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So You Wannabe…An Entrepreneur?

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Timothy Spall last night told a story recounted to him by that great British legend of the stage and small screen Richard Briers.

Briers’ daughter had said something like, ‘Dad, I have made up my mind.  I want to be an actress.’

Briers replied ‘Want?  Want?  Want is not enough!  To succeed you must HAVE to become an actress.  If you have to become an actress then I will roll up my sleeves and help. If you just want to be an actress then forget it.’

The story made me smile as I use almost the identical line when I am working with people who tell me they want to start a business, or they want to become an entrepreneur.  I often ask ‘Is this something that you HAVE to do?  Are there no other alternatives that you could pursue?  Is there NOTHING more important than this in your foreseeable future?

In fact I will often go further, telling them all I can about the life of the entrepreneur.  How it can take you away from family and friends, lead you into debt, consume your life and damage your health.  Of course we explore the upsides as well but those downsides are the things that will derail the process if not considered, if the desire is not sufficient.

And then I will move the focus away from ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ which is such a vague concept as to be practically meaningless and will focus on what it will be like when they have their business up and running.  What it is like to be sole trading as a furniture upholsterer, or a plasterer.  What the transition will be like going from being a professor in the Biochemistry Department to being a part owner of a biosciences company working with venture capitalists to commercialise their intellectual property.  Because being an entrepreneur is all about managing transitions.  Starting with one lifestyle and ending up with another which is very different – and hopefully better.

Enterprise really IS about the emergence of identity.  About shaping lives.

Enterprise for All – Some Reflections

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Enterprise for All was a one day conference organised on behalf of emda by Unleashing Enterprise with a mixture of key note presentations and workshop sessions.

A few things really struck me about it.  From the key note speakers and a tour of the exhibition hall it was clear just how much of a grip business and economic development interests have on the enterprise agenda.   Enterprise really IS all about business.  Business start ups, business growth and business education.

Except of course enterprise has relevance in many, perhaps all, spheres of life.  It relates to parenting, cello playing, footballing and planning.  To mathematics, politics and dance.  An enterprising approach helps with business, yes, but it helps with so much more as well.  Because an enterprising person is someone who has a theory about the direction ‘in which progress lies’, and has the confidence, strategies and skills that they need to pursue it.  By conflating enterprise with business we do it a disservice.  We alienate many who should be our natural allies, and we repel some who we should attract.

Business is a great vehicle for teaching enterprise – but so too is sport, art, history and drama.  In Bolivia, enterprise education has been conducted largely through the power of classical music.

I was deeply surprised when another  speaker said that ‘Business is Easy’.  This has not been my experience.  Business is hard.  And small business is really hard.   There have been times when it has been so difficult that I have though it must be me doing it wrong.  And I talk with some of my closest confidantes about my fears and they tell me ‘No – it’s not you, it IS hard’.  One mistake and your reputation is shot.  It can take over your life and ruin your relationships with friends and family.  It can leave you depressed and in debt.  It can also be the most wonderful platform for personal development and a fulfilled life.  It really is a double-edged sword!

I have never met an entrepreneur, until yesterday, who has told me that business is easy.  This is the ‘Enterprise Fairytale’.  I would agree that it is relatively easy to theorise about business.  To develop ideas, to refine them and to think about business plans. To get advice from business experts and to act on it, or not.  All this is quite easy.  On paper, it certainly isn’t differential calculus. But in practice it is something else.  It is easy to imagine yourself juggling, or being an astronaut or a pop star.  Actually doing it is another thing.  It is NEVER easy!   Good enterprise education needs to help learners to recognise the ‘double edged’ nature of the sword and recognise that a career in business will  not be a glorious extension of a 2 day facilitated workshop held in the comfort of the  college hall.  It just won’t be.  Good enterprise education nurtures the resilience, character, determination and commitment that is required to succeed in business or any other challenge that life throws our way.  It teaches the importance of craft and skill, of persistence and commitment.  And knowing when might be the right time to give up.

And the strange thing is that in my experience, the more honest we are about the challenges of entrepreneurship, the emotional, analytical, physical and financial challenges involved the more likely we are to get good, enduring entrepreneurs.  The more we help people to recognise how hard it is to leave the comfort zones and try something different the more likely they are risk it.

