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Enterprise as a Process of Becoming – the Emergence of Identity

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Enterprise is not about business and entrepreneurship.

It is not about premises, finances, business plans and swots.

It is a process for human development.

It is a way of exploring:

  • who I am,
  • what my potentials are/might be, and
  • the kind of future that I could create.

It is way of living – of becoming.

Enterprise can be a catalyst, a framework, for the emergence of identity.

We need to develop enterprise programmes that pay serious attention to these issues of identity development and the process of ‘becoming’.  Enterprise as the emergence of identity.  There are links here to other ways in which some people find their identity – gangs, drink, knifes, drugs, crime etc and enterprise as a ‘diversionary’ activity.  A ‘substitution’ product if you like.

The education system doesn’t take identity seriously –  so there is a really interesting vacuum that the enterprise industry could step into if it could learn to re-position itself and become experts in developing human potential rather than the mechanics of the business plan.

5 most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

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When Guy Kawasaki writes a post under the title:

‘5 most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur’

you just have to check it out.

I especially like ‘Make a little progress every day’ in which Guy goes back on his once held believe that a big marketing splash could launch a business ‘to infinity and beyond’. Instead he now favours lots of little steps forward taken over the long haul.

This parallels what I try to teach aspiring entrepreneurs about making progress by understanding their goals, understanding the current reality and then focusing on the immediate next steps, which are sometimes almost trivial things, that they cannot fail to do. Keep doing this often enough for long enough and the progress is amazing.

It provides a massive contrast to more formal business planning processes that often result in intimidating and insurmountable ‘To Do’ lists that make the whole enterprise game appear to be nigh on impossible.

Building the Entrepreneurial Team

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Successful entrepreneurs build successful teams. They build successful management teams and they also build personal partnerships with great coaches, mentors and technical advisors who help them to make the most of their own potential and to develop their business ideas.

Building the Entrepreneurial Team

Great entrepreneurs recognise that they need to play to their strengths and recruit others who can do the things that they can’t do well themselves.

Yet very few enterprise/business support services recognise this fact. Many (unwittingly) even go as far as stopping their clients from even considering it! Very few actively challenge entrepreneurs to consider the importance of building the right team with complimentary strengths covering the three key domains of enterprise:

  1. Product/service – the ability to provide a great product or service at the right price
  2. Marketing/sales – the ability to create interest in the product or service and to consistently convert that interest into sales
  3. Financial management and controls – the ability to keep the books and pay taxes as well as to provide accurate and timely financial forecasts and to secure finance at the right time at the right price.

Instead we work with individuals and then lament the fact that they don’t seem to be equally proficient in all three domains of enterprise.

We should help the entrepreneur to recognise their strengths and then to seriously consider the need to build a team to cover the enterprise domains that they are not strong in.

This may need us to confront entrepreneurs with their own limitations, which takes a strong relationship and a lot of honesty and courage. We also need to offer them ways to build their team quickly at low or no cost. This is a much more effective intervention than simply identifying their weaknesses and then packing them off to a training session on something that they are just not ‘cut out’ for. Unfortunately this IS the stock response for most enterprise service providers. While this may help to keep the training providers in business it usually does very little for the would be entrepreneur.

Business Planning as a Solo Sport

Many enterprise service providers also work as if business planning is a solo sport.

Lone entrepreneurs are encouraged to start working on their business plans almost immediately. We can argue till the cows come home about the value of business plans that are written on the basis of hypothesis and guesswork. And even the best researched business plans contain a large element of both. What I believe is above contention is that a high quality business plan can not be developed by any one individual. As Jim Collins suggests we should:

  • first build the team (get the right people on the bus) and only then
  • encourage the team to develop the business plan (work out where the bus is going to go and how it is going to get there).

This is because business planning requires different personality types and skill sets to provide high quality planning that is integrated across the three enterprise domains. I don’t believe that anyone has the passion and skill in all three domains to be able to write a well balanced business plan on their own.

And even if they could, their chances of implementing it all effectively are close to zero.

So one of the most effective interventions that we can do for entrepreneurs is to help them recognise that their first priority is building a strong management team.

This does not necessarily mean employing people. Nor does it mean giving away equity in the business (although sometimes this is EXACTLY the right thing to do).

It may be possible to find people who will contribute their talent and skills to the business on a voluntary basis. It is certainly possible to find people who will sell your product on a commission only basis.  If this proves difficult you really do need to ask yourself whether there is a market for what you do, at the quality and price that you do it!

In addition to building the team to work in the business I also think that entrepreneurs should consider getting further support signed up.   They should find mentors, coaches and technical advisors.

Choosing and Using a Mentor

The mentor should be someone that the entrepreneur chooses who has had experience in similar fields to the one that they are pursuing who is kind enough to pass on some of their wisdom, knowledge and experience. A mentor is not involved in the day to day development of the entrepreneurs idea or their business but instead focusses on helping them with their long term professional development and goals. They can also act as an excellent source of introductions and referals providing the entrepreneur with much needed credibility.

