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A Truth About Enterprise and Entrepreneurship?

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So here is my contribution to Enterprise Week.

DO NOT START UP YOUR OWN BUSINESS – UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Not the message that is usually put out, especially by national, regional and local government, but after 25 years of running and supporting small businesses, that is my best advice.  Don’t do it – unless you have to. Unless of course you have money to burn.

Because the truth is that small business is a really hard game.  You have to provide a great product or service – and one miscalculation, or one bad debt, can put you out of the game and into the bankruptcy courts. Few people succeed in business the first time they try.

It takes resilience, persistence, self confidence and courage.

The chances of success are slim and the levels of commitment and hard work required are, in most cases, enormous.

Your business will almost certainly steal you away from friends and family at least for the first few years, and many successful entrepreneurs talk about how much their business has cost them in terms of their relationships and health, as well as cash.

This is the reality of entrepreneurship that needs to be taught.  (Policy makers please take note.  If we were this honest about the nature of entrepreneurship we might not get as many people involved in enterprise week – but a far higher percentage that did get involved would go on to be successful entrepreneurs.)

Those that ‘have to’ start a business fall into two very different camps.  The first ‘have to’ because they have no other economic option for survival.  Enterprise is their ONLY option.  It is the only way they can make a living.  For those whom enterprise is a forced choice the outcome is rarely great.

The second group ‘have to’ because it is the only way that they can have the freedom to do what they have to do, to be the person that they have to be and provide the products and services that they really have to provide.  Enterprise provides them with a way of becoming the person that they feel they have to be.  It is about their own identity as a human being.

So the rallying call for enterprise week should be,

‘DO NOT DO IT- UNLESS YOU HAVE TO!

Unless it is the only way for you to become the person that you really want to be’.

And if we invested our energy into helping people to really understand who or what they want to become we might find that all of a sudden ‘enterprise’ starts to look after itself.

Of course for those that ‘have to’ enterprise can be a wonderfully powerful vehicle to achieve remarkable results.  I am not anti enterprise – quite the opposite.  I just wish we could present it honestly as the double edged sword that it truly is.

Enterprise Week 2008

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I am always glad to see Enterprise week come rolling around – every November – regular as clockwork – a neatly planned and managed government backed campaign delivered largely through public and third sector organisations to encourage people to start businesses. 

The irony of it is wonderful.  We, the salaried from the public purse will encourage you – the great British people – to do what we choose not to do.

An already swollen enterprise supply side co-ordinates resources to saturate the week with events, workshops, on-line surveys and other such paraphernalia to make Enterprise Week a success.  We get to hear assorted dragons and government ministers telling us again how important ‘enterprise’ is. 

Enterprise opportunities compete cheek by jowl for the attentions of the aspiring entrepreneurs – many of whom run a mile preferring to work in or on their business.

Enteprise Week reminds me of the local steam festival.  The event is planned all year.  The signs go up weeks in advance and the roads are blocked for days as lumbering steam engines and other pieces of heavy machinery crawl onto site.  Of course the steam enthusiasts turn up in their droves and so too do a large number of the general public – attracted by the bright lights, the romance of steam and the smell of the hot dogs.  But how many of them as a result decide that running a steam engine is really for them?

Nourishing Enterprise

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Britain is facing a “new kind of poverty” with many parents unable to nourish their own families – not through lack of money but lack of knowledge, according to Jamie Oliver.

“This isn’t about fresh trainers or mobile phones or Sky dishes or plasma TV screens – they’ve got all that. It is a poverty of being able to nourish their family, in any class.”

So what is Mr Oliver saying?  This is not a crisis of material need; people have ways of getting these met?  Most of us have learned the skills of achieving material possessions.  But I don’t believe that the problem lies in a lack of culinary skill – I think this is a symptom of a deeper psychological need rather than a root cause of this new kind of poverty.

It is about a poverty of psychological need and ambition. 

It is about poverty of self-esteem. 

It is about poverty of belief.

And once enterprise professionals recognise the power of enterprise to nourish these very human qualities we will have a powerful antidote to this ‘new form’ of poverty.

However it will require policy makers and funders to recognise that enterprise is not all about start rates and VAT registrations, but is about developing an enterprising psychology driving enterprising behaviours.

Enterprising Politicians?

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So we are in mire and the politicians decide that now is great time for them to incentivise employers to create jobs.  The promise of £2500 if we take someone who has been unemployed for at least three months into employment. 

No doubt there would be some takers but, I suspect, not as many as they would hope.  There are a group of business people who are always looking for ways in which government programmes can be exploited.  And usually they generate bad press as benefits intended for the ‘needy’ are used to prop up the profits of the ‘greedy’!

Most of us recognise that our job is to create value for customers – not to create employment.  That is not the responsibility of the entrepreneur.  It maybe a very welcome by-product – but it is not a responsibility. 

We should not be bribing entrepreneurs to create jobs.  If the right people are available to create value, and the market is available then the potential for profit will (and should) drive job creation.  If an incentive of £2500 is the thing that makes a difference between increasing payroll or not then one really has to question viability of the decision.