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Getting the right enterprise clients

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I recently received an e-mail from a friend and customer of mine who is managing a size-able enteprise project:

“Mike

I am using the training that me and the team have had from you to inform a business plan.

We are identifying an issue with people coming to us wanting funding for safety passports, fork lift truck licences etc. We are letting them apply straight away, but then they go away and we don’t hear from them again. 

To ensure we have more impact and build the relationship I’m going to look at solutions like using a minimum number of outreach sessions before unlocking other opportunities e.g. funding.  Where we have a relationship with the client we find out more about them, including often that they don’t really want what they are asking for in the first instance and rather something else, or that there are bigger issues holding them back. Also this process can weed out those people who can really afford to pay for training themselves – if we pay for them we are changing nothing about them or the world.

I don’t want to go down the Jobcentre route of the client having to be out of work and desperate for at least 6 months or 3 months to access any support but I think if word gets round you have funding then you get overrun with people, not all of whom have many barriers, which is what we’re finding.

I think this sends me back to thinking about who and how we really want to help and work with and to what end.  I think a lot of it is in the contracting that you describe in the Enterprise Coaching cycle.  Having the opportunity to build rapport with the client and really set out what you are both bringing to that relationship.

Yours…”

This outlines a number of challenges that are faced by enterprise support projects – which few have the courage to tackle head on – because it might make “the numbers” look worse.

As soon as you start to offer funding or direct opportunities to people, you start to attract a lot of the wrong kind of client.  Well, perhaps the right kind of client – but with the wrong motivation – and with a fundamental  misunderstanding of the power and potential of  your offer to them.  People motivated by a desire for handouts or quick fixes, rather than those that really want to work towards long term and sustainable progress.

You really want to ONLY attract people who come to you because you can help them by being kind, compassionate, caring, supportive and challenging.  ie the ONLY thing you offer is life changing transformational coaching. 

All the other transactional stuff (skills, money, training, premises etc) is available elsewhere in the system. Our job is to build the desire/commitment/hunger to help people to use it. 

I don’t think the answer is to delay helping people to access what they think they want.  Although we should know that most of our clients will initially present us with what I call ‘A BIG LIE’.  Very few clients will present us with their truths until we have earned their trust and repsect. 

They nearly all tell us a big, fat, safe lie to begin with. 

The answer is to help them to get some of that stuff (otherwise they will see us as useless and hard to work with) and challenge them as to what they REALLY want to do with it – and will it give them what they are looking for? 

This is all about being able to be acceptant and confrontational – which I also cover in the enterprise coaching training.

The Advantage of Social Enterprise

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Rob Greenland over at The Social Business has written a piece about how the ‘table’ that social enterprise has fought so hard to get a place at has collapsed.  I am assuming Rob means the table where policy is thrashed out and funds are allocated.

The high political table.

The table of the bureaucrats and the planners.

Rob’s analysis is that this table has collapsed.  They have no cash to spend since the bankers have grabbed it all.  So “What is a social entrepreneur meant to do now?” Rob asks.

Well I think the collapse of this table could be just the tonic that the social enterprise sector needs.

The sectors’ advantage is not in being a cheaper route to market for bureaucrats  – implementing their policies and plans (although this may be a legitimate benefit it CAN offer).  Its’ advantage lies in the ability of social entrepreneurs to tell stories of social change, social injustice and progress. In being able to attract, retain and develop talented and committed people who share in the vision and have the potential to manifest it.  In harnessing the potential of those affected by injustice and using it to drive progress.

So instead of trying to manoeuvre to catch the crumbs from the top table perhaps the sector should focus on sharpening vision, improving stories, and building a movement that people will want to join and work in because of its autonomy, independence and creativity; its ability to provide fulfillment and a decent wage – not because of the funding streams that it can secure (along with KPIs, evaluation frameworks and other game playing  inducements attendant with the mainstream).

When we are sat at the top table we have our backs to the real social enterprise marketplace.

Of course the sector needs to maintain good relationships with the ‘top table’.  It needs to influence, lobby, advise and occasionally disrupt.  If it can secure investment on its terms than so much the better.  But it needs to ensure that the money and power available does not corrupt – as it so often has.  That the pull of the cash does not lure us away from core purpose and beliefs.  That it does not allow us to kid ourselves that the latest funding stream to ‘do things to people’ might just work – this time – if we can only get our hands on the cash.  The social enteprise sector has to have the guts to be uncompromising on vision, values and beliefs.  It has to maintain integrity.

This requires the sector to develop an entreprenurial management and leadership culture.  A progressive mindset.  Progressive management.  Not Political.

The social entrepreneur needs to be comfortable and competent at managing and leading through vision, values, social goals and objectives and then relying on creativity and innovation to secure sustainable investments.  They must be obsessed with the social change they are trying to deliver and the recruitment and retention of a tribe of professionals and volunteers who can help.  Not with reading the political runes.  They need to promote change, not maintenance, autonomy not dependence (on the top or any other table), courage not conventionality.

