enterprise journeys

Find Their Enterprising Soul

March 30, 2009 by admin

Enterprise is not the same as entrepreneurship.

Being enterprising has little to do with starting businesses.

Enterprise is ALL about:

recognising how things are,
recognising how you would prefer them to be
having the self confidence, ideas, plans and taking action that helps to narrow the gap.

If we start from this premise we will find that we can engage far more people in learning the skills of enterprise than if we start with the tired old ‘Have you got a great business idea?‘ line.

We enterprise professionals might even find that we get taken seriously by educators and community activists. We might even find that we have something really powerful to offer to the social and economic development of communities.

And if we engage people in ‘finding their enterprising soul’ then there is a good chance that some of them will go on to start businesses and social enterprises as they start to exercise their enterprise muscles.

Sounds exciting? Then PLEASE leave a comment, get touch and ask others to the same.

Let’s reclaim enterprise from the ‘men in suits’.

Enterprise Lessons from Jim Sinegal Costco Founder

March 20, 2009 by admin

Jim Sinegal founded Costco 25 years ago.

This is a great post capturing some of what Jim learned about management, enterprise and entrepreneurship along the way.

Full of wisdom!

Shows that if you set up a small business in the right way – it can become massive.

The Creative Entrepreneur – WOW

March 20, 2009 by admin

Good networking event last night hosted by WYLLN, bmedia and nti.

Explored a couple of questions:

In a fast-moving industry dominated by freelancers and SMEs, what does ‘Leadership & Management’ really mean?
Why is it important?

More prosaically put – why are so many creative/digital businesses poor at establishing basic business processes, managing other creatives and getting paid?

My opinion?

It is because we (the business support industry) insist on training digitals and creatives (and every other entrepreneur) that they have to do all this stuff if they are going to be successful in business.

And this is, frankly, nonsense.

It damages people.

It distorts them from their true purpose.

The challenge is being comfortable with who you are, what you want to become and what you want to spend your time doing. Enterprise is a long term process of becoming, of exploring and realising potential. And then finding people you can work with to do the rest. It is about negotiating your self interest and building the right team. All really successful business are team starts.

Why don’t we teach this?

Find out what you love. What you really love. Something that will keep you engaged for years while you strive for mastery and excellence.
Get really good at it and keep getting better. Specialise.
Understand the importance of other things that you do not love. Learn to respect and value them. If you are a creative/digerati this is likely to be management, sales and marketing. (Most creatives and digitals have spent many hours over many years working alone honing their craft. They tend to be introverted and uncomfortable with conflict. Hence the aversion to management, sales and marketing.)
Find other people who love doing the bits you hate. Form a team. A strong team. Form it with care. Take your time. Unpicking the wrong team can be very expensive.
Collaborate on developing a vision and an action plan for the business.
Act – act often.
Reflect and learn.

Simple.

DO NOT TRY TO DO IT ALL. You will build a mediocre business. You will find yourself falling out of love with large parts of it.

Dave Pannell from the Design Mechanics recognised that he would perhaps never have been a really great graphic artist (I think I heard you say that Dave). And my guess is that this freed him up to run a great design business. His job is to work on the business as it grows and to spend less time working in it.

Liz Cable from Reach Further is building an agile team of freelancers and employees covering all the main bases. Balancing the demands of MD/entrepreneur working on the business, and passionate digerati working in the business is already a challenge. Being 1.4 of an FTE is not sustainable.

I suspect that Liz will either have to spend more time in the MD role or find someone the team trusts to take this on, freeing her up to surf the wave of technology and its application to building better businesses. Or she may find a way of balancing the two. However if the growth plans she outlined are to be realised I suspect a decision one way or another will be required before too long.

You see the real job of the entrepreneur is to manage the art of becoming. It is about the emergence of identity; building a life and a living – not the development of cash flow forecasts or the ticking of boxes on a competence framework. And when we take this seriously we will develop much more powerful and engaging process for enterprise education and build more powerful, sustainable and great businesses.

We must remember that the Latin root of educate is ‘to lead out’. Our job is to facilitate the emergence of identity – not to pour in the trivia of business skills.

Year 10 – Industry Day

March 19, 2009 by admin

My 15 year old daughter brought home a letter yesterday telling me about Industry Day:

In conjunction with our Work Related Learning programme, we have organised Enterprise Days in which all year 10 pupils will participate.

