‘Some of the most significant barriers to starting a business are emotional and psychological such as lack of self-confidence’

Yet still so often we find it easy to judge the potential entrepreneur and their business idea. Learning to accept and not to judge is a critical skill if we are to succeed in helping people on their enterprise journeys.

‘Policy designed’ programmes are usually targeted at particular demographic groups based on gender, ethnicity, disability or disadvantage. Although this makes sense for addressing inequalities in society, such programmes tend to regard their audience as a homogeneous group. They tend to overlook the real needs, motivations and attitudes of individuals.

I have taught the fundamental importance of client centred enterprise coaching for a long time now. The sad truth is that most services are designed more for the convenience of the funder, the service provider’s organisational infrastructure (I have a manged workspace and I am gonna fill it!) or the individual advisers own comfort zones than they are for the needs of the client.

Targeted, customer-focused activities are needed to convert more young thinkers into doers. This audience is mobile and dynamic and communications campaigns are an effective way to encourage next steps. Personalised messages, stories, role models and competitions should be designed with a customer segment in mind.

Not only Young Thinkers – but most thinkers are far more likely to respond to well targeted marketing messages that speak to them as an individual. However better than that by far would be word of mouth recommendation to you and your service from someone they know and trust.

Encouraging-peer-to peer support can be effective in building the UK’s entrepreneurial capital and socially empowering young entrepreneurs.The knowledge economy depends on institutions that join up thinking and help bring together “the five tribes of enterprise”: creators, advisers, funders, facilitators and educators. We need diffused and cost-effective forms of support and less reliance on only professional business advisers. This requires greater use of mentors, ‘connectors’who can bring people together, the stimulation of support networks for young entrepreneurs as well as experimentation in the use of social media for enterprise purposes.

We have long known that entrepreneurs of almost any age and at almost any stage in the business cycle learn more from their peers than from professional advisers. Especially when advisers ADVISE instead of facilitate personal and entrepreneurial development.

You can download a summary of the Mind the Gap Report as well as the Full Monty here.

The Power of Acceptance

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“We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advice are really ways to control others.

Advice is a conversation stopper…we want to substitute curiosity for advice.

No call to action.

No asking what they are going to do about it.

Do not tell people how you handled the same concern in the past.

Do not ask questions that have advice hidden in them, such as “have you ever thought of talking to the person directly?”

Often citizens will ask for advice. The request for advice is how we surrender our sovereignty. If we give in to this request, we have, in this small instance, affirmed their servitude, their belief that they do not have the capacity to create the world from their own resources; and more important, we have supported their escape from their own freedom.”

Community – The structure of belonging – Peter Block

“One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.”

Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Friere

“It was wonderful! Incredibly powerful – just to be listened to.”

Participant on an Introduction to Enterprise Coaching Programme.

Enterprise Centres – All things to all people?

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The New Generation Enterprise Centre - SHINE at Harehills

One of the things that LEGI has stimulated in ‘deprived areas’ all over England is a renewed interest in Enterprise Centres.

Many of them have a very wide remit to:

  • Provide serviced workspaces for social enterprises as well as more traditional ‘for profit’ businesses
  • Make available hot desks in open plan environments to encourage ‘start-up’ entrepreneurs to network and support each other
  • To provide access to business advisers and other professional sources of advice and support
  • Community Cafes/Restaurants
  • Conference facilities and meeting rooms
  • Crèche facilities

This breadth of focus should provide a real strength – a business community that is diverse in terms of goals (making profits AND making progress) and stages of development (start-ups mature businesses and high growth all under the same roof) and from a variety of business sectors. However it is also a potential Achilles heel as it easy for the various market places that the centre sets out to serve can become confused.

For example in Leeds this was recently written about one of the Enterprise Centres being developed in the city:

‘Shine Harehills offers flexible and high quality serviced accommodation for Leeds growing companies’

‘The space, being marketed to the city’s growing creative industries includes 14 office units, each around 600 sq ft, plus spaces from 50 sq ft.’ – ABOUT LEEDS – Summer 2008

Now this makes it sound ideal for a small but growing business looking for space in a professional, high quality and creative ‘for profit’ cluster, but perhaps not an ideal choice for a small social enterprise start-up.

The new generation centres are usually located in the heart of some of the most deprived communities in the country. It will be interesting to see what the ‘creative professionals’ make of the location of SHINE! Especially if they follow the local media and buy into their characterisation of the community.

The fact is that not everyone will be keen to situate their office in the middle of one of the most challenging and diverse neighbourhoods and the third most deprived ward in the city. This may sound like a horribly middle class mind-set. Middle class or not – it matters. I recently suggested meeting a client of mine for a curry on Harehills Lane. However she was not happy about parking her lovely Audi TT convertible down there so we ended up in the Shadwell Tandoori (again). Audi TTs are the ‘runarounds’ in that part of the city. Finding entrepreneurs who want to make a profit and play a part in community life will help to ensure success.

The nature of the local communities could result in the new Centres being put behind large fences, surrounded by CCTV and feeling more like Secure Units than open and welcoming centres for community enterprise. Working effectively with local people, councils and the media to change community narratives from ‘impoverished and problem filled’ to ‘optimistic and full of potential’ will be critical to the successful development of new generation enterprise centres and the transformation of the communities themselves.

Being able to develop and market a cost effective and diverse ‘new generation enterprise centre’ will depend on engaging the right balance of different tenants – and helping each of them to quickly realise the benefits of being part of such a diverse community rather than looking for a more homogenous business environment.

They will also need to very carefully learn the lessons from previous generations of enterprise centres, few (if any?) of which have managed to stay close to achieving their social objectives as they have had to pursue almost ANY tenant who can reliably pay the rent and cover the additional operating costs associated with high quality managed workspace. When faced with the reality of developing a sustainable business plan, that is not dependent on long term subsidy, sometimes the quality slips as does the range of additional services and support.

These ‘first generation’ centres sometimes do little more than offer cheap office accommodation for entrepreneurs that live elsewhere, enabling them to generate additional profits that are spent in other more affluent communities. These centres often then provide only a handful of jobs in security, office administration and caretaking to local people. The actual regeneration potential of the centres for providing business incubation for local entrepreneurs to help to transform the enterprise culture of the local community is largely missed.

If this new generation of centres is not to fall into the same trap then passionate and skilful management will be required – as well as a strong nerve – to ensure that they do become powerful centres of regeneration for local entrepreneurs and not simply low cost profit machines for the already entrepreneurial classes. The centres will need to have strong boards that are held to account as much for their role in the regeneration of the local community as they are for the financial performance of the Centre. And, believe me, when centre managers report to their boards the first thing they talk about – sometimes the only thing – is the financial security or otherwise of the centre.

I hope the new generation centres are massively successful. I do believe that they can achieve both commercial and social objectives. I just hope that they are able to attract the executive and non-executive management teams that they need to keep a balance between their commercial and the social objectives and to keep funders and other stakeholders on board for what could be a long, bumpy but incredibly worthwhile enterprise and regeneration journey.