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Reasons for Not Doing Micro-Enterprise Support

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So just why is it so rare to see decent business support provision developed specifically with the micro-enterprise in mind?  Well I suspect because there is a perception amongst the powers that be that it is hard, expensive and wasteful.

  • There are just too many micro-enterprises to offer more than a generic website.
  • Micro-enterprises are just too heterogeneous – they all have different wants and needs.  There is no one size fits all solution for them.
  • They just don’t have the capacity to absorb and act upon the services and guidance we offer.  There is no HR team to work with our skills offering, no marketeers to get involved with our business development work.
  • Micro-enterprises just aren’t able to engage strategically with support.  Everyone in the micro-enterprise is too busy doing their day job to invest in their development. They have no discretionary time to invest.
  • There is little return on public investment in micro-enterprise. They start small stay small and die small.  They are just lifestyle businesses that have little potential for job creation.
  • We don’t really understand them.  Our boards and committees are overloaded with people from big business.
  • To make a significant economic impact it is much easier to work with the big employers.  One big employer could trigger thousands of apprenticeships across the UK.  We might need to work with 10 000 micro-enterprises to find just 100.
  • Big businesses understand how the game is played.  They come to breakfast meetings, read policy papers and generally know how to work with the system.  Micro-enterprises tend to be much more opinionated, impatient and generally difficult.
Personally I think that each of these are actually reasons why enterprise support should be emphasised.  It is a massive market, driven, focussed and unlikely to indulge in pointless grandstanding and meetings.  The diversity of the sector means that is faces every problem and opportunity imaginable but also that the sector has all of the experience and skills within it that it requires.  The challenge is to get the know-how flowing. HINT when dealing with a large market this is not done by fielding a few experts.  If we can influence just a small part of the micro-enterprise market then we can make a massive difference.
Perhaps it is time we changed the rules of engagement to recognise how micro-enterprises work.  Drop the committees, agendas and the policy reviews and start committing to action and learning instead.

Elsie is Born…

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I seem to have been a bit quiet on this blog, while I have been doing other things, including pushing Progress School along, working on Collaborate Leeds and incubating a new idea which has finally found the light of day today:

The Leeds Community Enterprise Accelerator or Elsie for short.  This provides a community based network of support to local enterprise coaches, advisors, facilitators, in fact to anyone who is helping someone else in the community to make progress.

I have high hopes for Elsie in post Business Link austerity economy.  I think it will provide a sustainable high value model to provide practical crowd sourced enterprise support to those that most want and need it.

Have a look at Elsie and tell me what you think.

The Alternative LEP and Micro-enterprise

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Our alternative LEP will have a board stuffed full of owner managers of micro enterprises.

Don’t get me wrong we will have ‘token’ small and medium sized board members too – but will draw the line at Big Business. They have enough lobbying clout and influence to fight their own battles.

So what type of policies would our board look at developing?

  1. Programmes to promote local supply chains and sourcing from micro-enteprise wherever practical
  2. Conduct a major overhaul of commissioning and procurement processes in the public sector (local authorities and NHS as primary targets) and where possible big businesses to ensure that they are as micro-enterprise friendsly as possible
  3. Divert training and learning budgets away from FE colleges and pay owner managers to take on apprenctices and teach them current, commercial practices.  Move the locus for learning from the class room into the workplace.
  4. Develop ways to enable micro-enterprises to co-operate and collaborate so they they can punch above their weight. Promote collaborative consumption and production.
  5. Promote local economy arguments and the importance of keeping cash in local peoples hands rather than handing it over to multi-nationals

What other policy areas would an alt-LEP that understood micro enterprise seek to develop?

Towards the Enterprising Community

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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 theGo-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’.

And where does entrepreneurship fit into this practice?  How does this help the start up rate?  Well the more powerful and enterprising individuals we have, embedded in enterprising communities the more great start-ups we will have, borne into a context where they may well enjoy the support of a wide web of community.  We are truly building a community where enterprise and entrepreneurship may thrive.

Enterprising Communities – Missing a trick?

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One of my favourite frameworks for thinking about team work was published in a book called Dialogue by Bill Isaacs.

The model suggests that if a group is to make progress it needs to have 4 distinct roles handled effectively.

Firstly it need Movers.  These are people who float ideas, lead initiatives and generally make things happen. Spontaneous, action orientated and often extrovert – happy to put their ideas out there. In a community I often think that these Movers are akin to entrepreneurs.

But a productive group also needs skilled Followers.  These are people who can take the energy and ideas of the Movers and build on them, add to them, take of the rough edges, put in the hard work and generally get the job done.  They are close to what Mike Southon calls cornerstones.  People who help turn the vision into reality.

But in addition to Movers and Followers a productive group also needs effective Opposers.  These are people who are going to check the facts, collect the evidence and if there is an objection to be raised, they will raise it.  Constructively, powerfully and effectively.  They will skilfully play the role of the Devil’s Advocate and if there is a weakness or a fault-line in the thinking they WILL find it.

And finally a productive group, or I would argue and enterprising community, needs Bystanders.   They stand back from the cut and thrust of the idea and its development but will instead provide perspective, an overview and perhaps some historical context.  They also help to manage the group process, ensure that deadlines are met and that resources are available when they are needed most.  They may well ‘chair’ the conversations.

People can play more than one role in the model, but in an effective group or community all 4 roles are played well.

Yet we seem to be obsessed really with just one of them.  The Movers.  The Entrepreneurs.  We spend a lot of time and money developing the entrepreneur, but very little time developing people to play the other three roles.

One of the marks of the enterprising community for me is that it knows how to engage its Movers and Entrepreneurs and equip them with the Followers, Opposers and Bystanders that they need to really build a successful project, whether it is business start-up, a community project or a campaign.

We often rely on advisers or mentors to play these roles.  But when an entrepreneur works with a group of their peers, drawn from their communities and markets who know how to follow, oppose and bystand skillfully, I can guarantee that they will get much more value.

And they will also win lots of advocates for them and their work.