Choosing and using a mentor is not an easy or straightforward process. It requires planning, care and commitment to find the right mentor and make the relationship work. Yet I see business support services offering to provide clients with a mentor that seems to take little account of either personal chemistry or business need. Often the mentors are also looking to build their own experience through mentoring or want to mentor as part of their own professional development or corporate social responsibility programme. While these motivations may be great they do sometimes get in the way of the entrepreneur actively seeking the right mentor for them.

Frequently the resulting relationship breaks down with little value being created for either party.

Choosing and Using a Business Coach

A great business coach need not have ‘been there and done that’ in quite the same way as a mentor. Their focus is less on ‘passing on wisdom’ and ‘personal experience’ than around providing a relationship that the entrepreneur and their team can use to get honest feedback and support in structuring their goals and plans.

While the entrepreneur may only meet with their mentor once or twice a year it is likely that they will work with their coach on a monthly, weekly or even a daily basis, reviewing progress, developing goals and forging plans. The aim of the coach is to help the entrepreneur (and hopefully the whole of the entrepreneurial team) to make the most of their potential in building the new enterprise. The enteprise coach helps the client to make the most of their potential, focussing on them rather than on their business.

Technical Advice

The final part of the team that the would be entrepreneur needs to build is access to the right technical advice at the right time and price. This could be help with business planning, accessing finance or technical aspects of business development in any of the three domains of enterprise:

  • product/service,
  • marketing and sales or
  • financial management and control.

Many business advisers confuse their roles in coaching the entrepreneur and providing them with technical advice and guidance.  Eventually the desire to provide immediate help and support means that they end up giving lots of technical advice and guidance and do very little coaching.  They get sucked into helping the client to develop their business and forget about their role in coaching the entrepreneur.

So while the entrepreneur is surrounded by people offering them free technical advice and guidance they often find it very difficult to find access to high quality, person centred enterprise coaching.

Minding the Assets

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It is deeply ingrained in most enterprise professionals to try to fix things. Business plans, cash flows, products and people.

We listen to our clients for signs of weakness or difficulty and then we try and fix the problem, usually by referring them to a course or another expert.

Much of our work is biased towards exposing and managing deficiencies rather than uncovering and celebrating strengths. This has become a deeply embedded part of our work – an almost medical approach to helping.

Think ‘Inform, Diagnose, Broker’. Think ‘Best Practice Business Diagnostic’.

We become just another part of the system that has for years highlighted and exposed weaknesses.

How would our work be changed if instead of this focus on the weaknesses we spent our time helping our clients to recognise what they have done, what they can do and what they can do to use these strengths to make progress?

The Development Trust Association exists to help communities to take control of the physical assets in their community and use them for public good.

Is there a similar service that helps individuals to uncover their assets (skills, passion, energy, talent, anger) and reclaim them in pursuit of progress?

So why not spend some time trying to avoid highlighting the problems – and instead accentuate the positive.

Developing a healthy pre-occupation with what is right, rather than re-emphasising all of the things that are wrong is likely to hold the key to building really constructive relationships in support of more enterprising individuals and communities.

Enterprise Problems are Multi-Dimensional

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There is a school of though that says that enterprise professionals just need to be experts on helping clients with the business planning process. However in my experience the enterprise dimension is just one several that need to be addressed if the client is to be helped to make real progress. If the enterprise professional is to work effectively it maybe necessary to help the client to acknowledge and work on some of these other dimensions. As Iain Scott says about one of his clients (and I paraphrase) – ‘she realised that she had to divorce the xxxx before she would be able to make progress on her business idea‘.

Work on ‘other dimensions’ is not always this radical but it is often present and necessary! Some of the possible dimensions that may have an effect on your ability to make progress with a client include:

  • their lack of experience in enterprise and entrepreneurship
  • low socio-economic status
  • poor quality of relationships with significant others (persistent negativity from friends and family)
  • history of educational failure
  • poor mental health
  • chronic illness
  • history of anti-social behaviour
  • intimate partner abuse
  • substance misuse
  • poor accommodation (poor quality, frequent moves, homelessness)
  • lack of social capital
  • ambivalence about the future
  • ethnic, cultural and linguistic barriers
  • refugees
  • illegal immigrants
  • asylum seekers

And I am sure there are more.

My point here is that unless we are able to help the client to recognise and address the multi-dimensional nature of their barriers to successful entrepreneurship then we should expect high levels of frustration and drop out.

So when we talk about ‘referring the client to specialist support’ we need to extend our referral network beyond the marketing and financial specialists to those who can provide a more holistic support service to real people with real multi-dimensional challenges.  Once we have accepted that our clients require this multi-dimensional type of support it provides us with a range of further challenges in managing the boundaries of our own professional competence and practice.