The advantage of social enterprise is that it can be transformational.  People will join a transformational movement and bring to it their passion, creativity and hard work.  Turn it into another transactional part of the prevailing bureaucracy and this advantage will be lost.

And finally of course any organisation can be a social enterprise regardless of structure.  Many ‘for profits’ have learned how to create social change and a sustainable profit!

Building an Enterprise Culture – Laying the Foundations

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  1. Projects designed to develop an enterprise culture should be owned and managed by the community itself.  A community that is coerced towards enterprise by outsiders is likely to resist.
  2. Change agents, coaches, advisers and others working in the community should be recruited, managed and introduced to the community – by the community.  They should not be missionaries parachuted in to win converts.
  3. Change is best effected through a series of 121 meetings, characterised by honesty and openness, where a professional, compassionate and caring coach works to ensure that the client takes control of their own enterprise agenda.  To ensure maximum take up and productivity of the service it should be free of charge for as long as it takes for the client to complete their journey and believe that that they no longer need the service.
  4. Community based enterprise coaches should not replicate existing services.  Instead they should signpost and brokers clients to existing services and help them to use them effectively.  Where necessary the coach may need to advise existing service providers on how best to effectively serve their clients.
  5. The community based enterprise coach or business adviser helps the client to develop their commitment, passion and skill to their own enterprise agenda – using the tools and techniques of personal development.   Their focus is primarily on the development of the person and secondarily on the development of their enterprise ideas.
  6. Community based business coaches and enterprise advisers need to be at the heart of a network, of social capital, that can provide advice, guidance and support as required by the coach and their clients.
  7. Community based business coaches and enterprise advisers work in response to the wants and desires of local people – not to the delivery of strategies, plans and opportunities developed by economic planners.  They do not motivate or initiate but work in response to the passion, interests and skills of local people.
  8. The enterprise project must take a broad definition of enterprise – helping local people to use enterprise skills to tackle problems and opportunities that face them.  Entrepreneurship may be on the agenda – but it should not be THE agenda.

Choosing Enterprise or Bureacracy?

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Most of us experience ourselves reacting to both people and events that are outside of our control.  It feels to us like control lies elsewhere.

A reluctance to take full responsibility for our actions develops.  We learn to shift the blame elsewhere.  We lose sight of our responsibility for the type of life that we have helped to build.  We genuinely believe that the mediocrity that surrounds us has nothing to do with us. It is all the work of someone else, somewhere else.  We let ourselves ‘off the hook’.

Of course it is true that there is nearly always someone (many people) who has power over us.  But even in the face of this reality, we still have choices.  Choices that can lead us towards enterprise and progress – entrepreneurial choices; or choices that lead us towards safety and maintenance – bureaucratic choices.

We can choose to operate from an entrepreneurial mindset or a bureaucratic one.

We can choose between:

  • Maintenance and Greatness
  • Caution and Courage
  • Dependency and Autonomy

In my experience many potential entrepreneurs do not recognise these choices.  They wrap themselves in the  cultural cloaks of the community and the peer group – usually more about maintenance than enterprise – and lose sight of the fact that THEY can make a difference.

In the short term of course the bureaucratic choice has many advantages:

  • You blend in rather than stand out.
  • You risk little.
  • You minimise the chances of failure (and success).
  • You help to build a culture of shared contentment with mediocrity.

In the context of making the most of your life however the entrepreneurial mindset wins every time:

  • It allows you to find and develop your own unique contribution.
  • You take more risks – and develop the relationships and experience that will help you to manage them effectively.
  • You increase the chances of failure – but also give yourself a chance of great success.
  • You help to build a culture of enterprise and excellence; of enterprise

So just reflect as you go through your working day what do your actions say about the choices that you have made – entrepreneurial or bureaucratic?

What are you doing to help people in the communities that you serve recognise that they have these choices?

How are you helping them to build a more enterprising culture?

(It is ironic that most of the organisations charged with developing an enterprise culture are essentially bureaucratic in nature.  But then perhaps you have to be if you are to navigate the complexities of public sector procurement!).

The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half – unless he is enterprising

Mike Chitty

The Client Decides…

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As a matter of principle I believe that the client should always decide when our job is done.

We should work with them, free of charge, for as long as it takes for the client to make the progress they desire.

No limit to the number of hours.

No limit to the length of the relationship.

But this requires real skill in portfolio management and managing client independence on behalf od the coach – if their portfolio is not to become ovrloaded with clients who are not real making progress.

The relationship has to be professional, committed, developmental, progressive and challenging.  It should be neither ‘comfortable’ nor ‘easy’.  The coach has to be able to get to the real nub of the problem – quickly.  This is rarely the problem or opportunity that the client initially presents with.  They then have to act as real catalyst for progress.

As long as this is being achieved we should be prepared to support the client for as long as it takes.

We should always remain available to clients.  Our job is not done when we hand the client over to the mainstream.

Our job is done when the client decides that it is.