I was very struck when another keynote speaker told us about a primary school class that wanted to sell him a presentation.  An 8-year-old offered to sell  him the copyright!  Now I am all for educating young people about the importance of intellectual property, but at 8?  Is this really what enterprise education should be for such young children?  A Primary Business Curriculum?

Now this is a contested area.  No-one holds the truth on this.  In enterprise education we have little consensus on curriculum, assessment or methodology.  But I know that if my 8-year-old had come home from school telling me that they had been learning about copyright I would be seriously questioning the schools priorities for primary education.  I have witnessed primary classes being taught the difference between tangible and intangible brands. And I was once approached in a  Leeds hotel by a girl of 6 or 7 wearing a badge that said ‘Sales Executive’.  She knew exactly what margin she would make if she could sell me the beetroot plant that she was brandishing.  Are we really introducing appropriate content at the right time into the classroom?  Do we deserve the respect of our colleagues as educators when we teach this in the primary school?  I am not so sure.

Throughout the day I was approached by a number of people who made very similar comments.  ‘Mike, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but we only get paid for outcomes related to business.  I know it isn’t right, but if that is what the funders are paying for that is what we have to provide. It is what the system demands’.   I love the irony of this.  ‘We teach enterprise by following instructions’.  But I think it points to a wider challenge for the policy makers and the funders.  Does this ‘head on’ approach to entrepreneurship really work?

The title of the conference was also telling – Unleashing Enterprise.  Much of the socialisation of young people is all about putting the leash on them.  We value compliance, academic achievement, team playing and conforming.   Those that dare to see things differently, to do things differently, to paddle their own canoe, tend to be bought back into line, or expelled.   And it is not only enterprise that we struggle to unleash.  Creativity, leadership, innovation, potential…all of these have been subject to the leash fetish.

I have not done much on the enterprise conference circuit.  I have worked in community centres, village halls and at kitchen tables helping individuals and communities to develop their own approach to a more enterprising future.    It was a new experience for me. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone – and as always happened I learned a lot!

We may not be Mother Glasgow but perhaps we too are clipping wings?
In the second city of the Empire
Mother Glasgow watches all her weans
Trying hard to feed her little starlings
Unconsciously she clips their little wings
…
Among the flightless birds and sightless starlings
Father Glasgow knows his starlings well
He wont make his own way up to heaven
By waltzing all his charges in to hell
Perhaps it is time for a more inclusive, person centred and responsive approach to enterprise.  Where development is not so tightly wedded to GDP but instead to a freedom to develop our capabilities.  To develop our abilities to live the kinds of lives that we want to lead.
Or perhaps we should just keep on ‘living the vida loca’ and hoping  that we can make it last.

Craft, Motivation and Wasted Talent

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Richard Sennett’s ‘The Craftsman‘ is well worth the considerable effort it has taken me to read it.  Although very well written many of the ideas it tackles are not easy!

He makes the point that we have used tests of intelligence and education to smear citizens along a bell-shaped curve of distribution that is in fact very flat and very wide.  As a result we have come to believe that ‘ability’ is not anywhere near uniformly spread through society.  And this belief has been used to justify the increased public investment in the education of the most able and the relative paucity of opportunity offered to those who, in the tests, appear to be ‘less able than average’.

Sennett then argues that this is a social construction with little basis in facts, outside of educational IQ tests such as the Stanford Binet.  These tests rely on questions to which there is an answer – either right or wrong.  They cannot deal with questions where the answer is a matter of opinion or insight.  Where the answer is contestable.  This especially, argues Sennett, serves to discriminate against those whose talents might lie in developing real craft skills.  Sennet is at great pains to point out that these are not just about traditional crafts but anything where learning happens over a long period of application through experience, reflection and adjustment.   This includes many roles that are incredibly relevant in modern society.  People who are capable of this craft type learning may do poorly on the Stanford Binet and its equivalents (SATS) and from that point on they are socialised as ‘low ability’.  Or those that thrive on the assessment regime they are socialised as ‘Gifted and Talented’.  It is hard to know which is more damaging!

This socialisation has little to do with true potential or inherent capability and more to do with what we choose as a society to recognise, label and invest in.