Hidden curriculum lesson 1: Enterprise is not about freedom of expression and choice – it is about complying with the policy dictats of bureaucrats. You’d better get used to following orders.

Teams of personnel from Industry will be coming into school to help run the days which aim to introduce pupils (to) aspects of Enterprise education.

Hidden curriculum lesson 2: Forget being a living, breathing person full passion, aspiration and imagination. Once you are in Industry (why the capital – Orwellian reference perhaps?) you are just personnel in teams. This way you don’t have to exercise any autonomy – you just have to follow orders. Enterprise is a bit like a strange cult – we will introduce you to some aspects. But others had best remain a mystery….

Hidden curriculum lesson 3: Understand the power of language to obfuscate and confuse. I am a professional in enterprise education and I have no idea what ‘aspects of Enterprise education’ are.

Activities will focus on developing skills such as team building and communication and will be an excellent preparation towards work experience and the world of work.

Hidden curriculum lesson 4: There is a thing called the ‘world of work’. It has laws, practices and ways of being that are different to the rest of society. You had better know how to conform.

Hidden curriculum lesson 5: If you struggle with team work and communication then the world of work/enterprise/Industry is not for you. You had better develop your potential to survive in other worlds. See Hidden curriculum lesson 14 below

Pupils will be working in teams and your child will take part in the Industry Day on one of the following days…

(and yes the first one is on April 1st – perhaps the whole thing is a spoof!)

Hidden curriculum lesson 6: There is little room for the individual in Industry. They had better learn how to smooth of the sharp edges and get along with people. We wouldn’t want too many ‘rugged individualists’ in Industry. Forget what George Bernard Shaw said about all progress depending on the unreasonable man. In industry we are polite, formulaic team players.

It is intended that pupils will not follow normal timings for the school day. The day will be as follows:

08:45am – Sign in at Reception

9.00am – Industry conference starts

10.50am – Break

11.10am – Conference resumes

1.00pm – Conference ends – pupils involved in the Industry Day should go home

Hidden curriculum lesson 7: The world of work is dominated by the bosses clock. You will do as you are told – when you are told. Because employers are benevolent you will get a break.

Hidden curriculum lesson 8: If we do not have enough for you to do you will be laid off early.

Hidden curriculum lesson 9: You had better get used to confernces in Industry. They are a lot like lessons – but longer.

In order to give the pupils a chance to experience some aspects of the world of work the pupils will be required to:

wear appropriate clothing for business; for the boys this could be simply school trousers, white shirt and a different tie (The David Brent school of office dress then). For girls, an appropriate example would be their normal trousers or skirts and a plain top (as opposed to the haute couture that they usually wear to school). This should not, therefore involve extra expense and I would stress that this is definitely not a ‘non uniform’ day.

Hidden curriculum lesson 10: In the world of work you will be one of many clones – similarly dressed and equipped to deal with the challenges of the stationery cupboard. In the world of work we will continue to discriminate by gender.

sign in at Reception by 9.00am. This will mean that for this day the pupils will enter through the main entrance.

Hidden curriculum lesson 11: We will confuse you by our ambiguity over timings. Although earlier we said that you could sign in at Reception at 08.45am – you must be signed in by no later than 09.00. Got it? Any non-compliance in the first instance will be dealt with by sarcasm. You should be clear that in the world of work though time-keeping is a tool of power and any difficulty you have with it could lead to severe disciplinary consequences

Hidden curriculum lesson 12: The world of work is obsessed with clocking in and clocking off on time – get used to it. Again forget autonomy, initiative and flexibility.

behave in an appropriate, business-like manner and follow all instructions from the personnel running the Industry Days

Hidden curriculum lesson 13: Learn to moderate your behaviour when in the world of work. Understanding the mysteries of what constitutes ‘business-like’ could hold the keys to the kingdom of the corner office on the third floor.

Hidden curriculum lesson 14: There are alternatives to the ‘world of work’. These include the worlds of:

warcraft
benefits
crime

If the ‘world of work’ as experienced on Industry does not set your heart racing and your soul singing then perhaps one of these is right for you?

It is no wonder that so many highly committed educationalists who take the development of young people seriously are less than supportive when it comes to ’embedding enterprise in the curriculum’.

If Enterprise champions are pedalling such ill-conceived and poorly thought through programmes they deserve to be left to their own devices.

My eldest daughter went through a similar programme last year. The highlight for her was the ‘Enterprise Wordsearch’. You have to love those teachers for their great sense of irony!