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A Community Ecology of Enterprise

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Enterprise is not just about ‘entrepreneurial types’ and ‘business ideas’.
It is not just about business and commercial endeavour.
If I want to make something happen to improve things in my community I may start a business, but I may start a campaign, or a festival, or a local action group.  I have worked with many people whose motivation was not to develop a business, but to make a difference, and in some cases setting up a business has been a means to that end.  No more than that.  It is simply a means to an end.
Well managed and run these kinds of community based activity all contribute to a more enterprising community and provide the kind of community ecology and practice ground from which commercial endeavours may spring.  They also help to build the social capital that is essential to building a sustainable and resilient local economy and community.
If LEPs were to think more about the kind of community ecology that supports enterprise and how this can be developed I suspect they would get a much greater ROI than on more traditional approaches of advice, managed workspace (we are awash with these in Leeds, mostly under-used and inappropriate for the communities they were built in) and access to finance.
Yes the web matters.  But it won’t be primarily because either a LEP or the national Business Link site offer generic advice and guidance (which to be frank just replicates what is already out there in most cases) but because local sites and sites of shared interest will provide highly specific and contextual advice – usually in the form of dialogue and conversation rather than factsheet.  The web will provide a platform for conversations that cannot easily take place face to face.
We have to start to think differently.  We have to innovate. We have to be prepared to try new approaches.  I hope LEPs are up to the challenge.
For me this means getting away from thinking about one to one advice for high growth, one to small group for lifestyle and start-up (in deprived areas) and one to many (content led websites) for the rest, and instead seriously building the networks, social capital, self belief and self-reliance that will allow our communities to become much more enterprising.

How to Destroy an Enterprise Culture

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This is the title of a workshop I am submitting to the International Conference on Enterprise Promotion, taking place in Harrogate next month.  Don’t know yet if it will be accepted as it bends the ‘submission guidelines’ a little.

Workshop Aims

  • To illustrate how and why most contemporary interventions designed to promote enterprise usually have precisely the opposite effect;
  • To demonstrate how narrow conceptions of enterprise serve to undermine the value of enterprise development for both funders and citizens and sells our profession short;
  • To outline ‘in which direction progress lies’ if we really want to develop more enterprising behaviours in the community;
Conclusions
  • We (policy makers, professionals and community leaders) need to re-conceive what we mean by ‘enterprise’ and ‘enterprise development’ and understand more fully its relationship to ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘business development’ and ‘community’.
  • We need to adopt much more ambivalent approaches to ‘entrepreneurship’, of all kinds, if we really wish to engage ‘community’.
  • We need to take seriously the principles of person centred development in our work to teach people how to live a ‘becoming existence’ and pay serious attention to a credo that says above all ‘Do No Harm’.

Sounds interesting?  See you in Harrogate.  Or get in touch.

Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

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Essential viewing especially for all of you who promote fast start-ups:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU]

How do we provide enterprise coaching that provides spaces where people with ideas can meet, swap and take on new forms?

It is a team game after all!

I am glad to say we have been getting much better at this in Leeds recently thanks to tremendous efforts on things like Bettakultcha, Cultural Conversations, and Progress School all helping to build an environment and an ecology where slow hunches can brew.

10 Reasons Why You Should Never Start a Business…

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I have just been reading Steve Pavlina’s post on 10 Reasons Why You Should Never Get a Job.  Although written with, in my opinion, an offensive and patronising tone (people with jobs are morons, bosses are idiots etc) it does raise some interesting points.  Including the one about ‘getting paid while you sleep with a pregnancy body pillow‘ rather than while you work.  Seductive stuff!

But like so much of the self help and entrepreneurship industry it lacks balance and feels manipulative. So, in the interest of balance, here are 10 reasons why you should never start a business.

1  It may lead to debt and misery

The stats on business success are not that pretty.  For everyone like Steve that earns $40 000 a month from their website there are hundreds if not thousands who are trapped in a business that does not make enough money.  They work long hours for little or no money.  You talk to a Venture Capitalist and most of them will tell you the same.  For every 20 businesses or so they invest in the majority never make a return on the investment.  A few will just about break even on the investment.  And, if they are lucky, perhaps one or two will make some serious money.  Serious enough to cover the failed investments in those other businesses.  So what are the odds?  Are you sure you will be one of the lucky ones?

2  It will put strain on your relationships

When you run your own business it nearly always takes time.  A lot of time.  If you have had children and gone through the ‘terrible twos’ then you will understand what I mean when I say a new business is demanding, just like a toddler.  It takes time and energy.  Of course, so does holding down a job, but running your own business is way, way more invasive.   Many successful business people have left behind them a trail of broken marriages and damaged friendships.

3 It is difficult

Don’t believe those that tell you starting a business is easy.  ‘Just follow these 10 simple steps to business success’ etc.  Business is hard.  And small business is the hardest of all.  Because often there is only you to get the product right, to deal with customers, to do marketing and sales and to manage the money.  In a small business one mistake can take you down for a very long time.   Big business can afford the odd dodgy product launch.  But for small business it may be the end of the road.  You get sick as an employee and there will probably be a job for you to go back to when you are well.  You get sick when you are the business and that might be curtains….

4 Everyone becomes a mark

Unless you are careful the pressure to sell your business will turn everyone that you meet into a potential sale.  Not so long back I heard a primary school teacher telling one of the charges in her enterprise class that ‘everyone you meet is a potential customer’ and ‘remember you are ALWAYS selling’.

5 You become a mark

Once you have got a business everyone is trying to sell you something.  Mobile phones, office equipment, a sure-fire way to earn money while you sleep – yada, yada…And if they are not trying to sell you something they will portray you as a profit obsessed capitalist taking us all to hell in a handcart, profiting from the poor and ruining the environment.  You had better have thick skin.

6 You may become obsessed with money

Because that is how you ‘keep score’ in business.  It is  not enough to do good work. That work has to be profitable.  And if you have not got deep pockets it has to be profitable quickly.

7 You become a lackey to Government

Contributing to their goals of a sustainable growing economy, rather than a sustainable planet, collecting taxes for them and generally helping them to maintain their economic scorecard

8  You become that evil bovine master

When you start a business you are the daddy.  Or mummy.  You are the idiot.  And the hero.  It all rests on your shoulders…

9 You will have an inbred social life

I have met so many entrepreneurs for whom their business has become their life.  And they are trapped in it.  They can’t stop trading, but nor can they make good money. And if they do make good money then they have no-one or no time to spend it with.  They are literally married to the business.

10 You become a coward

If you are lucky, you find what works and you stick to it.   You don’t take major risks.  You can never walk away.  Just day after day the same old same old feeding the beast.

Now of course my 10 reasons are no closer to the truth than are Steve’s.  And that is the point.  No-one can tell you what the right thing is for you to do.

Not now.  Not ever.

So, the next time a slickly dressed and white-toothed smiler promises you that jobs are for idiots and that you too can make money while you sleep, well my best advice is just to look that particular gift horse in the mouth, very carefully.  Especially when they close their post with a link to your very own ‘Make Money Online’ business.