Sennett’s argument (again assuming that yours truly has understood it) is that capability is MUCH more evenly distributed – we just might need to search for it with a much more open and creative mind.  Many more of us are capable of doing ‘good work’.  This insight would have enormous implications for how we organise education.  Sennett says;

“Motivation is a more important issue than talent in consummating craftsmanship”

Socialisation serves to disconnect many of us from our talents as they are neither recognised not valued.  The capabilities remain, but our motivation is eroded.  Re-establishing motivation then becomes more important than extant talent.  Indeed the key motivation required to renew the search for potential and to enter into a period of ‘craft type’ learning action, reflection and adjustment, often over a period of years until the capability becomes a craft.

Another leading academic Nobel prize wining Amartya Sen also talks about capability, its recognition and development as a central tool in poverty reduction.  He also recognises the structural processes that serve to justify the enormous gaps between the haves and the have nots on a global scale.

Perhaps one of the vital roles of the enterprise coach is to help people to challenge the way that society has shaped them and to renew the search for ‘capability’ – the potential of those who use our services that has often been suppressed by societies warped, distorted and narrow perceptions of ability.

This is the Craft of the Enterprise Coach.  And it may have nothing to do with starting a business.

Entrepreneur – Or Entrepreneurial Seizure?

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More often than not ‘entrepreneur’ is used to describe both a passing phase of ‘start up’ and a lasting role of ‘business management and development’.    The two roles overlap to some degree but demand different dispositions and skills.

In the start up phase the entrepreneur is frequently working alone developing a personal vision and finding ways to make it work, in theory.  They are finding investors and developing plans.  They are researching and shaping their still very malleable ideas until finally they have something on paper that ‘works’.  They talk with advisers and potential customers.  But the business is just an idea.  It is not yet a demanding child; a long term commitment.

Sooner rather than later the infant business develops different needs; sales, management (especially financial management) and systems.  The emphasis shifts from the energy and drive of start up to a different vibe of business development.  Energy and drive are still required but so too is discipline and routine.  The business is no longer on paper where numbers can be changed at the stroke of a key.  It is now a real thing where to ‘change a number’ takes real work and often hard cash.  And the business is there, demanding, all day and every day.

Instead of a single person driving a personal vision it now may require teamwork and people management.  The entrepreneur has to morph into a cocktail that includes some or all of; sales, management, bookkeeper, product/service development, operations management and leadership.  A very few make this transition with relish. But for most it proves difficult.

Many entrepreneurs learn to move on with grace.  The passion, skills and energy that help them bring the businesses into life are not well suited to the more methodical and disciplined demands of business development.  Having been responsible for conception they leave the parenting to others.  They bring in professional ‘management’  while they move on.  This IS the entrepreneur.

But for the majority, who are venturing into entrepreneurship for the first time, this early exit to business ownership is not seriously considered.  The business is set up from the start as a vehicle in which the ‘entrepreneur’ can pursue their trade (social media guru, web designer, window cleaner, whatever).  There is no exit.  They have had what Gerber calls the ‘entrepreneurial seizure’.

Gerber recognised that most people who choose to start a business aren’t really ‘entrepreneurs’ as described above. Instead, they are technicians, craftsmen or artisans who have had what he called “an entrepreneurial seizure“. They have become fed-up with their boss, disillusioned by their employer, made redundant, or increasingly have never been employed and decide to start out on their own ‘Enterprise Fairytale’.

This is the entrepreneurial seizure, and critical decisions must now be taken.  Get them right and the transition to ‘entrepreneur’, and ‘business owner’ may be made.  Get them wrong and the entrepreneurial seizure may be prolonged, expensive and painful.  Society may still label you ‘an entrepreneur’ but you will be both boss and labourer, technician, craftsman or artisan.  What once felt like tremendous progress may soon turn into a trap.

If you learn your entrepreneurial skills at one of the worlds leading business schools you will be taught the skills of starting and owning a business.  You will be taught to avoid the entrepreneurial seizure.  If you learn your entrepreneurial skills in more prosaic settings this lesson may not be taught.  Indeed the working assumption may be that helping you into an entrepreneurial seizure  could be as good as it gets.

It might be perfect for you – but it is not really entrepreneurship.

And when the policy makers lament our ability in the UK to start businesses that consistently achieve global scale, I believe it is because we trap so many of our ‘could be’ entrepreneurs in their own entrepreneurial seizures.